Re: Diplomacy clumps

>According to multiple sources, you posted a concede announcement
>before the false update hit. 

Well, that's not the way I remember it.

The way I remember it is, I thought I was beaten a few days earlier,
so I may have said something at that point they construed as a
concession announcement. I don't remember what I actually said
a few days earlier. But on say Tuesday (don't remember the exact
day), I woke up with a new idea, and built a bunch of new units
and altered my production to carry out the new plan. Then we
had an update, and everything was ready, I figured the best chance
was Wednesday night, so I re-arranged my sleep schedule to be
ready then. I woke up, had some coffee and a shower, than just
as I sat down to the terminal Wednesday night to start the attack
I saw that the mistaken update had hit. After that I flashed another
player who probably doesn't want to be named and said something
like "the game is over". Then I announced something like "I can't
take it any more, I concede in advance". Then I sent email to you
and Romm as deities, don't remember what I said, but that was
after the mistaken update hit. I think that concession announcement
was lost due to rollback so I made another concession announcement
after the rollback.

Anyway I have heard rumors of some kind of project that allows
countries in what I called a "clump" to exchange information, but
those are just rumors, not something I have any proof of, so I can't
prove anything about the clumps, it is just hearsay and suspicion
that I have. But my suspicion is that Balchoth told the "clump" some
lies and the other players in the clump and whoever else was
listening may have believed the lies without checking with me first.

That is the normal state of affairs, someone like Balchoth who was
very clever at deceiving me may have duped the clump members
into believing I was the bad guy. I meant what I said earlier about
Balchoth as some kind of a compliment, they fooled me very badly
like excellent Diplomacy players have fooled me on occasion.

I remember one player in the clump who used to be my friend
(maybe still is, I dunno) saying that I sure stirred up a hornet's nest
by attacking Balchoth. But after Balchoth tricked me in a very
clever way, I warned him several updates ahead of time that I was
going to attack the mountains, to give them time to prepare their
defenses.

I did that by telegram, so one of the co-rulers may have read it and
not the other, so the other co-ruler may have thought I broke the
NA agreement. I'm not saying I wouldn't break an NA agreement,
I hate NA agreements so after thinking about it during the LOTR
game *after* the incident with Balchoth, decided I *would* be willing
to break them from now on, if only to try and rid empire of that
legalistic scourge. But since I warned Balchoth by telegram several
updates prior that I was going to attack the mountains, there might
be a case that I didn't violate the NA agreement since they were
warned in plenty of time.

Just one more problem when dealing with co-ruled countries. You
tell one co-ruler something, the other co-rulers don't hear about it.
You make an agreement with one co-ruler, another co-ruler breaks
it. You try to make a deal with one co-ruler, that co-ruler wants to
wait until he can talk to the other co-rulers so it takes forever to get
any decision made.

So I decided that when dealing with co-ruled countries, always
assume the worst, since if you have a friend and an enemy co-ruling,
the enemy may break the agreement you thought you had with the
friend. So co-ruling puts quite a strain on friendship, some players
that I used to consider friends when they ruled solo, are
no longer friends any more because of LOTR, due to the behavior
of their co-rulers. So if you co-rule you should be aware that the
behavior of your co-rulers may reflect badly upon yourself.

Anyway the mental picture I have of the clump is some website
or such where the various members of the clump post information
and get instructions for future activities of the clump, like "Mordor
is a bad guy" "Yes what a jerk, look what he did" and so on, you
get dozens of negative accusations so everyone starts believing it
to be true, how could so many people saying the same thing be
wrong? Then I imagine "Plan Alpha: Rohan, Rhun, Balchoth,
Mirkwood, Iron Hills, Dale, Rivendale to attack Mordor when he
is away celebrating Thanksgiving Thursday and won't be logged on"

This is just my imagination, I may be wrong. But when I saw these
huge piles of units stacked up against me, my paranoid reaction was
"damnation, they are going to attack me Thursday, so my only
chance is to make a preemptive attack Wednesday night"

I did get some telegrams Wednesday night about Dale spies
being killed on my highway net after the mistaken update, so it
may be that the clump got some information that way, though
again I can't prove anything, since those telegrams I no longer
have, and presumably the deity doesn't have them either since
the rollback might have wiped out that info.

I'm not blaming you Mith, we are a lot alike so when you flip out
and lose control in public I don't condemn you for it, I know you have
different ideas on some topics but in most cases you are so
brilliant that I put it down to inevitable difference of opinion, you
might even be right at some points where we disagree. But you
may have been duped by the too frequent repitition of lies by some
members of the clump, if there was a clump, into taking as fact
statements that weren't checked against the opposing viewpoint.
Also it must be damned frustrating to have a brilliant game like
LOTR ruined for stupid reasons like failure of the update scheme,
which had nothing to do with the LOTR theme, LOTR being probably
the most brilliant game conception empire has seen so far.

I was mistaken about one point, I thought Rhun and Rohan were
part of the same clump in both LOTR and Ice World, but now I
hear different, so I have to admit I was wrong about that part if
that is the case. I often make mistakes so I admit I am often wrong,
anyway since I don't have first hand knowledge of what was going
on inside the clump, if there was a clump, all I have currently are
my paranoid suspicions and a few bits of hearsay that fed my
paranoia.

Well all this is just to address one small bit of your posting,
obviously I can't respond to everything that was said, I don't
even remember everything that was said. Like cutting off a head
of the mythical dragon with 1000 heads, 3 more heads spring up
to replace it. So I don't know how to fight against thousands of lies
my enemies may have told you against me, some people in politics
and public relations have teams that try to go out and strike back
immediately to preserve their public image, but I have no positive
public image that I am trying to sell, so my strategy is the opposite:
those who know the truth and are against the clump, if there is a
clump, will often come over to my side anyway, and those who
believe what is said inside the clump will at least fear me a little
the next time they come across me in a game (I hope :-)

After all if it takes 7 members of a clump attacking simultaneously
when I am not on and my defenses weren't prepared due to the
mistaken update to beat me , how many single players are going
to have the guts to attack me on their own?

I don't regret attacking Balchoth mountains, Balchoth was a great
teacher of mountain warfare, again I mean that as a compliment
for Balchoth, as I didn't know how to fight in that scenario but I do
now. Next time though, I will try to be more decisive in my attacks,
my idea was to have a limited war over the mountains where I
wouldn't do any damage to Balchoth's regular sectors, so I let
Balchoth get back up off the floor several times so we could continue
the fight after the next update. But that was a mistake obviously.

Well this posting is so long already I don't have the energy to
check it so I will send it unedited, and someone can pick out
more snippets to attack and start another round of arguments
if they like.

OH. One last thing that is funny, to show how wrong I can be.
When you said I made a huge strategic mistake and missed
an opportunity, I thought about it for hours, and realized "yes
I did make a mistake!!! I should have grabbed all those sectors
in the southeast and overrun WhatzItzName before Harad got
there" (Harad is now my good ally, so it turned out for the best,
but I thought I had plenty of time to grab those sectors in the
southeast, but Harad very cleverly went all the way *AROUND*
WhatsItzName and showed up in what I thought was going
to be easy pickings for me in the southeast, *BEFORE* Harad
overran WhatzItzName. So Harad turned out to be a damned
clever player, nothing like that has ever happened to me before
so I got caught napping.)