Now thats a change. Usually people seem to be irritated and sometimes downright offended by my posts.
But I shall try not to dissapoint you. Hmmm…
How bout this?
You don’t mess with us, and we won’t mess with you.
Despite Mikes well written posts I still stand firm that war btw neutrals and freeps only helps the DS.
We may have a long (far fetched) road to victory as neutrals but we are still strong enough to be the difference btw winning or losing for either alliance.
The DS has won certain turncoats I would prefer to slaughter, so that only leaves the freeps.
So in a nutshell stop killing us and we shall stop killing you.
Ken says that things “keep on going,” but do they???
At least four of the FP nations did not seem to do a thing this past turn. We find it quite interesting that Ken didn’t even move his own Mythral Alliance armies this turn. His Silver Spires ally certainly forgot about order #215.
Is it that demoralizing that the attacks on independent neutrals have led to some of them declaring DS, and to the DS working with the independent neutrals against common foes? Or was the imminent fall of the Khand Hegemony major town (and its fall this turn, turn 12) to DS emissaries what did it?
In this respect Socrates was right. FP attacks on independent neutrals were a HUGE mistake. Their attacks on the neutral team, however, were not. Had they not attacked independents, perhaps they could have wooed one or two to their cause, as well. The weakening of the neutral team has been good for both FP and DS alike.
I have to applaud Socrates for making a post even when one of the “neutral turncoats” who joined the DS has shown up at his capital this turn, and much of Arnor is either in DS hands, has burned to the ground, or will fall into one of those two categories soon. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to be making posts right now.
If the FP are packing it in, I’ll be curious to see just how long this game lasts,
Mike
Neither. It was a host of other issues which had next to nothing to do with the DS team (except the guy who hacked early on). In short the free lost 2 players from the cheater (one quit ,the other put no time in, playing on auto-pilot and effectively missed 2 turns (the Khand player)) before the game even began. In addition there were set-up issues such as some nations having their starting pop center positions bumped because ME mistook other nation’s starting positions as Orange dot positions and instead of going to another listed set-up, the pop centers were just jumbled around in the general area. So not off to a good start.
We tried to carry on and did, but had some players out of town (the FA1000 experienced ones) for weeks or months at a time. In addition, some people, not knowing about the Diplo’s of others, attacked true neutrals just assuming they were all going for one big team. This mis-communication caused further apathy and frustration and in a last ditch effort to corridinate, we then attacked the allies of the true neutrals.
One interesting thing, the SK had given us false hope early on and when he basically went back on his word in the south he actually fueled the southern free to run a few more turns just to punish his ally for it. So you can thank him for us. 
In the end, general apathy and missed turns were the straw that broke the camel’s back. No one wants to play in that enviroment. It appears there were too many straws on the camel. 
Have a good one,
Ken
We DS were a little luckier with our players this time. We just had one nation who pretty much went on auto-pilot, and that nation was eliminated (forgetting to do sell orders and bankrupting before we even needed to transfer him a back-up capital). The rest of us have all been working together pretty well.
Unfortunately, everyone else is paying for the actions of the person who had hacked into your files. With an assault on a neutral team member as one of our first attacks, and then us focusing on nearby enemies, we obvioiusly weren’t playing like we had any knowledge of your set-up information.
I guess your team didn’t fully recognize that the neutral team “had it’s cover blown,” like we did early on, which is why we selectively attacked neutral team members, while courting the independents.
I guess we’ll just see how long everyone stays in this game. We’re not going anywhere right now, though,
Mike
Let me make it clear that no one was saying you did. You all played excellent. The guys who quit did so out of principle in one case and the other did not real have interest in 4th age in anycase and was playing as a favor. The cheater gave him a reasonable out.
I believe most did, but some felt some of the true neutrals signed up with the intention to go neutral pre turn 1. Still others might not have caught on.
I wish you luck. Beat the crap out of the original true neutrals for us. It is too bad you have to hit the allied neutrals as well, they are pretty swell. Can’t you all just get along?
