This I expect will cause quite a bit of confusion, and so I thought we could toss up a thread and discuss how we all feel about it.

I am currently leaning towards the following policy.

* Military attacks on towns count as acts of war

* Caravans bumping caravans count as market rivalry

* Military attacks on caravans count as market rivalry

To put short, military actions taking place on the map and not in the towns, is in my opinion not an act of war, though it might obviously encourage retaliation against ones own occupied resource nodes, caravans and such.

What are the opinions of the other alliances?

Let's be honest, these things will happen, and a game where nobody fights at all will become dull, but then again..who wants a power struggle this early?

The winner (me clearly) would become rather omnipotent and thats just no fun.

I did get a warning that i would be provoking a war against a certain alliance if i continued to attack one of their members, my care factor = 0.

I think considering attacks on towns acts of war is fairly simple minded, if i must be blatant, since it is an everyday normal thing with me. If everyone adhered to this i'll be involved in several wars by the end of the week.

Sure if someone starts blockading you or outright laying siege to your city, THAT is an act of war. But everyday attacking for score and resources? You have to be joking.

I don't really mind if people take this approach, i'm just trying to make sense of it.

And you're free to do that, just like how White is free to burn anyone who does this to a member to a sinder with a massed siege assault.

I never bite off more than i can chew, i assure you. I bide my time.

I gave an opinion, no need to get ratty. Sure i don't care less about peoples towns i attack to improve my own, but that doesn't mean i'm too stupid to know what i can and can't handle. The point i was making in my previous post is to think before you act, but not so much that it dampens your gameplay as a whole.

In my opinion, what's the point in attacking towns being possible if every move you make is considered "an act of war". 

If everyone wants to hold hands and dance around the flower patches i'm sure there's a carebear game out there somewhere, the attack towns function is there for a reason!

Unless of course you're me, in which case you burn a douzen H towns a day for kicks and laugh as they try to break your own.

Haha, yep, you got my character pretty much spot on there. Lack of respect for others? I call it the more enemies you make, the more potential food for my account.

Why respect neighbouring accounts if they don't respect it themselves? If they are leaving piles of resources and their army sitting at their picnic tables while they are offline, with no defensive measures and whilst knowing there is someone nearby who can obviously destroy them in reasonable travelling time, that's basically asking to be killed.

I find it amusing how you avoided my comment though, and picked out that single one.

But yes, that is my opinion, i am not peaceful at all. I play games for fun, and fun here is destroying armies, stealing resources and killing my way up the ranks. But sure, if you wanna play The Sims go ahead, more towns for me to hit right? 

 

H? is not telling anyone how to play the game... And I wouldn't brag about needing 25 of your alliance mates to protect you from 6 H? guys...

In my alliance we defend each other, unlike in H? where we've yet to encounter a single proper defence when attacking any of your members.

Perhaps those six members, those six top ten members who constantly leech resources from the alliance to power their cities while their members burn, should try focusing on their alliance rather than themselves for a second.

The objective of H? is to impose rules on this game, rules as to how you are permitted to play. If you violate these rules they will send a nice, polite siege train and remove you from the game as a "disruptive element to the peace".

I will not yield, you treat your own members like sh*t, you insult them by not letting them in by keeping them in the dark so much, that they actually mail ME to find out why they're being attacked, as their so called leaders tell them nothing, give them no instruction, offer them NO aid.

All while I sit and watch caravan upon caravan feed your already well filled bellies with more and more resources.

In White Company, we cooperate, every member is valuable, every member is informed as to what goes on and every member participates.

And when the largest players of the game in the largest alliance of the game try to subjugate the game to their own will, their own rules and god help us if we break them, then we strike.

We would rather risk our towns in the defence of the freedom of this server, than see it dominated by a "friendly" dictator, who really only wants everyones "best" interest..as long as that best interest conforms with their ideals and opinions.

I've dealt with your kind in every game I played, where they win, the game dies, where they lose, chaos and conflict is king! 

If Harmless is destroyed, the result will be countless small wars between countless small alliances, countless of skirmishes, of conflicts over many many many months until the server some day resets.

If Harmless destroys White, the result will be a charter, five pages long on how to behave against other alliances, if you wage war without going through the proper process handing in ten pages of justification to your H? overlord you will be squashed like a bug in two days of coordinated assaults.

All in the name of peace, we would all sit on our asses upgrading our resource buildings, sending caravans back and forth being bored out of our minds until this game grows as inactive as the game from where H? has come, Inselkampf, where they dominated, where the game has now died, because there is nothing to do but to suck up to H? in long winded treaties and spin caravans.

I spit on this world of yours, and tonight I will burn more of your towns to show you how I feel about your new world order.

xx

Best thing i've read since the angry mammoth incident. 

 

For the record, you have more members than we do. So stop trying to pass yourself off as the "underdog" or small alliance being oppressed by the evil H?...

