An Open Letter to Frawley

[White Chocolate]

19 minutes ago, Auctor said:

 

Everyone hates everyone as of four years ago already.

 

I will say, signing treaties with people you are not willing to trust is kind of a bass ackwards way of handing the problem of having had treaties with people you apparently did not trust. Losing intelligence clauses doesn't really change the dynamic there at all.

Your first point, if correct, explains in part the reason Planet Bob is the way it is in the first place.  Perhaps people should allow old grudges to drop if that is indeed the case.  It is what I will advocate in any case.  Not that I think my doing so will do any good generally, but it might in a more local context. 

 

I would agree with your second point, EXCEPT for the Non-aggression Pact part of almost every treaty.  DBDC-IRON NAP reminded people of that fact and it remains true.  One SHOULD seek a NAP with people they don't otherwise trust. 

 

Losing the intelligence clause may not change the dynamic exactly because such clauses are not actually followed.  Planet Bob's "diplomatic" culture of  "nice doggy, here is your bone" now let's all plot against each other makes that almost necessary in order to compete.  Well, maybe it's time to stop that. 

 

If nothing else, it gets rid of one clause in the treaty and no harm in shorting them. 

 

From what I'm told by people more experienced in the "big boy/girl" politics than I am, it is very common to have a treaty with an alliance and still plot behind their back.  This gives a major advantage to alliances willing to do it and confuses the issue for those alliances that do not.  Basically, the fall back position becomes "of curse our allies are plotting against us, therefore we have to start plotting against them otherwise we're going to lose the war." 

 

Perhaps the treaty web would actually be less of a problem IF we all had the guts to be honest in the first place about why we are signing a treaty with a particular alliance and how committed (or not) we are to each other.

Edited June 11, 2016 by White Chocolate

[Emperor Whimsical]

Realistically, the game has been at the end of any meaningful political growth, since before oculus came to be. Disbandments are only going to rise in the next few months. I'd anticipate that the game itself only has two years left. 

[brucemania]

First i want to say well done again Smurf as it seems you have put yourself in the middle of another log style dump.  I am beginning to really wonder whom this Alex the Great dude is.   Considering that the DoWs did come out and two AA leaders discussing or co ordinating in April from stuff that probally happened for time before that like the last year i think one month is not so bad for co ordination.  As well two leaders talking about something that is to help the game maybe become more interesting does not seem to be a bad thing as it is better than having some say how do we kill the game.  Just a interesting thought on a personal note.

[hartfw]

1 hour ago, White Chocolate said:

Perhaps the treaty web would actually be less of a problem IF we all had the guts to be honest in the first place about why we are signing a treaty with a particular alliance and how committed (or not) we are to each other.

 

I wouldn't ever want to sign a treaty where the other alliance wasn't honest.  In my day back when I had the ability to sign treaties, I never signed one where I didn't think the other alliance wasn't fully honest with me, and rejected those where I felt different.

 

Just having principles and not signing with the people you don't have enough trust with for them and you to be honest with is a step everyone can control for their own alliance.  And canceling those who turn out to not be fully honest, fully committed, and instead duplicitous is an important second step.  There definitely do seem to be some exceptions to these principles, although I won't sling mud.

 

Instead, I will argue that another alternative is going fully paperless. Being paperless, you can know who your true friends are and not worry about the nuances.

[Sarkin]

I'm no longer a member of the Oculus leadership, so feel free to discount this, but the single largest frustration I had over the past year was the unwillingness on the part of virtually every alliance in the game to have a proactive foreign agenda. This was a problem long before Oculus came into existence. 

 

The old grudges are simply too old to still bear fruit, and new grudges have not arisen (except on the micro level) to spark new global conflicts. To be honest, this was mostly true for us, too. Everyone chattered away about an "inevitable" Oculus vs. Doom conflict being the next global war, as you can see from R&R's comments in the logs, but it never happened because there was no grudge. Most of the various alliances that constituted Oculus have spent years working closely with DBDC. We set up an entire global war on behalf of Doom Squad so they wouldn't get rolled for hitting Invicta. DBDC had been enormously helpful to us many times. Outside of a couple of individuals in DK who apparently got bored with the relationship and wanted a change, there was never anything concrete to motivate a war between Oculus and DBDC. I think we've been great allies to each other; we've had fun and we've benefited each other tremendously. Why would we want to fight each other? Some third-party being bored isn't a good enough reason. We were both already on the top of the world, and we had reached that point as a team. 

