TDO are you going to shoot back or what?

[Ogaden]

TDO has been nuked 43 times so far, MQ has been nuked 21 times

Edited September 18, 2013 by Ogaden

[Auctor]

Umm, what? linky

[Saniiro Matsudaira]

Actually, it looks like TDO is fighting back.

[Ogaden]

I stand corrected, still though like 2:1

[Arthur Blair]

I wish they would shoot back harder.

 

Insh'allarchon, they will learn the wisdom of the mushlim way.

[jerdge]

A different level of activity must be expected. Neutrals attract the nation builder that logs in less often, while aggressive groups attract the most active ones.
Not to mention that MQ formed basically at and with the start of the war: anyone in MQ being already inactive would really be terrible (or very RL-unlucky).

To see the real commitment of TDO you need to be patient and to wait for a few days.

[Auctor]

It's a little bit strange to see TDO having to beat any kind of expectations curve.

[MagicalTrevor]

It's basically a tech raid right now. Should change tonight though...

[shahenshah]

A different level of activity must be expected. Neutrals attract the nation builder that logs in less often, while aggressive groups attract the most active ones.
Not to mention that MQ formed basically at and with the start of the war: anyone in MQ being already inactive would really be terrible (or very RL-unlucky).

To see the real commitment of TDO you need to be patient and to wait for a few days.

 

Just a little correction that MQ has been around for a while.

Edited September 18, 2013 by shahenshah

[Omniscient1]

Strange how the attitude to attacking neutrals has changed through the years.

[Dajobo]

Strange how the attitude to attacking neutrals has changed through the years.

I was thinking just this myself.

 

I suspect the many times they watched people who would have helped them burn without giving a care in the world destroyed political capital that they didn't even know they had. Years ago I'd have fought for a neutral but I know personally their decision to watch us burn over and over made real sure I don't care about them now!

My attitude is I would never attack neutrals and I don't believe they detract from planet Bob but they chose to never help anyone and now they live with their choices.

Edited September 18, 2013 by Dajobo

[Ogaden]

I think the third or fourth curbstomp where the various neutral alliances would just complain that the GRL was rising or just be smugly superior about how much better neutrality is, I stopped caring if they were rolled.

[Omniscient1]

I was thinking just this myself.
 
I suspect the many times they watched people who would have helped them burn without giving a care in the world destroyed political capital that they didn't even know they had. Years ago I'd have fought for a neutral but I know personally their decision to watch us burn over and over made real sure I don't care about them now!
My attitude is I would never attack neutrals and I don't believe they detract from planet Bob but they chose to never help anyone and now they live with their choices.

I just think it's strange going from the Woodstock massacre to post-Karma feelings about how evil this was to jokingly saying "let's roll neutrals" to finally the slope that lead to this. I mean a couple of years ago coslitions would been put together for rolling any tiny alliance (Thriller situation, Grub and Polar) Now everyone just kind of laughs at this. How do opinions change so much here?

[Dajobo]

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction"

 

Clearly this rule applies even if the action is inaction.

[Echostorm]

The game is already dangerously under populated.  Warring players come and go but the neutrals are always there for tech and ad revenue.  They don't detract from the game in any way. 

[Ogaden]

The Grudge War pretty much threw out what remained of "the rulebook", which was already kind of a joke. The last people who still followed "the rules" were us, and we got our asses handed to us in Grudge and Dave. The last of "the rules" was finally discarded in Equilibrium when we ignored the unwritten rule about matchups being vaguely fair and hit ODN with half the planet's NS.

What has really changed is that as warchests have grown, the harder it is to force someone to surrender, so wars have become more brutalized and wars of attrition, literally wearing down your opponents. You can't even compare what war has become to what was fought in 2008. The equivalent would be if you took a modern day army and told them go nuts with the nuclear, chemical and bioweapons, suicide bombers and forget the Geneva Convention, just win however you can, but after they surrender we won't make them do anything.

Some people claim that wars are less bad nowadays because reparations and forced disbandments don't happen anymore, but that's not really true, people do demand crazy things in peace negotiations still, but forcing people to accept reps or disbandment just isn't in the cards these days, and due to the brutal nature of war, few alliances are willing to spend the blood and treasure necessary to force someone to accept a term other than surrender and no re-entry, blood and treasure they would need for other purposes. The classic cautionary tale of an alliance trying to force terms in the modern era is classic Gremlins against IRON.

