In the hope that this thread will not become, as it often seems to happen, a surrogate battlefield for those contenders who evidently did not get enough of their share of fighting in the real war (and by real I obviously mean fake, this is a game you know), I ask you to describe the events of this war as you would if you were telling a story to a child. After all, aren't we all newbies like children needing support and guidance ;-)

You are welcome to describe the large scale strategic manoeuvers of the alliances, the cloak and dagger games going on behind the scenes, or even just a small episode that you may have witnessed first hand (like the siege of a single city, for example).

Pleeeease grandpa, one more story before I go to bed.

Edit @ killer poodle: we don't want comments about other people's posts. They're boooring!

If you don't like what other people said, just tell us your own side of the story. That is the full story, as you think it should be told.

Re-edit @ Deranzin: your philosophical approach to the causes of this war is interesting but maybe a bit too aloof for kids like us to comprehend. We really just want to hear a fun story :)

As seems to be the usual way with great wars, this one started (or at least got out of hand) because somebody was not happy with the result of the previous war. The previous war was called many things, but it seems many have agreed to call it The Consone War after the main instigator. They were a group who had very strong views about the right way to behave in Elgea and about the evils of alliances with other ideas getting big and powerful. For all practical purposes they were annihilated in that war.

As with other great wars, the losing side was left with a number of grudges. The peace treaties left them with a long list of cities they had to give up, either to be taken over or razed by the winners. And even worse for some, their philosophy had not prevailed. Some were making secret plans behind the scenes, and many were waiting for somebody to kill the Archduke//////// do something to give them a pretext for action. 

I hope some of the cooler heads both among the coalition and the unnamed axis crow-eagle / militant pacifist crusaders / whatever will provide historians with documents and events about the early stages of this conflict before they are forgotten.

After finishing our campaign on H? in the north, EE decided to move south and east against the Dominion who had been stalwartly entrenched in battle for some time against our allies.  After a round of long distance sieges and reinforcement operations against The Colonist Empire, we decided that another direction was needed.  Fearing that outside influence was hardening TCol's resolve, it was determined that a focused campaign against another Dominion force was required.

Scouting parties were sent, and forces were taken measure.  But either by our pride or by our past conquests, our first attacks were met with both superior resistance and proper planning.  Our first siege was cleared out of a group of buildings, but not without a large number of swords that I determined that Dark Blight could not afford to lose.  A large scale siege was sent to a mountain range, but some armies arrived too late to prevent the ambush set from destroying a good number of our siege engines.  Once the bulk of forces arrived it was apparent the enemy could not dislodge us, but neither could we storm and raze the town of Asa Wright.

After gaining a proper measure of our enemy, and with it a proper respect, we landed more sieges against their General Sergito.  Towns were razed and enemy troops were killed in terrain not favorable to them due to their previous loss of swords.  Troops arrived from all members of DB who still had them at home, but it was too little too late.  What was later learned was that the enemy had troops marching to their doom in a last ditch attack against an allied leader.

Surrender quickly followed after these battles, but indeed the greatest respect was gained for our foes in Dark Blight.  They taught us to not gauge the strength of our foes upon the ease of earlier victories, and bloodied our troops in a way we had not seen up to that point.

On a side note and completely out of storyteller character, nicely done Noki in both the on the field showing and in the spirit of the above post.  You and your alliance definately have earned the respect of EE, and hopefully you have continued growth and success.

~Prior to the onset of the war I had my alt account in NC, where I fought Bane and Insanity Inc. I  enjoyed the friendships and warlike play NC and its members have had since shortly after their journey began. Being part of a small close knit group that's active everyday and was something I had not experienced yet in my tenure here. I spent more time on my alt than I did on my main account. It was around this time my brother in RL started playing and I needed to make a switch from elf to orc. Knowing this was possibly the last time Id ever actually go through with the move I abandoned my alt and in doing so left NC. In the meantime I was setting Shade up to be a competitive military style alliance built for tourneys and Veteran Illy players. War seemed to be on the brink- It seemed as though blood was on on the breath of everyone. The air was becoming thick and whatever each alliances choke point was their tolerance was less and less. The fact that we had no tourney for ages meant illy was full of troop counts, negative gold, and people willing and ready to prove their mettle. 

War broke loose and with them- many major armies that had been horded for the better half of a year. Illyriad seen battles for the record books, unknown men and women carving their names in with the Gods, and those that were once great proved why, or they were cast away soon to be forgotten like so many before them. 

