Azreil, our tactic may or may not work as intended. At this point, it appears you've catalyzed your members well with enough righteous fury to hold the lead. Whatever the means, may the best alliance win. That will probably be Valar, and I shall be the first to congratulate you all. And I appreciate your distaste for having faced an unexpected form of opposition. But I very much take exception to continued attempts, by yourself and others who speak for your alliance, to brand it as "a questionable exploit."
 GM Stormcrow wrote:
We feel absolutely 100% that this is not an exploit...It's a clever, legitimate use of an ingame mechanic to hamper a competitor's tournament progress. |
Calling it an exploit is a smear with no purpose but to wage a slander war and encourage negative opinions toward us. Doing so will have no influence on the outcome of the tournament, and I doubt it sways the opinions in other alliances either. You don't
like it. Fair enough. Anti-Harmless propaganda that elegantly dances around inconvenient facts has likely been a valuable tool to motivate the membership. But persisting with this already refuted slur in public only shows everyone else
your character. Simply put, you color our name with blatantly false and only thinly veiled accusations, and you do so completely without justification or even
purpose, save to falsely besmirch our honor. We have
not earned this insult. I will not bear any grudge regarding this, but you should realize exactly what you are doing and that we recognize it for what it is.
So, setting aside this implied and unfounded insult, can you please clarify the exact nature of your complaint? You say we have "disturbed such coherence and balance." What exactly is now
unbalanced? You speak of fearing this becoming a normal acceptable thing in the game." What exactly is wrong with that? Attacking and sieging cities is one of the core, intrinsic mechanics of the game--
very much intentionally so. So also is the use of diplomats to kill commanders, steal resources, find out about the strength of your army encampments, etc--even with difficulty, sometimes near impossibility, in uncovering the aggressor. Who will be the defenseless victims plagued by "legions camping nearby?"
Suppose there actually is someone negatively impacted by an enemy employing this tactic. Heck, I'll even offer an example of how it might matter at all: perhaps someone with an incoming siege attack will ensure legions stick around to help him defend an adjacent tile. Whatever the case, any "victim" has the freedom to seek redress according to whatever offense or grudge he bears, as he would for an offense by any other means. Game mechanics don't kill people, people kill people.
The most pivotal question in all this is the premise no one in Valar has even attempted to address, and
without it you have no case whatsoever:
What harm was done?
Are your cities in rubble? Have your armies been poisoned? Have you been
robbed of some thing you were
entitled to attain? Is all that you've built in this game suddenly for naught? Do legions of giant rats taunt you and recite Vogon poetry in the town square? We have altered the progress of the tournament, as is the very thing we're supposed to try to do when losing.
There have been great volumes of talk, rhetoric, and outpouring of anguish. Far more in fact than I could possibly have imagined coming from a very simple attempt to merely slow down a competitor. But not a single attempt has been made yet to actually respond to any of my original points by explaining, in factual terms, how a problem actually exists and how Valar have been
mistreated. And it's no surprise, for you simply have not been.
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The use of subterfuge
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