Eleusis-Hashan War: Aftermath

Ryx

I mostly want this discussion out of Raves, and the discussion doesn't seem to be ending any time soon, so I think it warrants its own thread.

Asmodron

Pros: loved the theme of the fight. Whenever aggressions between Hashan and Eleusis rise up again, I get a since of the old days. I also loved how the area measage of Radiation just fit in so well with the flavor of the conflict. The idea of dropping mini nukes in Eleusis was just so bloody amazing.

Cons: War system still exhausts me. I admittedly was secretly hoping all the fonts would blow up and a new war system put in place. One less based on little victories and more upon long term dealings that show more results (sieges for example).

Cailin

I thought @Keorin 's mention of setting objectives beforehand was a great idea. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact words...

Taryius

Having fought in a war exactly like that, I would not want to again. 

Having hardset win conditions, and therefore hardset lose conditions does not encourage participation at all. Denying sanctions and raiding only when heavily advantaged is not fun.

Myrddin

I thought it was a tremendous effort on both parts, and enjoyed being able to be part in many firsts for myself. I think Eleusis did amazing being able to get some to rally to their cause while Hashan had to face many variables.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Eleusis auto-enemying just because people were from Hashan even though no aggression was made from them, but I get it. However, I think it frightened some new players away that joined the City in the time of war.

Astarod

I mean, to be fair to Eleusis and Hashan, I think both sides struck solid blows against one another. I will admit to having messed the Hashani up quite a fair few times which detracted from the growth Eleusis displayed on the combative front.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to say either side really ‘won’ since if we’re being honest, there’s a little bit of timezone politics coming into play here and the truth is I saw both sides achieve goals they set and decided (together) to end the war. I think that ending the war as a victory condition for Hashan is a bit laughable and would moreso reference your cool system you set up for soldiers on head-accumulation benchmarks. 

This war could have been a lot more but I think with the healthy level of inexperience on both sides there were a lot of cool character development in roleplay and in combat. Cool beans, everyone. Except Zhedan. You don’t get beans.

Ryx

The little bird meme is my favourite result of this war.

Athelas

Myrddin said:

I wasn’t a huge fan of Eleusis auto-enemying just because people were from Hashan even though no aggression was made from them, but I get it. However, I think it frightened some new players away that joined the City in the time of war.

I thought Hashan started it? Athelas was enemied by Hashan during the last black wave already, and he hasn't even set foot in Hashan for at least a year before the last black wave or indeed even during this war.

Sobriquet

Astarod said:

I mean, to be fair to Eleusis and Hashan, I think both sides struck solid blows against one another. I will admit to having messed the Hashani up quite a fair few times which detracted from the growth Eleusis displayed on the combative front.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to say either side really ‘won’ since if we’re being honest, there’s a little bit of timezone politics coming into play here and the truth is I saw both sides achieve goals they set and decided (together) to end the war. I think that ending the war as a victory condition for Hashan is a bit laughable and would moreso reference your cool system you set up for soldiers on head-accumulation benchmarks. 

This war could have been a lot more but I think with the healthy level of inexperience on both sides there were a lot of cool character development in roleplay and in combat. Cool beans, everyone. Except Zhedan. You don’t get beans.

Ok, I'll bite. You didn't mess up Hashan at all, you were just a consistent breaker of rule #1 under the RP guise of "Lol, Coalition" and the only thing you succeeded in doing was forcing Nicola to write an announce post with a gentle reminder that you shouldn't be doing it. 

I think it's perfectly fair to say that Hashan won, although I personally don't like the way it came about but that's down to Mechanics. There were a lot of even fights but I think we generally came out on top with Tanks, disarms and KDR. The 2 tank, 40 guard wipe I wasn't there for but was told Eleusis has 25 people online who did nothing but leave the city.  I'm well aware numbers by themselves mean little, but even with time zone imbalance you can see the war was getting them. I take no pride in that, as the very last thing we need in a war system is to get people to disengage, we saw that with Hashan when Mhaldor wiped the entire city of guards because they were bored of Ajoc using them during raid defence. It was demoralising, we all had enough of it and QQ'd, and certainly not fun. If you asked Hashan and Eleusis to start the war again now, I can tell you which side would be the happier.

