The Great War |
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Brandmeister
Postmaster General Joined: 12 Oct 2012 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 2396 |
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In reading the original NC-BANE thread, I still have the same question. I didn't see BANE desperately requesting intervention by DARK. They barely even said anything on that thread. That does make Halcyon's statements seem more like a pretext, and less like a genuine concern about fairness.
It always seemed to me like both NC and BANE wanted to fight. Both were trash talking in GC, both were escalating by adding players, and neither seemed to be suffering severe city destruction. I never understood the argument that it was fair for DARK to intervene on BANE's behalf, yet it was apparently an outrage that H? did the very same for NC. Their war seemed to be typical MMO fare--two guilds fought, one was starting to lose ground and thus called in allies, provoking the other guild to do the same. And it did seem very conspicuous that the allies called in for both sides already had an axe to grind with each other over different issues. |
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Tamaeon
Wordsmith Joined: 19 Dec 2011 Location: Centrum Status: Offline Points: 152 |
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I don't think I can recall a single instance in the 3.5+ years that I've been playing, in which a player or alliance resorted to cries for help on the public forums. That said, I've scoured the forums for old threads from the NC vs. BANE war, and some related threads from the early days of the Great War, to cite some of the comments that were made at the time. I've put some three hours into this, so I beg that everyone behave and avoid nuking this thread!
You're absolutely right about the jabs and posturing from both alliances on GC. However, in the interest of keeping this discussion on topic; I want to quote/reference the events which led to the formation of the GA and what motivated our thinking at the time. One thing that was particularly shocking to some leaders of the soon to be GA, was the stated casus belli and the reasoning behind NC's war declaration on BANE. See the link below for my own recounting of the facts... (further details can be provided upon request)
The issue wasn't H?'s willingness to defend NC, but rather our perception that they were deliberately shielding them from any kind of accountability, for their indiscriminate targeting of alliances that were either unfit, unequipped or inexperienced in the art of warfare. Here's a comment I made in regard to one of Halcyon's posts, as well as a pivotal moment in the formation of the Grand Alliance. Notice my complaint over the constant talk of escalation... DARK was trying to end the war amicably, but their efforts descended into war talk when H? made it very clear, that they would not tolerate any DARK involvement. My own experience with NC's adventurism and my own attempts at diplomacy during incidents prior to the NC vs. BANE war had already led me to view NC as a threat, acting on behalf of H? as their direct (war) proxy. The mere fact that even a member of the Coalition could be threatened with war, for questioning the actions of NC... was the last shred of evidence I personally needed, to be convinced of the inevitability of a massive war. A war which mind you, many in my confederation (Crowfed) opposed vehemently, and some still resent me for.
Not really. The NC vs. BANE war ended with BANE's surrender, and the soon to become GA in deliberations and early war planning. We knew a war was coming, we just didn't know when. uCrow (my alliance at the time) entered a mutual defense agreement with xCKx on September 2nd 2013, about 4 days before BANE's surrender. This proved to be yet another pivotal moment before the great war, as no one could have predicted at the time, that they would become the next alliance on NC's target list. When NC declared on xCKx, uCrow went into full war prep mode, while the GA decided this would be the moment where made our final stand against H? and NC. We pulled out the scrolls and drew all the battlelines, set approximate war declaration dates and signed an agreement to see the entire war through together, no matter the outcome. Obviously we did not expect, and could not have foreseen... the massive resistance the Coalition would put up, or the amount of destruction that ending the war would ultimately require. Halcyon's statement about our reasons for fighting, including comments about NC's war against xCKx: Further remarks by Halcyon regarding DARK's attempts at mediation during the NC vs. BANE war: And yet another post by Halcyon emphasizing what I've said about the NC vs. BANE war being the pivotal event which ignited the Great War: Hope this long post will help shed some light on the GA's thinking and reasoning at the time. I've stated some redundant facts which are known to everyone who's been playing for over 2 years, but are probably new to players who started in 2014 or later. Hope someone from the Coalition side can provide some insight into their own reasons for supporting NC, and perceptions regarding the GA's careful orchestration of "The inevitable Great War". Thanks for reading edit: Date corrections + Spelling & Grammar Edited by Tamaeon - 15 Jan 2015 at 00:11 |
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"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."
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Brandmeister
Postmaster General Joined: 12 Oct 2012 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 2396 |
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I appreciate the time you took to compile these links and add commentary. It does provide a window into how your leadership team viewed the events leading up to the war.