Shades initial targets were those closest to them in Kal Tirikan and freemorn. We knew they were active, and if not were actively sat based on the last tourney. Our primary focus were the freemorn cluster of Harmless. After being evenly matched or out matched the previous tourney in that region we knew it would be an uphill battle. Not only did Harmless display prowess in the last tourney but they did so coming fresh off a war. Our initial Sieges were met with Heavy resistance. John 5420, Leanthar, and alas Tordenkofffen did not disappoint. Their armies were heavy and well led, dealing a 2-1 kill death ratio at nearly every hit. This is when my time in NC really helped me. NC was second to none at one thing. War. To win a war you needed to be active, and timing was most crucial. I had a meeting with our strategist and trusted generals setting sieges in favorable terrain along with precise timing. With every siege we landed we would launch a follow up siege shortly after. It became apparent that with the continued Barrage and Shades superior sov/cities in the area we were making considerable headway. At some point some of our members lost the sense of containment I had hoped we could keep, destroying one account to the last city, and others losing 4-5. I then reached out to H? and after a week or so reeling in some of our members we moved on from the freemorn region which had proven broken and bloodier than I would have ever imagined. We continue to march, farther and farther south. The enemy has regrouped and I can only  imagine the pain we have felt thus far is minute in comparison to what lies ahead. ~

I think much good information is coming out of this thread. I do not doubt that old alliances have a number of accounts sat for a very long time, but I do not see that as necessarily bad. I personally know of at least one account which has been sat for the better part of a year before the owner got enough RL breathing room to come back and take control again. Besides, only people totally living their life in the game will be able to effectively sit more than a couple of accounts. 

Even without having many "permasat" accounts, an old alliance will have huge stockpiles inherited from players who have left. With safe storage in hubs, this is possibly enough to keep fighting for months.

My impressions from the market is that the war has increased regional differences. People at war may not have the time to shop around or having stuff shipped over half the map. This is good for those of us who have invested in many traders, and could open for more arbitrage deals.

 

Another thing is that I believe you have to use untold amounts of Prestige if you commit all out to a major war. That is, obviously, very beneficial to everybody. As long as Illy has income, they will be able to improve it.

I both hope and believe Brandmeister is wrong about Illy becoming like other games. From what I can see, only those who want to take part in the current war (or stick with their friends) are involved in it. This kind of split is good for everybody. Elgea will have a crisis if everybody choose the same style, whether it be peaceful or warlike.

I have quite a few more stories that I could tell you all. I think that I'll talk to you about the best of the enemy players that we fought. 

When we started the war, I had a shortlist of the players who I wanted to target in our local region. Top of this list was Taelin, and we narrowly failed to siege his city Sinde. We did at least damage it badly, and indeed it never regained the same level of population. The other person whom we were interested in neutralising was sevenonefour.

Earlier, we had tried to attack sevenonefour to take out his armies. When we did this, we discovered something annoying. He just doesn't sleep. Whenever we attacked him, he would simply dodge our attacks, no matter what time of day we were sending them at, and hit us back. As such, we decided that we ought to siege his city. We had excellent coordination on this particular siege. We had enough reinforcements to handle what we knew vCrow had in the immediate vicinity, and we were confident we could pull this siege off.

But when the troops arrived, one of my more inexperienced people hit siege instead of occupy. A second before Sabre Wulf's siege arrived, another siege with no catapults turned up. You can imagine my frustration. We never actually returned to siege 714, as Bane had joined the war by this point which made sieges in our local area untenable. However, our direct siege attacks still pretty much levelled the town.This, as it turned out, annoyed sevenonefour. He then went on a bit of a rampage.

He targetted Carl Zeis and Vertigo. Using direct siege attack, he levelled four cities belonging to Vertigo and two belonging to Carl Zeis. Having done this, he turned his attention onto sieges. BANE had previously tried and failed to siege Aemonn's fifth city, but 714 tried again and, this time, succeeded. We hit back hard at his capital with a wave of direct siege attacks, almost levelling the entire city, but this didn't stop him from continuing to fight hard. He was the sender of the siege against Sergito's Siparia. In this siege, Sergito had some 12k T2 spears. He dodged an attack from Hyo, and in the time when his troops were moving 714 hit raze, and succeeded. Presumably, the phalanxes were left in the ether.

Take this as a shout out to a great player. 714 did not have the largest armies I have ever encountered, but he uses them better than anyone else I have ever seen. Now I'm not at war with him and I'm not obliged to dislike him... kudos!

I was originally the leader of a small merry band of Lords and Ladies that called themselves Affirmative Action. We were originally stationed in Keshalia but had relocated many settlements to Southern Zanpur. We have made friends with neighbors in Keshalia and Zanpur that included several Consone alliances, as well as The Colony before the days of the DarkStar Dominion. 

