[Standards?]

Oh boo hoo the value of being a massive treaty whore is gone, how will CN ever recover.

I have absolutely no idea why you posted this as a reply, since the amount of treaties an alliance holds has no bearing on what I said. I'm guessing you were going too quickly and misread?

[Standards?]

While you definitely have a point, that's not the type of standard we were referring to with that exchange. Specifically, we were talking about the standard to which wars are literally fought. Working treaty chains, coming up with a battle plan to outplay the alliances lined up against you, strategic dow's that are meant to maximize damage to others and minimize damage to you based on the ties individual alliances on the other side hold, etc.

Basically, what we were discussing was the fact that chess aspect of war was one of the most important parts of this game, and while it was certainly injured before, its now totally gone.

[In Praise of VE]

For whatever reason--disbandment denial, bad breath, dumb leaders--VE was never welcome among GOD's other bloc, SuperFriends

Bad breath, it was definitely bad breath. Smooth had a horrible gingivitis problem back then.

As for the rest, well, I'm not quite sure how to reply to a post with this title from you, so I won't.

[Filling out my March Madness Bracket]

Would say SU. But yea, !@#$@#$ retarded piece of !@#$ fab melo.

[Ad Hominem]

Don't even bother trying to explain it, because it won't go away. Ever.

I've mentioned it many times before, but it's worth reiterating that the whole 'ad hominem, strawman, paradigm, draconian, etc' word bank is possibly the biggest pet peeve I have in this game. They are almost always used wrong, and even when they aren't it's just seething with a thick layer of try hard. Every time someone uses one of those words/phrases, I picture the poster as a middle school student sitting with his eyes three inches away from the screen grinning ear to ear while hitting refresh and waiting for that fateful response of "golly, you're so smart!".

[10AM General points out some absurdities.]

The Romans Are Long Dead

I beg to differ.

However, even though I actually manage to fall into all three of your categories of people who can legitimately use Latin, I do agree with your point on that and it annoys the hell out of me. Abuse of italicized Latin around here ranks up there with overusing the words hegemony, paradigm, ad hominem (which gets dual citizenship in both annoyance categories), etc. I have a whole list written up somewhere. IRON's play on Cato was at least fitting if not a bit overused though.

[CBs in CN.]

Very good While Chocolate, I've thought about pointing that facet of the definition out in the past but always figured it wasn't worth it. On that note though, I've never seen a war without a CB in all of my time here (well, except maybe the KoN attack but I guess that was a raid, whatever). There has been, and always must be, some semblance of cause for war, if not it kind of defeats the purpose of the game. Now, if any of you are thinking 'well what about NG hitting SOS!!@! That has no cause!!!', there is a little back story that you should consider, since the cause here isen't 'I dont like you'. SOS almost incited two global wars by poking the occupants of what's now known as Non Grata, for literally no other reason then they are an alliance of drama queens. Those incidents and the surrounding events probably should have gone to war at that time, but there were many overriding concerns that needed to be dealt, so priorities prevailed. SOS lived on, comfortable in its ability to poke and run back to RIA, until such a time when RIA was finally sick of it. Once they were, NG acted on a justification that had been sitting in their back pocket for quite some time, nothing more. They still have a justification, just because it's old doesn't make it any less valid.

There is a correlation though between the importance of the event and the strength/pertinence of the justification. While a justification like the one with SOS is certainly valid, its not important enough to complicate life to a severe extent/cause a global war/etc. Rather, its just enough for a pet project but not much more. On the other end of the spectrum, your not going to see this type of justification for a war that could have global implications. Since those are events of dire importance which impact the whole, not just the few, the cause must have more weight and be in succinct accordance with the traditional justifications we apply to such situations. That hasn't changed and I don't think it ever will.

[Look At Me. I Am The World's Worst Recipient of Leaked Information.]

Ah yes, last year. Good times.

[Every Thread is about Polar]

Agreed, but it's not just Polar. It seems like every thread goes to one of five things:

1. NPO

2. Past wars.

3. [PB/XX/SF/MJ/CnG/Insert Bloc etc] is evil or bad.