See ya,
Ken
Just interested how the turn went? the DS win yet? Hurry up and take out the SK.
Thanks,
The truely free (of this game) free people.
See ya,
Ken
It seems there is no love lost by any of the 3 teams. I hope you didn’t really think I left this game… It I was knocked out from my origonal position now I knocked out one yours… I find this game interesting in that there was alot of short sightedness on all parties involved that has allowed for a real 3 team game to survive…
I am sure glad DS team Thought I needed a good recruit base … Thanks for giving me bree without even a tug of war in it’s defense…
Venger
Its still interesting but with many of the FP not putting in turn orders, the SK and Wisigoths having gone DS there may be a critical mass reached soon. Still the fight is still on in Arnor for now and we are starting to reclaim what is ours as well as all the Ered Lomin lands we have.
Gavin
(Scribe for the North Kingdom)
My goodness you DS team sure was good when you had your flunky of SK in our users group. Now your geting beat back quite handily. Should we forward our current ones so you guys might have chance to stop us now.
Venger
I’m afraid, as far as Arnor is concerned, that you’ll be up for some disappointments.
Yet, the fight is interresting.
The Sad part of thie game it was the first game under the new changes brought forth from the FASUP usergroup. The biggiest thing I draw from this game is a Policy change about nuetral players in any game joining any side then leaving that group to declare for another team as SK did… those players should be removed immediately from the game becuase they had insider information about the previuos team from being able to access their pdf’s and those players doing such most likely fed their new team information about what tht team was planning while they was in the other teams camp ( usergroup). The DS team has had access now to every positions pdf’s without permission of the owning players permission and these players Hve the right to protect thier pdf’s being stolen by players in an out of game context… So while you the DS team will win this game… I know you never beat either the FP or Nuetral team with any honor nd integrity whatsoever.
Terry
No pdfs were shared. Accuse away if it makes you feel better about being a sore loser.
Don’t invite neutrals to join your group. Mistakes were made, like the Duns in game 32… Learn from it for the next time, but don’t point the finger at someone else to protect players from their own mistakes…
Oh so beat the nuetral team even if by puting a nuetral going DS eventually is ok? People play this game to win or lose by game actions and good team play. I guess then having a friend start a game as FP join their usergroups and then send information about thier orders would be ok to you then also… This is 4th age there are 3 teams in this game at startup every game. If a nuetral joins any usersgroup in any formatt he should stay with that team for the duration of the game… Joining one then leaving for another is Cheating whether he likes his teamates or not… A player with any ethics about him would have simply dropped rather than put himself in a bad light with the possibility of ethical behavoir to other players. Players on that team if they had any would have dropped rather than allowing a player doing this to join thier team. It puts them in the same bad light where winning no matter how sleezy is ok. So please defend this player for his sleezy actions in this game… I personally was taken out by good tactics by 2 of the DS as far as I know.
As for changing alliegence before allowing a player to join the nuetral team there is currently no order to change alliegence from a free Nuetral to a commited nuetral team player prior to turn 13!
Everyone pays good money to play this game where everyone wins or loses by game actions. Everyone in this game has spent well over 100 dollars by now in this game to simply say at turn 12 a nuetral can leave the team to switch to an aligned side being ok means everyone on that team’s hard earned dollars doesn’t matter becuase they chose to play Nuetral and try for a Nuetral team victory.
For myself even though I am not paying for turns anymore where one side has even the possibility of having my possibility my and all of the oppositions pdf’s any longer… It simply is not fair or just.
As an individual who, in this game, had people join his team’s yahoo list because its security measures were flawed during set-up, I have to disagree with you Holy.
There is a large difference between someone coming in, uninvited and taking your stuff and you choosing to give that person your stuff before you know for sure their intentions.
See ya,
Ken
Terry,
The reason that Erving joined us was that we offered him significant help (gold and goods) fighting the FP, not the other neutrals. He wanted to focus his attention on them. When the FP all dropped, he was left in a very awkward position of no longer having his preferred enemies to fight and of his only enemies being the team that he had worked with for much of the game. Had the FP not dropped, he would have focused his efforts on them. Even now, he’s not all that excited about having to fight other neutrals.
