SIN War Declaration Against SHARK

Angrim wrote: asr wrote: This is no secret that big alliances are having players who are logging in once every week or so, and many are not military oriented nor don't care about crunching numbers or watching clock to send troops, not even waking up middle of the night to specially send troops on a game. i've heard this theory before. mostly-inactive players can still have very large armies. i believe we had a war that demonstrated that. quantity has a quality of its own.

@ Madmano
Where do you get the idea that Pico wanted to fight 1 land claiming alliance at a time?
Stomps (Shark and Pico's alter ego) entire resume was about fighting ALL land claiming, as was ALL their rhetoric.
The fact that they started out small doesn't detract from the fact that the ENTIRE ALLIANCE was founded for the express purpose of battering land claimers.
I don't consider that alliances, who know they will be targeted - Given it was all across Stomps profile that's a no-brainer, and decide to take pro active action ahead of such attacks are in any way piling on.

So then we move on to the Newlands war. A land claiming alliance already in place there, finds Shark landing cities in its area and ignoring its borders. The reason given for this by Shark is that Newlands is strategically central to the entire continent and as such is required by them so that they can get to everywhere easily for wars and tournies,.............
ummm, right - not threatening at all then.
The Shark presence in BL taking into account their Chulbran holdings (btw anyone know why Shark are in Chulbran given that their stated intention apparently 8-9 months ago was to settle in Newlands? - Did they get lost?), was even then pretty much as large as the alliance they were deliberately taunting and certainly was more militaristic and geared up for war. Shark also used much the same rhetoric as Stomps had done previously (as it was probably written by the same person that's hardly surprising). So three fairly unprepared but local land claiming alliances decided to take them on. Given that Shark/PicoStomps stated intentions were to prevent land claiming they were already targets and knew it. The combined might of all three was less than Shark and certainly the combined military of them wasn't prepared for Shark armies - Hardly a pile on.

However after Shark won that war Sin not wanting Shark to settle in for the long build and regroup is entirely sensible - given that they also are a target for Sharks anti land claim propaganda and were almost certainly an intended war target. Even Shark players admit as much.

NOWHERE has Sin (or any other land claiming alliance for that matter) stated they intend to wipe out all NON land claiming alliances, or make it compulsory for all alliances in Broken Lands to go over to Land claiming. (So you can't settle in a few spots - not really a big deal considering the entire land claiming area of all land claiming alliances is only a fraction of available land, not always the best places and sometimes a bit of diplomacy would sort it out anyway.)
This is directly opposite to Shark/PicoStomp, whose stated intentions are to remove and prevent land claiming, who by that policy are signalling their warlike intentions, and who want a central area already occupied by other alliances so that they can move around and get to wars easier.

I have neither heard nor seen any evidence that Invictus in BL were threatened by Sin.  There is absolutely no evidence that Sin intended to attack anyone else other than an alliance which has stated goals of wiping land claims off the map. Alliances piling in against Sin have their own agendas I am sure, would be interesting to know what those really are, Shark shouldn't need any help given their size and much vaunted military ability.

Dungshoveleux wrote: That said, it isn't a 1:1.  The initial SIN 1:1 declaration was, in my opinion, just words designed to make them "look" more like David vs Goliath.

erm...on the basis of resources, this is very much David and Goliath. have you compared SIN and SHARK? SIN has less land than eCrow atm. without doing the maths, i'll wager they have more land *per population* than any alliance in the game. so at best they are a shrew taking on a SHARK. no one is guaranteed equal sides in an illy war, but your quotation marks are ridiculous.

Rua wrote: Well, as I see it, if you do not want escalation, you should not have declared war in the first place. The whole point of confederations is that an alliance helps another alliance in case war is declared on them.

your opinion, and not one much supported by illy history. confeds are made for many reasons, but making them public serves only one: deterrent. no one party can dictate the terms of engagement, but many, many conflicts are pursued in illy without ever involving confeds.

KarL Aegis wrote: Are we still pretending like this one versus one challenge was made in good faith? It wasn't. Don't pretend like it was.

meaning...what? a bad faith challenge would be one in which SIN draws SHARK into a conflict and then...ambushes them with secret allies? i'm curious where this particular conspiracy theory leads. it's posturing on SIN's part, yes, but bad faith is something else.

Bobtron wrote: From what I have read on the Times and this thread, it seems to me that SIN has declared a War of Aggression, with no Casus Belli whatsoever.

did  you miss the post wherein SHARK declared a strategic interest in Newlands because it allows them to strike anywhere in BL? it was explained as being for tournament play, but the capability is the same. i'm suspicious of a rationale that allows SHARK to have strategic goals that potentially impact other alliances but does not allow those alliances to react strategically.

asr wrote: This is no secret that big alliances are having players who are logging in once every week or so, and many are not military oriented nor don't care about crunching numbers or watching clock to send troops, not even waking up middle of the night to specially send troops on a game.

i've heard this theory before. mostly-inactive players can still have very large armies. i believe we had a war that demonstrated that. quantity has a quality of its own.

Leaving all the rhetoric aside for a sec...."evil"? I can only assume you use it as a trope.

Oh did I upset poco ?
Maybe when picking a fight with an alliance choose an active target (I know that puts you at a disadvantage but may save you some trouble)
And you deared war on T-O, they didn't declare on you.