Basically over the last 5 years "the rules" have been slowly undermined until now they no longer exist. There are no rules.

Edited September 18, 2013 by Ogaden

[King Wally]

I think the interesting question here is could the Neutrals have been more proactive in fostering a relationship with certain AA's that had a moral predisposition to look out for them. How far could they of pushed such a relationship without becoming a target themselves but still ensuring that they had grass roots support to protect them from future Woodstock massacre events.

 

Could some post war rebuilding "gifts" and general support been utilised to feed goodwill and make it clear that neutrality did not equate to not caring. I think this is the basic problem as the lines between staying neutral in wartime and frankly not giving a shit about anyone else become one and the same thing somewhere along the line, and in my opinion anyway it didn't have to be like that.

[IYIyTh]

We've come full circle. We're monsters.

[White Chocolate]

@ Ogaden
There are no rules and never have been. There is only power. Those who have
power determine the rules of the time and (try) to impose those rules on everyone
else.

We've come full circle. We're monsters.

We' ve always been monsters and (as a group) always will be. The trick to thriving
on this planet is to keep this fact in mind and prepare accordingly in private while at the
same time treating each other as if we are all civilized.

[Ogaden]

We've come full circle. We're monsters.

You stare into the abyss and the abyss stares into you

[Omniscient1]

@ Ogaden
There are no rules and never have been. There is only power. Those who have
power determine the rules of the time and (try) to impose those rules on everyone
else.

We' ve always been monsters and (as a group) always will be. The trick to thriving
on this planet is to keep this fact in mind and prepare accordingly in private while at the
same time treating each other as if we are all civilized.

I agree. In every game there's certain courtesy rules. Try asking for those in CN and you become a dirty moralist or whatever they say these days. There needs to be some sort of paradigm shift really; against this nihilistic cynicism towards everyone and everything.

Like it still amazes me how many people hang around here to talk shit about the game. I mean, you can leave at any time. But wow, I'm way off topic now. Good luck to everyone fighting.

[The Zigur]

This is only going to make the next Hegemony that much more powerful.

[tayloj7]

The game is already dangerously under populated.  Warring players come and go but the neutrals are always there for tech and ad revenue.  They don't detract from the game in any way. 

 

I think any new players looking for a nation building game would see that they'd likely never catch up to the upper tiers (many of which sit in neutral alliances) and go 'oh well, why bother playing' so they may be part of the reason why the game is now dangerously underpopulated - similarly the game becomes relatively boring once you've gotten to the point where you've bought all the wonders and are just importing tech to build up, the lower the average nation strength on the planet the more the nation building aspects of the game comes back into play and the more interest people may have.  I could be way off of course but I'd say there's a least an argument against the neutral alliances not detracting from the game by just sitting and building.

[Steve Buscemi]

The game is already dangerously under populated.  Warring players come and go but the neutrals are always there for tech and ad revenue.  They don't detract from the game in any way. 

 

I agree with the bolded part.  Neutrals don't usually bother me, but I've seen two very large nations grow in "protection" as a neutral.  Then they jumped to a warring alliance and started attacking other nations.

 

This is the problem.  If you could tell me they'd be neutral forever, that would be great and I'd have zero problems.  But that's not always the case.  It's sad that just those two nations have ruined my view on neutrals.  But in general I really like the GPA and most neutrals and I wouldn't ever think of just outright attacking them.
 

[renegade4box]

I think any new players looking for a nation building game would see that they'd likely never catch up to the upper tiers (many of which sit in neutral alliances) and go 'oh well, why bother playing' so they may be part of the reason why the game is now dangerously underpopulated - similarly the game becomes relatively boring once you've gotten to the point where you've bought all the wonders and are just importing tech to build up, the lower the average nation strength on the planet the more the nation building aspects of the game comes back into play and the more interest people may have.  I could be way off of course but I'd say there's a least an argument against the neutral alliances not detracting from the game by just sitting and building.

I agree, the game looks like it was designed to last for 3 years from the start, with changes that got maybe an extra year or two in there. We're really at the point where play has continued past what game mechanics initially envisioned, and it's at a point where new players are at such a disadvantage that they don't sign up. Not to mention war in the age of the super warchest has made it so that wars need to be 4 vs 1 to even have a chance at a decisive victory, and even then defeat only comes because the other side gets sick of logging in and click buttons at 1 am for 2 months straight. If CN wants a chance at surviving in the future, it either needs a second server or a reset.