The Unjust War

[WarriorConcept]

And is there a explicitly stated purpose for the game?

I think that if a person gains pleasure from playing the game in a particular way then it is as equally as valid as any other persons way of playing.

Personally I enjoy some drama, but I also like periods of peace as well so I can build up and actually have a lot more fun when the drama arrives. So I guess I am somewhere in between these two points of view.

But I do gain pleasure from raging against injustice (Yet another one of these nebulous concepts that depends greatly upon your point of view).

I have no problem with agreeing to disagree on what we think makes the game fun for each of us

[Mussolandia]

GOONS and NPO were actually the same, the difference was that GOONS didn't try to disguise their actions as something totally innocent all the time and create false justifications for their actions. So I disagree that it would have been any worse.

Though given GOONS didn't play the BS game, they would have themselves gotten rolled much faster than NPO, since even dumb people would turn against them quick enough, given they weren't being fooled.

Ah, what an ignorant post. Indeed, it was our cultural differences (particularly our OOC approach to the game) that drove us apart.

Propaganda is not the exclusive domain of the NPO, Starcraftmazter. Shark Week is an excellent example of GOONS using propaganda - pretending to do something for the benefit of the community when defending its interests. Some propaganda is more believable than the rest and that makes all the difference.

[WarriorConcept]

Ah, what an ignorant post. Indeed, it was our cultural differences (particularly our OOC approach to the game) that drove us apart.

Propaganda is not the exclusive domain of the NPO, Starcraftmazter. Shark Week is an excellent example of GOONS using propaganda - pretending to do something for the benefit of the community when defending its interests. Some propaganda is more believable than the rest and that makes all the difference.

You caught them, Shark Week was for GOONS to defend their interests of...not liking to read crap?

[BamaBuc]

[08:15.40] <|Jason8|> If I can ask, what will it cost \m/ to continue to exist as an alliance?

[08:18.14] <~sponge_afk> You have to disband to minimum military forever, including improvements, and become an eternal tech farm for Polaris.

[08:18.28] <~sponge_afk> With an appointed Polar Viceroy.

[08:19.08] <|Jason8|> You're kidding, right?

[08:19.37] <~sponge_afk> Not in the slightest.

[08:21.00] <|Jason8|> Got anything else?

[08:21.51] <~sponge_afk> A personal apology to every single member of the New Polar Order, each individually written and apropriately personalized.

[08:22.08] <|Jason8|> ...

[08:28.04] <|Jason8|> You cannot expect me to accept either of those.

[08:34.07] <~sponge_afk> Did you really think when it came down to it I would be at all charitable?

[08:34.38] <|Jason8|> Oh hell no.

[08:34.53] <|Jason8|> I just thought you might let us exist.

[08:36.11] <~sponge_afk> I will under the terms offered above.

[08:36.32] <|Jason8|> I guess this is over, then.

[08:36.43] <~sponge_afk> Yes, it is.

To be fair, it has been noted that \m/ might well have gotten real terms if it had continued to fight; I am frankly not qualified to judge that statement though I certainly have an opinion on it.

Sponge has said that he was only trying to get them to fight a little longer to get fair terms. I'm not sure I believe it. The way to goad someone into fighting on is to show them the light at the end of the tunnel, but keep it just out of reach. Instead he essentially told them to pick one of two deaths. If \m/ had been at full strength, they might have fought on... But they'd had so many people leave at that point. I don't buy that Sponge was just trying to get them to fight a bit longer. It just doesn't make sense for him to go about it that way.

-Bama

[Saber]

We're getting off topic now as we are leaving the UJW period, but I guess it's your thread. There are many reasons that One Vision went from being a group of close allies to a group of folks trying to kill us. This has been debated at great length for many months, but the short version is:

1. The NPO wanted to kill Polar

2. Polar failed to keep a good relationship with IRON and the GGA and instead allowed the NPO to pick up where we left off (Now we all know how the GGA/NPO relationship was)

3. We had internal problems and failed to resolve them in time to prevent what was already in action

4. We weren't proactive enough, and instead waited for problems to come to us

So it was a combination of said alliances being traitors and cowards and Polar not doing enough/fast enough to address it and prevent it.

