Posts by NBA

Jeru I'm not sure why you are so bent on piling blame on GD, especially if you're not in TDE haha

You're right that GD made tons of mistakes along the way, we fought two quad wars in the NE and the NW quad while TDE simmed happily, clearly not an ideal scenario for us! We don't claim to be perfect, that was certainly never the claim. What we're disappointed with is a few diplomatic decisions by TDE that knowingly unbalanced a fairly interesting server (even after witnessing all the horrible imperfections of GD that you so eloquently pointed out).

What we're doing here is being realistic about the situation (with a little bit of immature name calling along the way by some others, admittedly ). Travian is a very fun game, but it also requires pretty significant time out of your real life to play it at a high level. If you find yourself in a situation that is no longer fun, no longer winnable, and certainly no longer interesting, you should always step back and see how you can improve things. We did EXACTLY this among the leadership group, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that we came up with exactly ZERO solutions to the server that would be both fun AND winnable. Given that we are merely playing a time-consuming browser game that is really not important at all, we decided to avoid this scenario, as any reasonable person would understand.

We are absolutely quitters in this case, and if you disagree with the path we chose then I don't really understand where you're coming from. We aren't going to sacrifice our real life time and money to play a game that was ruined in an unfortunate way. Life is too short and it is also too short to explain it anymore on this forum thread for you, so I will leave it at this:

Congrats to TDE on their unconventional victory, we in GD wish you had played it much differently, but it is a victory nonetheless!

The reality is, the server was decided the second TDE merged with nGp.

GD leaders knew that nGp is too strong to go join forces with one side of the fight between GD vs TDE (would tip the balance too far with nGp on either side). Knowing this, GD refused to take most nGp members (except some in the NE quad) to preserve the balanced server and keep it interesting after nGp's rapid downfall. Then TDE comes along and, assuming they are not total idiots, knowingly ended the competitive server by recruiting all of nGp. This hand-holding diplomatic approach worked, TDE will win the server. Maybe they would have won anyway, but that is not really the point of the issue that led us here.

For any players looking for a fun and interesting server and now find it ruined, I think it is fair to lay the blame at the feet of whoever did the diplomacy efforts for TDE. Either they were too dumb to realize this single move would ruin the server (I will give them more credit than this) or they just didn't care. Maybe GD leaders should have known better and just taken all of nGp while we had the chance, clearly our gamble for a competitive server did not pay off!

I had to make a forum account to answer to this thread

The core issue here is not to debate who is a better alliance (GD or TDE) because the answer is overwhelmingly that TDE is a stronger team. They were the only premade on the server and it showed with their superior organization and discipline in the early stages. When GD was formed around day 60 (the merger of NWE in the NW and RAR in the NE) the server looked like it was set for an incredible three-way battle: GD vs TDE vs nGp. At the time of GD formation, the power ranking of these alliances was pretty clearly 1) nGp 2) TDE and 3) GD.

Shortly after, GD vs nGp battle became very intense, and GD outplayed the hell out of nGp, blocking many of their biggest hammers (including that crazy MoonBlaze hammer) and destroying many nGp capitals with barely any losses. After only a few operations in each direction, nGp gave up the fight and their main leaders quit. At this time, nGp leaders offered a full merger with GD but GD rejected this because it would make the server unbalanced. Instead, GD took approximately 20 (I don't know the real number but if it's much more than this I'd be shocked) nGp players located in the NE quad and told the rest to figure it out for themselves so that the server could be fun still.

It is at THIS POINT that GD has an issue with TDE tactics/diplomacy. At this point GD is coming off two very damaging quad wars (against nGp/TNT in east and GODS/PT/TW/FM in the west) yet STILL rejected taking in all of nGp to keep a more balanced server. TDE, who at this point still had done ZERO fighting (not knocking this strategy, but it's worth mentioning the strong position they had already) then proceeded to take in all remaining nGp players, which ruined the server dynamics. In addition, we confirmed with leaders in TNT, GODS, and others that TDE had extended diplomacy to them in order to conduct joint operations against GD. Now all of a sudden GD is looking at TDE + nGp + GODS + FM + PT + TW + TNT in coordination against them. This is not 800 accounts against 200, but the real numbers are more like 500 against 190, and it's not like GD had significantly more quality (less, in fact) to balance against this quantity.

In just 50 days, we went from a fairly balanced 3-way fight, to a fairly balanced 2-way fight, to a completely unbalanced server.

Could GD have made better decisions along the way? Absolutely. NWE broke away and led a bloody coup in the NW quad against GODS leaders (don't even get me started on those clowns) and RAR had no friends before NWE either. However, TDE did make the final decision to unbalance the server for good, by recruiting all of nGp, and for this the server could never be saved. The issue is with this outrageous diplomacy conducted by TDE. This game is meant to be fun, and when the fun is taken out of the server, there isn't any reason to stay and waste time/money on it. Players will go on to other servers in search of said fun, mainly com2 by the sound of it, where a more interesting server will hopefully happen. TDE used win-at-all-costs, hand-holding diplomacy methods, and it worked. TDE has locked up the server and there is no need or desire to play it out. Congrats to them, it is not how I would want to be defeated, but defeat us they have.