Harmless Wartime Policy Announcement

If you must refer to allies of Harmless? during war time as jackals - Then I will point you to DARK and our interaction during the Consone war and how we reigned them in from their over focusing on individual players.    Twilights still rants about that in GC from time to time.  

Edited by Anjire - 11 Nov 2013 at 12:56

Anjire wrote: If you must refer to allies of Harmless? during war time as jackals - Then I will point you to DARK and our interaction during the Consone war and how we reigned them in from their over focusing on individual players.    Twilights still rants about that in GC from time to time.

Edited by Halcyon - 11 Nov 2013 at 19:24

geofrey wrote: geofrey wrote: What sparked the announcement of this policy now? The same tactics that this policy opposes were performed in many of the previous wars by all parties.  If that has always been a harmless policy when approaching this war, why was it not announced at the beginning?   Why do you expect everyone to respect Harmless? policy when Harmless? has blatantly disregarded and insulted other alliances' war time policies? Since no one else is interested in answering my questions, I am going to GUESS what the answers are. Keep in mind I have no idea what i'm talking about, as I am not part of Harmless? leadership. Pure speculation for the sake of discussion from this point on:  geofrey wrote: What sparked the announcement of this policy now? The same tactics that this policy opposes were performed in many of the previous wars by all parties.  To answer this question we must understand what the goals of the post are.  This policy is either published to drive behavior or to gain public opinion/support for behavior. The behavior mentioned is the rather vaguely defined aggressive action towards non-large-scale combatant cities. So either Harmless is attempting to discourage enemies from attacking their outlieing non-large-scale combatant cities, or they want the public to think they are in the right when they do attack their enemies outlieing non-large-scale combatant cities.  Something has changed from Harmless?'s perspective this time around that has prompted them to publish this policy during this war. I am GUESSING that Harmless is not as confident in their military advantage this time around and are afraid of being out gunned. As a result they are attempting to dissuade their enemies from attacking their more vulnerable targets. This is to encourage their enemies to attack their more fortified defenses, allowing them to score better k/d ratios.  The other possibility is that Harmless is afraid of loosing public opinion, and this is their propaganda attempt to maintain their dominance in the eyes of the players not in the war.  Either way the key take away is that Harmless is more afraid of the outcome of this war, than any other war they have fought. Something they themselves have hinted towards when discussing the magnitude of this war.  If that has always been a harmless policy when approaching this war, why was it not announced at the beginning?   Now this question is interesting. Harmless has known who they are up against for weeks. Infact they were theorizing who they were up against months ago. They have known their enemies strategies for weeks, some would even say years.  It is possible they had this policy stored in their private forums, and were spacing out their diplomatic/policy post so they have some meaningful propaganda to publicize to remind the players not involved in the war that Harmless is still awesome.  I think it is more likely that recently Harmless has had a new strategy put into place. I am SPECULATING that they have decided to strategically encourage individual players to drop out of the war, as opposed to forcing alliances to surrender. I believe this change of direction is a result of some battles not ending the way they thought they would. But what does individual players surrendering have to do with this policy?  Harmless will need to begin focusing on players instead of alliances. That means throwing down some pretty hard ultimatums to players, instead of negotiating surrenders for alliance. Those ultimatums are going to be "leave your alliance and surrender or loose all of your cities." These ultimatums will not go over well with the public and they know it. Harmless is trying and make them look like the good guys by preventing these sort of ultimatums until they were provoked.  Why do you expect everyone to respect Harmless? policy when Harmless? has blatantly disregarded and insulted other alliances' war time policies? Now this is the most interesting question, and is why it is the last one.  I am GUESSING that the answer is "we don't." Harmless is smart enough to know the forums is not the place to reach an agreement with anyone. Going back to my original question, if Harmless is not stupid enough to think this policy will drive behavior, than that means it was designed to gain public opinion/support. This reinforced my THEORY in the second question & answer; that Harmless has a new strategy to target individual players.  -------------------------------------------------------------- In Summary, I'd like to remind everyone this is my speculation and is not fact. I posted this as a discussion of the Original Post, and not as an attack on anyone. Any and all discussion about these wild theories of mine would be great. please stay positive in your analysis, but feel free to call me out for being a conspiracy theorist.