Sorry to be late so much for this, but I was away.

One thing puzzles me. You say NPO wanted to kill Polar. Do you agree that it was a result of Sponge's wish to take leading spot from NPO or is it unrelated?

I am asking as I seem to recall a certain discussion where Moo informed Sponge of Continuum after which Sponge went into a rant mode. In the end he told Moo that he should recall who's allies got killed in UjW, and then pointed out that it wasn't "unintentional". I don't remember exact words but crux of the log was that Sponge pretty much told Moo that he orchestrated UjW so he can destroy NPO's allies.

Sure. If I was NPO after such a talk I would want to kill NpO as well. However even there you are wrong. NPO was one of major stumbling blocks against going after you. They pretty much kept all of Q in line until NpO did something for nth time after which even they approved it. I in fact remember what it was but can't really share openly (OPSEC and that stuff).

Also, regarding OV vs Q. I remember hearing from NPO that Sponge/NpO was pushing to announce One Vision a lot. Impression I got at the time was that OV was pretty much NpO brainchild and your attempt at controlling post war environment. Moo countered by wanting to announce Q at the same time as OV (to minimize gain NpO would get from creating such a bloc) however we were unable to proceed as fast as OV could so we were too late to create Q (which happened month or so after OV).

[Mussolandia]

You caught them, Shark Week was for GOONS to defend their interests of...not liking to read crap?

Not wanting to read "crap" about them posted by people they didn't like. If you want another example of GOONS/Initiative propaganda, then how about GWII? It just turned out that GOONS got away with a war of aggression because WUT convinced the world (the people that mattered at least) that the response to their war was even worse.

[Drai]

I'll say what I did back then.

[08:21.51] <~sponge_afk> A personal apology to every single member of the New Polar Order, each individually written and apropriately personalized.

That is manageable. How many active members did \m/ have? I believe we had over 100 in our IRC chan on the night of the blitz. How many members did Polaris have, 600 or so? Even if only 50 members did it, that's something like 12 apology letters from each person? Not more than a couple hours work.

My numbers might be off, but I still think that is pretty manageable. Unless Sponge meant the apology letters on top of the no military thing.

Edit: Ok, it would be more than 2 hours work. Probably half an hour per letter. Something that could easily be done within a week or two though.

Edited July 29, 2009 by Drai

[JBone]

Once the war ended, I could not help but notice that there were two people for whom it seemed never to have ended: Sponge and Slayer. Sponge always seemed upset that he was 'robbed' of his genuine victory by the withdrawal of TPF and the disbanding of \m/ and Genmay. Slayer, for his part, never forgave Sponge's machinations that started the war in the first place.

Slayer was unhappy with the way Sponge pushed the war and tried right up until the first shots were fired to avert it. But make no mistake, they were in the bedroom together shortly after it started....a bedroom furnished by NPO. TPF was the only WUT AA that still held an MADP with Pacifica and they wanted TPF out relatively unharmed. The OOC mess that ensued was very convenient for all concerned and was used to facilitate our exit and the ultimate collapse of UJP. The rift occurred sometime after Sponge was removed from Polaris and it was insinuated that our exit was planned pre war.

EDIT: And since it was brought up two posts before mine, I believe \m/ would have been granted peace if they had continued to fight. Than again, what would I know? It's not like I've actually talked to people....

Indeed they would have. Watching them fold as they did was a big surprise to many, I would wager even ES was not expecting that.

[Saber]

No, Vlad is wrong. The entire point of the Continuum was to isolate and eventually "kill" Polar. So the reason we were not included is... it would make no sense. We were not invited, obviously, and we didn't even "officially" know about it until it was about to be signed.

Random, you were not invited into Continuum because if you had been there wouldn't have been a Continuum to invite you to -- a large number of major players would have left and formed another bloc where you weren't invited, taking the rest with them. The full member-list would have read: 1) NpO 2) NPO.