From an IC perspective we reveled in the fact Eleusis has prominent army members quitting or leaving the city because they had had enough and I think I could count only 6 members active as the war ended, OOC, that's the complete polar opposite of what we want as a player base. I had more fun when Andraste, Ainly, Waayan etc entered the city, or stood on clouds and waited for us, and we engaged. Having the opposing faction lose people and quit is boring.

The downside of other war conditions is, as we have seen, people will just refuse to engage even more. "if we don't defend, they don't get a tank" x 1000 until the city leaders get fed up and quit. I'm not sure what the answer is here though, but hoping Mak is thinking up something neat.

So yes, Hashan won this war and the only people that don't see it are you and Caelan, and even he is doing it sarcastically

Waayen

I'll also bite - we defeated ourselves. Only two people really left the army due to Hashan that I know of. One was expected to do a back and forth(rage/unrage/rage) and the other was before the war ended. Any others who left either got removed(like myself) or were questioning certain actions that made zero sense whatsoever. Can't do "this", can't do "that". It's war for bloody sake. Shit happens. Some villagers are still enthused about fighting the war(which I love), but when things are going sideways someone's gotta step in and end it. Some villagers didn't want to fight Hashan at all for differing reasons.

In the end, this war and event was more beneficial for the village in that many people stepped up to get involved in different ways. From novices to veterans. It was thrilling to see that in comparison to fighting Mhaldor whose that ex we're trying to get away from, still love you Mhaldor. It was sad to see the Tsol'teth event ended with the Championship Games as it would've made the war more interesting. That is one of the reasons, I recall, we stayed in the war with Hashan to begin with for more good fights until it got boring like most said since the Tsol'teth weren't returning.

Adrik

Sobriquet said:

The downside of other war conditions is, as we have seen, people will just refuse to engage even more. "if we don't defend, they don't get a tank" x 1000 until the city leaders get fed up and quit. I'm not sure what the answer is here though, but hoping Mak is thinking up something neat.

So yes, Hashan won this war and the only people that don't see it are you and Caelan, and even he is doing it sarcastically

I can 100% say that this was the case with the Targossas v Mhaldor war.  Wait until your city has the massive numbers advantage.  Detonate 5 tanks and ride (most) of the war off of those 5 tank detonations.

It's the reason the Divine backed out of their wager on the war, that made the war just look absolutely-awful to everyone.  Targossas barely won, and I still absolutely love some of the news posts that came out of it.  The 2nd Nishnatoba battle in particular is absolutely amazing with reference to the dual Avatar Targossas pulled off, and props to the people that wrote it.  Targ got some majorly cool things to host in our Museum afterwards (thanks @Skye).

The war goals, and points awarded from certain things were changed repeatedly, and Targossas had to do a lot of scummy things to get sanctions.  (See: Antidas casing some mhaldorians who usually defend and yeeting them into Mhaldor for ganksquad)

I don't think either side had anyone leave army at the time, but overall?  It was fun, and I seriously enjoyed it, even if Deucalion asked Farrah to tell me to go the fuck to sleep.

Farrah

The only thing that really ruined that war was sanction mechanics. I think if war status between cities allowed you to just SANCTION RAID like when font is active, it would open up more options. Yes, it allows off-time raids, but from an RP perspective that's way better than people winning by not fighting. Realistically, the city with more strength across timezones should win anyway, since that faction is dominant more often. And it at least would allow "win conditions" much better than "try to grief the other side into quitting."

Antonius

Sobriquet said:

The downside of other war conditions is, as we have seen, people will just refuse to engage even more. "if we don't defend, they don't get a tank" x 1000 until the city leaders get fed up and quit. I'm not sure what the answer is here though, but hoping Mak is thinking up something neat.

