enderland

Congrats folks.

This is interesting.

Yup.

There have been far more than 5 alliances worse than \m/ even if everything about their disbandment was terrible. If disbanding after a week of war gets an alliance on this list there are MANY contenders since there are quite a few that have done that over the years.

Perhaps we can test this theory somehow. Are there any other fledgling alliances looking to be born? We can DoW you and only a few days later you will be brought to life!

Most people could not articulate what makes their IC persona different than their OOC persona. Even fewer have decided what their IC persona actually should be and have thought about it and try to act in a way consistent with a RP'ed character. I do disagree with much of your post regarding moralism and DBDC, though I do not believe this detracts from your main point(s). Historically most people have not cared when a nation is an aggressor to neighbors so long as it doesn't affect them. We have only to look to WWII where it took Hitler declaring against a nation (Poland) where treaty obligations required much of the soon to be allies to declare war (not their annexing of Austria or Czechoslovokia which is very similar to DBDC attacking WTF). And even then it still took months and an invasion of France for there to be much actual, meaningful response from those at war with Germany. This is very consistent with how this game is played out. Alliances act nearly identical to how the allies did in WWII (or most conflicts throughout world history). The problem, here, at least is that while what you are saying is true and it's likely most people involved in CN would agree, CN is still a game at heart. Our primary purpose here is entertainment, enjoyment, and/or boredom. This will often directly conflict with RP purposes. The effect of this is people basically dismissing legitimate IC discussion such as in the ambition thread and then others not correcting them or bothering to even try to act IC.

You know, if all people who participated in politics here acted like Walford and contributed meaningful things to the OWF or backroom politics this planet would be a much more vibrant place and provide far more interest for pulling people out of retirement. This is a philosophical argument and one I, an observer, find quite interesting. It is the "might vs morals" argument except played out in an actually interesting fashion because Walford can actually articulate a cohesive perspective (unlike many of those folks who I have on ignore here). The issue at hand here is fascinating. Is it more important to have a strong alliance and security? Or to be comfortable in knowing you have "done the right thing" - this is what is up for debate here. The only problem is that DBDC and Walford disagree on "what is the right thing" but this is what contributes to a good discussion and less drivel on the OWF. So for that, thanks to Walford and DBDC for making the OWF -- and this world, by extension -- a better place.

Makes me wish I had more NS... :war:

Well this was awkward timing.

Ah, that makes sense.

Also, the last bill payment shows up twice on spy ops.

I recently spied someone and am a bit confused by the results. It seems that the person has not paid bills in about 3 months yet purchased a wonder yesterday. I am unsure if the bug is in the wonder purchase update or something else, but you should not be able to purchase a wonder while in 3+ month bill lock.

This is why I don't really think \m/ or the first GOONS should be on this list. Both had a very significant impact to this game, and while perhaps their ending was a bit pathetic, there are far more alliances who have had either significantly longer stretches of insignificant or futile existence (and ends, for that matter). My list would be: GGA, this is pretty self explanatory Atlantis, surprised they haven't been mentioned (or at least seriously discussed), their entire existence Echelon, ugh Blackstone Collusion, never has so much been said by so many to mean so little WTF, pretty much every other neutral alliance has added something to CN at some point other than WTF Many of the other alliances I would want to add have somewhat reversed their tendencies over the years of their existence. Pre-2010 NADC seemed to have an unbelievable tendency to have bad gov/situations happen to it. Likewise some of the fail in GATO/Legion has been, while not necessarily reversed, at least makes them less qualified for the top five worst alliance ever.

That was probably the most fun week I've ever had in CN, lol.