 

Here's what kept happening: we would go around to our allies and say, "OK, what do you want to do?" They would tell us that they didn't have anyone they wanted to roll. If we threw out some options of the folks we knew were out to get us, the ally might say, "Well, not Alliance X. I guess Alliance Y would be okay, but we don't want to be involved unless you get countered." Nobody would come to us and say, "Hey, we want to hit Alliance Z." It just didn't happen. After the Doom War, everyone complained that the annual global war was stagnating the game and that we needed to get back to smaller-scale conflicts. We set the stage for just that and wanted to enable it, but alliances have refused to take the opportunity. 

 

I don't hold this against any individual alliance leader in the game. If your membership isn't interested in taking out such-and-such alliance or improving its position in world affairs, there's not a lot you can do about it. The reality is, however, that if everyone operates that way, you may as well put the coffin in the ground for this world. 

 

I'll point out an exception to the general rule, out of fairness' sake. In the last global war, every Oculus alliance was on one side and the New Polar Order was on the other side. There were extremely few positive feelings between our alliances and NpO. In the year following the war, however, Polaris put their nose to the grindstone and did something about their situation. They changed leadership and foreign policy strategies. They ended some ally relationships that were no were longer substantive or beneficial. They conducted an honest-to-God long-term diplomatic outreach to several of their former foes. They rebuilt into a real power.

 

As a consequence, the New Polar Order is once more one of the foremost powers in the world. They've taken advantage of the current world order to actually pursue their foreign policy agenda. This is something that all of our allies could be doing, if they had the interest to do so. As hartfw noted, Oculus has no interest in stopping its allies from starting wars (except against each other, obviously) or from pursuing their desired agendas. The problem is that most alliances just won't start wars anymore. They don't have the fire, the circumstance, or the membership to do it. They weren't willing to do it years ago and they aren't willing to do it now.

 

Quote

How can an active/competent person/alliance actually get a group together to oppose Oculus when every potential alliance is allied to Oculus and will go running to Oculus to get Invicta/MI6/Polar/NSO/whoever rolled for plotting as soon as it happens?

 

The creation of Oculus could have been the big wake-up call for everyone outside of that sphere to say, "Oh, dang, I guess the state of the world's treaty web is crystal-clear now. I can't fool myself into thinking that my friends and I are in a better position than we actually are anymore. If I have something I want to see in this world, I now have all the information I need to make a plan and I have a boogeyman I can rally folks around." I won't say nobody has tried (MI6 attempted it immediately, a few other alliances have tried it more recently), but nobody has done it well.

 

We've done our best to shake things up from the all-consuming complacency we saw in the aftermath of the Doom War. The existence of Oculus and its willingness to aggressively promote its interests and those of its allies should be enough to spur real action both inside and outside of the sphere. That said, we're not actually going to shove a pistol in our own mouths and curl your finger around the trigger; you have to do some things yourself.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Sarkin

[Keres]

1 hour ago, White Chocolate said:

However, had I known about this at the time,  just maybe something would of happened and RnR would of gotten the war they apparently wanted.

 

Not knowing either side all that well anymore and having been gone for... years... ish... then I came back and didnt actually follow the goings on of Doom and RnR all that much... I dont know if there was any bad blood going on there at all.

 

But "Why not hit doom" is, im pretty sure a question that everyone's asked themselves in the past 6 months, As it seemed to be the kind of thing that would actually happen and throw us into another World War... from the outside looking in... just saying.

[Unknown Smurf]

Well said and exactly what I have inferred is the overall thought process of Oculus Sarkin. 

 

The problem with this logic though is that it (Oculus Sphere, not just Oculus itself) does stop other alliances from having a proactive agenda. There are many alliances that would be aggressive and take out the party that aggrieved them if they did not have to worry about being squashed by the world police. There are a lot of micro conflicts that are stopped before they even get started because there are very few alliances that will go to war because they won't end up fighting the actual alliance that they have a problem with. 

[Blackatron]

I don't know whether I entirely trust these logs, but I'll take them as truth for the sake of this post.