4. Polar is marked for death.

5. Karma.

[An Unofficial Official Announcement from The Last Remnants]

Wow, Locke... Wow... I thought MvP (not MVP) was a pedant.-Craig

And there is, of course, no personal bias in this statement whatsoever.

Normally this is the type of topic I would read only at 5am to sober up, not comment or care, then completely forget about it the next day, but jesus christ wiki banning? You were a hall monitor, weren't you.

Literally laughing out loud.

[Alliance State of Mind]

I think its due to a misconception that most of the banter on here actually matters. This forum is where things sometimes start or come to light, it might be where things end, and it can be where you get a general feel for an alliance and their opinions, but its not where the meat and potatoes go down. No amount of arguing or "making someone look bad" on here can actually get enough support to destroy them if the people who would be supporting aren't already otherwise inclined, some goes for the converse as well. In reality, its about interpersonal relationships between alliances and what different groups can bring to the table in the event of war that determines the what, when, who, and how of this little merry go round we have here.

That line of thinking breeds the mentality of "this post will really get them this time, hahaha!". I've made the joke before that people think their posts destroy infra, but it actually does seem like that's their belief sometimes. If someone has the delusion that their comment is akin to a nuke being fired, bringing the target alliance closer to destruction with each hit, why would they waste the opportunity by showing respect? So, instead of rational thought and giving credit where credit is due, we have catchphrase after catchphrase, selective quoting, and endless bickering over minutia.

Unfortunately, I don't see it ever changing.

[From: Progression of Terms]

If you actually read, you would find out I said I was near finals and not paying attention to CN, specifically noting that we wouldn't have even noticed the retardation of that term

Dear Doomhouse, Impero thinks you are a retard (and that's saying something.)

if Avalon didn't come out of peace and hit 4 dudes. Aka, my disagreement with the term was formed in about 15 minutes and pretty much the opposite of what you were trying to get at in your tantrum above, and that's because I was too busy in real life to remember that it existed until then (which is why in my first post I said I can't lay it all on their feet and its partially my fault for being inactive, seriously you need to actually read before you start this stuff buddy). Don't respond all foaming at the mouth

I don't really have anything to say about the stuff in that quote, I broke up the post here so that everyone else can giggle along with me as Impero accuses me of foaming at the mouth and then launches into his own crazed tirade.

if your not even going to read what you're responding to, you end up wasting your time writing up a big post of crap that has literally no bearing on the conversation whatsoever. What's clownish here is you stroking out because you tried to play the gotcha game again with us and came up empty. Did you realize it made absolutely zero sense that an alliance as heavily engaged as we were would actually give a !@#$ about 4 wars? Or have you been having a rough time and need a little bit of attention? It's ok if you do, don't be upset. If worse comes to worse, you can just make another super special irc room this Saturday night or something like that one time man, it will be fun. Oh, and no Schattenman, people don't laugh about this. People don't care about this because its you freaking out over 4 wars...or are you now mad about the timeline or something. At this point I'm not even sure what your convulsing about actually. Whatever, either way, point is no one cares and your wrong. Guffy- Don't worry about it, like I said before, we have no problem with you guys. Also, it hasn't caused us frustration, making Shattenman publicly loose it is a VE pastime, I'll gladly whip up a couple of posts to that end any day.

You and Goldie's mewling excuses about inacitivity and ignorance cannot hide the facts: Out of all the alliances in Doomhouse's coalition, you are the only one that literally went ape and started threatening reps and unending war when you finally got around to reading the terms that had been on the table for a month because a grand total of 4 VE nations were attacked in a war that VE declared but was unprepared to fight. You are incapable of taking care of business.

The Viridian Entente fought 2045 wars before the end of the Polar front, which includes 599 defensive wars and 1446 offensive, the latter being the most out of any other alliance at the time peace was declared. Don't tell us that we don't know what declaring war means or were concerned about 4 nukes, idiot.

I know you're the resident mirco superhero so you may not understand the significance of actual numbers as it pertains to war, but we've made it very evident that we damn well can and do take care of business. Try going with a line that doesn't have publicly available evidence to the contrary next time.

We never threatened unending war or made any threats at all really, just the simple acknowledgement that if they wanted to finally actually fight a war, that's exactly what we would do and the conclusion would be based upon that, not some sort of prior agreement.

