Originally Posted by
Cello
Ok, I promised a long post.
Forgive me for not coming with all sorts of quotes from previous topics to stave my arguments, but it's 5:30am right now, Darkie just made us through a NATO like top kingdom council meeting that ended in nothing but bickering, I've been PMed in IRC by half the server and it's been a long day in general as you may have guessed :P
I will probably get into more detail, but basically this whole thing start in the first serious age that Polar Bears/AMA was whoring. The two ages before that had been used to build the kingdom by Elit, and to recruit more serious players, until we got to a point where making a serious throw for a crown was a viable option.
I don't recall the entire history, but we were in a position to have a good chance at crowning, but we got into a long hostile with Sanctuary of Absalom. During this hostile it was discussed in ABS council that letting AMA (as we first called ourselves that age) have a shot at crowning was not in their best interest, and if they stuck to their deals AMA would be a force to reckon with with a better shot at crowning than they themselves did.
How is this relevant to the current situation, you might think? Well, in Sanctuary leadership at that time was maximouse, currently a leader in Cromulent Republic (aka Havoc). In Havoc leadership, at that time as he will gladly point out to anyone that asks, was Nick_Mi. Who spoke the legendary words:
Side note: before they were discussing breaking the terms of the Cease Fire we had with Havoc, Sanctuary had stolen 30 mil gc from one of Havoc's bank after Havoc broke ingame Cease Fire with them. Another way we were screwed over in that conflict.
In the coming ages we were again cheated out of crowns by betrayal (pewpew, our own ally, turned on us and renegotiated CFs in order to war targets we had noticed), SWEA farming pewpew while pewpew razed us, and so on, we all know how that ended. And the age after that when our ally Jerks, albeit through a more 'legal' fashion, took the land crown in the dying minutes of the age after suspiciously taking 80k acres from an opponent that was giving them a fair fight before and granting them the warwin that they had been denying them thus far.
Fast forward an age and Havoc is still alive and kicking, under new management, under the wings of Zauper who is respected throughout the community and treated with the respect his long carreer deserves. Things over the ages have been reasonably fair, most past hurt forgotten and Havoc has mostly been left alone by AMA.
This age however shady play has started to surface again in Havoc's style. They tax Simians for 15% of their acres (close to 20k acres from their snatch news), just because Simians wanted to war someone other than Havoc. In a similar situation Simians approached AMA for a CF, and got an extension, no questions asked.
Earlier this age news reached our ears that Havoc was seriously considering breaking their CF with Pyro, something Pyro expressed concern about as well.
At this point Pyro was going to enter into conflict with Simians, and afraid that they would get into back to back wars - ending their Simians conflict only to be confronted with AMA - we sought to stop their concerns. As part of the CF deal that we made with RBL at the end of our war, we included an extension with Pyro, giving them ample time to fight Simians and recover from that fight, even put up two extra cows (three maybe? don't remember) on par with our own.
Around the time when the war between Simians and Pyro ended, talks began in the top. Contact between Zauper and Elit, and Zauper and myself was frequent, and our intention to war Pyro was quickly brought up. At which point Zauper said that even though he would rather have warred AMA himself first, he probably be ok with extending the CF that we had with Havoc to a time beyond our conflict with Pyro, so that AMA could first war Pyro and that the winner of that conflict would afterwards be in a position to war Havoc with at least a fair chance at a good war. All sides agreed that if Havoc were to war either Pyro or AMA it would only amount to a farm out, and that there was no fair war to be had. This also because both sides were aware that Havoc had yet to cash in on the acres that they negotiated Simians owed them for being left alone.
It was a few days ago, shortly before Zauper left on his vacation to Vietnam, that he started backpeddling and telling us that his council was giving him issues on the extension and was not willing to agree to anything anymore. In any other situation, he said, he would've pressed the issue through on authority alone and that would've been that. In this case he felt that he couldn't make a deal that was going to affect the time that he wouldn't be around to lead Havoc himself, so his council would have to make the decision. This proved more tedious than should've been the case. In light of recent ages, and deals given in good faith with the promise to keep shady play out of the top on both sides, an extension would have been the way to go. With the advantages Havoc had, waiting and granting the winner of the conflict between Pyro and AMA some preparation time, would have only slightly reduced their chances at a crown. With a massive advantage in science, better prepared cows and a cash stock unrivaled by any kingdom in recent ages, securing a win and thereby winning the age, was only a matter of time.