I can believe that Celtic Knights was unfit, unequipped, and inexperienced in the art of warfare. They are a casual gaming alliance, by all appearances similar to eCrow. But it does strain credulity to apply that same description to BANE. Military competence is their signature.
I'd give it a 7 on a scale of 1 to Trove Mine.
The begs the question, what did the Grand Alliance anticipate as the resolution to the war? |
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Epidemic
Postmaster Joined: 03 Nov 2012 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 773 |
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You can post all the justifications you want, Tamaeon, but it doesn't justify all the destruction your 'peaceful' confed brought to this game. We lost a ton of vets and by your action have ensured that all future wars are of only total annihilation. Once you break something is nearly impossible to put it back together.
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Tamaeon
Wordsmith Joined: 19 Dec 2011 Location: Centrum Status: Offline Points: 152 |
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I'm not justifying anything Epi, the facts speak for themselves, and no one can deny the massive toll of the war. So far I've been putting considerable effort in sharing the thinking and reasoning which led to the formation of the Grand Alliance and subsequently to the Great War. As far as the game being broken... I think most of illyriad will disagree. As far as I'm concerned, nothing is broken and therefore nothing needs fixing. I see no reason for alarm or any indication whatsoever, that we're worse off than we were 2 years ago, or that we haven't settled into a new stable status quo. So if I didn't make myself clear before; there will be no justifications and no apologies (both sides of the war did what they considered necessary), only the recounting of perspectives and every now and again a statement of facts. I speak for myself, but hope that others will adopt a similar position in discussing the Great War.
Edited by Tamaeon - 15 Jan 2015 at 02:53 |
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"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."
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The Duke
Forum Warrior Joined: 22 Jul 2011 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 465 |
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I The Duke was leader of Shade at the onset of the war. Shade was sided with the GA for numerous reasons but ours were set apart from the other members of Dominion. We had a few mutual issues with those that we fought with, but wasnt entering the war as a group who just was looking for reasons to fight.
That being said two things mentioned already i feel i can shed some light on. -Hannibal Foul Wind- HFW has a tendency to become very drunk and belligerent at times and was indeed very vocal about his dis-satisfaction of H?. That being said he was being threatened to have a city removed due to never losing one for his surrender terms. This was in fact not the case. Myself and a former friend who played (Beecks) had done the sieging already. Beecks at this time had went inactive and I am horrible at keeping hard proof around. So it was my opinion that H? was using this as a crutch to threaten HFW. To my knowledge the forceful extermination of the account was never said outright. -The_Dude- Shade had a long history of outstanding issues with The_Dude which started when i was a new player and then recurred when leading my own alliances Knights Virtue and Shade as well as the short stint i was a spokesperson for RMYShankster in WE. Most the GA didnt have issues with RES and it should be noted the alliances in GA in large part didnt declare on them due to having no issues with them. However Shade and Aesir declared approx 1 week prior to the onset of the major war for our own reasons unrelated to the major conflict. At a later date RES would inevitably side with the dominion and if memory serves correctly declared on most of the GA alliances. (To note here at the point of them declaring there had been a lot of diplo incidents and attacks from both sides to "undeclared" parties anticipating the debacle that would unfold assuming all parties would soon be at each others throats anyways. Whether that was right or wrong serves a moot point now and both sides were equally guilty.) General Events- As stated above hard copies and keeping documentation arent my forte' but Ill try to share a touch of history. Shade entered the war with RES first accompanied by her close ally Aesir. Our main targets initially were Flipper and El Jeffe and The dude. We sent waves of diplo's at these targets specifically and sent alliance mails issuing orders to begin diplo'ing anyone in RES with 4 or more cities. No seiges were landed on RES by us through this first week because we needed to gather intel. We did issue attacks on cities which we found were holding large groups of cav armies hoping to get lucky and catch them defending rather than mowing through our seige engines later. Approx a week after our war was declared with RES it was voted a go for "The Great War" and to each sides credit Im not sure either side knew for sure who all would be involved. It was no secret that I had no desire to fight Harmless, and voiced my opinion on more than one occasion that i didnt think the crows were capable of uniting, and Harmless had squashed any challenger to date when it came to war. Crows and company were relatively inexperienced in such tactics which is something that worried me from the onset. To say that the GA knew from the start we were going to win is not true and I spoke to other leaders who shared the same concern as I did. *Alot of speculation has been put into how long GA spent devising a plan of action and what happened behind the scenes