It's always easy to throw charges around without providing evidence, like saying that we landdrop or we spend most our time bashing ghettos. I cannot provide evidence that we dont landdrop - even if i were to disclose all our papers of all our ages one could just make the argument that I deleted all the intra hits or whatever, so you'll have to take my word for it. What I can do is show our recent war record regarding the ghettobashing charge.
What is or isnt a ghetto is a tired discussion, because everyone has their own metric. Its always going to be open to interpretation. So what I will do is provide you with the honest, accurate numbers of uniques during wars, ours - theirs (as calced by Utopia Prince formatter). Then you can decide for yourself if FREE is a KD in the habit of taking easy pickings, or challenges, or both.
[note to palem: seriously? locations from past ages are a problem?!]
Age 56:
March 24 of YR2 We have declared WAR on The Secret Garden ()! - 234 vs 196 uniques
(lost other figures from age 56, but we ended that age with a pathetic 1/3 record)
Age 56 honour rankings:
72 SkyfallGarden NoWar recruiting () 64033
Age 57:
June 8 of YR0 Not Telling Yet () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 119 vs 78 uniques
July 14 of YR1 We have declared WAR on WAR is coming STFO ()! - 82 vs 47 uniques
July 19 of YR3 IMPOSTERS--message for war () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - only partial papers recovered, 28 vs 16 uniques
June 2 of YR5 Starcraft () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 91 vs 67 uniques
July 13 of YR6 We have declared WAR on Music recruiting Hostile STFO ()! - 168 vs 150 uniques
February 4 of YR11 Stronghold HOSTILE () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 606 vs 561 uniques
Age 57 honour rankings:
Not Telling Yet () unranked
We have declared WAR on WAR is coming STFO () unranked
IMPOSTERS--message for war () unranked
86 Wave us for war () 65402
11 War Music () 112913
54 Stronghold NO WAR () 75675
Age 58:
July 23 of YR0 Ancient Spartans () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 230 vs 182 uniques
January 24 of YR3 We have declared WAR on Bacteria Hostile ()! - 89 vs 44 uniques
March 1 of YR4 We have declared WAR on F P S PRESS ()! - 97 vs 65 uniques
March 2 of YR5 We have declared WAR on Into the Blue Hostile ()! - 340 vs 363 uniques
July 5 of YR8 We have declared WAR on Dealers Of Death - WAR STFO ()! - 88 vs 4 uniques
(this demands some explanation: this was the hostile: Total land exchanged: -327 (30/28); we started with a dragon and they replied with a dragon. Then on April 12th they canceled dragon and proposed a ceasefire (i guess they chickened out? I dont remember the specifics). Anyway we had the button, and reading from the papers we were doing many plunders to fund our dragon, and then did a declare + wave that was afterwards not answered with anything - to our surprise. So then it turned into a farm war - we didnt dare to not attack because of the repercussions faced by fakewarring KDs)
February 24 of YR10 We have declared WAR on Randomination HOSTILE STAY OUT ()! - 343 vs 263 uniques
June 20 of YR12 Ninja Cats HOSTILE STAY OUT () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 162 vs 158 uniques
Age 58 honour rankings:
20 Ancient Spartans () 91532
25 WarSeeKers () 83015
59 FACEBUTTS RECRUITING ATTACKERS () 69431
3 Band of Brothers hostile () 125847
Dealers Of Death - WAR STFO () unranked
Randomination HOSTILE STAY OUT () unranked
77 Paragon of Duality WAR () 61817
Age 59:
January 1 of YR1 Nicki and the Galaxy Fleet () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 215 vs 264 uniques
March 1 of YR3 We have declared WAR on Unfortunate HOSTILE ()! - 133 vs 115 uniques
February 21 of YR5 Wanna Play going to war () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 209 vs 202 uniques
April 2 of YR7 We have declared WAR on Fuzzy Animals - PM for WAR ()! - 234 vs 282 uniques
April 2 of YR10 We have declared WAR on F O R C E ()! - 221 vs 230 uniques
Age 59 honour rankings:
Nicki and the Galaxy Fleet () unranked
Unfortunate HOSTILE 6 7 () unranked
Wanna Play going to war () unranked
95 Fuzzy Animals - RECRUITING () 50076
60 F O R C E () 59375
Age 60:
February 10 of YR0 noobs looking for a good time () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 368 vs 428 uniques
January 24 of YR3 We have declared WAR on Cowards 3 14 why dont press ()! - 112 vs 87 uniques
April 12 of YR4 We have declared WAR on The Internet ()! - 259 vs 256 uniques
February 20 of YR8 The Black Company Hostile () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 564 vs 518 uniques
Age 60 honour rankings:
2 Endurance War Specialists () 116281
77 Fallen Hostile STFO () 53309
88 The Internet () 51168
66 The Deadly Theater () 55456
Age 61:
May 2 of YR0 We have declared WAR on where Am I ()! - 80 vs 58 uniques
January 24 of YR2 We have declared WAR on Unnamed kingdom Hostile 4 4 ()! - 97 vs 66 uniques