When it became apparent that Harmless? had orchestrated a large scale attempt to dismantle Consone, I became concerned for my friends. Doubtly so when Kale Weathers agreed to put The Colony on Harmless's side. 

Affirmative Action was not part of Consone, but we had a vested interest in keeping a friendly presence around us. As a result we began contributing to Consone military efforts to prevent loss of cities. As history will tell us, this did not go well. 

My alliance's initial surrender during the Great Trove War. 

Inbetween The Great trove War and the current War, I agreed to a proposal set forth by Boru to merge Affirmative Action and ViCX. This new VICX created a consolidated geographical powerhouse in the southeastern hemisphere. 

And then the current war began. 

I was one of the Vcrows in the  Taelin siege city defence. lost basicaly all defence troops i still had left. Anyway, i think The city was too close to a certain Vcrow Orc (not me by the way) that quicky was able to deploy massive amounts of defence, making life for the attaker's very hard.

more story's plz : )

That is true, but there will always be some who are exceptions without that invalidating the overall picture.

In the case of the consone war, I was dragged into it because of a confederation agreement. While such agreements can provide small members of small alliances a level of security in case somebody big and scary should get nasty, they also increase the risk of being dragged into something.

While it was scary to suddenly see big, red cities all around my neighbourhood, it was also very interesting and educational to become a tiny part of the biggest war machine Elgea had seen up to then.

I never saw Illyriad as an interesting wargame, and never built much in the way of armies. I have, however, some RL experience with command control - being trained as an S-3 in the Home Guards. Anyhow, I was put in charge of the coordination of our Northern area. 

Our first action was against Quackers, who had build a new city placed to support attacks against one of ours. In an attempt to confuse us, he kept changing the name. Not very effective, since we used coordinates, but I remember the place as Bobby McGee. 

The operations were not very successful for any side. We could never muster enough strength in that area to destroy the place, and they were not able to make any inroads into our territory. The area just was not important enough to either side, and by the time we had built up enough strength to start a siege the war was over.

The most impressive action I took part in was a siege run by TVM. I received a message saying:

Was that the siege of Sinde?

First of all, omitting alliance names doesn't really mean anything if you're just going to specifically identify them all anyway.  And more convenient secret alliances that you're going to use to justify your actions after the fact.  Fun.

In the spirit of trying to get this thread back on track, I'll give an outline of how I came to be in this war.  Honored, I know you've spent a long time cultivating that impressive ego of yours, so you might not want to read this.  Consider yourself warned.

It had nothing to do with Harmless?.  

I spend my early alliance life in an alliance called the Order of Consequence.  It would eventually collapse due to internal drama, and mostly migrate to Amicitia, which would dissolve for much the same reason, with a dose of inactivity thrown in.  Still, I made a lot of friends in these alliances, and many Amicitia members ended up in either House of Plantagenet(PLAN), where I ended up, or in Insane Knight(BANE). 

BANE was(and is) an innovative alliance in many ways, but mainly in that they are a mercenary alliance, they fought for gold.  This had at the time always been contained to assistance in clearing inactives and tournaments, basically professionalization of the activities even the most peaceful alliance engages in.  Unfortunately for BANE, this was Heresy(tm).  Night Crusaders would strike at them under cover of a tournament, using a pretext so weak as to be farcical.    

Would I make myself a Heretic(tm)?  Was I already?  These where my friends that had just been attacked, and I knew may of them had a lot in common with me.  

The second concern growing in my thoughts was the Darkstar Dominion.  The largest militant bloc in the game, they where a force expanding in influence and belligerence every day.  The Dominion threw their weight around in ways Consone and Crows would never have imagined, eventually culminating in an unproved attack by one of their member alliances on my own alliance, PLAN.  Backed up with the threat of attack by the Dominion and H?, should anyone come to our assistance.  Of course we knew our allies wouldn't be any match for such powers, and asked them all to stay out.  I know it may sound like I'm trying to make us look noble and selfless here, I assure you that isn't the case.  The math would simply never have worked in our favor.  So we took some damage, fought as best we could, and eventually made a barely tolerable peace with our attackers so they could prepare to fight their new war.  That would be the current one.  

NC, it turned out, had found a few more Heretics(tm) than they could handle, and the Dominion was dutifully riding in to bail them out.  I think it goes without saying at this point I would have preferred to see them lose, but more to the point, could I stand to see them win?  To come out of another war with even more arrogance and aggression, and even less to hold them in check?  

No.

