Thank you for the interest. I try to comment on some of the posts. There is multiple negotiation running atm and it is not really possible to answer all the questions because this is supposed to be a movement of many alliances and I do not want to speak for them. But I am happy to present my perspective:

Brids17 wrote: Janosch wrote: Internal and external conflicts should be solved peaceful (if possible).   Why?

Strange comment from a Crowalition member, I thought this would be also the aim of Crow policy, not to let conflicts escalate to something seriously violen, if possible.

However, I wanted to imply three things with this sentence:

First, if multiple members within NAAM have a quarrel and they decide to fight about it that might be fine with me (and other NAAM members), depending on the precise circumstances. It is not the aim that NAAM members fight against each other, though. So we will try to solve things peacefully.

Second, if there is a conflict with any third party, the idea is not to blindly escalate, but mediate between the involved parties and get to a fair solution. Every alliance is eventually forced to defend the freedom of its members together with friends. But we aim to solve things peacefully.

Thirdly, NAAM is not about joining together to attack third parties. Sometimes it is hard to clearly see and interpret what is an attack and what is a defence though, so each situation must be judged individually and together with the other NAAM members. Also words like bully or troll are open to interpretation, as it has been discussed in this forum before. But I believe there is a solution for most, if not all, situations and we will try to get things solved peacefully.

The members that have joined so far (I might publish a list here soon), are in principal peaceful alliances. And we want to stay peaceful alliances. That is why we want to solve things peacefully.I intend not to get involved unasked but only consider to get involved, if another movement member is going to ask for assistance.

Hadus wrote: If i may suggest, you need to consider a few things: - I would recommend you advertise this system as a "Network," rather than an Alliance. An alliance usually assumes or implies a sense of unity between the members; thus, the member alliances might presume that joining entails submitting to the unified values of the parent organization. A network, on the other hand, merely provides each member alliance with a list of contacts who have indicated a willingness to defend other small alliances if the need arises.

 Indeed that was more or less what we were thinking about. The Non-Aligned Alliance Movement is supposed to be a movement of alliances, so in fact some sort of Network, not a Confederation System/Network like Consone or Crow(?). If participating alliance make in-game confeds, that is perfectly fine with the idea.

Hadus wrote: - What defines a "small" alliance? Will there be a maximum number of members, population, land claimed, or alliance rank? Will setting a maximum dissuade alliances from continuing to grow? Will the absence of a maximum allow bigger alliances to control the network to meet their own goals?

This depends on what the alliances decide that will join in the Network. We will need to decide together who we like to join and who we do not accept as a member. It might be an advantage if a larger alliance is going to join. I do not think we will kick alliances that grow (so I do not demand the right to kick an alliance for myself (or any other special rights) but there will be the possibility to exclude alliances from the movement if they show certain behaviour or try to drag NAAM in unprovoked wars). It will not be possible for anyone to control the network and all involved alliances have one vote in the movement, no matter what size they do have. I do not want to make this decisions for the Network participants.

Hadus wrote: - Are the member alliances bound by any agreements? Are members required to take part in any aspect of the network? Will they be forced to aid other alliances or forced to end a conflict with another member? Will the network become so large that small alliances feel forced to join, or else have no allies to protect them?

We did prepare a Memorandum of Understanding to clarify some aims and organisational aspects. Members are not forced to take part in any actions of the movement, they do not support (I cannot see how else this should work anyway). So if a (large) alliance wants to use the network for anything tresures, it will only be possible, if there is sufficient support from participating smaller alliances (and I do not expect this to be the case). In fact, I hope rather many smaller alliances will dominate the Network. It is possible for any participating alliance to have additional relations with other alliances. We will see how many alliances will join, but I do not think there will be no protection left for alliances that decide not to join. If alliances decide to leave the movement, they are free to do so.

Hadus wrote: - How will the network be run? A hierarchy based on size? A democratic approach based on group votes? An election-based system? Does the network even need leadership, or simply administration/organization?

There is not supposed to be any leadership. We might elect some mediators to assist in larger negotiations and organisational efforts. Each alliance will have one vote and things are supposed to work democratically. I incresingly have the feeling that Illy is based on quite a few very active players. So this players could eventually excersise more influence then others, I do not know how to change that fact. However, I expect the rest (or parts) of NAAM only to support actions they really want to support, no matter what kind of

 BlindScribe, I was thinking about local solutions. But first of all TOR is not very well concentrated. Secondly, I believe the organisational effort of multiple smaller alliance networks/movements will be much harder to handle. And in the end also forum support might be valuable. Also the idea to found a large alliance with only large players from small alliances, for excample for tournament participation, will not work with many local solutions (which would have multiple overlaps).

Thanks for wishing us luck. I think we will need it.

Kumomoto wrote: Faenix wrote: Non-Aligned Alliance Movement The problem that I see with this is .. If you align yourself with this movement, then you're no longer a Non-Aligned Alliance .. So perhaps you should refer to yourselves as the "Movement of Previously Non-Aligned Alliances?"   Or maybe .. Tenuously Aligned Potentially Defensive Agreement of The Autonomous Sovereign Subjects? LMAO.

The idea of a non-aligned movement is to be not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. This might or might not be a fitting comparison for the political world of Illyriad. It is created because of the desire not to be aligned within a geopolitical/military structure and therefore itself does not have a very strict organizational structure, which is why we choose the name.