The irony is that actually, fewer people would avoid the OWF it they were more quick to put people on ignore. Constructive disagreement is what keeps this forum alive. Terrible posting drives people away who no longer can wade through the pages of garbage for the few interesting posts worth reading. ------- As you probably know, quality of posts and policy does have an effect on the perception of others. Just as Valhalla has impacted their overall perception negatively by posting a "we are going to declare an opportunistic neutrality in a war we had many treaty ties to earlier but now that the political landscape is settled for this war we're making an official PR statement to make it look like we did a great FA job this war" type post for this reason: the same is true of individual posters. Those such as yourself (Daenerys, not Starfox) consistently generating bad content with poor quality posts is what smothers the OWF. Interestingly this thread had good content until I started seeing messages indicating posts were ignored. Guess I know who to ignore on here.

The problem with trying to get everyone to "need a legit CB" for a war is the opportunity for that ship sailed years ago. When more people actively cared about the political environment - and not just having fun - you might have been able to sail that ship. In fact it sailed several times right into torpedoes resulting in a quick sinking. There were days however when people legitimately did care about such things. But now? This is going to fall on the deaf ears of a disinterested and bored population that is lacking any level of caring about such things.

At least one problem is: Fallout Shelter System the FSS breaks the "nuke = defeat alert" thing. Unless this has changed from several years ago the FSS prevents the defeat alert from being triggered.

People need to learn to use ignore more :)

... there can only be one.

Psychological warfare is the only creative thing left in this cruel world. Sadly it is ignored by most other than the frequent attempts to spew so much garbage on the OWF that your opponents hate their lives and choose to end them (IC, of course). When I first saw the quick counter, I wondered how many nights VE waited in anticipation of being able to counter TOP. Causing likely opponents to prepare and remain up late is a pretty meaningful factor an alliance such as TOP gets to control, especially if an entry into war is inevitable. Delaying entry can burn out opponents psychologically. Anticipation can lead to a let down, especially since much of the excitement with war is actually that anticipation. As rulers age and have less time available to manage their affairs this can lead to considerably lower morale and ability to remain committed to a long term war. Over time, such psychological warfare results in an aggressor more quickly losing morale (especially in the rank and file) and in a war like this which will become a nuke fest for most of those rank and file nations it hurts morale significantly. When you add in the fact that TOP presumably had ample time to prepare their counter, resulting in minimal levels of their members waiting on the brink of war for nights on end, it's likely that simply delaying their entry a few days - let alone weeks - gives them a pretty significant morale advantage. ... of course, it's also possible that everything I wrote above really boils down to lolpsec rather than any strategic psychological warfare planning. But continuing our psychological warfare discussion, knowing the timezone of your opponents and then attacking only an hour or so past when a ruler would normally go to bed or awake for their days is the next logical step. You can wear down their ability to maintain their life and deprive them of sleep. If you attack too much into their night, they have no hope and give up. But by strategically planning your attacks to correspond with time that is on the cusp of intense inconvenience but remaining feasible, you can force them into either remaining up late, arising early, or choosing to sacrifice their nation for the sake of sleep, knowing it was fully in their power to be at the helm during your attack and they chose to abandon their post. I am equally surprised no alliance chooses to basically peace mode their entire alliance, decom all their soldiers, and DoW when leaving peace mode with no soldiers (but keeping tanks for the initial blitz and their immediate destruction upon a single counterstrike), thus depriving opponents of all their opportunity to steal land, tech, casualties, and promising only a boring war of nukes, spies, navy, randcraft, and cruise missiles, slowly chipping away at years of hard earned work with minimal casualties to show for it. Oh so much is missing from this world of psychological warfare. Simply choosing not to nuke casualty happy enemies is but scratching the surface!

He can always choose not to nuke you just to deny you casualties ;)

Have fun. Many friends in TOP that's for sure :war:

This could be really taken out of context, that's for sure. It normally goes like, "yeah I play this online game. It's actually really lame - especially after I built an Excel simulator to perfectly replicate the game. I don't know why I even have a nation still."

This reminds me of two things. First, in Woodstock with Twisted and back then you could do "all but 1 soldier" deploys and so the timing of your GA/rebuy was important and we were fighting Conan the Barbeque, I think, and that started lots of fun shenanigans. In UjP I remember someone in GOONS had 150M at 4999 infra which we all were astounded by.

Such a killjoy, exposing our secrets.