March 15 of YR3 Group Photo - War Agreed STFO () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 376 vs 423 uniques
June 23 of YR7 WAR Monkeys () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 52 vs 81 uniques
January 2 of YR11 We have declared WAR on X-United - HOSTILE STAY OUT ()! - 162 vs 177 uniques
February 3 of YR13 Paragon of Duality HOSTILE () has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 142 vs 134 uniques
Age 61 honour rankings:
where Am I () unranked
Unnamed kingdom Hostile () unranked
39 Identity Crisis () 65784
3 WAR Monkeys () 101859
57 X-United - STAY OUT () 58581
74 Paragon of Duality () 52716
Age 62:
July 1 of YR1 Going to war STHO (xx:xx) has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 85 vs 58 uniques
March 21 of YR3 Body Bits going 2 war stfo (xx:xx) has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 338 vs 461 uniques
January 4 of YR7 NiP Hostile (xx:xx) has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 191 vs 218 uniques
June 6 of YR9 Nightmare - Hostile PSO (xx:xx) has declared WAR with our kingdom! - 215 vs 272 uniques
Age 62 honour rankings: (current):
Going to war STHO (xx:xx) unranked
61 Broken Body Bits WAR (xx:xx) Lionia 53,599
77 N i P (xx:xx) Cantora 49,895
20 Nightmare - War PSO (xx:xx) Utosia 68,168
-------
My philosophy on wars is: you take what you can get. When im warsearching, i search for KDs that look beatable within our range (common sense, yes?). Then after a mountain of ceasefire proposals, one of them will reciprocate. After the war, we search for another war within the range of whatever size we ended up at (because we dont LD). Out of the 33 wars above, we gave away the button 19 times, which argues against the phantom practice of baiting ghettos.
My interpretation of the above data is this: it matches my philosophy. FREE takes what it can get. Sometimes thats a ghetto and sometimes its a top 3 honour KD.
--
Four days ago i posted a
compilation of comments from Nightmare players about the war, coupled with a presentation of their considerable advantage and subsequent withdrawal and indicated my displeasure at their forumbehaviour. Apparantly this gesture was received as a great sin, a giant faux pas. It was
taunting and disrespectful,
condescending and dicklike behaviour, we are
taking pride and need to feel important,
we conjured up a slight, we are
colossal douches, and
we acted like we pulled off some miracle.
Allow me to explain where i am coming from.
Utopia is a game I've played since december 2000, and it is dear to me - more specifically, the Kingdom that I've lead since summer 2002 is dear to me. To maintain a kingdom you need to keep the players you got and replace the ones you've lost as soon as possible.
Many players struggle with utopia in finding a balance between work and fun. For the ones who want it to be fun, it is sometimes a fatal blow when an opponent behaves like bastards and your leadership is forced to hit the withdraw button. It is truly insult to injury. It saps the will, it induces a kind of "screw this im out" behaviour, even in the seemingly most loyal and stable people. Someone can just snap at some point.
The way you treat your opponent has an effect on the health of their team. That is why I instruct my crew to behave: i dont want to do psychological damage to the opponents, and hurry the inevitable demise of this 1998 textgame.
Nightmare publicly humiliated us. If you - without asking our permission - air this war in the public forums and boast about how you're going to force us to withdraw and take all honour, that is humiliating. If we had lost this I could well have lost a few of my newer players who would lose faith in my leadership, because "how could I be so stupid picking such a hard target".
This is what I rage about. Whatever the intention, the effect of talking like this has - in the event of a loss - a potentially serious negative impact on my players. You're punching my baby, goddammit.
I think it takes giant hairy balls, after Meeni/Osaze's posturing in the first five pages of this thread, to turn it around against us, saying that WE are taunting and acting up - based on a single, relatively mild post. Every single sodding opponent we treat with respect. We dont call them names, we dont accuse them of all kinds of ****, we dont waggle our e-peens in their face once we gain the upper hand. I take every conceivable measure to preserve our opponents' dignity (diplosilence in the past, or publicly and privately chastising players when they misbehave).
What ive seen from Nightmare so far is faux outrage at my post, a lot of deflecting, and not a lot of reflecting, as evidenced by this comment: "
So my KD mates were right in saying how they felt, because it was true.". Again: whether or not it was true is irrelevant. The whole point of my first post as well as this one is that such commentary should be kept to yourselves, so that you don't inadvertently harm others. Even if you consider me an overly sensitive overbearing f?ckface, my plea warrants consideration at the least.