Wow, things kicked off overnight.
First up, ive seen banned's original post and I agree, moderation is pretty heavy handed over here. Anyone who has played en servers (And im assuming that banned is one of Wild Nisa little minions, i recognise the posting style) will know that on several en servers, the abuse chucked around has been pretty high level (and very funny) but pretty high level but the mods treat us all as adults and let it ride unless it starts getting personal. I didnt see anything personal in Banned's original post. But thats beside the point.
First up the 8 alliances thing..
Gods - 1 alliance - total 232 members -
Visions - 1 alliance - total 114
Wheel/Infamous - 1 alliance - total 156 members
Of those numbers I would say Wheel have about 140 players who are experienced and have played wonders before, GOS have about, maybe 30.. the vast majority are playing their first wonder phase
Gods is split into multiple branches but lets not pretend each of those is an alliance. We have 2 more branches more than we went into wonders with, and I will admit, that is because of a lack of experience in the players involved and we were struggling with rotation in and out, some branches were filling up, some branches werent sending out invites, so a few more experienced players formed branches to clear the queues.
What I dont get is why "banned" decided to aim everything at me, loaded up both barrels, and shot and me rather than shooting at gods in general. But as he did, I guess I am obliged to take it personally.
I never wanted GOS to be an MRA, ive only ever played in small alliances and prefer it that way, and im not sure how this world ended up like it did. Gos will say that infamous merging with wheel forced them to merge in other alliances, Infamous will say that GOS merging with vortex forced them to take in players from matter. Whatever the strory, somewhere along the way we had a mass merge fest going on and im not a fan. I actually went in vm and my intention if i came back was to go over to saints, finish the world in a small alliance, just attacking stuff, and to hell with wonders (I even considered approaching KOD). By the time I came back Saints had collapsed, so it was play wonders with GOS or Ghost, and I decided to stick with it and play out wonders with gos and give it 100%.
Theres no doubt WOI are favorites to win the world, and may even get the crown outright straight off. Pretty much every one of their players is experienced, has played wonder phase before, knows what they are doing, how to rotate, how to play the wonder phase.
GOS on the other hand, I would say that 3/4 of the players have never even played wonder phase before, and have struggled with the concept of it. Weve had players casting favor on the wrong wonders, confusion over where to send resources, hell, i even had one player ask me "To send resources to the wonder island do I send a colony ship". On my own ive got 23 pages of Pm's most of it assisting players on how to send resources, how to leave a branch and join a fresh one, basic stuff. Yes, we can all have a good laugh about that, GOS have a bunch of noobs, but two facts remain.
1) Even the noobs on gos who had no idea how wonders even worked have still done their very best, have still got involved, at times as leadership its been frustrating, mind numbingly so, but cant fault any of the players on gos, they have all tried and will continue to try their very very best right until the end, and really thats all you can ask for. They will all go into their next server much better and more experienced players.
2) Leadership on gos have never faltered, they have been constantly trying to organise wonders, nobody has ever thrown in the towel, got upset about inexperienced players, thrown a paddy about anything, you play with the cards you are dealt and thats what we are doing.
Of course its not helped by the fact WOI know everytime we start a build, or every wonder we have favor on, or that i have to keep moving our google docs tracking timings because they keep finding out the address
To return to "banned"'s original point. Aparently I am the cancer that is killing grepolis, apparently i am dumber than dumb, because apparently, i was the one who made the decision for gos to become an mra and i was the one personally that killed Sparta. For some reason "Banned" blames me for everything
Mate, go right back to the beginning, I opposed the vortex merge into gods, i wanted to maintain relations with matter (short term) and go to war with vortex (And then go to war with matter), I didnt want to take in Dark Angels, i wanted to eat them to put us in a position in 43 to attack KOD. I opposed the merge of laughing coffin and various other small alliances (as did many, it was vortex took them all in). The Titans merge, hell, nobody even knew about that, Sir Conner formed a branch and invited the WRONG Alliance to merge into us.
I hate MRA's, i think that all alliance changes to be banned come wonders phase to put pay to the whole rotation and academy thing. GOS leadership didnt want to be an MRA, they felt forced into it by the sheer numbers that MAtter, Infamous, Wheel, Dynasty, KOD and Dire Wolves had against them and they had no choice.
But like I say, you play the cards you are dealt. You run with it, you do the best you can with the current situation, and even if GOS fail to build a single wonder, ever leader at GOS can come out of it knowing they did their very best, and the players who have been a part of it will come out of it better players. You can whine and moan and complain, or you can just get on with it, make the best of it, show loyalty and play it through.
I think the mod deleted it because of personal attacks. "Banned" questioned my intelligence, but to be honest, im old enough and ugly enough to take those sort of insults with a pinch of salt. Ive had much worse thrown at me, and ive dished out much worse on en forums and never even had an infraction over there. The only thing i took slight offence was him calling me the "cancer that killed grepo", like it was me that singlehandledly decided that GOS would have x number of branches (And besides, teh multiple alliance thing was pretty much created by the Eviction Notice, Knights, Hert branches on En server which "banned" was a member of)
The other mistake he made is assuming that every leader in GOS is happy with the numbers we have, and happy with the strategy of multiple branches. I played the whole of en70 and en65 with a team of 25-30 people and one major ally. I quit en65 when we merged into an "MRA", i played the whole of en70 as part of a 30 man team until we merged for wonders.
Ive said all along, I think kittens deserve the most credit on this server. Battered out of 54 with several players down to 1 city, they rebuilt, regroup, and become a force again, that takes dedication. They were helped by the fact that, GOS had a plan to eat Dark Angels move into 43 and go into a full scale war with KOD before they could rebuild, but Ekswisit, Arete and Co who were the closest refused to take cities from angels considering them too weak (yet they fed on inactives for months), and they in turn held sway over the former vortex, so basically half the alliance flatly refused to go into 43. huge tactical error by GOS at the time, when youve got an alliance on the run NEVER let up on them.
Infamous, lets not pretend they benefited hugely from the merges of Dire Wolves, Wheel, Matter, Saints etc. They too recruited huge numbers (but they will say thats because GOS were an MRA), the only difference is while GOS were recruiting from Laughin Coffin, Infamous were recruiting players who have been through multiple worlds. But credit to them, they recruited smart. The only thing letting infamous down is the gob*****'s who go on externals and attempt to make everything personal, attacking bayou, attacking other players. Man, its just a game.
GOS, havent recruited brilliantly, took on a lot of players that were dead weight, and honestly, those players should have been eaten months ago, and we should have gone into wonders with 100-150 strong big and experienced players. But that wasnt gos's style. They arent a cannabilistic bunch, and go with the theory that its better to teach than eat.
But then im the sort of person to give everyone who reaches endgame credit, even the wee outlaws and their one level wonder. Good on em for trying.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Its a wargame.
BUT, if it is a wargame,and youve already won on abp and dbp, why are you getting your knickers in such a knot about wonders