Redhaven

[CryptCypher]

Well, weeeeeell aware. Alara played friendly with Magnus(me) and had a dagger at our back all along. I caught Alara promising to screw Minas only for them to change their mind and join up to gank GX, after spying on us. It was a massive clusterf-ck and Alara's leader pretty much lit the fuse for the entire southern conflict over the pettiest situation. Quite sad, really. Seems things went from bad to worse later.

Should have wiped Alara off the map at the get-go and avoided the whole problem in the first place.

[GustavKuriga]

Well, weeeeeell aware. Alara played friendly with Magnus(me) and had a dagger at our back all along. I caught Alara promising to screw Minas only for them to change their mind and join up to gank GX, after spying on us. It was a massive clusterf-ck and Alara's leader pretty much lit the fuse for the entire southern conflict over the pettiest situation. Quite sad, really. Seems things went from bad to worse later.

Should have wiped Alara off the map at the get-go and avoided the whole problem in the first place.

Huh, it would be interesting to get to know your side of the story then, as my character was the one that kicked off the whole series of events which eventually ended with your character stepping down. I'm not nearly as annoyed with Alara though, as the realms that were at war with each other starting out would have made for at least a relatively even fight. It was Perdan and friends jumping in that made things absurdly unbalanced.

[JeVondair]

Should have wiped Alara off the map at the get-go and avoided the whole problem in the first place.

I tried.

[Zakky]

Huh, it would be interesting to get to know your side of the story then, as my character was the one that kicked off the whole series of events which eventually ended with your character stepping down. I'm not nearly as annoyed with Alara though, as the realms that were at war with each other starting out would have made for at least a relatively even fight. It was Perdan and friends jumping in that made things absurdly unbalanced.

Not sure you understand what relatively even fight means. GX was slaughtering southern realms until Perdan and Vix joined.

[GustavKuriga]

Not sure you understand what relatively even fight means. GX was slaughtering southern realms until Perdan and Vix joined.

Because the southern realms were not very good at coordinating. They had relatively equal combat power if they actually bothered to bring it all in one spot, but they didn't. Even just Vix joining in wouldn't have been a horrid overbalance. But once Perdan came in things were just ridiculous. So please, don't blame failure in a war solely on the size of the realm, because that had very little to do with what happened.

GX's military is what happens when you have competent, active players coordinating with each other. They punched above their weight not because of superior economy or number of nobles (the number of nobles was even and both Alara and especially Perleone had much higher gold per noble. I've checked repeatedly), but because they actually moved together as one force with relatively good discipline. It's why the war lasted for so long even after Perdan joined in.

[Zakky]

Because the southern realms were not very good at coordinating. They had relatively equal combat power if they actually bothered to bring it all in one spot, but they didn't. Even just Vix joining in wouldn't have been a horrid overbalance. But once Perdan came in things were just ridiculous. So please, don't blame failure in a war solely on the size of the realm, because that had very little to do with what happened.

GX's military is what happens when you have competent, active players coordinating with each other. They punched above their weight not because of superior economy or number of nobles (the number of nobles was even and both Alara and especially Perleone had much higher gold per noble. I've checked repeatedly), but because they actually moved together as one force with relatively good discipline. It's why the war lasted for so long even after Perdan joined in.

So if you see an army of 1000 armed soldiers vs an army of 1000 armed peasants you call that even because the numbers were the same? Sounds like solid logic. Of course they were bad at coordinating. It is quite difficult to coordinate with multiple realms. That is a well known fact of this game. There are even better examples than that of GX. Sirion for example lasted years against multiple realms or Fontan which fought largest realms on the continent by themselves with their infamous lions.

It is better to have one large highly concentrated realm instead of 2 smaller realms with 2 capitals sitting few regions apart. And what about having equal number of nobles? Alara+Minas Nova+Perleone did not have the same number of nobles as GX. GX always had at least 5 more. Alara and MN actually lost nobles over time while GX gained even more. Only when Vix jumped to aid them things started to become somewhat even. When Perdan joined, it finally tipped. Let's not forget Fallangard actually joined GX's side as well. Then Caligus on top. So stop giving me this bull!@#$ about GX and south being on the even ground. If you really believe that then you are just horrible at being a general.

[JDodger]

 8)

[GustavKuriga]

So if you see an army of 1000 armed soldiers vs an army of 1000 armed peasants you call that even because the numbers were the same? Sounds like solid logic. Of course they were bad at coordinating. It is quite difficult to coordinate with multiple realms. That is a well known fact of this game. There are even better examples than that of GX. Sirion for example lasted years against multiple realms or Fontan which fought largest realms on the continent by themselves with their infamous lions.

