Nevar Fergit

[LJ Scott]

According to those charts, the then members of SF had 349 offensive wars and 22 defensive wars between the three of us at the time you drew those up. That pretty much matches my recollection of how well the respective sides did on our front.

Also, King Penchuk being an MCXA member got a chuckle out of me.

[ooc]The dates are in the url's.[/ooc]

Those posted are the ones from either the 13th/14th typically I believe.

Also incase anyone wondered;

Red = Anarchy

Blue = Peace Mode

Orange = Near ZI

When looking at them you also had to remember that GOONS and a few others used multiple AA's at that point such as Stupid Sexy Flanders, so their stats will be off a bit.

[Sandwich Controversy]

44 Soviet Canuckistan 38466.486 4562.59 625.98 20 1:1 3:1 2 3

I am history's greatest warrior.

[Delta1212]

44 Soviet Canuckistan 38466.486 4562.59 625.98 20 1:1 3:1 2 3

I am history's greatest warrior.

Everyone knows babyjesus grows up to shoot swords out of his mouth at the End Times. Can't really beat that.

[Kaiser]

The Unjust war was the most fun I ever had on Planet Bob. I was in RIA at the time, and had been for about 9 months. We at RIA had been hotly debating the SF bloc. I knew that I was personally against it at the time due to how ASC had signed a pact with GATO, then cancelled it and signed with GOONS like 3 days later. This made my not trust them, but soon I was working closely with them.

I was just a regular member at the time, but I remember Delta coming to me and asking me to help with the update blitz due to our War Advisor being largely inactive at the time. I didn't even know who are target was, but I soon found myself invited to #ggaint about 2 hours before update. We (being RIA, ASC, FARK and another small alliance that disbanded) talked for a long time about how to devide up the target. It was decided that because ASC had more upper nations, that they would take the first 3 pages of GGA nations, and FARK and RIA would alternate a page at a time for targets. This took about 30 minutes.

Then, I knew I needed help. I had to prioritize targets for about 200 nations and assign them attackers in an hour and a half. Me, Delta1212 and C-zom planned prioritzed all our targets in about 30 minutes, then assinged attacked to them in about 15. We tried to help GOONS nations that were being besieged, and I think we did a good job. I remember watching the blitz, and I was so proud to see something I had planned turn out so well. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I recall RIA having a good blitz for an alliance their size.

I remember the tension in RIA at the time. Superfriends was doing so good in the war, we were actually gaining strenght and absolulely crushing GGA. But day after day NPO stayed out of the fight. I knew that at any update NPO was going to attack us. I watched every night for a week the war screen, fearing the NPO blitz that never came. When they finally attacked GOLD, I was honestly shocked. It made no sense, we were the best front of the entire war. We were the only ones gaining NS, why didn't they attack us?

I now suspect that they didn't want to help NpO out, and joined the war only marginally for just that reason. I couldn't comprehend it at the time, but I was thankful.

That week long war was the most fun I ever had on Planet bob, and though I didn't sleep too much, if I could go back and do it all again, I would have done it the same.

[ChairmanHal]

Aw, Hal, be a sport! How'd your experiences then shape your course?

Ever watch Goodfellas? Toward the end of the film, when Henry is reminiscing about the old times:

Henry Hill: [narrating] Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies.

[Henry leaves the witness stand and speaks directly to the camera]

Henry Hill: Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over.

Henry Hill: [narrating] And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

I think that sums it up pretty well...I miss the action. The PCs and the other raiding alliances today are nothing like \m/. They don't interest me. I think I climbed the ladder at Ragnarok all the way up to the top in some ways just to prove that my Triumvirate at \m/ wasn't a fluke. When Ragnarok started to become a bad night time drama I went to a place that reminded me of the old days. So I guess you could say that when you talk about the past two years and what motivated me, look to Henry Hill.

[Nintenderek]

I was too young and inexperienced for the UJW to have affected me a whole lot, however it did affect me in a couple of ways. For one, I made a hidden goon my defense minister. The main thing I remember from UJW though, which seems ironic considering how things went, is Doitzel coming into #GOLD-CN to talk to GOLD government to find out if we would be declaring or not, and telling us we were dead if we did. As it turns out, not only was Doitzel right, but I joined an alliance he helped found a little bit later. It was called Vox Populi, perhaps you all have heard of it?

