rumors of war

I have been hearing that the whole META is going to be starting a war with our long time allies RING. What is the reason behind this?

Man if this gets leaked out to RING too early, they might get a little pissed.

Actually, our concern is that Ring may be planning to band together with Omen and others to try to wipe out Shadow and East. It is possible they've been massing troops for weeks to this end. Ring does not offer or respect 24 hours grace when breaking alliance. Please stay alert.

There are a couple of things here.

1. Rings general lack of political/diplomatic understanding in Travian.
2. Rampant and nearly overwhelming expansion
3. Concern about end game strength and focus
4. A growing sentiment from the RING players of "We need to remove Shadow/East sooner or later"

There have been suggestions by RING players to encourage/wait for a war between us and groups like WW or TF and that the RING then use that timing to break ties with us and attempt to destroy us.

While a war with them isn't anything the Shadow leadership wants, the more information we get, the more it seems as if the RING is preparing for an eventual strike on us or, more likely on East (whom they seem to view as the devil).

Trust that their players won't take matters into their own hand. Trust that they can learn true coordination. Trust that they'll help and not hinder our end game efforts.

These are all part of the concerns we have.

Well then, let me put on my war hat.

When do we start? Who's organizing?

This isn't at the point of war yet.

But we want to make certain everyone is ready in case it gets to that point...

Well if war breaks out I know EAST and SHK will definatly be on our side. I was talking to SHK's leader, and we were discussing this, and they said they would join us over Omen in a war.

We have berserk aswell and LLJK.

Frankoman wrote:

Well if war breaks out I know EAST and SHK will definatly be on our side. I was talking to SHK's leader, and we were discussing this, and they said they would join us over Omen in a war.

I do not trust SHK, as in their forum they have our villages marked as good takeover locations... I also have inside info, that before the WAR plans with RING, SHK was trying to get us and OMEN fighting and than SHK was going to join OMENs side.

I have been preparing for a possible big war like this for a long time. My wheat production is in (-)s and keep producing more troops everyday in both offense and defense. But the problem is that RING is going to be much harder to destroy from where they stand at this point. Waiting for an attack/scouting by RING is another problem because they are probably getting ready to hit us when they are ready, not us. We'll all see what'll happen. Be ready!

Random, I think your Mistaken.

There leaders are all in close contact with me (Chuckzor, Tir Mcdohl, GeneralMatthew etc)

They are the oneswho deside for war. Plus Chuckzor said he would join us over Omen, and He is the boss downt ehre.

Or... maybe you are mistaken... remember you cant trust what everyone says... And I have my ways of knowing these things... If they have nothing to hide Im sure they will let you check out their forum... than again they may delete thos posts first. They are not trusted by me.

Random, I do have access to {SHK}'s forum and they are with us all the way. They are friends of mine. In addition, I am right by one of their leaders and I am bigger than he is and he is isolated from the group. Trust me. They won't turn on us unless they all want to quit.

Can you post some of this they have been saying on their forums random?

Who's villages do they plan to take over?

They're doing the same thing we were doing back in the days of the math gang, we knew war was coming and we prepared for it, look at us now. The only difference was that we weren't allied with math, but we are allied with RING and to turn on them because they may be massing troops for a war is just wrong- we've been doing the same thing! We're picking off our own allies one by one; any survivors will know that we weren't trustworthy and our current allies may band together behind our backs, we'll become the new math gang - the big bullies to take down. It's one thing to cancel an alliance because they aren't growing or not contributing, but to drop an ally and declare war because over massed troops and unsettling talk is outrageous.

Hi Joafu - that is a concern, but not completely accurate.