Personally the most enjoyable part of the Targossas vs Mhaldor war was the Nishnatoba battles, though I wasn't able to make it for the second one.

For something that players can do with minimal admin involvement required, just have X staged battles on Nishnatoba at agreed upon times to decide the outcome of a war. Not turning up/refusing to fight wouldn't be a viable strategy because that would just be an automatic loss for your side.

The main potential problem is scheduling. Most of them would likely need to be on weekends to allow for as many timezones as possible to be involved so you'd have a war that might last for several IC years (depending on the chosen value of X). I think that sort of duration would necessitate removing the open PK aspect of war, or at least limiting it in some way (maybe open PK for the month leading up to the scheduled battles, but not the rest of the time).

Cooper

Almost like a crusade, eh?

Antonius

Cooper said:

Almost like a crusade, eh?

Except people would actually turn up to fight.

It also wouldn't have people uninvolved in the war present (as fun as fights with more than two groups are), wouldn't require gathering the essence to initiate a crusade, the splinter falls during, etc.

Lenn

I thought it was strange seeing Eleusians comment about low numbers, given whenever I checked, they nearly always had more citizens than us and more soldiers than us.

Maybe it was just a timezone difference there too though?

Cooper

Lenn said:

I thought it was strange seeing Eleusians comment about low numbers, given whenever I checked, they nearly always had more citizens than us and more soldiers than us.

Maybe it was just a timezone difference there too though?

No, that's just Eleusis not wanting to admit this war was one sided and they stood no chance.

SLIGHTLY hilarious though that Hashan is pointing out how many citizens Eleusis had online and also that Eleusis had plenty to defend.

Astarod

Sobriquet said:

Astarod said:

I mean, to be fair to Eleusis and Hashan, I think both sides struck solid blows against one another. I will admit to having messed the Hashani up quite a fair few times which detracted from the growth Eleusis displayed on the combative front.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to say either side really ‘won’ since if we’re being honest, there’s a little bit of timezone politics coming into play here and the truth is I saw both sides achieve goals they set and decided (together) to end the war. I think that ending the war as a victory condition for Hashan is a bit laughable and would moreso reference your cool system you set up for soldiers on head-accumulation benchmarks. 

This war could have been a lot more but I think with the healthy level of inexperience on both sides there were a lot of cool character development in roleplay and in combat. Cool beans, everyone. Except Zhedan. You don’t get beans.

Ok, I'll bite. You didn't mess up Hashan at all, you were just a consistent breaker of rule #1 under the RP guise of "Lol, Coalition" and the only thing you succeeded in doing was forcing Nicola to write an announce post with a gentle reminder that you shouldn't be doing it. 

I think it's perfectly fair to say that Hashan won, although I personally don't like the way it came about but that's down to Mechanics. There were a lot of even fights but I think we generally came out on top with Tanks, disarms and KDR. The 2 tank, 40 guard wipe I wasn't there for but was told Eleusis has 25 people online who did nothing but leave the city.  I'm well aware numbers by themselves mean little, but even with time zone imbalance you can see the war was getting them. I take no pride in that, as the very last thing we need in a war system is to get people to disengage, we saw that with Hashan when Mhaldor wiped the entire city of guards because they were bored of Ajoc using them during raid defence. It was demoralising, we all had enough of it and QQ'd, and certainly not fun. If you asked Hashan and Eleusis to start the war again now, I can tell you which side would be the happier.

From an IC perspective we reveled in the fact Eleusis has prominent army members quitting or leaving the city because they had had enough and I think I could count only 6 members active as the war ended, OOC, that's the complete polar opposite of what we want as a player base. I had more fun when Andraste, Ainly, Waayan etc entered the city, or stood on clouds and waited for us, and we engaged. Having the opposing faction lose people and quit is boring.

The downside of other war conditions is, as we have seen, people will just refuse to engage even more. "if we don't defend, they don't get a tank" x 1000 until the city leaders get fed up and quit. I'm not sure what the answer is here though, but hoping Mak is thinking up something neat.