 

Also, for the record, we did not attack you. You attacked us. We are merely defending ourselves from your aggression. To claim that you are doing so in the interest of saving Illyriad from domination by H? is an incredibly thin argument. In a game that has 8,500 players, how can the 75 members of H? possibly be in any position to "dominate"?

 

We, like everyone else, are trying to be as strong an alliance as we can and do as well as we can in this game. And we have never and will never tell everyone else what to do.

 

But we will defend what is ours and refute spurious justifications for those who attack us.

 

Oh, and we never defend ourselves? Why don't you ask Laura Christine about that... Strikes me that her 600+ troops got burnt to a "cinder" (that's how you spell it) last Th by a coalition of defending H?  members...

 

As to us not helping our members and sucking them dry for resources? I think if you ask any new H? member if help is given when asked for, you will find a universal response: "Yes". We are incredibly dedicated to the growth of ALL of our members, not just the largest ones...

 

K.

 

 

The fact that you completely dominate the rankings, that you huddle together with your great capital cluster at x21y16 in an attempt to make it impossible for any alliance to challenge you. The fact that your population count is vastly above ours even if we include our newbie training wing, these facts are gently pushed under the rug in your post.

The fact that you have been constantly casting offensive spells on White members for weeks before this began, the fact that you have been positioning and jockying for power and position, these you all quite ignore.

The plan of H? is this.

They wish to build themselves into a position of power where no one can challenge them, they will offer you kind words of friendship and of honour, they will greet you with a smile, and they will do no harm...openly, to anyone, though their alts under the tags of other alliances or no tag at all will be at your back with a dagger, as was Naive's alt Mars, when he came to irc to speak of peace to me several week ago.

You have openly admitted, that your Diplomat came to me long before this war began, speaking of peace, while his alt outside your alliance waged war on me, and not only admit it, mocked me for being so foolish as to grant you my hand in the spirit of cooperation.

I told you then it was war, and yet you act as if you are suprised?

You have proven yourself to me as what you are, you come in peace until you have a position of power where you can not be challenged, at which point you impose your rules, at which point liberty dies!

Well as long as I draw breath liberty in Illyriad will not die! I will fight you to the last breath, and so far I am doing very well at it!

I have burned city after city, every day our siege engines knock out more of your buildings, yet you dont care, because we have been unable to attack your leadership.

Yes, that's why they don't care, we can only attack the outlying members of H? the unimportant members of H?, that is....everyone except those six and about three of their friends he mentioned, those are the only players any effort is being taken to defend. I should however, say all efforts.

Yet despite this our valiant warriors have struck many blows, where your own simply glance off, because in White we are not just a group of 9 people using the rest of our members for our own benefit (much the same way you intend to use this entire game to your benefit).

We are an alliance, we are brothers and sisters in arms, we defend, we attack, we cooperate, all in unison.

In White every member knows what happens, we do not hide our information, paranoid that any member will betray us or be too stupid to handle it, we inform them, we educate them, we appreciate and value them!

And this is why we are winning, this is why you have yet to strike a single blow against my city, and if I am to believe my mail this morning, you now plan to get your "great victory" by assaulting my new third city, which I have been able to put up despite your pitiful, constant assaults.

To send a massive siege army to destroy a lvl 3 farm or a lvl 4 library, what a great victory you seek, do you really think so little of your members, that they would be impressed by such a pitiful act that they will forget that you're letting them burn?

I see you for what you are H? and I will not stand idly by and let you get away with it.

I will destroy H? if it is the last thing I do and I will do it in the name of liberty, so that any man or woman of this game is free to attack whoever they want, be it even myself!

Peace, stability, these are other words for stagnation, boredom, caravan spinning.

You come here, you say I am the villain, yet behind your back you hold the vial of poison which you seek to pour into the very soul of Illyriad.

 

right, cause that 6508 additional population which reflects resource/arms production better than number of members really puts us over the top...Oh wait it still doesn't.

Diablito wrote: Perhaps those six members, those six top ten members who constantly leech resources from the alliance to power their cities while their members burn, should try focusing on their alliance rather than themselves for a second.

Our members have eagerly volunteered their resources because they want them used to put you out of our misery, not pillaged from their defenseless or unmanned accounts by the very aggressors attacking them.  We weren't even being supplied until you started attacking our non-combatants, most of whom are too small to even have troops in quantity or quality worth mention, and most of whom were conveniently away when you struck.  Our most ardent suppliers are the ones you constantly attack.  Heck, I should thank you for bolstering the camaraderie and loyalty of our members.  They make me proud.  And they know whom to blame for their misery.  You have left them no other productive avenue for participation in the game.  They can't grow under the constant waves of saboteurs, rebuild their military strength under the constant military attacks.