Brids17 wrote: Janosch wrote: Strange comment from a Crowalition member, I thought this would be also the aim of Crow policy, not to let conflicts escalate to something seriously violen, if possible. I don't particularly like how stagnant the crow alliances are and how fearful people are to get involved in a conflict with one due to the chance they'll all get involved, so it's really not as strange as you might think.  The aim of your non-aligned alliance movement seems to be to prevent war whenever possible. This is silly. Newbies of all people are the single best suited players to go to war. Unlike many of the vets, they don't have a whole lot to lose. So what if they lose their 750 man army? So what if their 2k city with 200 cows and 10 saddles get's sieged? It's not a lot to lose. And while you may not stop them, the fact that they're in the huge confed of alliances is enough to stop it alone. Inter-confed conflicts are obviously going to be pressured to stop because that would defeat the purpose of it. So the entire thing is anti-war and I just want to know specifically: Why?

I am the last one that wants to stick my nose into affairs that are none of my business. So if people want to fight, I do not mind. I do know that creatures like trolls or the definition of bully and self-defence are significantly shaped by power constellations here in this forum. So particularly small alliances do need friends. They can eventually come here and find assistance, if they need it (and as I said, they might find it or not). But as some players do not like to beg for resources, some players do not like to beg for military assistance. So the idea NAAM is not entirely about peace. If the game became stagnant, that is certainly not the fault of NAAM or the “small” alliances. But there are reasons why “small” alliances should join together and be it tournament participation or forum support. How precisely the policy of NAAM will look like and if the aim of NAAM is to prevent war whenever possible, depends on the alliances that will join. So I cannot predict what will happen and how this will influence the game.

STAR wrote: 5. Trading opportunities - arrangements for alliances to inter-trade with one another at "special rates" 6. Basic Resource support between NAAM members if in a position to do so. 7. Friendly military operations (for training purposes)

I think these are great ideas and indeed we are already cooperating economically. FTG obviously and also TOR are relatively trade oriented. NAAM will be open to whatever ideas the members will contribute. So if the game will provide further cooperation opportunities (i.e. roads), we are happy to include such things.

We are currently considering forming an alliance for tournament participation. It will also be open to players/alliances that are not sure if they want to join NAAM. I think this would be a great opportunity to get to know each other and how NAAM can eventually work.

Greetings,

We want to remind the interested audience that NAAM is nothing new. We are a group of peaceful small and mid-sized alliances that have joined together for cooperation and self-defence more than a year ago. Until now we managed to handle our affairs with the necessary discretion and successfully avoided to get involved in wars. Some of the NAAM-alliances have decided to join together to handle the current crisis and we created the NAAM-alliance.

XckX is a member of NAAM. RE has decided to violate standards of courtesy (settled within ten squares, military occupation of sovereignty and T3 resources, failed to reply to messages, attempted to siege “inactive” players and tried to recruit spies within XckX). What started as XckX's short and punitive expedition would certainly not have been a NAAM operation. Even RES intervention against XckX would not have been a reason to constitute the NAAM-Alliance. From NC there was clearly no approach to get to a reasonable solution but sieges were sent straight away against XckX.

The main problem about NC intervention is the fact that NAAM already has a history with them. When they declared on II (a war that ended in March this year), they attacked a close friend from different NAAM alliances. TFS decided to aid II by sending over some players. When II accepted surrender and TFS players returned, NC sent out armies to TFS. Although NC stopped hunting TFS-players when TFS collapsed, NC intervention against TFS led to the collapse of the entire alliance, and a valued NAAM-Member.

II was considering NAAM participation before but was afraid of being dragged us into something larger. So they were attacked and had no friends to help them. Consequently, II went looking for serious allies after they lost the war, negotiations with NAAM started again and a merger with BANE was negotiated. In this moment NC (being bored without PvP-combat) declared on BANE using the most ridiculous reason they could find. BANE not being an official NAAM-member, was only backed by II who decided to aid them since they were planning to merge. When NC got into trouble they asked TCol to intervene against II (who were defenceless at the time...) to force II-players out of BANE. This incident brought NAAM-alliances close to war participation. The rest of the story is known due to DARK intervention and forum post.

We cannot tolerate further aggressive movements against NAAM alliances and have therefore declared war against NC. We certainly have the right and the duty to defend our confed when NC keeps playing this game like that. We are a group of seven (and more) small, tiny and mid-sized alliances. The current events do give us reason to worry. NC is more or less randomly attacking growing alliances. The fact that those alliances have a higher population size is void because many factors play a much more important role. NC has developed into a crucial threat to a few NAAM alliances and many others in this game.

Already in the BANE/NC war it became apparent that this way of gameplay is supported by very influential alliances. While I cannot confirm any sort of plot between NAAM and the Crowalition (or whatever alliances), to me it rather appears like NC and those alliances that support this sort of gameplay to drag Illyriad to server war.

As the forum sometimes is an unfriendly place, you are certainly welcome to contact our alliance directly, if you have any questions or comments on this post.

Respectfully,

The NAAM-Council

Gaius Rufius Tullus wrote: Say you are in a family group, and someone is beating your little sibling. Granted, you may be bigger than the bully - but that should not stop you from helping your younger sibling and stopping the conflict.

[23 Sep 2012 12:40]<Innoble> a fair fight is a fight both parties are dumb to start, so fair fights are fought by idiots