D'Hara didn't want war with anyone. It did everything it could to avoid war with Kabrinskia, same with Aurvandil. Except that Aurvandil forced our hand by attacking a federated ally, putting the Treaty of the Maroccidens into play. Something Kabrinskia had not done.
Rubbish, if by doing everything to avoid war you mean, doing every to ignore Mendicant when he said "Don't declare war, we nearly have peace, there is no need for war, I don't want war" to which the reply was "Yeah well, we're going to have a war and that's that". You may have avoided a war with Kabrinskia, but you were definitely up for one against Aurvandil the moment the opportunity arose.
You assume we are shortsighted, because you confuse your own objectives and ambitions for ours. Having a behemoth on our doorstep may be in Asylon's best interests, it certainly isn't in the 'moot's.
I'm sure the irony of that is lost on you. You have a behemost on your doorstep and you seem quite happy to encourage their growth so long as they throw you something to nibble on whilst they do it.
You assume all realms should be the same, and that war is the only possible venture in this game. BM would be rather bland if everyone acted the same way, and sought the same thing. That if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.
No I don't, but I do struggle to see the appeal in a realm that does nothing, ever, save for trade. That can't be fun, there's just nothing to do. Roleplay can only go so far when your realm does nothing.
D'Hara's vulnerability, combined with its great wealth, is precisely why I settled up there in the first place. And why I'm so attached to it. D'Hara is forced to spend a great deal of attention to its diplomacy, as well as to its food management. No other realm has to bother as much as D'Hara. For many people, that'd be a total bore. However, some of us actually enjoy this. Makes things quite different from the other continents.
All that effort, and to what end? Well I suppose you are happy simply with the journey, not the end result, which I can understand. I am the opposite, I always look to the end result and dislike the journey. Like now, I am looking to find the best possible end result of an Aurvandilan victory in this war, but resent the needlessness of the war in its current incarnation in the first place. Like right now, I am waiting for the time when I can begin what I refer to as my retirement roleplays for Mendicant, the climax of my character and the events he'll create in Aurvandil, but for that I need a time of genuine peace.
As for attacking the South, we were treaty-bound to do so. And as predicted, getting involved in a war blew up with the Lurians backstabbing us. As we always feared they would should we send troops abroad. However, we did not attack "the South". We attacked Aurvandil, who is limited to a small chunk of the South-West. Even if Falkirk had joined in, they'd still be attacking via the same city. It's nowhere as comparable as risking invasions from a ton of realms over a bunch of sea routes. As for the Lurias, I'm still amazed at how they failed to kill us. Perhaps they overestimated us. I don't know. From what I've seen since my return, their performance is considerably sub-par for the resources they have. Whereas Aurvandil manages a whole lot with very little, they manage very little with a whole lot. We shouldn't have stood a chance against average performance on their part.
You were treaty bound to defend Barca from the Zuma, but you were pretty quick to choose not to.
As for Luria Nova, well they are massively wealthier than Aurvandil and did at one point have more nobles, they should have been a true super power.
See Aurvandil fight SA, sure. To defeat Kabrinskia, at the time, sure. Despite your forces, we'd never have expected you to be able to conquer SA. We wouldn't have seen it as desirable had we thought you capable of it, either. We've made a bunch of defensive alliances in the past with a bunch of people. Pretty amazing how, until the Treaty of the Maroccidens forced us to defend Barca, every time our partners decided to go launch a war on their own, for some reason expecting our support in their suicide campaign.
Defeating Sanguis Astroism would never be the goal, but to sack the Vatican of the Church and to dominate them in war would be priceless. To look the biggest conglomerate the game has in the eye, challenge them and survive where people like Thulsoma and Asylon failed. That would certainly secure Aurvandil's reputation as a die hard military.
SA owns half the continent and nobles, or roughly so. It's NORMAL that they get this income and armies. Aurvandil owns a bunch of rurals with a tiny city, and they somehow had the largest armies a bunch of times in history.
We get the largest army because firstly we run efficient tax rates, and secondly we pay on a week by week basis, we don't worry about paying our men, we buy to the maximum spending all of our gold and deal with the bills later. We've been doing it so long we've gotten to the point where we can quite efficiently pay our way on a tax by tax basis leaving nothing left in between taxes, which is why Mendicant's treasury is believed to be eternal, it's always replenished before it seems to run out.
You seem to think your movement rates are bad... I question how many realms you've played in. In a bunch I've played in, or observed, you'd need twice as long to get half the movement rates.
We have high standards. In Character, we don't tolerate nobles who just fail to move for no good reason, if you can move, and you're ordered to do so, that's what you do. We put a lot of emphasis on it.
You are obviously out of touch with SA. Heck, OOC, I'm rather impressed SA got so big. Kudos to them. They could have done things a lot differently to stifle fun. They haven't. Quite the contrary.
I disagree, based upon the fact the north is deadlocked in alliances, with only the occasional gang war to keep them going, but whatever.
There are four major powers on the continent: SA, Luria, the 'moot, and Aurvandil. SA doesn't threaten us with total destruction. Only Aurvandil and Luria does. If Aurvandil hadn't been so hell-bent on picking on Barca, it could have remained a power in its corner. SA didn't really care enough for you guys at the start, neither did we, neither did the Lurias. You had world-grade armies, a bloc on your own. There was a kind of balance. All of the blocs could pose a serious threat to the other in some way or another. But if any one of the bloc annexes another... then everything changes. SA saw this: if you annexed the 'moot, they'd be in great trouble. The Lurias now see this as well. The 'moot would have reacted the same had you threatened to annex another bloc. Being anti-hegemonies isn't about raging against the big players, it's about trying to keep all of the foreign blocs at about the same strength, so that if any of them betrays you, you only need to rely on one of the other blocs to defeat them.
Well, Aurvandil never posed a threat to D'Hara, even when we were at war, Mendicant made it clear he would never have the heart to destroy, cripple or weaken D'Hara, until recently that is. Mendicant for some reason tried to hard to think highly of D'Hara, rather than utilising the killer instinct he should have and brought an end to D'Hara when they were on their knees in starvation, but that would have been dishonourable to Mendicant's eyes, there is no honour in attacking a starving wreck of a realm when they can barely defend themselves.
We did have a ton of gold on hand. I personally gave over 10 000 gold to Gornak when I left for my honeymoon. No idea how all that gold was spent, though, I wasn't there. I'm kind of surprised we didn't do any better with these funds... And I know many others had significant wealth as well. You are correct on this point, though.
Must be nice to just "lose" 10 grand, we've never had that kind of capital lying around in Aurv.
All you had to do was not attack Barca. The unthinkable!
All you had to do was heed the words of Mendicant and not rip up the peace treaty in process with Barca in some misguided belief it would protect them.
Exactly. Mendicant proved that he had no understanding of D'Hara whatsoever, when he proposed the creation of a realm in Paisly as a BOON for us that we should be grateful for.
Aurvandil may live to fight, but that doesn't mean everyone else does. Or that if they do want to fight, it's to somehow prove something.
Mendicant has made his ignorance clear on many occasions, he's very forthright in saying "I don't understand" but then, he doesn't exactly care to understand.
Aurvandil doesn't live to fight, we fight to live, and live to live. But we don't consider what D'Hara does as living, just "existing". Serving no greater purpose than to take up otherwise unoccupied space.