[Seerow]

Then the whole end-of-the-war thing happened. I must confess that I scratch my head when people speak of it as if it were the turning point. Let's be honest with ourselves now: We had lost. The war was becoming a rout, and even idiot newbie me could see it. It just would have taken a bit longer and everyone would've blown a bit more stuff up

I'll give you that UJP was going to lose either way in the long run, however I blame this more on the mindsets of those involved, and the lack of organization on some alliances. \m/ in particular was a huge headache for me (as MK and \m/ were sharing the same targets, and \m/ did not seem to understand the meaning of staggering).

However numbers themselves do not win the war if it is relatively close. Had everyone in UJP acted optimally there would have been a chance for victory, I'm pretty sure on our side we had bigger warchests in general, and more active members. In a long term war this could have resulted in a stalemate at worst, a victory at best. But with the way things stood it looked like a losing war, and this led to the suicidal sentiment among many of the alliances involved, and the thought that any surrender was better than PZI of the entire alliance, thus leading to the cascade of surrenders.

[Chief Savage Man]

I'll give you that UJP was going to lose either way in the long run, however I blame this more on the mindsets of those involved, and the lack of organization on some alliances. \m/ in particular was a huge headache for me (as MK and \m/ were sharing the same targets, and \m/ did not seem to understand the meaning of staggering).

However numbers themselves do not win the war if it is relatively close. Had everyone in UJP acted optimally there would have been a chance for victory, I'm pretty sure on our side we had bigger warchests in general, and more active members. In a long term war this could have resulted in a stalemate at worst, a victory at best. But with the way things stood it looked like a losing war, and this led to the suicidal sentiment among many of the alliances involved, and the thought that any surrender was better than PZI of the entire alliance, thus leading to the cascade of surrenders.

Oh boy, the disorganization of wartime \m/. Something I would like to forget.

[Seerow]

Oh boy, the disorganization of wartime \m/. Something I would like to forget.

My favorite part was Virillus denying they were disorganized when I !@#$%*ed at him, and claimed that he knew of no overlying strategy involved with picking targets, insisting that doing things the way there were was actually helping.

Of course this is ancient history now. Virillus has assured us all he is a very competent leader in his current alliance.

[Doitzel]

I was too young and inexperienced for the UJW to have affected me a whole lot, however it did affect me in a couple of ways. For one, I made a hidden goon my defense minister. The main thing I remember from UJW though, which seems ironic considering how things went, is Doitzel coming into #GOLD-CN to talk to GOLD government to find out if we would be declaring or not, and telling us we were dead if we did. As it turns out, not only was Doitzel right, but I joined an alliance he helped found a little bit later. It was called Vox Populi, perhaps you all have heard of it?

So it goes with everyone who doesn't listen to me.

Ah, The Cleansing... It was the culmination of months of work and political maneuvering. It was the realisation of my political dreams (at the time), the traditional alliances of the world banding together to drive out the invading scourge. Seeing IRON, GGA, and Polar as the knights on white horses leading the charge against the GOONic scum was something we toiled ceaselessly to see. I regret the final outcome of that toil, but I do not regret what we did in that war. The only alternative would be the same thing happening at a later time, or else millions more NS tacked onto what became the Continuum / "the Hegemony".

Anyway... good times. 9/19 is a better date for celebrating, though, if you ask me.

[Louisa]

This is about as boring as all my stories so I have the courtesy to provide a painless way to pass over this post.

Louisaland lost its communications system a day or two before the Modgate thing and so my country was under benevolent foreign occupation. Or, to put it in the local burkaninja language: a broken "computer monitor" forced me to hire a "babysitter". So, and because I was just a clueless little member, I missed the whole building up to the war, and also the start of it, with the "OOC attack" events etc (I still have no clue what happened there, but I can guess).