Right now, Erving has not shared ANY of your PDFs with us. The only information he has given us about any neutrals was information that some of us requested from his turn 1 recons. We pretty much had information about the general area of most neutrals, anyway, from our maps and from battle rumors.
Again, let it be stated that Erving’s intentions in joining us were not to stab the neutrals in the back, but to have a significant number of allies against the FP, and to get support from those allies,
Mike
Mike
This is very simple to me… No player in the same game should ever be allowed in 2 different teams usergroup ever. Even the receiving team should not allow this … Why becuase if ME games will not stop this kind of behavior we the players must… I simple will never pay for a turn in any game where this happens It’s my money and i Demand a fair game where not even a whisper of the opposition getting my pdf’s or my teamates without my giving my own information. After all erving gave his word he was on the nuetral team then changed it so now his word is meaniless. If he lied about His loyality the Nuetral team when joining the usersgroup anything he says about not giving information cannot be trusted!
I"m going to touch the the support question as far a resources sent to his nation.
He definitely ensured the DS Victory by switching sides. Which is why the FP team dropped I’m sure…
But Hey DS team wins in a game where Anything goes including 2 of your members was in both FP and Nuetral team usergroups Be Proud with your win!
Quick note for ya Mr. Grumble. The Free quit before we knew which side the SK was on and thought he was neutral. The free quit due to internal issues, not the goings on of any other nation. Hell, we had hoped he would stay neutral so the DS would crush him since I believe he was the only nation the majority of the free wanted to see wiped out (along with cap, the nation in the south).
Well at the least, the SK did not make many friends, so that counts for something. 
(All in good fun Erving).
See ya,
Ken
Terry,
All we ever knew about Erving was that he was working with the neutrals earlier in the game, but we did NOT know to what extent. We did not even know that you had shared PDFs with him, and he did NOT share them with us.
The information that we found in Arnor, Dunland, etc., was obtained through scry area spells and recons, and much of this was done BEFORE Erving even joined us.
Obviously, it would be logical to scry everything within 3 hexes of 1108 to find the NK starting PCs. Even still, it took us at least 3 orders to find 1211, and we had troops in the vicinity for quite a while before we found it. Some of the PCs in northwestern Arnor were on the Ered Lomin map, as well.
Dunland was easy, as one of the starting PCs was on one of our maps, and it seemed likely that he went with the road bonuses.
Believe it or not, scouting for characters and rumors might have us some information about the identity of some neutral characters, too!
So once again, all of the DS are being accused of foul play when there was none. Had the neutrals been in better position to help Erving versus the FP, it is very unlikely that he would have joined us. Had we known that Erving had access to the neutral PDFs, we would have been much less likely to want to work with him, and we wouldn’t have been likely to accept him as a teammate. Unfortunately, we were NOT aware that he was working with the neutral team that closely.
So, here’s the summary:
One original DS finds the FP usergroup, nearly if not all 24 other players in the game object, and he is forced to resign his position and is replaced.
One independent neutral joins the DS when he has shared PDFs with the neutral team, but the DS were not even aware of this, and we have not seen any neutral team PDFs.
Therefore, I suggest that you discuss these issues with the guilty parties, rather than accusing the entire DS team.
The factors that have much more to do with the likely DS victory are that both the DS and the FP hurt some of the neutral nations, and then the FP all dropped. Had the FP stayed in, this game could have been much more interesting,
Mike
Interesting is subjective.
All in all it ran down exactly as I predicted it would when the freeps began to target the wrong enemy.
The freeps allied with the wrong side and spelled their own end. Instead of fixing their mistake they quit.
The neuts made tactical mistakes, and got suckered into standing up to be critisized later for standing. Case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The DS don’t deserve the hard time they have been given. But the victory was handed to them a long time ago.
Some neuts saw that and jumped the bandwagon. Some were impossible from turn zero on.
This does not mean they are bad people just habitual playing styles.