 

I do kind of see a lot of the stuff that is being said here about the reasons for forming Oculus. Frawley's idea seems to be to incite Karma 2.0 and try to have NPO win it, both because it would be something to entertain everyone whilst it is happening and would make his name go down in CN history. The problem seems to be that they were willing to take too little risk, they made a bloc to huge and no one is going to go up against it. Even though this is OOC I'll avoid being specific but I have heard a few people from Oculus allies expressing quite anti Oculus sentiment followed by "they'll never be beaten" or "nothing that can be done".

 

I wasn't here before Karma, I know only what I have read, but I'm not sure there was such hopelessness in the face of the Hegemony. I suspect that because of that too many people who might have tried to fight a "smaller"  megabloc that did the same thing as Oculus will have no hope, so will focus on smaller grudges and wars.

EG the guys in TBC and NSO that have previously insulted and attacked Oculus over the OWF now fight besides them against MI6, why would they bother conserving their NS and WC to possibly fight a hopeless war against Oculus when the could fight an easy war now besides them against MI6?

 

Now I rejected the CB used to justify attacking Invicta IC, and will continue to do so OOC (especially considering what the logs in the OP state), but let's for the sake of argument go with it, surely creating a hostile sphere is a good thing? It allows for some real drama and interesting confrontation.

 

The problem is the NPO and the alliances hitched to them want the drama without any risk, they're like someone who wants fun and strife from a video game campaign but plays on the easiest difficulty where no enemy is a real threat and the AI allies can basically defeat everything without you.

 

Now I appreciate that the NPO certainly makes the game more interesting, but if you want to do something truly valuable then create drama without IRON, VE, Umbrella, all of Aztec, Non Grata, C&G, US and now NpO and their sphere at your side. Be willing to take the chance that Karma will happen again successfully and this time they will disband NPO and PZI the imperial officers, or that you could lose the top spot badly. That won't reverse the trend of the game shrinking, but it will make things a lot more entertaining for those that continue, and maybe help the game go on for another few years whilst the defeated/disbanded NPO members and allies plot revenge.

 

 

TL:DR; I get what Frawley and NPO are trying to do, but if those at the top want to make drama to make this game worthwhile they have to actually take serious risks with their pixels and their in game status'.

 

Didn't mean to continue typing after the "TL:DR", but words just flow ATM; TBH the very existence of Oculus leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, it will either just disband, be brought down with help from former close allies or former members, meaning that the "crimes" of Oculus aren't really being "punished", or the game will be shut down with Oculus still standing. All of those options are crap and make the game kind of suck.

[Blackatron]

35 minutes ago, Sarkin said:

 

We've done our best to shake things up from the all-consuming complacency we saw in the aftermath of the Doom War. The existence of Oculus and its willingness to aggressively promote its interests and those of its allies should be enough to spur real action both inside and outside of the sphere. That said, we're not actually going to shove a pistol in our own mouths and curl your finger around the trigger; you have to do some things yourself.

 

Who exactly are you talking to here?

 

Let's see:

 

Polar? No.

 

C&G? No.

 

US? No.

 

Sparta? Not really.

 

DBDC? You already made that clear, no.

 

The neutrals? Obviously not.

 

That's it, every other alliance you need to literally triple or quadruple in size to make NPO, and then they are not as active and not as organised.

 

Even if you take Sparta, all their allies, and their allies allies, you still have a relatively tiny amount of NS, a basically non existent top tier, and not half the connections of Oculus.

 

Face it, you've "won", congratulations. Now try to do something to reset the game so people can continue having fun.

[Neo Uruk]

3 hours ago, Mogar said:

I'd be perfectly content with Oculus splitting, Umbrella/VE on one side, NPO and friends on another, with IRON and AZTEC as toss ups that by itself would cause a significant shift in politics. (though, I suspect this current war is a way for NPO and friends to weaken Umb's FA position while remaining allied to them, just as the efforts to get DK to walk into a rolling were a way to weaken DBDC's FA position without having to cancel on them.)

same #yolo #oculussucks

 

Who exactly are you talking to here?

 

Let's see:

 

Polar? No.

 

C&G? No.

 

US? No.

 

Sparta? Not really.

 

DBDC? You already made that clear, no.

 

The neutrals? Obviously not.

 

That's it, every other alliance you need to literally triple or quadruple in size to make NPO, and then they are not as active and not as organised.