But then the satellites went back to business as a new "computer monitor" was bought, and Louisaland returned to native control after about 7 weeks, which was a week or so after the war started. And then suddenly I found that Louisaland was in war with five people that used to be allies a month before. There was no time really to ask why (also I was too busy trying to figure out the hilarity that had made me Banned in the GOONS forum while I was away) so I just sat down to fight, fight, fight some more. I have forgotten those things and am too lazy to check the Louisaland wiki but eventually after about 5 more wars IRON failed to stagger me and I built a Peace Mode energy field to shield my poor little ZI:d country.

And then the months passed and friends started disappearing from Bob until there was just two handfuls or so left, and then I came to our new forum one day and found that we had been disbanded. I stayed in my AA for a month or two (I have forgotten the dates because my old computer died this spring and I lost all those things) until some charming fellows from TOP seduced me into their wicked stat-collecting ways, and with that my year of war ended.

Moral of the story: buy a new computer screen as soon as the old one starts to flicker. Also buy a new computer as soon as the old one starts to smell like burning plastic. I wish that I knew that before and then I would still have my pretty little country.

251 Louisaland 21482.731 2833.68 280.29 0 0 0

God I was great when under babysitter control

/returns to retirement

[ChairmanHal]

My favorite part was Virillus denying they were disorganized when I !@#$%*ed at him, and claimed that he knew of no overlying strategy involved with picking targets, insisting that doing things the way there were was actually helping.

Of course this is ancient history now. Virillus has assured us all he is a very competent leader in his current alliance.

Not that it matters anymore, but I was getting the same story from him. I was concentrating on getting morale up, got daily (sometimes more often) briefings and of course sat in the UjP leadership channel once I became a Tri.

FYI: I actually laughed when you said something about warchests. At best warchests were periodically yelled about at \m/ but few actually got serious about maintaining one and large warchests were rarer still. By the time of the Bilrow incident we had people already starting to run out of money (Virillus was working on trying to pull them back into peace mode to reload) and while we as fair number of us had pulled in some nice cash from ground battles, I don't know that we would have lasted more than another couple of weeks before being exhausted. I personally would have been ZIed or darn near had the war lasted much longer as I was heavily outnumbered in my fights.

That's another thing. \m/ by my calculations was outnumbered a bit over 3:1 in its fights. Our only hope was to knock out an alliance or two from off our backs and hope that it created a domino effect. There was no scenario where we would have "won", just fought our enemies to a draw. Not without help that wasn't coming.

[ChairmanHal]

Anyway... good times. 9/19 is a better date for celebrating, though, if you ask me.

Ha. Ha. We didn't and if you ask me there are other dates that are better celebrated. Like the day the NPO "gaming club" kicked you to the curb and the date they made sure you didn't get settled into Polaris. That one showed taste and good judgment.

See how comments like yours end up in tit-for-tat? Let it go.

[Haflinger]

I remember the tension in RIA at the time. Superfriends was doing so good in the war, we were actually gaining strenght and absolulely crushing GGA. But day after day NPO stayed out of the fight. I knew that at any update NPO was going to attack us. I watched every night for a week the war screen, fearing the NPO blitz that never came. When they finally attacked GOLD, I was honestly shocked. It made no sense, we were the best front of the entire war. We were the only ones gaining NS, why didn't they attack us?

I now suspect that they didn't want to help NpO out, and joined the war only marginally for just that reason. I couldn't comprehend it at the time, but I was thankful.

Sponge was in charge of target assignments for UJW. He didn't care about GGA, as he has said in other posts on these forums. That's probably a simpler explanation.

[Alterego]

Interesting post and thread schatt, I hope more people contribute to it in as honest and open a manner as you did.

[Gottrich Northeim]

I was a Feldmarscall in Norden Verein at the time, and was coordinating my divisions needs, (lots of battle reports, lots of aid, lots stuff...)

Edited September 12, 2009 by Gottrich Northeim

[BamaBuc]

I'll give you that UJP was going to lose either way in the long run, however I blame this more on the mindsets of those involved, and the lack of organization on some alliances. \m/ in particular was a huge headache for me (as MK and \m/ were sharing the same targets, and \m/ did not seem to understand the meaning of staggering).