Listen man, you really got nothing here. At this point, you're just saying stuff like "you can't hide the facts!" then randomly making stuff up. Schattenman, you cannot hide the facts, you have secretly been supporting EZI for months and tried to get Umb to install a viceroy in NPO. The world finally knows the truth.

Really though, you're drawing wild conclusions based on insignificant events from months ago. No one cares.

[From: Progression of Terms]

No, Impero, it's not that we didn't read it, it's that it's a load of horsecrap.On 3/21, Doom House made this demand of NPO:<~[`_`]> 1. 100% Of your nations above 80K NS must leave PM.<~[`_`]> 2. 85% Of your nations between 50K NS and 80K NS must leave PM (leaving room for banks)<~[`_`]> 3. These nations, once left PM must fight for 30 days.<~[`_`]> 3a. This period of 30 days will begin when less than 5% of the order are in peace mode, and no one above 80K NS is in peace mode.<~[`_`]> 4. Pacificans who have not individually surrendered will be considered part of the alliance until they do so.There was no demand, request, or implication that while NPO continued fighting for 30 more days that everyone else would peace out. At that point, 30 more days for NPO meant 30 more days for everyone else.On 3/24, NPO and its coalition countered thus:". . . The New Pacific Order will place an additional 883,000 ns into war mode for two weeks. This NS will be pulled from our 80k+ nations. At the conclusion of two weeks (start and end date to be added once all parties agree) all hostilities will end by and between all signatories. . . ."Even though peace was already firmly in hand, VE declared war on on Avalon and NADC that night, posting a DoW just after update on 3/25. After we had already agreed to some period of continued war (DH wanted 30, we gave 2 weeks).By 4/14, a middle-ground of 21 days had been reached, with VE part of coalition peacetalks the entire time as part of DH's coalition.By 4/22, a formal document had been written outlining exactly how things would progress based on DH's demands:

Article 2: Limited WarA. NPO, and any other alliance that wishes to subject itself to the provisions of this Article 2 (collectively, the "Article 2 Alliances"), shall remain at war until the end of the Limited War described in this Article 2. Upon completion of the Limited War, the Article 2 Alliances shall be given immediate peace.B. The Limited War shall begin on the day that NPO removes from peace mode nations whose combined nation strength totals at least 1,800,000. Nations whose individual strengths are at least 80,000 shall combine to account for at least 1,000,000 of the required total. Nations whose individual strengths are at least 50,000 but less than 80,000 shall combine to account for at least 800,000 of the required total. Strengths shall be measured as of the date this Agreement is executed.C. The Limited War shall last for 21 days. At the conclusion of this period, all undersigned alliances still involved in mutual combat shall immediately cease fighting. No action shall be required of any alliance to bring this ceasefire into effect once the 21 day period has elapsed.D. The combatants agree that no new fronts may be opened, and no new alliances may join the current conflict or the Limited War. An attack on an undersigned alliance by a member of a non-signatory alliance shall be a violation of this Agreement by the alliances that are fighting the attacked alliance at the time of the attack.

Doom House's rebuttal limited the participants of the 21-day period to just NPO, but Doom House immediately allowed TPF and Avalon to also participate upon their request.On 4/24--SIX DAYS before VE lodged any complaint about any terms which had at this point been available for VE to review for a MONTH--GOONS graciously agreed to allow Avalon to sign a separate peace at the end of the 21-day limited war so that they would not be party to a peace treaty with reps on it.Now, your lie is that VE always planned to not agree to the terms, and did not suddenly bring this up because of Avalon's stunning attacks on 4 VE nations after signatures for the limited war had already been collected. Your claims are laughable, VE, people literally laugh at this.For over a month, VE lodged no complaint about Avalon (or anyone's) participation in the limited war. A month. The DAY that Avalon began shouldering its part of the limited war, Sardonic, Goldie, and you all frantically contact our coalition asking what is going on, why is Avalon attacking VE, and VE suddenly starts threatening to break the peace agreement and continue attacking Avalon beyond the 21-day limited war, and to force Avalon into a separate surrender agreement.Your attempts to play this off as anything except exactly what it was are clownish, Impero. VE's behavior in this situation is shameful, it is hilarious, it is everything everyone knows VE to be.