At least 6 different people from Havoc approached me in the time between then and now. Each deal they proposed more prepostorous than the next. What it came down to was that Havoc said they would notice us when we would notice Pyro (or slightly before, nobody's counting seconds), that in the best case scenario they would refrain from hitting us, but would hit us straight out of the war without a notice period (even though a reset clause was included in the original deal). In the worst case, Havoc would wave us into our hostile with Pyro, continue hitting until the conflict hit war (or even after it hit war, as you can see earlier in this thread) and claimed this as being something they have earned by their style of play this age. Not once seeing our position. We counter proposed and tried several forms of extension, asking for YR10 + 96h notice or YR11 + 72h notice, so that we could at least prepare to war them after our conflict with Pyro. A war with Pyro would've been extremely destructive, and both KDs would have their cores destroyed and their banks unable to fight a back to back war, because the kingdoms were actually matched up evenly. Like I said, back to back wars would've been hard already, let alone warring a fully prepared kingdom that was 20-30k acres bigger, had a massive cash stock, massive science advantage and an extremely well trained core and set of banks. AMA have shown that we can war our way out of a tense situation, but this would've been more like digging our way out of a titanium box with a stick of butter.
During these negotiations this particular thread was started, and Havoc's KD members began taunting us, telling us we would run (which we hadn't done yet, and we even told them we'd war them if they gave us a fair deal after the Pyro conflict). Members of AMA started getting irritated with the disrespectful way that Havoc treated us in here and in the negotiations, ignoring the good rapport that we had build up over the past ages and trying to force us into deals that were just framed farming options for Havoc to win the age. Perceived as pure greed and poor sportsmanship by us. Sportsmanship that we feel we have extended to other kingdoms, including Havoc, Pyro, Simians, Rage/RBL, HoH and others if not this age, in the past few ages.
On top of that a province that we had taken acres from, be it somewhat aggressively, last age decided to come back and raze our cows. Disrupting our preparations for an upcoming conflict, reducing our chances to near zero to win a war vs. a prepared kingdom, be it either Pyro or Havoc. Only after this happened and our situation was reduced to miserable odds to fight a succesful war against a same-sized opponent, did Havoc offer the original extension that we asked them for over a week ago, 96h notice after a war with Pyro.
At this point we were faced with a number of options, some that were within the letter of our CF agreements, including renegotiating our deal with Pyro in order to reduce Havoc's gains and several other options that I won't detail here, but which we do not want to consider seeing as we have lost ages in similar fashions.
We were threatened with 2v1 by a kingdom that has shown, with their current leadership in leading positions in different or the same KD, that they were capable of making true on their threats. A kingdom that had taken a turn for the shady and grey side of diplomacy during the age and seemed to stop at nothing to secure their crowns, at the cost of fair play, carefully built up relations in the top and treading the edges of the acceptable. All for a win that had eluded them in previous ages.
The options we had were put to a vote and we figured that we could show that we think the kind of behavior displayed by Havoc this age towards the rest of the server is unacceptable. With power comes great responsibility, and being as big as they were they should have and could have been more forgiving, generous and sportsman-like in their way to the crown. If they had, people in this thread would've been more forgiving towards their crowning aspirations in return, and this situation would never have happened.
Because Elit was at two chess tournaments throughout this entire ordeal, Proteus and myself were left in charge of the kingdom. And although we haven't been faultless at all in this whole process, what we did was the will of the kingdom. Elit has no blame or responsibility in this whatsoever. If fault for what we did lies with leadership, it lies with Proteus and myself.
We have approached some kingdoms in the top with some ideas on how this situation can be solved. These kingdoms include RBL, Pyro, BB and PewPew through RBL/Pyro. I believe Proteus has tried talking to Simians, but I am not sure if that has lead to anything yet. We have made known our intentions to them.
Have we crossed a line in this case? Yes we have, and we will take full responsibility for crossing said line. But as Kygal said we were pushed into a corner and we decided to push back. Havoc's disrespect and unsportsman-like behavior has netted them a deal break.
I'm pretty sure I've missed some things in this post, and I'm 100% sure that I'll be attacked for this post in this thread, but right now it means jack ****. We started this age as a warring kingdom, we wanted to war everyone and show everyone we were the best at what we do. We wanted to war every kingdom that was worth warring, be it top KDs or ghettos, and we wanted to win. And we did win, where the fights were fair. Sometimes back to back, but still fair fights. We wanted to war pyro and after that Havoc, but Havoc would not give us a fair shot.
<3 my KD mates, the effort they have put in this age is remarkable. Perfect activity wars for most of them, and the way they live and breathe this game is amazing. Some of the best players I've ever played with, despite some of them being absolute whiners :P
Thanks also to Pyro for treating us with respect and talking with us throughout this conflict, and even offering to pay for a prostitute for clawz should he be able to hit Nesta.
That'll be all for now. I'm going to get some sleep :P Bloody 6:30am...
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