Thats simply not true. You know, im not a fan of Pacifica. Never was and probably never will be. But why on earth would they prevent TOP, MCXA and Gremlins coming after your asses for such a long time if Continuum was only created for it to happen?

That simply doesnt fit. And for the record, Polar wasnt included because if they were, Continuum wouldnt have come into existance because half the alliances being a part of it wouldnt have signed.

Well. I guess there are some different ideas about goal of Continuum. I feel I can share my thoughts at least, as I was one of main movers from TOP side.

HellAngel is right to a degree. Continuum was not created to isolate and kill Polar. Well, it wasn't built to kill Polar. Isolation and taking away of power from Polar was one of my main motivating factors. TOP did feel threatened by NpO following UjW and we decided to make proactive moves along with NPO to secure our future. Thus we entered Continuum so political power is removed from center of ~ to Continuum or in other words NPO, TOP, Gre, IRON and others.

However TOP's goals and intentions never were offensive in nature. We really cannot go in offensive wars without significant reasons and entering Q to eventually kill Polar is just not possible. However defensive move so we can't be isolated and taken out, and at the same time taking away power from Polar was possible and that was what we have done.

So it seems RI is right that it was formed to reduce power of Polar (true), HellAngel that it was not formed to kill Polar (true), and Vladimir that it didn't include NpO because most alliances wouldn't join with NpO (true).

[Essenia]

I am asking as I seem to recall a certain discussion where Moo informed Sponge of Continuum after which Sponge went into a rant mode. In the end he told Moo that he should recall who's allies got killed in UjW, and then pointed out that it wasn't "unintentional". I don't remember exact words but crux of the log was that Sponge pretty much told Moo that he orchestrated UjW so he can destroy NPO's allies.

"There are no accidents where I am concerned." The only thing about it is that it doesn't really make sense- NPO was fully ready to drop GOONS, as well as most of the UJP alliances, and they even passed confidential information from GOONS to Sponge.

Edited July 29, 2009 by essenia

[WarriorConcept]

Not wanting to read "crap" about them posted by people they didn't like. If you want another example of GOONS/Initiative propaganda, then how about GWII? It just turned out that GOONS got away with a war of aggression because WUT convinced the world (the people that mattered at least) that the response to their war was even worse.

Uhm, you might want to revisit the old forums. They didn't attack anyone who spoke out against them if the posting was the equivalent of "crap." In fact several good arguments were held during that week between GOONS and others. Claiming GOONS of bias would be lying as well, as they hit their own members whose postings were terrible.

GWII was well executed completely, especially on the PR front. We had plenty of evidence available and LUE jumped the gun without plotting its moves appropriately such as posting their own treaty in the first before citing it as a reason to start a global conflict.

I'll say what I did back then.

[08:21.51] <~sponge_afk> A personal apology to every single member of the New Polar Order, each individually written and apropriately personalized.

That is manageable. How many active members did \m/ have? I believe we had over 100 in our IRC chan on the night of the blitz. How many members did Polaris have, 600 or so? Even if only 50 members did it, that's something like 12 apology letters from each person? Not more than a couple hours work.

My numbers might be off, but I still think that is pretty manageable. Unless Sponge meant the apology letters on top of the no military thing.

On top of the no military thing.

[Saber]

"There are no accidents where I am concerned." The only thing about it is that it doesn't really make sense- NPO was fully ready to drop GOONS, as well as most of the UJP alliances, and they even passed confidential information from GOONS to Sponge.

But many others, TPF, Genmay, ... I don't remember the details of who was close to NPO at that time but many more were close to NPO on UjP side than on ~. Not to mention that NpO was very close to those that joined on ~ side.

It does make sense. NpO takes away half of support structure of NPO with lot of power on the remaining structure. Only problem is that they did not capitalize on the gain and that TOP/Citadel got away which is significant power that was exclusively tied to NPO with no love for NpO. Good proactive FA post war managed to counter Polar gains during UjW and ultimately led to NPO staying #1 while NpO got served (but not because NPO wanted it).