leading up to the war and I think this would be interesting to know myself. Dittobite is probably the most knowledgeable but I think Shade was the last if not one of the last alliances to give the nod we would join. If the planning started 6 months prior as eluded to by Tameon, then I had no knowledge of that and only entered the discussion at the very end. As the major war took off Shade backed off RES and fwd'd any substantial evidence and operations over to Calq Crow who was staying out of the war for the most part yet had a laundry list of diplomatic issues with RES specifically. So with Calq at war with RES we had a few members work with them to help in hitting some targets in the very dense Hub areas that RES had built in Middle Kingdom and Tor Carrock. Shade then moved its primary focus on Harmless and her Freemorn hub. Freemorn operations- This area was where we knew we had to perform or it was going to be devastating to Shade in the long run. Freemorn was a region Shade and H? had fought over previously in tourneys, and it was easily Harmless' Growing hub area second only to Lan Larosh. Kal Tirikan is what is largely considered Shades homeland and neighbors Freemorn. Shade dug in and started planning sieges. First targets being the H? members who were once Colonist Empire leadership- Tordenkoffen, Valin5, Sneaking Ham, John5420. The issue was these cities were so close together they could all mutually defend themselves and each account had 9-10 towns. We ordered attack after attack on these cities from our freemorn Cav players Manochandar and Muykul but hitting them was proving fruitless. Over time we took heavy losses in multiple sieges that either were raided out of engines, were mis timed, or simply destroyed by the opposition. Eventually we were able to start getting sieges to land and be successful and one by one cities fell. After about 15 sieges that were a success it was found out that most if not all these accounts were at the time being sat. After that we pressed forward to other accounts in the area that werent as high profile and many exodused to Lan Larosh. This tactic was one alot of H? members used and probably saved alot more towns in the war than people ever realized. After taking care of most the southern Freemorn area we moved back onto the Northern half of Elgea. Basically hitting 2 sieges a week in Freemorn dedicated to Harmless, while trying to push the other alliances who were in the dominion into a surrender. Some of the most epic battles and sieges in the war Shade wasnt even a part of. Ditto had lured the Colony into attacking him on a mountain full or archers just to purge some of their troops in one battle that comes to memory. He-Man and Hyo were both extremely crucial especially early on in turning the tides of battle with their armies that were unprecedented to date. Most of the cities left in the freemorn area either exodused toward the end of the war or were eventually deleted due to inactivity such as the four accounts I listed above. Its no secret by looking at the map of H? Shade had its part in clearing entire regions as people in the thread have brought up. The war was rather merciless sometimes and alot of bullheaded tactics were used. The initial couple months were FUN, very intense, and it was still a toss to which side was going to win, even though we were ahead, it was never a "comfortable" lead. After that it became more of a grind and as accounts got hit over and over losing 75%(sometimes more) of what they had it was hard for alot of people to carry on the orders. I think for the GA in the end they wanted to break the will ofthe Dominion alliances by admitting defeat, but to those fighting in the dominion their will had been broken cause they felt like thay already lost everything in that 75%(sometimes more) and it was to the point it didnt make sense to surrender, at least being sieged to 0 you can leave with dignity. Remember this is just my view and doesnt represent anyone but myself and those Ive mentioned of my alliance
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"Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives."
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KillerPoodle
Postmaster General Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Status: Offline Points: 1853 |
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Um - that's exactly what a white peace is - not surrendering. NC offered terms to Bane, Bane refused to negotiate so Dark stepped in to try force an end without surrender. Also, from the H? perspective Halcyon came to us with the decision already made, "NC have to do what we say or we'll join the war against them". There was no negotiation or even discussion that I was privy to. Our response was pretty predictable too - if you escalate against our confed we have to get involved too. You can post all the Halcyon quotes you like claiming they did X, Y, Z but I have all their discussions with us on the H? forum still available and I posted a detailed rebuttal on this forum including dates and times of Dark statements. It's depressing that the same tired arguments are still being made in the face of the facts, backed up by the record of the actual discussions. I'll also add a quote from you in one of those threads you linked:
Next HFW:
I'm not forgetting anything - what I said to Hath in IGM is completely consistent with what I said to the The Duke in our embassy (as The Duke has now confirmed). Now that The Duke has confirmed - can you finally admit that you were misinformed/misled? You've already backpedalled from "This is absolute fact" to "A convincing case was made" it's not really that hard to take that final step is it?
You don't have to be unsure - it's here in black and white in a post on this forum - why is it so hard for you to acknowledge your sweeping statements are simply not true?