 

Even if you take Sparta, all their allies, and their allies allies, you still have a relatively tiny amount of NS, a basically non existent top tier, and not half the connections of Oculus.

 

Face it, you've "won", congratulations. Now try to do something to reset the game so people can continue having fun.

now try convincing them -- with actual reasons -- why they need to let you win

Edited June 11, 2016 by Neo Uruk

[Keres]

1 minute ago, Blackatron said:

EG the guys in TBC and NSO that have previously insulted and attacked Oculus over the OWF now fight besides them against MI6, why would they bother conserving their NS and WC to possibly fight a hopeless war against Oculus when the could fight an easy war now besides them against MI6?

 

As TBC I dont think we've done a ton of that... maybe defending allies... And we all have our own minds about stuff... I for one tend to hold grudges and get fiercely defensive of those I actually care about... there are some AAs we're not TREATIED to but I care about... like TTK for one... and that tends to go with whoever we're fighting for or against... 

 

TBC is made up of a lot of former MI6 members but also Pre-gonetocrap-SF members with a lot of former RoK/MA/CSN members so we were in Karma on opposite sides of NPO and the Hegemony and we generally just had... did I take shots at the Hegemony side back then? Hell yeah, I remember it being heated against Echelon and it was a lot of back and forth fun that just helped make everything worse because it was funny though as far as I remember... talking crap on here is pretty much the only thing that makes wars interesting... launching a nuke takes about 3 seconds and then it gets boring again

 

But back to the main point I was making, TBC is made up of a lot of former MI6 members, a lot of us got a lot of crap from MI6 when we left to form TBC, that just made it easier to hate MI6 for their !@#$%^&*... besides that I personally think NPO, NG and the bad guys at Oculus have been a lot friendlier with us than a lot of other AAs who oppose them like MI6... that tends to make fighting "with" the a hell of a lot easier... at least against someone we all have come to hate. 

[Duderonomy]

Dear Frawley,

 

Viceroy NG BB? Smurf creepy.

 

Sincerely,

Your Sekrit Skwerril

[Auctor]

I will say, the irony of people now wanting the Oculus alliances that previously had historical disputes with one another to continue those disputes when nearly everyone of yall around at the time complained constantly about how played out they were is great. Anyone who is bored here has only themselves to blame.

[hartfw]

10 minutes ago, Blackatron said:

Face it, you've "won", congratulations. Now try to do something to reset the game so people can continue having fun.

 

So, if I'm getting this right you cannot have fun because you would have a hard time attacking NPO and winning?

 

That does seem a dreadful disposition to be stuck with.

[Unknown Smurf]

If anyone is curious: CN wise, I am always having fun. Maybe not winning, but I do stick around for reasons. 

 

The problem is that there is so much 'dead' (politically speaking) NS tied to Oculus that any real opposition is impossible. 

Edited June 11, 2016 by Unknown Smurf

[White Chocolate]

1 hour ago, hartfw said:

 

 

Instead, I will argue that another alternative is going fully paperless. Being paperless, you can know who your true friends are and not worry about the nuances.

I tried for Margrave's sake (because I liked him at the time), but personally I never actually could get behind a paperless (only) system.  Margrave seemed to think it encouraged communication.  I disagree and in fact at this point feel proven correct as he certainly did NOT communicate his full intentions with me.

 

1 hour ago, Sarkin said:

 

The old grudges are simply too old to still bear fruit, and new grudges have not arisen (except on the micro level) to spark new global conflicts. To be honest, this was mostly true for us, too. Everyone chattered away about an "inevitable" Oculus vs. Doom conflict being the next global war, as you can see from R&R's comments in the logs, but it never happened because there was no grudge. Most of the various alliances that constituted Oculus have spent years working closely with DBDC. We set up an entire global war on behalf of Doom Squad so they wouldn't get rolled for hitting Invicta. DBDC had been enormously helpful to us many times. Outside of a couple of individuals in DK who apparently got bored with the relationship and wanted a change, there was never anything concrete to motivate a war between Oculus and DBDC. I think we've been great allies to each other; we've had fun and we've benefited each other tremendously. Why would we want to fight each other? Some third-party being bored isn't a good enough reason. We were both already on the top of the world, and we had reached that point as a team. 