[Prime minister Johns]

You caught them, Shark Week was for GOONS to defend their interests of...not liking to read crap?

Silencing their critics perhaps?

[Vladimir]

Would you agree, however, that the problem was Continuum itself? Weren't those allies you got by excluding Polar the same that lulled you into a false sense of security and either ran away at the sight of the first bullet or simply stabbed you in the back? The NPO's "big tent" approach was, in my opinion, a mistake.

I had always thought that the Orders could not survive without each other. It was the "special relationship". The NpO was created because in May 06 we simply couldn't trust our other allies and it wasn't unthinkable that the same situation could be reached again. Polar had grown too large, however, to be entirely subservient to big P. Facing this reality was not easy for either side. The NPO resented ES and, as Vladimir demonstrates, they had an almost paranoid fear of the Random-Sponge duo coming after them. NpO itself bumbled its way into treaties it shouldn't have signed and it antagonized a lot of alliances that might have sat on the fence.

We didn't exclude Polar, we just had friends that didn't like them -- if we had rejected potential friends because of their relationship with Polar back then we wouldn't have had any. As a compromise we built One Vision and it remained central in global affairs until the incident some time later.

I also disagree that it "lulled us into a false sense of security." The Continuum oversaw the longest period of stability in history, lasting nearly two years, alongside the greatest period of Pacifican growth. Eventually it fell apart, yes, but everything always does; and indeed, if you look back through all the 'things will never change' threads you can see me stating as much even at our peak. Unfortunately we fell on the wrong side of things when it happened, but c'est la vie. There is much to be learned there, but I cannot see any direct link back to events two years previous -- and I do not know what we could have done differently other than join Polar in relative isolation, which would ultimately have put us (and Polar) in a much worse position. Moreover, I do not agree with the implication that all of these alliances were always what they turned out to be in the end. Things changed far more recently and far more gradually.

There was no "paranoid fear" of Random-Sponge coming after us. We knew that they wanted to because Sponge had told us (and everyone else). We also knew that they had horrendous foreign relations with the other global powers, and so if they did take a shot at us (which they eventually did) it wouldn't pose any great danger (which it didn't). What we were concerned about was Random-Sponge roaming the globe with impunity at our expense, annoying everyone, putting us in extremely awkward situations where we constantly had to defend the indefensible, and weakening our position as a result.

Edited July 29, 2009 by Vladimir

[Essenia]

But many others, TPF, Genmay, ... I don't remember the details of who was close to NPO at that time but many more were close to NPO on UjP side than on ~. Not to mention that NpO was very close to those that joined on ~ side.

It does make sense. NpO takes away half of support structure of NPO with lot of power on the remaining structure. Only problem is that they did not capitalize on the gain and that TOP/Citadel got away which is significant power that was exclusively tied to NPO with no love for NpO. Good proactive FA post war managed to counter Polar gains during UjW and ultimately led to NPO staying #1 while NpO got served (but not because NPO wanted it).

But those alliances were not really part of NPO's support structure. NPO distrusted them and felt that they would turn against them later so they didn't bat an eyelash when those allies were crushed. There were many close NPO allies on the ~ side, IRON, GGA, MCXA NoV to name the first that come to my head.

Edited July 29, 2009 by essenia

[WarriorConcept]

Silencing their critics perhaps?

Their critics were still allowed to speak without being attacked, provided they didn't post stupidly. Perhaps you should re-visit the old forum and remind yourself.

[Dr. Dan]

There's no such thing. We never actually got around to drafting \m/ surrender terms. They disbanded before we reached that point. The terms that were posted above were a joke. Compare the original draft of the NPO's surrender terms (that pretty much everyone who uses IRC must have seen) to what ended up being decided upon.

The general flow of a war is, once a side starts to lose, surrender stuff starts to get discussed. The expected victors draft terms, the losers either accept or reject, and so the process goes until peace is had. With \m/ we never even got started. They didn't last long enough.

