We are ACHE, a well-known and respected training alliance.  We were attacked without provocation, and we will be engaging in military action to respond to this. 

Two players were involved in the attack on us – Single Malt (SM) and Knightrider (KR).   They cleared, sieged, and captured a town belonging to kname called Kname’s Armory.  This happened in the space of 3 days when kname was not logged on.  When we discovered it, we started diplomatic negotiations including monetary compensation and the return of the town.  This seemed to be progressing but eventually failed.  At that point, they razed Armory.  We consider this to be unprovoked aggression against us.  From our alliance profile: 

ACHE is a Peaceful Training Alliance

We do not aggress on any outside players, either militarily or diplomatically, and we expect the same of others.  We do realize that misunderstandings can occur with new players.  We will always seek a diplomatic solution first and foremost.  Rest assured though that we are prepared to defend ourselves from unprovoked aggression and if diplomatic attempts fail, we will respond at a level consistent with the outside attack.

To be clear up front, at the time of the attack, kname had dropped from ACHE to help with sieges.  He was maintaining a blockade on an abandoned account so members could capture the towns.  This is not an uncommon practice.  His history with ACHE since 2013 was clear.  No attempt was made by SM or KR to contact kname or ACHE before the attack. 

Also worthy of note up front, KR was trained in ACHE and knew our policies.  He should have realized that contacting ACHE before attempting to take the city was the right thing to do.  Also, he should have known that our mature accounts often drop to assist with sieges. 

This is the timeline of events: 

·         Kname’s Armory cleared                    6 Jan    00:01

·         Siege army lands (SM)                       7 Jan    08:59   25 cats

·         Siege army lands (KR)                       7 Jan    09:00   20 cats

·         Blockade lands                                   7 Jan    09:41

·         Siege army lands (SM)                       7 Jan    10:41   30 cats

·         Assassination mission                         7 Jan    20:11

·         Bombardment begins (SM)                 7 Jan    20:59

·         Bombardment begins (KR)                 7 Jan    21:00

·         Bombardment begins (SM)                 7 Jan    22:41

·         Suspicious persons spotted                 8 Jan    00:17

·         Kname’s Armory ready to fall            8 Jan    07:00

·         Kname’s Armory ready to fall            8 Jan    07:00

·         Kname’s Armory ready to fall            8 Jan    07:02

·         Kname’s Armory captured                 8 Jan    07:12

Total time elapsed from clearing to capture:  2 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes

Kname logged on, discovered the attack, and rejoined ACHE 9 Jan, 16:04.  ACHE Council started discussions on how to respond and drafted a mail to SM and KR to begin negotiations immediately.  We sent the mail to both on 9 Jan at 18:39.  A link to that mail will follow below. 

We felt we were gentle but firm.  I reminded KR that he had trained in ACHE.  Our conditions at that time included 3B gold from each of them and to recapture Armory.  The gold was to buy prestige to build kname’s pop up to 233K quickly so that he would be eligible to have a 10^th town and then rebuild Armory to its original population of 24.4K.  We gave them 24 hours to respond.  No reply came from SM at this time or ever. 

KR’s reply came on 10 Jan at 02:47.  He acknowledged that he remembered me from his time in ACHE.  He offered arguments for why he thought the account was inactive and rejected our conditions for reparation.  He said that he deserved the captured town. 

Our reply was to rebut his arguments and demonstrate that the account was active and that he should have known so.  We also said that he should have attempted to IGM kname and ACHE leadership before the attack.  We offered to consider prestige in lieu of gold and gave him 12 hours to respond. 

He came back with five more excuses and the agreement that an IGM to kname would have been better but did not acknowledge ACHE as the presumptive owner of kname’s account.  He again rejected the conditions we had set forward. 

Our reply to that was gentler in tone.  We acknowledged that he was new in the game.  We provided a rebuttal to one of his excuses and said that would be all for now.  We backed down on our requirement of 3B gold from each but gave him some numbers that would help him understand the damages.  We acknowledged that as a new player the original gold requirement might be impossible for him and gave him an opportunity to make a counteroffer.  We stated that we still required the return of kname’s city. 

He then tried to extort us.

Our final and brief reply was that ACHE does not pay ransom and that his choices were up to him.  We quoted our alliance profile including that “Rest assured though that we are prepared to defend ourselves from unprovoked aggression and if diplomatic attempts fail, we will respond at a level consistent with the outside attack.”   

He had one additional reply consisting of excuses and accusations.  It is available in the full text of the IGMs provided in the link below. 

It should be noted that when we sent the first IGM, SM started trying to hide Armory by Exodus’ing it and renaming all eight of his towns to “Unnamed.”  A few days later, KR renamed his towns all to “Arran.” 

As far as our military response, we consider the loss of Armory with 24K pop and very considerable research to be the standard.  We believe that a proportionate response at the very minimum, is appropriate for the unprovoked, blatant, and spiteful razing of kname’s town and his loss of significant research.  This would be military action plus 1B gold or prestige.  ACHE will have to bear any additional cost of prestige to rebuild kname’s account.

This ends our description of the events and our planned response.  Further detailed documentation is provided in the links below for those interested.  We invite comments from the Illy community on the attack and our proposed response. 

Here is the link to a Google Docs file with all our detailed documentation. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CNPwgW8jQGeYsYipTXOHWdUVDyUJDdkZoMCERjP68bk/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CNPwgW8jQGeYsYipTXOHWdUVDyUJDdkZoMCERjP68bk/edit?usp=sharing

Fellow Illyrians, ACHE has not received recompense for the razing of kname’s city and still feel that we deserve it, but the story will have to end here.  SM and KR have joined [FALLN], who does not share our opinion on that.  We wish to maintain our non-aggressive training alliance status and be viewed by the community at large as being fair and neutral.  We will not pursue this matter further.  Be safe.