So yes, Hashan won this war and the only people that don't see it are you and Caelan, and even he is doing it sarcastically

I mean, I would consider 100+ guards slain multiple times among other things a ‘mess up’ but I do think Hashan had some solid blows. Said so before. I just am saying, as I said before- you’re suffering from the no predefined goals.

What I think would be great start as a minimal system is for citizens in the military of each city to be able to do WAR STATUS like CRUSADE STATUS. This statistic that would be recalled would include a points total:

Headcount:
Players slain by players.
Ar0 (non army): 1 point
Ar1: 2 points
Ar2: 3 points
Ar3: 4 points
Ar4: 5 points
Ar5: 6 points
(Players slain by the enemy faction’s guards would attribute .5 of the original point value as if slain by players)

Tank Warfare:
Disarms: 6 points
Detonations: 8 points
Captures: 8 points

Guard Slayers:
Mobiles: 8 points each
Stationaries: 10 points each

Annexation: 
Uprooting an enemy totem: 5 points
Planting a totem in hostile territory: 10 points

And more...

Essentially a basic statistic that could show the perspective of the war in numerical terms for soldiers of each faction. Citizens will not be able to access this function. I’m not emotionally tethered to the point values I provided for examples. 

Caelan

Astarod said:

I think both sides struck solid blows against one another. 

I saw both sides achieve goals they set

on both sides there were a lot of cool character development in roleplay and in combat.

This is what I meant before when I said something along the lines of 'Eleusis is growing because of the war'.  But then "everyone" assumed it meant literal size.  Then the topic got cut off.  

Despite three wars being entered into in a row with no clear objectives, each time it has helped Eleusis grow in some way.  If people left, it made others step up. If people joined, it got them into defense.  If people were politicking, it got them recognized (and if the majority disagreed, the person got shouted down and properly chastised).

Kuririn

I just hated having my spars interrupted every time I went to Eleusis

Andraste

I'll be completely honest. I feel like folks are reading into a lot of things incorrectly. Some things are highly perceptual and misconstrued, and other's are just factually inaccurate. As for the Village losing the war. The conversation that I had with Krizal, I offered three ways to proceed. The last of which was a mutual cessation of hostilities. When I proposed we continue with the war with some more traditional terms, Krizal suggested that the only option that made sense was the ceasefire. Up until the last week, I felt Eleusis was at least holding their own. 

I would argue that we had a lot of successes in defences and in control of the map with ganks. We were considerably more successful at Hashan at in city assassinations, and for attempts / successful tank detonations, and up until the last week we were starting to gain momentum on guard bashing as well. We were driven out fewer times during sanctions (but we also attempted far fewer times than Hashan did). There are a few factors that I observed driving this. Hashan did however have more overall offensive occupations and more tanks detonated.

We came out of the gates relatively strong, and there was a lot of positive energy behind us because Eleusis was more or less ignored by administration for this event, but historically it's been difficult to get even some members of the army to offensively raid. I will say that we were more successful at this during wartime than we were outside of wartime. This interest seemed to fall off in the last week with some of the tank detonations and the massive guard bashing that happened at times when I wasn't around. When I was around, I was very proud of the effort we put in. We fought hard and had a lot of personal and group growth.

Some of our raid leaders were out of pocket that last week, and while we could have endured for far longer financially, I think we risked things getting a lot dirtier and toxic internally and between the city-states if we continued. Another thing to consider is the OOC influence from the forums on this war. I feel that the OOC and forum RPing not just from the respective sides but from onlookers strongly contributed to the toxicity that has crept in over the past week or two.

I'm not sure where the perception of lost membership comes from. Ploutos left for reasons other than the War, as did Erikka , Bail (non-soldier) and Artanis were put on leave for unrelated reasons. Estariel left probably because he didn't understand the war mechanics and kept getting ganked. Nhakra quit the army literally as we were discussing the end of the war. Waayen was discharged by Ainly due to some conflict over orders.