 

Here's what kept happening: we would go around to our allies and say, "OK, what do you want to do?" They would tell us that they didn't have anyone they wanted to roll. If we threw out some options of the folks we knew were out to get us, the ally might say, "Well, not Alliance X. I guess Alliance Y would be okay, but we don't want to be involved unless you get countered." Nobody would come to us and say, "Hey, we want to hit Alliance Z." It just didn't happen. After the Doom War, everyone complained that the annual global war was stagnating the game and that we needed to get back to smaller-scale conflicts. We set the stage for just that and wanted to enable it, but alliances have refused to take the opportunity. 

 

Both of Doom Kingdom's M level treaty partners were good allies.  I agree with what you said.

 

I do have on question.  It's easier to ask because both of the alliances involved no longer exist - so I will ask it.

 

What if Doom Kingdom (not a part of Oculus, but allied to two of it's members) had attacked Valhalla (also not a part of Oculus but allied to two different members)?  You may not be aware of it, but I had actually mentioned the possibility to others and got told "we don't care, but Umbrella and IRON would have an issue."  I took that to mean that IF we followed that course the outcome would of been that Umbrella and IRON would of defended them,  and the rest of Oculus would of joined in via the M+ block level treaty that is Oculus.  Essentially, it would of been the start of this "Doom-Oculus" war that people wanted.  Some of our membership didn't like that so they went off on their own and did what they wanted on their own.  They are (I believe) ALL still fighting in one form or fashion and (I believe) they have all asked for peace terms at this point.

 

I'm sorry, Sarkin.  I like the idea of non-Oculus alliances being free to work out their own problems outside of Oculus.  However that is NOT what I have actually seen and I'm REALLY glad that Doom Kingdom did not follow up on what our membership who left wanted.  I could be wrong, but I believe I have a good idea of what would of happened.  

 

Even in the very unlikely event that what I expected to happen IF we had followed up on what our particular members wanted, I don't think my educated guess was unreasonable.  Given what usually happens in wars, it made sense. 

 

The only war (other than micros) so far to at least keep it to only a few alliances was the NpO-SNX war.  I am also NOT convinced that that one stayed local because the parties involved desired it that way.  The end was worked out because SNX had more than just Doom Kingdom who could back them at the time, AND was willing to do so if necessary.  On SNX'es end,  what is the difference between a curb stomp from just NpO and one where all of Oculus is involved?  None in terms of actual damage.  Also SNX would of had far less control over the terms to end the war.  Thus a smart move on Junka's part.

 

So easier to simply work out a deal on both ends.

 

 

46 minutes ago, Keres said:

 

 

 

But "Why not hit doom" is, im pretty sure a question that everyone's asked themselves in the past 6 months, As it seemed to be the kind of thing that would actually happen and throw us into another World War... from the outside looking in... just saying.

 

Because like every intelligent alliance leader, Lord Hershey and I (and the leadership before us) had our own close connections with Oculus (DT and NG) and our closest ally (who, if people have issues with "doom sphere" is probably the reason - DBDC) is allied to ALL of Oculus EXCEPT these alliances: NPO and VE.  Doom Kingdom had a PIAT with NPO.  Also close relations with C&G bloc who have ties to Oculus alliances as well.

43 minutes ago, Unknown Smurf said:

 

The problem with this logic though is that it (Oculus Sphere, not just Oculus itself) does stop other alliances from having a proactive agenda. There are many alliances that would be aggressive and take out the party that aggrieved them if they did not have to worry about being squashed by the world police. There are a lot of micro conflicts that are stopped before they even get started because there are very few alliances that will go to war because they won't end up fighting the actual alliance that they have a problem with. 

It isn't just micro conflicts.

 

On the other hand, Unknown Smurf.  I don't think the solution (if you want more war) is to ask the ruling hegemony to please break up because we want fair wars.  They have absolutely no obligation to do anything just as Doom Kingdom/doom sphere had no obligation to take X or Y move so that the people who wanted a Doom-Oculus war could get what they wanted.

 

In the above logs, RnR could of attacked us on their own from the start.  yeah, would of been consequences most likely but everyone has that option.

Edited June 11, 2016 by White Chocolate

[hartfw]

The idea of Umbrella and Iron defending an ally isn't really related to Oculus at all.  They had those ties beforehand and would have defended beforehand.