Ah, thanks, I wasn't aware of that.

[shahenshah]

UjP. Joined GOONS in August, got hooked on CyberButtes politics bc when I went on IRC for the first time everyone was going apecrap over ModGate and Loldavi and generally wanted to burn down the world. Fought mostly IRON including Shahenshah, nooblet Sunstar from ODN, and a couple people from NpO and Zenith.

#goonrush was probably the best times I've ever had in this game. I was in the Camp Meatspin academy for the entire war so I didn't get to read any of the GOONS forum until the war was effectively over, then Error stopped paying the server bill so it was all deleted. Loads of fun spying on MHA's forum. The fighting got sort of old; I was staying up so damn late every night for over a month and got pretty frazzled. Lot of lulz had in sending YouTube clips of emo boys making out to Shahenshah in response to daily surrender terms PMs.

^^ lol I had joined game i think just before the war was going to start, really had no idea, but it was alot of fun lol, I remember those emo spams, fun times, I wished the war wouldnt get lopsided very soon.

Good times and necessary victory.

Edited July 30, 2009 by shahenshah

[flak attack]

A UJP victory would have ended in the disbandment of the other side, horrible curbstomps for anyone who angered the top alliances - including such offenses as happening to have the top sanction spot

Thank admin we never had to deal with things like that

GOONS and NPO were actually the same, the difference was that GOONS didn't try to disguise their actions as something totally innocent all the time and create false justifications for their actions. So I disagree that it would have been any worse.

Though given GOONS didn't play the BS game, they would have themselves gotten rolled much faster than NPO, since even dumb people would turn against them quick enough, given they weren't being fooled.

Very true.

I'll say what I did back then.

[08:21.51] <~sponge_afk> A personal apology to every single member of the New Polar Order, each individually written and apropriately personalized.

That is manageable. How many active members did \m/ have? I believe we had over 100 in our IRC chan on the night of the blitz. How many members did Polaris have, 600 or so? Even if only 50 members did it, that's something like 12 apology letters from each person? Not more than a couple hours work.

My numbers might be off, but I still think that is pretty manageable. Unless Sponge meant the apology letters on top of the no military thing.

Edit: Ok, it would be more than 2 hours work. Probably half an hour per letter. Something that could easily be done within a week or two though.

tbh, I've never understood why \m/ didn't take that route. It could have been absolutely hilarious. I'm amazed no one noticed the lulz potential of 50 people writing a dozen letters each.

[Master Hakai]

It's amazing the extent to which people still love heated debate over this war. It was definitely THE most influential and controversial war in CN's history, no doubts about that!

In my opinion, we should have another one. It would make a lot of people happy, especially if UJP won this time.

[Corinan]

It's amazing the extent to which people still love heated debate over this war. It was definitely THE most influential and controversial war in CN's history, no doubts about that!

In my opinion, we should have another one. It would make a lot of people happy, especially if UJP won this time.

The Great Patriotic War (Great War One to you heathens) was far more influential and controversial than the Unjust War.

[Master Hakai]

The Great Patriotic War (Great War One to you heathens) was far more influential and controversial than the Unjust War.

What is that? I have never heard of it. You should make a post about it since it would probably get more than 13 pages of replies within one day than this thread.

[John Michaels]

What is that? I have never heard of it. You should make a post about it since it would probably get more than 13 pages of replies within one day than this thread.

Because everything that EDIT: has happened to whit Between Great Wars 1 and 3 was a result of the war. The Initiative and the League were the the offspring of that conflict and their formation led to GW2 and GW3. It's the most important of the Three Great Wars.

Edited July 29, 2009 by John Michaels

[Corinan]

What is that? I have never heard of it. You should make a post about it since it would probably get more than 13 pages of replies within one day than this thread.

What John Michaels said. At this point a thread on the GPW probably wouldn't get a lot of hits simply because it's been done to death.

[Great Lord Moth]

I was on the Unjust Highway, but I wanted to see both sides grind each other into a mutual fine powder.