However numbers themselves do not win the war if it is relatively close. Had everyone in UJP acted optimally there would have been a chance for victory, I'm pretty sure on our side we had bigger warchests in general, and more active members. In a long term war this could have resulted in a stalemate at worst, a victory at best. But with the way things stood it looked like a losing war, and this led to the suicidal sentiment among many of the alliances involved, and the thought that any surrender was better than PZI of the entire alliance, thus leading to the cascade of surrenders.

There's no denying that the mindsets hurt. I wasn't "in the know" at the time, but I've heard since then that GOONS in particular had consigned themselves to the scrap heap before the war had even begun, and resolved to go out with a two-part bang. It's also been widely admitted by \m/ folks that large portions of the alliance just didn't care and were only there for the raiding. The UJP alliances in general didn't take things that seriously, and those two supposed warrior alliances probably took things the least seriously of all.

After a few days it wasn't relatively close. People kept piling in on the ~ side, and nobody came in for UJH. Almost without exception, wars are won and lost before they start. The stats were fairly even for a couple days, but at that point ~ had tons of allies waiting in the wings, and UJH had none. The Big Bad said in his memoirs (OOC: they're in his blog) that UJP leadership wasn't willing to do the diplomatic legwork to win the real war, while Sponge was. That certainly seems to be right on the mark.

If a war isn't won and lost before it starts, it's won and lost in the first few days. Once the masses pile on one side, it's over. The only example I can think of where a much larger force was fought to anything even slightly resembling a standstill was GWI, and that was against probably the most ineffectual coalition in history. ~ was fairly well organized and united against UJP. UJP had more experienced warriors, but even if all of those warriors had played for keeps, it wouldn't have mattered. Experience, aptitude, and organization are important, but numbers win wars. If you've got overwhelming NS and nukes, you win. There's no such thing as winning a guerilla war. If you're good you can do a TPF and pay reps but survive with most of your active core intact... If you're extemely lucky, you can do a FAN and get off with white peace when your enemies kill each other. But you do not "win" a long guerilla war. If you've got good warriors with good warchests, you can do some damage on the way down, and maybe make it costly to keep you at war. That's the best you can do. It was even worse then before the MP.

If the numbers had stayed close and UJP had cared, who knows. But Sponge and friends did the diplomatic legwork to get overwhelming numbers on their side and keep people away from UJP. Polar was ridiculed for it's foreign policy that some said amounted to no more than "LOL U WANT TREATY?", but it won them the war.

-Bama

[Seerow]

Not that it matters anymore, but I was getting the same story from him. I was concentrating on getting morale up, got daily (sometimes more often) briefings and of course sat in the UjP leadership channel once I became a Tri.

FYI: I actually laughed when you said something about warchests. At best warchests were periodically yelled about at \m/ but few actually got serious about maintaining one and large warchests were rarer still. By the time of the Bilrow incident we had people already starting to run out of money (Virillus was working on trying to pull them back into peace mode to reload) and while we as fair number of us had pulled in some nice cash from ground battles, I don't know that we would have lasted more than another couple of weeks before being exhausted. I personally would have been ZIed or darn near had the war lasted much longer as I was heavily outnumbered in my fights.

That's another thing. \m/ by my calculations was outnumbered a bit over 3:1 in its fights. Our only hope was to knock out an alliance or two from off our backs and hope that it created a domino effect. There was no scenario where we would have "won", just fought our enemies to a draw. Not without help that wasn't coming.

Okay maybe it was exclusively GOONS and MK who had warchests, which makes the situation quite a bit different.

[ChairmanHal]

Okay maybe it was exclusively GOONS and MK who had warchests, which makes the situation quite a bit different.

\m/ was the shock troops. Fantastic for quadding people and in general picking targets to ruin. Individual fighters became near legendary in their ability to inflict damage against superior numbers.

Fighting over the long haul? That was a bit problematic.