 

Similarly, the idea of someone debating hitting an aa for lols without even a cb only to chicken out because they don't want to be hit by the aa's treaty partners isn't a new concept.

Edited June 11, 2016 by hartfw

[Auctor]

I really fail to see how Oculus not coming into existence would have somehow invalidated IRON, Umbrella, and VE's pacts with them or anyone else's pacts with IRON, Umbrella, VE.

[Keres]

1 minute ago, White Chocolate said:

Because like every intelligent alliance leader, Lord Hershey and I (and the leadership before us) had our own close connections with Oculus (DT and NG) and our closest ally (who, if people have issues with "doom sphere" is probably the reason - DBDC) is allied to ALL of Oculus EXCEPT these alliances: NPO and VE.  Doom Kingdom had a PIAT with NPO.  Also close relations with C&G bloc who have ties to Oculus alliances as well.

 

I know that, dont get me wrong, but from what I heard from a lot of people from the outside looking in, that this was the only outcome that sort of made sense. Two spheres drawing lines (sort of, even if they overlapped a lot) in here, somethings thats got at most a couple years left ((lets be honest here, im not gonna blame NPO, this game has serious issues bringing new people in and people leaving)) it looked like it was going that way, treaty web be damned, but it is something AAs built around as possibly happening with their own treaties... 

 

All in all even WITH all those treaties, a lot of people were still bracing for that eventually.

[Blackatron]

2 minutes ago, hartfw said:

 

So, if I'm getting this right you cannot have fun because you would have a hard time attacking NPO and winning?

 

That does seem a dreadful disposition to be stuck with.

I'm responding to you but this is a more general response to a few who have responded to me.

 

First hard time is a bit of an understatement.

 

More importantly my point wasn't about "fun" or "right" or anything like that, both Sarkin and the Frawley logs seem to suggest a desire for interesting dynamic global confrontations, new and enjoyable politics. Oculus as it currently exists simply doesn't allow that. That's not really a reason for them to break up, even if Oculus disbanded today (as Auctor said mere seconds after me writing this) it wouldn't change the fact that NPO and co are still ridiculously powerful here.

 

I don't know how this is fixed, I do feel inclined to cite Murphy's law; if something can happen, given long enough it will. If it is possible for all of those that are active and good for a fight with most of the NS to be friends and stick together then it will happen if the game lasts long enough. Since CN is never zero sum and all the conflict is created by the relationships between the players this was always bound to happen given enough time.

[Sarkin]

20 minutes ago, Blackatron said:

 

Who exactly are you talking to here?

 

Let's see:

 

Polar? No.

 

C&G? No.

 

US? No.

 

Sparta? Not really.

 

DBDC? You already made that clear, no.

 

The neutrals? Obviously not.

 

That's it, every other alliance you need to literally triple or quadruple in size to make NPO, and then they are not as active and not as organised.

 

Even if you take Sparta, all their allies, and their allies allies, you still have a relatively tiny amount of NS, a basically non existent top tier, and not half the connections of Oculus.

 

Face it, you've "won", congratulations. Now try to do something to reset the game so people can continue having fun.

 

I heard the same things in 2007 and 2008 before the Karma War. Everyone had their own little spreadsheet or notepad where they had done the math and it was clearly impossible to take down NPO. They had Continuum and 1V, who could possibly take them down? Most of the talking heads sagely agreed with each other that it couldn't be done and that the Pacifican sphere had to disband itself if the world would ever change. 

 

It required far-thinking leadership, effective long-term diplomacy, and capable alliance-building to do it. It wasn't easy; nobody shot a single proton torpedo and managed to blow up the Death Star. It required time, planning, and effort. MK lost two global wars before it, and if you count their LUE spiritual predecessors, four global wars. It was a challenge. Nobody got the keys to the kingdom by pointing out to the king it would be fun for someone else to sit on the throne; you're looking to influence the wrong people. 

 

I contend that if our sphere had kept our relationships decentralized instead of forming Oculus, the task would be far more formidable. It's similar to the last few global wars when so many folks repeatedly managed to delude themselves that Fark or whoever would totally switch sides. The informal nature of the web allowed you to lie to yourself about how easy it would be to conquer such-and-such sphere. By creating a bloc, we made the situation clear as day. Nobody can say, "Oh, you know, I bet we could swing Umbrella through TOP" or whatever. We set a core network of relationships in stone, and everyone knew who our friends were beyond the bloc itself. It's your fault if you weren't up to the challenge. Here's the thing, though: we're still around. You can take another stab at it and try a different approach; learn from your mistakes. 