It is better to have one large highly concentrated realm instead of 2 smaller realms with 2 capitals sitting few regions apart. And what about having equal number of nobles? Alara+Minas Nova+Perleone did not have the same number of nobles as GX. GX always had at least 5 more. Alara and MN actually lost nobles over time while GX gained even more. Only when Vix jumped to aid them things started to become somewhat even. When Perdan joined, it finally tipped. Let's not forget Fallangard actually joined GX's side as well. Then Caligus on top. So stop giving me this bull!@#$ about GX and south being on the even ground. If you really believe that then you are just horrible at being a general.

Honestly you seem deadset on holding this opinion that everything was GX's fault. I'm not going to be able to change that if you're so stubborn, so let's just drop it.

[steelabjur@aol.com]

Fallangard was a non-issue due to standing agreements by GX with Caligus, and Caligus didn't get involved militarily until Vix and Perdan did. Ironically, if Fallangard had gotten involved offensively, Caligus would have declared war against GX, due to long standing disputes between Caligus/Fallangard, so our nearest ally was limited to defensive/protective actions only.

[CryptCypher]

Huh, it would be interesting to get to know your side of the story then, as my character was the one that kicked off the whole series of events which eventually ended with your character stepping down. I'm not nearly as annoyed with Alara though, as the realms that were at war with each other starting out would have made for at least a relatively even fight. It was Perdan and friends jumping in that made things absurdly unbalanced.

There's a lot that goes on in ruler channel and personal missives that realms, and even councils, miss out on. If you think I said a lot with RP's and public posts, you have no idea how much discussion was going on with certain rulers and power-brokers I'd become close to. I had been spending at least 4-5 hours a day, every single day, sending missives to keep up with all the strings I was pulling (and being pulled by, eventually). It just got crazy, but if it had worked out we'd have achieved great things.

Not to steal your limelight but Robb Starfall did a pretty effective job of sowing chaos on his own, even without you getting thrown in the mix. Sucks because we had gotten pretty damn close and discussed practically everything on a daily basis, both IC and OOC. At one point I had secured a trade deal for them to feed GX at pennies on the bushel, as well as a soon-to-be-signed treaty allowing our soon-to-be priests direct and exclusive access to spread the Phoenix Cult in Alara, and slowly convincing certain key members to consider a full-on-merger with GX in the future.

My own damn fault for not being more of a King and less of a democrat. Robb did apologize once, saying that this conflict is not what he had wanted, but that he had to do what must be done or lose his crown, and I did and said the same, but I wasn't so sure after-the-fact that it wasn't bs. To be fair, he probably thought I was lying through my teeth too, so I guess I'll never know.

When you jumped in, and Dodger later lit his powderkeg, there wasn't much that could be done to alleviate the already stretched situation. You gave Robb the perfect excuse to distrust me and renege his promises, and Dodger just forced me to abdicate before I had a chance to set certain things into motion to avoid future issues down the road. It went from an Alara-GX future merger a-la-Riombara to threats of war in the drop of a dime.

From my perspective as Xerarch, Caligus started the entire !@#$show. Can't speak for anything that went on afterward, but I should have ignored Dodger's camp and kept moving forward with my negotiations. The second I listened to the GX-against-the-world faction and pulled out of negotiating alliances, it gave everyone the opportunity to gank us.

After all, you're either with us or against us. Not wanting to become allies is an instant, clear signal that you're a target, and anyone with a hint of common sense would take that as a premeditated declaration of war and start making friends to ambush you with.

From what I've been told from a few former rulers from Magnus' time, Selenia was no Magnus. All the favor and mood I'd curried quickly flew out the window due to Selenia's vastly different methods of diplomacy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, its just different is all. Some liked it, some didn't: hence losing Fallengard as allies, Garas going from someone Magnus liked deeply to an enemy of (some) Xavax, and Xavax now being allies to literally everyone who wanted to murder us when Magnus was Xerarch, not to mention us joining Sirion despite Selenia and Magnus having planned to wreck Sirion and usurp them as the top-dogs on the continent. :P

If things had gone as I had been working toward, we'd have united the south and burned the north to the ground. A true Imperium - before (purposely, once we got too strong) collapsing into feuding Greece-like city-states with similar-but-divergent Lurianesque versions of Xavax culture.

Instead, we're a northern satellite realm fighting the south. Funny how that works out.

[CryptCypher]

The Fallengard-Caligan equilibrium was understood by all parties right when we became allies. Caligus made it pretty damn clear, as did Fallengard. The only way around that would have been to ally both and broker an agreement between them.

If we had allied Caligus, do you things may have turned out differently?

[JeVondair]

Is anyone keeping rack of Redhaven's history?

[Blint]

I tried.

I tried also.. I like to think Leatho + Selenia were a combination that caused an immense amount of dread for Alara... Especially since I betrayed them, and knew where they liked to rally and where the milita was...