Epidemic wrote: Those of us who are true war gamers consider Illyriad as retirement and want to explore the social, lore and mystery part of the game.

dont forget the trade and crafting...

INSERTRANDOMPLAYERNAME wrote: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignroance is Strength, H? and Crow players are destroyers of community, etc etc etc

Propaganda aside...

There is a history and longevity to the game and community that is beyond dispute and it can't be glossed over by your ministry of truth. That history and the stability of the game was made possible in a large part by the older players in the Crows and H?

The players in these groups are among those who are directly responsible for the stability Illy has enjoyed. Newer groups (that I've watched come to prominence in the last year / year and a half) are not and to those of you newer players that are slandering either one of these groups I am going to say now that you are not fooling anyone with your doublespeak. It is a wasted effort. You should at least show respect for the fact that these older players and groups built the community that you have enjoyed and is now under threat.

To you older players I ask, in both Crow and H?, please do not abandon either what you worked to build nor the ideals you built it with. I'm not the only third party hoping for this. - M.


Edited by Meagh - 12 Nov 2013 at 04:51

Halcyon wrote: Anjire wrote: If you must refer to allies of Harmless? during war time as jackals - Then I will point you to DARK and our interaction during the Consone war and how we reigned them in from their over focusing on individual players.    Twilights still rants about that in GC from time to time.   That is a load of nonsense Anjire. Dark did not siege anyone out of the game, ever. During the Consone-Coalition war, 1 player alone was driven out of WR because he gave his word not to take part in attacks on Dark and went back on his promise. 2 or 3 of his cities were razed and I believe that 2 more were Exodused. Harmless? did not reign Dark in. First because Dark always does what we believe is the right thing to do and second because H? never had that power over us. Twilights rants. That is what she does. She never made Dark's policy or directed Dark's actions. She is our friend and we love to have her with us. I believe Twilights never razed a town. I was just informed by the said player from my first paragraph that while Dark negotiated said agreement with his alliance leadership, he was not made aware at the time of this agreement and thus attacked us without breaking his word. I was not aware of this until now, but believe his words to be true. I will not edit my first paragraph in order to acknowledge that part of what I wrote there is most probably wrong.

Had to wade through about 3 years of IGM's to track down the information and make sure my t's were crossed and i's dotted.  Yes, I still have a handful of contacts within DARK.  I was very active helping a number of their members expand in some areas to the point I even sacrificed my alt to make room for a number of their cities.  

Late November, early December of 2012, Killer Poodle posted in the war room H?'s policy about limiting damages to players to 1-2 towns at most unless there were extenuating circumstances and a request that coalition members abide by this as well.  This post by Killer Poodle was prompted because of DARK's actions against a member of Consone in Western Realms.  It resulted in an internal vote by DARK  to abide by Harmless?'s request or not.    I guess since Killer Poodle only had to approach DARK twice more during the war in regards to this policy the result of the vote can be assumed.  Not that there were some very vocal advocates pushing for wanton destruction of any/all Consone Accounts within Western Realms by prominent members of DARK leadership.  

At that time, it wasn't about sieging a player from the game that wasn't even a consideration at the time.  This war, due to IGM's that have been forwarded and the language being expressed, it is quite clear that one side initially had no qualms for pushing forth such a doctrine.  however, since this posting by Honored Mule the language has changed and a number of break throughs have been made.  We will continue to push from our end to abide by such a doctrine.  

~I don't listen to twilights for the setting of DARK policy, I listen to twilights to get a feel for the policy/stance set by DARK leadership.  She has been very accurate over the last year in foretelling positions and stances for DARK as a whole.  It lines up surprisingly well with all the forwarded IGM's that I have accumulated from various DARK members/leadership over the past year.