We were never allied with math.
We prefer that our allies DO mass troops.
RING didn't talk their way into this with unsettling talk, but rather because of their leadership's poor choices.

~~~~~~~~~~
Here's one summary I edited from a post by AlmostFamous who used to be a RING diplomat and is now part of the Shadow/EAST leader team:

Reasons to drop ties with RING:

1) They *HAVE* played both sides of every conflict. They were going to side with Chosen and and with ][ until some of their leaders bitch-slapped darkness. They didn't want to be involved in the math wars because they were afraid of losses. The primary leaders who demanded that they support us and EAST against Chosen and ][ are now with us... aquias and almostfamous. The one who flat out told Darkness that he was having RING members swing at Math was aquias. When aquias left, most of the quality players that understood the strategy and diplomacy left with him. A few were comfortable staying because almostfamous was still there.

2) They show a constant disregard of generally accepted Travian diplomacy. They do not handle diplomatic situations well at all and they try to "help" allies with words instead of troops. Again, the players that have assisted with their troops are mostly gone now.

3) They have rampant recruiting practices that equate to being as bad what we swung at Chosen and ][ for. They continued these rampant recruiting practices AFTER Sax posted on their leader forums a gentle poke about it and failed their test when they recruited muse (just one example).

4) They have continued to absorb more and more mostly crappy alliances into the RING. I am not referring to AeM here (though I dislike that they took the AeM guys that took over a week to move alliances because of their activity level, most of AeM is quite good). I am referring to their absorption of NOVA. When we all signed up to be allies with RING we did NOT sign up to be allies with the cannon fodder of MATH.

Quote :

It's one thing to cancel an alliance because they aren't growing or not contributing, but to drop an ally and declare war because over massed troops and unsettling talk is outrageous.

First of all, we did not immediately declare war on RING, we are dropping our alliance with them for the reasons pointed out by Saxman and the others above, and are preparing for the possibility of war. We said we will not go into war with them immediately, but will retaliate and take necessary action if RING attacks us first, and sadly, that is what they have done; RING has attacked one of our players in SN already...

And second, in my opinion dropping an ally because of 'over massed troops and unsettling talk' is not really an outrageous move, allies should not be plotting the removal of their allies...that would not be a true alliance, obviously. I would rather we be prepared and be able to take action when the time comes, than to keep the alliance with them and sit around hoping for the best, only to be struck in the back off guard and in a really bad time...

I apologize I do not have the forum post still saved Joafu. But there are a few threads on the RING forums, openly discussing when and how to attack Shadow/East and claim power in the NE.

These threads were all started by non-leader types. But VERY few leaders stepped in to do anything to quell that talk.

I helped BUILD the RING Joafu. I can assure you that this isn't a conflict sought and it is not a conflict I wanted to ever see. I am not one to be all gleefull about tearing into players that I helped to protect at one point.

However, I will stand by the choice to remove them as allies to send a message that things ARE NOT okay. Which is what this was intended to be. -RING- hitting us isn't something unexpected but something I had hoped would not happen.

I was the first RING branch leader that can not stand RING's diplomacy and practice in war and left them. Almost all fights against Math Signs were pushed by aquias and me.

When I led -RING- to attack, Darkness didn't give me prompt information and answers and -RING- used up all our troops in the attacks in 2 days after RING already ceased fire.

I recruited 3 players and viewed their logs for of the past week, confirmed they have decent troops. But asydik claimed they are "planed" farms no matter what. He will attack my new members with zahi (TF player) no matter what. I told him we should value good players more than farms and focus on battles with Math signs, but his and Elaida's answer was they make farms for better counteracting Math Signs. What a joke! TF was allied with Math at that time.

Ok, I lost 3000 troops and 120 catapults in the battle and these two leaders even didn't honor my small requests to retain good players. Their leader group just simply lost their focus and knows nothing about long term goal.

I was there with aquias. I don't speak out much, I just play, follow orders, and send help where I can. I have a number of folks I'd consider friends in the RING branches, and one branch is even populated with a number of my weekend drinking buddies. I don't want an all out conflict. I'd like to hear more thoughts on downgrading from an alliance to a NAP, perhaps. Yet, I know people will talk their talk, and actions will be taken.

It's probably just me, but at times like this, the game looses a bit of luster.

Sadly Andy, I don't know how far back we can go now. The RING has already begun launching heavy assaults against East and Berserk. Even if we were to downgrade to an NAP, it would require us to watch two of our allies in war over a group we carry an NAP with.

Had the leaders of the RING been patient and continued to talk to us we may have avoided an escalating conflict. I don't know just what else we can do at this point.

As for the luster part, I don't believe you are alone my friend.

My feelings as well, McDonough. Thanks for explaining everyone.

Joafu wrote:

They're doing the same thing we were doing back in the days of the math gang, we knew war was coming and we prepared for it, look at us now. The only difference was that we weren't allied with math, but we are allied with RING and to turn on them because they may be massing troops for a war is just wrong- we've been doing the same thing! We're picking off our own allies one by one; any survivors will know that we weren't trustworthy and our current allies may band together behind our backs, we'll become the new math gang - the big bullies to take down. It's one thing to cancel an alliance because they aren't growing or not contributing, but to drop an ally and declare war because over massed troops and unsettling talk is outrageous.

I assume there is much more to leaving such alliance than what is written here. This is evident by our being attacked today with Cats, before the alliance was even finished.

I have to question your loyalties based on what you write above. You definitely state that in the past we have went to war without any reason, and are doing so once more. If you do not trust us, then we can not trust you.

We're not going to walk down the path of finger pointing.

One of the problems with forming this meta has been the close ties some of our players have to certain allies. Moving forward, we've made strategic choices to better protect ourselves and our long term interests. In some cases, like the RING that choice was made for us by their players discussion of the best ways to remove/attack us.

Expressing concern for the direction of the alliance is understandable and encouraged. We all want to be headed in the same direction and on the same page. Its why the leaders of Shadow are so open about why we've made certain choices.

Sax, Narbs, Poly, anyone wanna lock this before it degrades?

Lord Saxman edit: thread locked. If you want to discuss more concerns related to this war please IGM aquias or Lord Saxman.