For weeks I watched half of your alliance send constant reinforcements to your personal capital.  No doubt this was purely "for the good of the alliance."  We have the names and activity logs of every member who has aided both the war and your defense personally (and it's quite a list...far longer than the list of our own suppliers).  We knew which members were rendering themselves helpless for your cause.

We chose to directly confront you and that power defense you erected most clearly just for your own good, instead of attacking those players who rendered themselves defenseless on your behalf.  Attacking them would have been good strategy.  But we don't need to lower ourselves to your standards.  We've seen your type too.  Alliances like White always crumble when faced with fair opposition, because the members get to see who really expects members to sacrifice themselves for the good of their leaders.

Furthermore, we don't consider the mere wearing of an alliance tag as presumption of guilt.  Not everyone in your alliance contributes to the war effort, and we would offer clemency to those who continue their non-involvement.  To those who have contributed, and seen what White/Black costs them (surely you didn't think we missed Black's involvement either), we offer time to consider their actions.  We're not going to relentlessly gank smaller players for making bad decisions one time, now or later.  We know who is responsible for the choices of White as an alliance, and it is they whom we hold accountable.

Diablito wrote: Long, aimless rant with no substance or logic.

I normally make far more detailed point-by-point rebuttal, but this hardly seems worth the effort.  I'm a busy man these days.  As for your ludicrous claims of stagnancy...I shouldn't even bother dignifying that with a response either, but here goes:

I've seen your "chaos."  It does mean more war--constant, unrelenting war against smaller players while the bigger get constantly bigger.  It means an experience of pure frustration for new players trying to participate possibly for the first time while a few experienced bands rape and pillage all for their accelerated growth.  It means people quitting the game on a higher order of magnitude while the most talented rule the ruin-littered roost.  Only the most committed (as in round-the-clock vigilance) are allowed to survive.  Thoughts of real-life or friendly dispute have no place in White's world.

And as for us and our stagnating ways?  For someone who prides himself in his spies and subterfuge, you should know what P.E.A.C.E. means by now.

I should also note that unlike with H? we have been coordinating smaller attacks by our smaller members, helping them actively participate if they aren't setup for front line engagements. We're doing this for all of us, not solely because of Diablito's delusions of grandeur :p

Ehm, I have 3 commanders at around lvl 30 and one lvl 8 commander and your intel about troop numbers are equally off, I had 4100 units defending me, I did however KILL 3.500 H? soldiers attacking me.

To this date you've not made ONE succesfull attack on my capital of Gay Paris (or a SINGLE white town as far as i'm aware of).

Where as we daily attack H? members with siege, knocking down upto a douzen buildings per day overall, yeah i'm sure your members think of this all as a mild inconvience.

We attack anyone wearing an H? tag because wearing an H? tag is showing support for your continued acts of aggression, you may speak of peace but diplomatic attacks, 24/7 negative spells on my city (for weeks before this war ever started) speak for themselves, you did what you could to provoke this war.

If these new players want to stop being attacked all they have to do is leave H? and all attacks cease immidately, they chose to join the largest alliance in the game, an alliance that conducted aggressive policies towards other alliances and by doing that they chose to take the risk of attack.

You whine and talk about honour and justice, but we all know what you are.

You cry to be left alone, to be left to grow, but when you've grown, when you're strong enough, you will set policy, you will write a sub-set of rules to those put down by the GM's, you will enforce YOUR ideas and opinions on this game and don't think for a godamn second I will permit it.

I'll fight this "utopia" of yours to my last soldier, and judging by our perfect attack/defence ratio, I dare say i'm doing pretty damn good.

You say I leave my members out to dry, I take care of my members, thats why they're tearing yours to pieces, thats why non of my members suffer in this war yet yours are wailing for help.

In White, we care about our new players, we don't just have them around for cannon fodder.

I'd like to ask the members of H? something directly. Do they tell you their plans? Do they include you in the planning process? Do they activly organice you? Do THEY ever send YOU resources? Or do they leave you in the dark, do they have you boost them so that they can win this war for you?

Well I have a news flash for you, 200k stone isn't going to win this war, your leaders have turtled up in a defensive position not even trying to mount an attack not defending a single member, just absorbing as much resources as they can and growing their score.

Well **** score, score doesn't matter, people matter, so you can take your score and shuv it up your ass HM, I don't give a sh*t where I am on the rankings, I care about my members.

I have to give Diablito and the management of White a bow for investing so much of their personal time in creating the group.  I really appreciate their personal sacrifice.

So, yes, I'm having fun - which makes the game worthwhile.  I would suggest everyone should be having fun or consider changing what they are doing and adapt to the point they do enjoy the game - whatever that may be...

Edit: Had to re-add - I obviously fail at copy-paste...

Hehehe, oh I do enjoy things like this. Where's the fun in building mine after mine and talking politics when you can provoke people into giving you some nice defense score.