Oh Schattenman, what are we going to do with you slugger. Seriously though, what the hell are you talking about? I mean, really, your kidding around right now, no?

My lie? Where in gods name did I ever say that we planned to not take part in the agreement the entire time, you truly pulled that one out of your ass. If you actually read, you would find out I said I was near finals and not paying attention to CN, specifically noting that we wouldn't have even noticed the retardation of that term if Avalon didn't come out of peace and hit 4 dudes. Aka, my disagreement with the term was formed in about 15 minutes and pretty much the opposite of what you were trying to get at in your tantrum above, and that's because I was too busy in real life to remember that it existed until then (which is why in my first post I said I can't lay it all on their feet and its partially my fault for being inactive, seriously you need to actually read before you start this stuff buddy).

Don't respond all foaming at the mouth if your not even going to read what you're responding to, you end up wasting your time writing up a big post of crap that has literally no bearing on the conversation whatsoever.

What's clownish here is you stroking out because you tried to play the gotcha game again with us and came up empty. Did you realize it made absolutely zero sense that an alliance as heavily engaged as we were would actually give a !@#$ about 4 wars? Or have you been having a rough time and need a little bit of attention? It's ok if you do, don't be upset. If worse comes to worse, you can just make another super special irc room this Saturday night or something like that one time man, it will be fun.

Oh, and no Schattenman, people don't laugh about this. People don't care about this because its you freaking out over 4 wars...or are you now mad about the timeline or something. At this point I'm not even sure what your convulsing about actually. Whatever, either way, point is no one cares and your wrong.

Guffy- Don't worry about it, like I said before, we have no problem with you guys. Also, it hasn't caused us frustration, making Shattenman publicly loose it is a VE pastime, I'll gladly whip up a couple of posts to that end any day.

[From: Progression of Terms]

Impero:Doomhouse wanted to go after NPO for an extra 21 days.We negotiated the idea that others could stay in during that period, in order to support NPO, an idea that your coalition agreed to.Avalon was going to partake in that option, that your coalition agreed to.Then you flip out that Avalon was moving to optimize the damage they would conduct in that period.You panicked and declared a separate peace in order to save the nations who were rebuilding, during a war you declared on Avalon, from Avalon. In all honesty, a tactical error by Avalon, they should have waited till after the terms were signed, because then you couldn't do anything about it without violating the agreement.

Alright, so you just didn't read what I wrote then?

[From: Progression of Terms]

You honestly think we gave a rats ass about 4 wars and nukes after we just fought and took literally thousands? Really should have been able to see there was something more to it on your own.

It was either peace out and not escalate it, or we would show what escalation would be, leading to a scenario where we could very well still be at war with Avalon today

Impero, VE has this lifetime disease of talking out of both sides of its mouth, you oughta see a doctor.21 more days of war was Doomhouse's idea, not ours, and the option to either peace out or keep going for 21 more days was given to everyone by Doomhouse, not us. You entered Doomhouse's war on Doomhouse's side, accepted Doomhouse's plan, declared war on Avalon, and then when Avalon attacked some of your nations you flipped out and threatened to derail the entire peace process because you were trying to be at war and rebuild at the same time. You're petty, petulant little children that apparently didn't know what declaring war means and shouldn't have pushed the button if you didn't want to get attacked. Your inability to understand that "21 more days of war then white peace" meant exactly that made you a pain in the ass for your allies and the laughing stock of a bunch of micros that had been getting pounded for 3 months but you couldn't handle 4 nukes.

Having a rough day champ?

The Viridian Entente fought 2045 wars before the end of the Polar front, which includes 599 defensive wars and 1446 offensive, the latter being the most out of any other alliance at the time peace was declared. Don't tell us that we don't know what declaring war means or were concerned about 4 nukes, idiot.