That's only really possible when you decide to actually post facts instead of posting opinion/slander and trying to pass them off as facts, and when your descriptions and claims are actually consistent from post to post. Edited by KillerPoodle - 15 Jan 2015 at 16:07 |
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"This is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it." - endorsement by HM
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Halcyon
Forum Warrior Joined: 17 Aug 2012 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 360 |
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Late
for the party…I will give my own and Dark's perspective of what led to the
Great War.
First, I would like to thank Tamaeon for representing my views on what caused the war. Thank you Tama! Dark's involvement in the war began with the war between NC and Bane. Being a personal friend of Malek of Bane and him being a good friend to Dark we were sympathetic to Bane's peril after NC declared war on them. At the time Dark was a member of The Coalition and Kompanion and myself conveyed our growing unease at the way that war was developing. I'm pretty sure that we have also made our stance public in the forums. This brought one alliance leader who would later be a major part of the Grand Alliance to quarry in GC what exactly is Dark's stance on the NC-Bane war. To my recollection, I have never before exchanged words with the said leader and Dark and his alliance did not have diplomatic agreements. But since he represented a power in Elgea I decided to make my view even more public in the hope that other alliances may get politically involved and the NC-Bane war will come to a peaceful end. I opened the following thread on the game forums (Tama posted a link to it in a previous message in this thread): http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/ncbane-war_topic5236_page1.html While the polemics on this thread raged I became more and more concerned with the fact that players from Coalition alliances – especially TVM – were joining NC while Bane was denied the same because of what I perceived has Bane sympathizers being intimidated by the more than real possibility that joining will inevitably bring the entire Coalition against them. As the thread shows I finally found that if any help is to be given to Bane, it will only come from Dark. Since I knew that if all of Dark will join the battle at least 1 major Coalition alliance will also join, Dark's leadership decided to join with only 3 major Dark accounts. On September 3 I gave Malek the names of 3 Dark accounts (including my own) to be invited to Bane and join the war. On September 4 I was informed that Bane will agree to surrender. It should be known that while the NC-Bane war was raging the Grand Alliance began to form. To my knowledge there was no intent at that time to initiate a world war, but the example of what happened to Bane made the alliances that in the future will form the Grand Alliance begin to feel the water and seek a balance to what was seen as unchecked Coalition aggression. At this time I began to be contacted by alliance leaders that never spoke with me before. At least one of them was trying to make sure that Dark is no longer a member of The Coalition and that my speaking for Bane was not in fact a trap. I believe that if I did not manage to reassure him that Dark will no longer side with the Coalition in the case of more aggression - he would not have signed up for what would later become The Grand Alliance. Again, to my knowledge there was no plan at the time to challenge the Coalition, but new ties were beginning to form. Pretty soon after that NC got involved in the war between Celtic Knights and RE. Talks began in earnest again with the intention of halting this war before it expands. It had the same explosive potential as the NC-Bane war, the difference was that the Grand Alliance was almost fully formed albeit hidden in the shadows. When uCrows entered the war things became almost inevitable. I believe that the only thing that would have stopped the Great War from happening at that time was NC surrender, but NC did not have "surrender" in them. I was still trying to avoid a great war, but other alliance leaders felt that we are as strong as we are likely to be and giving way will only allow the Coalition to gather more strength and come against us in the future. When Harmless declared war on The Eagles there was no coming back. We were in it, all together, to the bitter end. On October 30th 2013 the Grand Alliance came out of the shadows as vCrows, Shade, Soon and Dark declared war on Harmless? In the future I hope to be able to write an account of Dark's war operations.Halcyon, late of Dark, now of New Dark.
Edited by Halcyon - 16 Jan 2015 at 19:17 |
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Angrim
Postmaster General Joined: 02 Nov 2011 Location: Laoshin Status: Offline Points: 1212 |
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Halcyon
Forum Warrior Joined: 17 Aug 2012 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 360 |
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I was asked to mention other members of the Grand Alliance that I did not mention in my post above. The reason I did not mention them is that I was giving my own and Dark's info on what brought us into the war and I had no part in bringing these alliances into our ranks.
Having said that, some of these alliances fought even before Dark began to fight, some joined later, but all were as significant a part of the GA as we were. These alliances are: VICX, Calcr, AEsir, BANE, NAAM, nCrow, XckX, ALT and HEAT. I also mentioned above though too briefly EE and uCrow. Hope I didn't forget anyone - it was a long war. |
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