 

2 minutes ago, White Chocolate said:

I'm sorry, Sarkin.  I like the idea of non-Oculus alliances being free to work out their own problems outside of Oculus.  However that is NOT what I have actually seen and I'm REALLY glad that Doom Kingdom did not follow up on what our membership who left wanted.  I could be wrong, but I believe I have a good idea of what would of happened.  

 

[...]

 

The only war (other than micros) so far to at least a few alliances was the NpO-SNX war.  I am also NOT convinced that that one stayed local because the parties involved desired it that way.  The end was worked out because SNX had more than just Doom Kingdom who could back them at the time AND was willing to do so iif necessary.

 

My first post was long, so I'll repeat the parenthetical note from this relevant line: "Oculus has no interest in stopping its allies from starting wars (except against each other, obviously) or from pursuing their desired agendas." This would be a case of allies attacking each other. I'm not aware of any alliances or blocs in existence who want their allies to fight each other or who would encourage that.

 

So, I suppose there's a caveat to my earlier point about wanting our allies to pursue their foreign policy agendas. If their agenda contains contradictory ideas, such as (1) we want to be friends with Oculus and (2) we want to roll an Oculus ally, we can't help them to achieve both things. It's incumbent upon every alliance to rationalize their foreign policy and to make value judgments and tradeoffs. As you said, you made a value judgement that although you would like to roll Valhalla, you would prefer to remain our friends. I'm glad you made that decision, it made sense and Valhalla ended up disbanding anyway. If you had picked a non-ally and really wanted it to roll them, I'm sure we would have found a way to make it happen. If you had taken a diplomatic approach with the Valhalla treatyholders and tried to get them to drop the treaties, it probably would've been extremely difficult, but it could've worked with the right argument and relationship. 

 

To answer the second part, I'll repeat this bit: "The problem is that most alliances just won't start wars anymore. They don't have the fire, the circumstance, or the membership to do it. They weren't willing to do it years ago and they aren't willing to do it now." The only difference between now and a hypothetical post-Oculus world is that maybe some allies of current Oculus members would think they have a shot at rolling other allies of current Oculus members. I guess that's a marginal growth in the possible number of wars, but why would we ever take action to encourage knife fights between our friends? 

[White Chocolate]

45 minutes ago, Keres said:

 

I know that, dont get me wrong, but from what I heard from a lot of people from the outside looking in, that this was the only outcome that sort of made sense. Two spheres drawing lines (sort of, even if they overlapped a lot) in here, somethings thats got at most a couple years left ((lets be honest here, im not gonna blame NPO, this game has serious issues bringing new people in and people leaving)) it looked like it was going that way, treaty web be damned, but it is something AAs built around as possibly happening with their own treaties... 

 

All in all even WITH all those treaties, a lot of people were still bracing for that eventually.

At one point I sincerely felt that Doom Kingdom was being targeted, not necessarily by all of Oculus (not by Aztec who historically have been very good supporters of Doom) but by others.  So I asked for help.  Would you like to guess the response?  

 

I think that people have a larger than reality idea of what doomsphere is/was in terms of our ability to draw in people to our side and what that war would of been in reality.  Doom Kingdom itself was never more than 50 members.  We had allies but I actually DID go around and ask a number of people privately to either treaty with us or upgrade the treaty and no one I asked would upgrade.  They gave various reason why it wouldn't work.  I did not ask people who were already a potential target that *I* was aware of (i.e. MI6).

 

The only alliance  we specifically asked who said "yes" was one smaller one who I will thank in public if given permission.

 

Then with NpO attacking SNX, in our way of looking at it, the way this was going to go was that those who wanted us planned on attacking our allies until we finally decided enough is enough and once that happened, we and DBDC would be stomped.   DBDC membership would end up in the same position Bones is at this time. 

 

In other words, it would NOT of been anything close to what the types who wanted a "big war" would of liked.  It would of been a stomp that would of really harmed our best friends.  On the other hand, it would of given those who hated DBDC EXACTLY their heart's desire.