And that is the story of how I found myself in the first non-neutral alliance of my Illyrian life, with Eagle's Eyrie(Who're great!), at war with Harmless? only by virtue of their deliberate decision to aid these factions who embodied all they claimed to oppose.  So maybe, when you're trying to figure out how you got here, don't look at the people who wouldn't support you, look at who you continued to support.  

 

And clearly, all parties weren't willing to end it peacefully.  As for the indiscernible future, thank you for your concern, but I think I'll keep my eyes on the threats in front of me.  Seeing daggers in every shadow usually ends up even worse than not looking at all.  

Anyway, storytelling thread.  We've told ours.  Let's let someone else have a turn.  

Although the battle I recount here is told from my perspective, the real credit for our (semi) victory goes to the entire alliance of T-O and Praetor Augustus especially, as the city was his, and his contributions were instrumental in ensuring the battle's outcome.

The siege was rather late into our foray in the war, and despite this, our western armies had seen relatively little action on the field of battle. We had launched a couple of sieges at NAAM, however none of them had very much success. My own troops hadn't seen a single offensive battle in the west, as they were primarily stalwarts, and their use as city clearers was limited due to the attack avoiding tactics used by NAAM. 

None the less, Praetor Augustus informed us one day in Alliance Chat that a number of vCrow troops were approaching his settlement. Thinking quickly, he demolished most of his city in order to give the besiegers a smaller storming population. This would prove to be a wise decision. As the attackers piled onto the two mountains outside his city, it became clearer and clearer that this was a large and well coordinated military operation on the part of vCrow. As soon as things had settled down, it became evident that direct military force would be insufficient to drive both the vCrow sieges from their mountains. An alternate strategy of defense was devised, in which the city was reinforced with enough troops to defeat the inevitable storm attempt. Furthermore, the siege on the mountain to the west was broken, and Simple Jim settled a city on the square to shield PA's city from other vCrow operations on the defensively favorable terrain. Days went by with neither side budging from their post. PA's city idled at 0 pop, and vCrow, who had scouted the city to asses its defenses, knew better than to attempt a storm. 

The second part of the siege began when vCrow sent a large amount of attacks (over 60) at the city in an attempt to dislodge the defensive force there. Since we didn't have the firepower to maintain the defense in the onslaught of their attacks, a new tactic was devised. We broke all the blockades around the city, and every night an alliance-wide aid effort was conducted, which involved sending millions of basic resources to the city in order to help it rebuild to above storming population. The city hovered around 2k and 5k pop per night, managing to just stay above the mark, and PA slowly rebuilt up his forces in the city and dodged the attacks. In the mean time, we decided to begin picking at the defenses on the mountain. The main force we sent consisted of approximately 80k stalwarts and crossbowmen sent by me. Although I did not receive a battle report for these attacks, I estimate I killed off about the same number of troops that I lost. Any blockades sent at the city were immediately killed off, and the siege continued to fail to drop the city past storming population. 

In the end, the siege lasted the entire 15 days that it had been sent for, and while we didn't kill it off, neither did we lose the city. In the end PA exodused it, due to its location next to two mountains. Thus, it cannot be counted as a forced exo by vCrow as the exo occurred after the siege was over.

"Held" as in past tense. And yes, it's perfectly reasonable to want H? removed from control without seeking that control yourself.

I dunno, I would say that the siege of 05 couldn't have been handled more effectively by us. The small attacks meant that we got a nearly 2:1 kill ratio- 40k troops to kill 70k. You may disagree with these figures, my records are haphazard.

05 and 04 were both supposed to be exodused as they were next to mountains and had troops on said mountain. The only reason 05 wasn't exodused was because of a 30d research queue (I know.). So you were kinda lucky then.

Your town that you exodused was a great example of why we need counterclaiming back. Without counterclaiming we were more or less powerless to stop you. However, since I was pretty sure you wanted us to put a siege there because of the building (we already knew about your stals) I didn't bother sieging. We just hit it with some troops and blockaded it.

The Hyo op taught us to be a lot more careful with our RT. The operation put our RT capabilities back by an annoyingly large amount. Luckily we were able to return the favour when we took out your 120cats and 4k stals.

30 Day Research, ouch no need for sabo attacks on that one. 

 

As to counterclaiming, I could not agree more. I have seen numerous instances since the pause of it where counterclaiming could have made a difference. This being one, The NC town exoing into the middle of NAAM towns another. I think Amporphias did it as well in the MM area, not quite sure on that one. 

I am to tired to keep summing them up. But here we go again for at least 2 of them. 

First... Breaking sieges was never considered an offensive action by H?(and by it's "allies", would use other words but trying to keep calm and not resort to offensive words) .... 

.... off course, when it suited you best and you could do the breaking in the past. 