We have no qualms about fighting a war, but if we are going to fight a war that's exactly what we will do. We don't qualify it, we don't condition it, we don't play TPF's little self righteous "let me hang myself on a cross for 21 days" game that Avalon hitched their wagon to. Up until that time, Avalon had about 3 total wars since we declared on them. If they would have continued to just sit, we wouldn't have noticed. However, once they seized the opportunity, I took notice and made my feelings on the "deal" known. It's pretty simple, the deal was retarded and let Avalon, who had barely fought for the entire war, drop peace finally, hit some choice targets, then walk away. That's absolutely ok for Avalon, I would have done the exact same thing probably if I was in their position (and not looking to get away unnoticed) and there was nothing wrong with it whatsoever, however they don't get to have it both ways. If they wanted to finally come out and fight a war that's great and exactly what we would do, if they wanted to get peace that was fine too, but we don't do the in between thing (which is what both me and goldie were saying, not sure how you think they are inconsistent). If that messes up other peoples plans, well I guess they shouldn't agree to stupid deals then. Avalon chose peace, they completely understood what we meant and were fine with it. If you can't, wealp, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Then again, I know I'm wasting my time explaining this to you since you probably already get what the real deal was and are just being yourself.

[From: Progression of Terms]

Goldie got it.

If you really, really need to know, in sum you could say our issue was with the terms themselves. Frankly, I felt the whole TPF/Avalon agreement where they stayed in until x time then walked thing was simply very stupid because it fostered a situation where things like that which you touched on in your post could happen without the traditional recourse (i.e. actually fighting the war now that they were out of peace, and we did give Avalon that option). The wars themselves were a symptom of a problem (creation of a stupid term), not the problem itself. I can't lay it all at the feet of the guys who came up with that agreement though, since during that period I was gearing up for finals and semi inactive.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't like you at all, but I at least give you credit for some semblance of intellect hidden in that head of yours. You honestly think we gave a rats ass about 4 wars and nukes after we just fought and took literally thousands? Really should have been able to see there was something more to it on your own.

[NPO/DH War Part One]

You seem to believe I am trying to say one is right over another and that isn't the case. I am stating what I have seen and my thoughts. Step back from your knowledge (or don't) and see it from a different set of eyes, that is all this is.Also if I thought VE directly orchestrated all of this, I would have said so on your forums directly.

Oh I know, was more just kind of pointing out the poor phrasing/over generalization. If anything you implied that we were slated to kick off some sort of nefarious 'get Pacifica' plot, when I know you know that's not true.

[NPO/DH War Part One]

This was a trap to pull the NPO in.

Absolutely zero parties who were not treatied to VE were made aware of the impending declaration on NpO until about -5. The Polar dec was kept under extremely tight wraps in the formative stage with specific instructions that everyone save a handful of alliances be kept 100% in the dark, and I made sure of it. Further, the lead up went from start to finish in two days. Word didn't get out till we started to coalition up a few hours before, at which point it was already as good as done. Pretty hard for it to have been a "trap to pull the NPO in".

All of it was rather moot because treaty activation would pull us in.

^Should have just gone with that. In the end, the way your front went down was merely the result of a contingency plan.

[A Viridia Day Address]

Thank you for posting this Bob, we didn't even make a thread :x

[A Public Service Announcement from the Department of Spelling]

Your very name is a flagrant grammar mistake: it should read «L'impero romano».

In a certain way you thus reached "perfection"!

I also blame Bob for having revived my nostalgia for the Härmlins.

CN wouldn't let me input the " ' " when I made my nation, so that one is a technicality (my original name for a long time on the VE forums was l'impero though). However, true to the theme of horrible grammar, it would actually be lu impero romano without a contraction anyway in the !@#$ dialect I grew up on.

In an oddly related note, Caesar is also spelled wrong in my nation name because the correct spelling was taken. So yea, it's a bit of a tradition at this point.

[A Public Service Announcement from the Department of Spelling]

Bob, you know I find spelling to be offensive. Thus, I must disapprove.

[The latest numbers]

There's a disbandment joke to be had here.

Wait your turn, princess.

[Blog removed]

Great read as always, Shattenman!

[The Diplomacy Lie]

Or, you find it fun to side with the underdog and arranged the matters of your cult as well as your personal viewpoints accordingly, no matter the circumstance or reality of the situation. One of the two.

[A Note on PB Military Tactics]

Congratulations on finding 2 or 3 nations fitting a description then proclaiming it as the "tactics" of an entire bloc.