 

Why would we ever give our enemy his or her desire and at the same time harm our best friend?  And all for the sake of a war that wouldn't of been what most people imagined?  I may be newer to the "big" politics, but I'm NOT a total fool.

Edited June 11, 2016 by White Chocolate

[The Zigur]

No alliance should ever act against its own interests in order to appease the desires of foreigners. It's not the job of any alliance leader to "take down Oculus," our job as alliance govt is to represent the interests of our members and lead them in battle should someone start a war.

 

The existence of any hegemonic force is not inherently evil; the original Hegemony began as a force for law and order in my opinion. The reason the original Hegemony fell was it eventually came under bad leadership, faltering from the path of Order, and instead pursuing petty grudges and vainglorious conquests with chaotic ends. So Oculus won't break apart until the majority of nations decide the bloc is not acting in their interests anymore.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Immortan Junka

[White Chocolate]

7 minutes ago, Immortan Junka said:

No alliance should ever act against its own interests in order to appease the desires of foreigners. It's not the job of any alliance leader to "take down Oculus," our job as alliance govt is to represent the interests of our members and lead them in battle should someone start a war.

 

The existence of any hegemonic force is not inherently evil; the original Hegemony began as a force for law and order in my opinion. The reason the original Hegemony fell was it eventually came under bad leadership, faltering from the path of Order, and instead pursuing petty grudges and vainglorious conquests with chaotic ends. So Oculus won't break apart until the majority of nations decide the bloc is not acting in their interests anymore.

Agreed, but with one addition.  Or if enough of the alliances in Oculus decide that others inside of Oculus are not acting in their best interests well enough to make it worth keeping the bloc.  Not that I think this will happen or that alliances outside the bloc have any say in the matter.

 

Personally,  I think people should just take the relative peace as a good time to recruit new members and increase your alliances in that fashion.  Why do we even need a regular big war?  Best answer is that we do not.

[hartfw]

2 minutes ago, Blackatron said:

both Sarkin and the Frawley logs seem to suggest a desire for interesting dynamic global confrontations, new and enjoyable politics. Oculus as it currently exists simply doesn't allow that. 

 

I don't buy this.  I think it is either:

1) an excuse used by people who before Oculus didn't set up 'dynamic global confrontations, new and enjoyable politics' and now still aren't.  

2) a masked call for someone to roll Oculus because thats what the OP wants

(or both)

I feel like a lot of the comments, like yours fall into category 2 and to be honest, I really don't care and will just ignore them.  I don't have to care about Oculus.

 

But looking at the first and being honest. Monsters Inc has done more setting up interesting wars in the past few months than TTK has in its existence.  Correct me if I am wrong on that.  But they have in the past few months been attacking an Oculus protectorate, attacking Oculus directly, and attacking alongside Oculus and outside Oculus aa's.  They have hit people off a piat (preempting an uninvolved aa), and off an 'invite' for an oa(?).

 

If you want to do something, maybe it will put you alongside Oculus.  Maybe it will put you against Oculus.  Maybe Oculus won't give a $%&@.  But the only thing stopping people is themselves.  If DK felt strongly that they wanted to roll Valhalla, they could have pushed that agenda on their treaty partners in Oculus and seen if they could work a coalition and make it happen, just like all major wars are usually done.  Or just yolo'ed in as some people did.  Not doing either and blaming Oculus is lazy.

 

Sitting around and bemoaning Oculus as the reason that someone else isn't setting up something interesting for you is just you failing to be interesting yourself.  Especially those aa's have been approached by Oculus at various points to see what interesting could be set up for them, what they wanted out of CN and ways they could be engaged and interact and make an interesting dynamic, and have instead fallen back on 'we will get back to you'. Maybe they have since I left for Cowboys, but I doubt it.

 

 

Edit: And to WC's points above and the potential of a Doom-Oculus war, she is well spoken on why it never made sense.  I certainly don't begrudge them not acting in a way that wouldn't help them or make any sense,even if the crash crash would have amused unrelated masses.  I might question their inability to stop their constituents from spreading that narrative of two spheres destined to crash, or question the wisdom of their FA actions that at times seemed more intent on securing allies in case of a conflict that made no sense; but I don't include not randomly starting a Doom-Oculus war as a critique in terms of my rant about people not taking any responsible for making their own interesting dynamics and then blaming others.  I've never seen WC blame another like that, and wouldn't ever expect her to.