I like to make the comparison between Valhalla and \m/. Both are/were arse kickers. Both conducted raids pretty regularly in the lower ranks (\m/ even the upper ranks). Valhalla however placed a major emphasis on individual warchests, even when NPO was there to back them up, whereas \m/ always figured on NPO for aid and was suddenly deprived of it. In two similar fights, \m/ in GW IV and Valhalla in GW VI (Karma War), each initially hit an alliance and then was radically counterattacked. Valhalla fought its enemies basically to a draw, \m/ did not. While you can talk about the motivation of the enemy forces in both cases as a factor (NpO wanted nothing less than \m/'s destruction), for me the decisive factor was Valhalla's warchests. We took absolutely appalling amounts of damage and was still dropping nukes on target from infra levels that were rapidly approaching ZI.

[ChairmanHal]

According to those charts, the then members of SF had 349 offensive wars and 22 defensive wars between the three of us at the time you drew those up. That pretty much matches my recollection of how well the respective sides did on our front.

Also, King Penchuk being an MCXA member got a chuckle out of me.

\m/

Total Nations: 360

Total Wars: 902

Total Offensive Wars: 269

Total Defensive Wars: 583

Yep, I'd say we were under heavy counterattack all right.

[mythicknight]

Fun times.

[Duncan King]

* Duncan King waves to Schatt.

On April 15, 2007, I founded an alliance called ICON. We were a byproduct of GWIII and the Initiative-Aegis divide that had divided the world at that time. Over the summer of 2007, we spread our diplomatic wings, making treaties for friendship and voluntary aid and defense with any an all alliances we liked. We were independent and basically neutral, as our charter banned the signing of military treaties.

Things went along okay until late August of 2007. Tensions were starting to heat up as the two poles that had developed, ~ and UJP, intensified their efforts to bait each other. Although we had been relatively free of attacks in the months before, being above the common tech raiding threshold of 5 members, we soon began to fear for our safety. The waning days of summer saw larger alliances like Golden Sabres and Order of Feudalistic Security make aggressive advances against smaller, unprotected, alliances, some times riding to the level of an all out war. ICON itself was bullied in this way by OFS when I was told by Gonzoczar, an old friend from GATO, that if ICON didn't merge with OFS, we'd be attacked. It was well known that the only reason GS and OFS could get away with this kind of conduct was GOONS having their backs.

Faced with the escalating tensions, we had to decide what to do. Did we become totally neutral and assume a GPA like existence with no treaties or did we compromise our independence a bit and become a protectorate? Although my personal political opinion in this world is very close to neutrality (although I love a good war), I knew that if we sat this one out, ICON, which was already beginning to die from inactivity, would probably stagnate more and become isolated in neutrality.

Once we decided that we would become a protectorate, the government of ICON set out to find a protector and to amend its charter to allow a protectorate. I sent requests to many alliances whom ICON had had contact with, among them MHA, LoSS, and NATO. NATO's offer was basically we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't embarrass them, so we went with them. As a protectorate, we were able to breathe a little easier, but I knew that it wouldn't last long as a war was still coming. Being a warrior sort when it came down to it and resenting GOONS for what their cronies had done, I knew that I personally could not sit out the war. After some soul searching in ICON, the government decided that if NATO asked us to help them fight against, we would be there for them. GOONS was one of the few alliances that I actually hated, so if NATO had fought for UJP, we would have likely canceled the protectorate and sit out the war.

Of course now know that NATO did join ~ and enter the UJP war against GOONS. ICON entered the war a couple days later at three in the afternoon because I had to work and the rest of the government was either out or in another time zone, making update impossible. I do have to say that the war was a blast. Our MoD, Lord Shazbot, did the target lists and was really good with them. We had very high participation in the war and soon began to shred small GOONs nations. We had something like half of our opponents go to ZI and several delete their nations. I fought a nation alongside Brian Reimer and we had our nuclear cherries popped together (neither of us were nuclear yet). We racked up quite a few POWs, a couple of whom jumped into peace mode, but most served their time and left. One of our most memorable opponents was Schatt, who we enjoyed jumping on.

Once the targets began to dry up, in third wave or so, we pulled out of the war and began to rebuild. Lord Shazbot was in charge of recovery aid but didn't actually believe in sending aid, so our fighters got very little aid from the government to thank them for our service. The remaining members of government did what we could, but the rest of us had fought and me and BR had been nuked. I never forgave myself for not being able to aid the fighters of ICON. I've always believed that good service in war should be rewarded monetarily.