When Invictus send in troops to break sieges, (read point one, NOT offensive) H? warned VIC that it was considered an offensive action... how weird?

Second...

Jasche, the one you keep trying to pull down, but the one who has also always been the most CONSISTENT player to be called true to his word, actually called back all attacks against those sieges, even when most of invictus players hated doing so. See... we do stand by our friends. (Something you and yours so loudly applauded when it benefited you. But suddenly it was something considered evil and offensive. ) How bold you and yours were saying that confeds not standing by their friends were not worth their money... 

Consone did that, stood by it's confeds and they broke sieges, they DID NOT initiate sieges. 

Cry foul play all you want... Inconsistency two! 

Even when Jasche ordered it, and we didn't like his orders, all attacks were kept back after that. And you, being so militairy oriented knew that attacks launched could not be called back. 

All you had to say to that was "well... they could have been send in after the call went out".

I have to admit.... Jasche called your bluff, and you miserably failed at meeting it.... If I had still been leader of Invictus you would indeed have managed to goad me into the war you wanted all along. Not with Jasche... 

But you wanted that war, ... it was evident from the beginning. And if Consone/Jasche was willing to go this far... what then??? ... If you had accepted what he had offered then you would have never been able to pull off your precious war again. So you had to go forward even though the foundations of it were failing beneath your feet as it happened. 

Gratz, you won.... for a while (hmmmm this sounds familiar?)  

Sorry... two points where you lost my respect. And two points where I had my eyes on the whole situation. 

I don't mind people who actually roleplay. If they ARE really roleplaying and not just hiding behind it to insult people. 

I also don't mind people who are honest enough to say "I am just in it for the war". 

What I do mind is alliances such as H? claiming time and time again that they are not the aggressors. 

If you want to play that card try to give it at least a LOT more effort or don't come up with cheap tricks/lies like this. 

Truelly.... these were only 2 of the things that really made me lose my respect for H? .... 

Not even going to go into all the other times. 

(edited for spelling errors, was to angry when i posted this, and still am)

Jasche made attempts at diplomacy with H? and was consistently rebuffed, patronised or simply ignored for his efforts. H? engineered the situation and Jasche had no way of dufusing a situation that was already scripted and in progress. 

And futile since you had already geared up for war and were going to have it regardless.

Anyway this is rehashing old news but belittling Jasche over a year after he was driven out of the game isn't very becoming.

It was me and HM to bring up the topic of Consone war - non derail at all, as the Consone war is a important part within this history lesson.

We both stated multiple times, that each thread was a BIASED version of the same story, and we were both trying to add to the understanding of each other without the vicious pre- and postwar propaganda rhethorics.

Would like to have seen a thread with many posts like this, but certain persons dragged it back to finding culprits and insulting people, trying to invent other peoples motivations out of some (again BIASED) intell they might have got.

I made my point in here, so did HM. Many nice people also defended the names insulted, and I think they made their point, too (Many thanks for that!).

So my advice is to ignore any further accusations in here, as I hope they tend to fall back to the wielder.

This said, I'll retreat myself from this topic - actually to follow HM's example.

kindest regards.

I used to have more but I cleared everything on my laptop recently and this is the only screenshot I still have. This is a nice representation of an average DB siege.

Well written Deranzin - in the spirit of the OP.  And well played.

Although your 'victory' at Xarva was a little Pyrrhic to say the least.

I certainly hope so!

Deranzin wrote:    but that is indeed a good way to go down ... by having fun at it

Hear hear!!

Yeah me too, lets hear it guys.

The parts I did not appreciate so much were largely conjecture about the motivations of other players, back handed compliments and slanders.    

FACTS and REQUESTS for facts are what win the day in any social context.  Everything else smacks of passive and or outright aggression, which just plain is NOT necessary.

I found Honored Mule's conjecture as to other folks motivations and cases for actions particularly offensive.  I really think that  if SERIOUS communication were to take place, that QUESTIONS be asked and that FACTS reviewed and even if debated and parsed between the opposing parties, (rather than seeing bitter conjecture posted), we might have room for all of us to feel happy in this game.  Please HM, take that to private communications with the actual parties that you feel committed offenses and ASK them why they did things, instead of posting it in the format of a political diatribe comprised of uninformed editorializing.

I think I came off pretty well in your story. Fact is I was not home when raze time came. When I returned my alliance leaders were unsure if there were any troops in Lar Toribar, so I sent my knights to take a look. They confirmed that there was in fact no army hiding in the basement of the one hut left standing, so my army went ahead and razed it.

I can't honestly recommend this hotel.

Starry's welcome leaves a lot to be desired.