With the singular purpose of the war gone, ICON again began to descend into stagnancy. Internal disputes that had quieted during the war flared and we had some more resignations. After a couple more months of limping along, I finally decided that I couldn't take it anymore and attempted to annex the alliance into NATO. When the annexation vote failed, I left anyway. Most of the rest of the government did as well and the alliance disbanded the first week of December 2007.

When I look back on that time, I regret very little. I was happy to fight GOONS and I'm not sad that they are gone. I do think that this world is better without UJP and that a world created by UJP would have been much worse. My main regret is that I went to NATO. I had a couple other offers that, in retrospect, would have been a much better fit (I was ex GATO trying to govern an \m/ spinoff, so my tenure in NATO was one of constant fighting with other members of the government and other members of the alliance). But joining NATO got me in with tC and allowed me to lead a top 20 alliance. It also allowed me to become Duncan King, someone you may not like but have probably heard of. I don't regret ICON disbanding and I firmly believe that it would have died sooner if it wasn't for the war.

In the grand scheme of things, my experience in the Unjust War didn't mean much. I was government in a small alliance and did not choose targets, assign waves, or do any of the diplomatic work. I was simply there. But now that the war was two years ago, fighting in UJW is something I am proud of.

[Leftbehind]

The UJW was a mess for me. I was the MoFA of a mid size alliance that had mostly verbal agreements with our friends ( Neuva Vida and GOLD) and no real treaties besides a MASH MDP (I think). PLUS knew that it was time to decide which of the two spheres are the lesser of two evil and we thought that throwing our support behind "~" was the right choice. We could have sat it out and went along our merry little way until we died from inactive overdose but choose to defend NV no matter what. Although we only had a ToA with them at the time it was common knowledge to members of PLUS and NV that we will alway be there if the other asks. We were brothers at the time because alot of NV members joined PLUS after SyN disbanded and that we would attack any rogue that hit either of us when we were too small to really defend ourselves. So on Sept 12 we declared war on CDS nations attacking NV nations and GOD, GOD wasn't our main target just an alliance that we would be able to attack if we were needed. I didn't like how the whole GOD thing went down and I always felt bad about that one but CDS on the other hand was the most fun I ever had with CN. Godfrey was and is still one of my favorite people who ever played this game no matter what anyone says about him he was a very kind and understanding man and one of the best diplomats I ever spoke too. Honestly he could have sold ice to polar bear. I also had a lot of fun fighting with Mogar about how the war was going and who was more wrong.

After the war though PLUS went back to a very boring state and many of its government just wanted the title and to do little work. I don't blame them because most of them been in PLUS gov since the start of the alliance and it wasnt a easy task dealing with me and my BS. I can remember talking to Specto, Waldo and CK about what the world will be like without GOONS and \m/ and how we hope that we didn't just eliminate the only threat to NPO and company. We all thought some other group would rise up to counter them soon but we were mistaken. Now when I look back and think about it I still have the same opinion as before, NpO was the lesser of the two evils and defending a friend is more important than a political gain.

[Machiabelly]

I was an independent when the war started so I didn't see much action. Near the end I joined ODN and saw a bit, so for one of the major events in CN history, it had little to no effect on me.

The only major war during the 3 years I have been a nation leader in which I didn't see a lot of action.

[Schattenmann]

Interesting post and thread schatt, I hope more people contribute to it in as honest and open a manner as you did.

I hope so too. When I got up, I thought wow, way to point out that you've been a spy pretty much every day between August 07 through April 2009. But, I'm not afraid anymore. To me, the UjW was about fear. It said that if you don't operate like us, or think like us, or act like us, then you can't exist (or at least you can't have any infra). That system existed for a long time, and I operated under it, BAPS did too, and there's an argument to be made that it's still not entirely gone, but I am personally not afraid to say, think, or operate the way I want to anymore. If someone from, say, MHA wants to make an issue out of my spying during war from 2007, they're welcome to give it a go, but I think that just as time has cooled my hate of GOONS attackers, it has made some things discussable if not acceptable.