Hashan had people leave their army too. Amik joined and left, as did Qidaxt for a period of time before rejoining as the war was ending. I think there was another as well (Maajida possibly?)

I am not trying to make the argument that Eleusis won the war, as many have insinuated that we perpetually do. I think this narrative of the 
deleusional Village contributes to a lot of unnecessary vitriol. There may be some running narrative about Eleusis never admitting it has lost, but I don't think that whether Eleusis won or lost should be based on the arbitrary book that was created. Kiet can think what he wants, but we didn't enter into the war for his entertainment. Sorry Mhaldor, it's not all about you.

The tenor of the last conversation that I had with Krizal, I left thinking that we both agreed it was in our best interest to step away. And while this was the case. There were no stipulations for defeat discussed, just a mutual disarming of hostilities. When Krizal responded in the way that I did, I was pretty angry, because I felt it misrepresented what we discussed. We had a prior conversation a bit before about discussing terms with our respective orgs. She came back to me after the 2nd day of Eleusis guard bashing.

At the end of the day, think what you want. I'm walking away from this event feeling like we stood up for what we needed to, and we walked away with more than we lost in terms of experience and credibility. This was an opportunity for Hashan to flex their new skillset, and Eleusis rose to the occasion rather than walk away from a conflict tail tucked.

Kuririn

Here here. 

Torrent

There is also a misconception that keeps being put out there on number of people in a city able to defend. Yes when you have 25 people on but about 3/4 of them are novices, your not going get a great turn out for defense. That can be said for both sides. There was only one tactic that I didnt like with the war which was the login jumping to build tank. Granted I dont think anyone intended to but when you login see that your in the middle of an enemy group, do give them more then 5 secs to get out (especially on phone, that shit is hard to move enough as it is and especially trying to figure out where your group is at). Granted also it happens unintentionally so no beef here just something for the future.

Rangor

I always win. I don't care what the rest of you do! 😘

Mishgul

Rangor said:

I always win. I don't care what the rest of you do! 😘

I have a game of tyrants of the underdark that says otherwise.

Caelan

Andraste said:

I am not trying to make the argument that Eleusis won the war, as many have insinuated that we perpetually do. I think this narrative of the 
deleusional Village contributes to a lot of unnecessary vitriol. There may be some running narrative about Eleusis never admitting it has lost, but I don't think that whether Eleusis won or lost should be based on the arbitrary book that was created. Kiet can think what he wants, but we didn't enter into the war for his entertainment. Sorry Mhaldor, it's not all about you.

At the end of the day, think what you want. I'm walking away from this event feeling like we stood up for what we needed to, and we walked away with more than we lost in terms of experience and credibility. This was an opportunity for Hashan to flex their new skillset, and Eleusis rose to the occasion rather than walk away from a conflict tail tucked.

I agree  even though we did jump into 3 wars with no terms - I have no idea why it keeps happening and that lesson wasn't learned, but there we were - But I agree we definitely were holding our own until the last week.  I, for one, love that people think Eleusis is delusional (either here or IG - which is why I encourage it) because then they underestimate us.  Look at the Hashan/Darkenwood thing.  They underestimated us and we regularly dominated them.  Same in the Sunderlands.  Hashan caught a good week where people weren't around as much and made it look worse than it was.  Up until that point we were pretty even on tank detonations and sanctions, they just talked more. I think they had one more tank than us but it was disarmed, something like that.  The last week was brutal for guards, but we definitely came away with more - and the admin didn't have to give us jack shit

Astarod

I think people are just a bit different in what they concern wins and losses as. I will admit that I’ve been off the reservation since last Saturday so I don’t know precisely what has happened in the last weekish, however to say Hashan dominated them thoroughly throughout the war is a bit laughable. 

I think my only hope is that Hashan considers itself worthy of war with Ashtan- preferably no terms!

Morsul

No-terms war against ASHTAN of all cities is a recipe for mass exodus of players.

Krizal

Yeah, lol. I Hashan is very much lacking in people who could match the top 10 Ashtani in terms of artefacts or pkills. It'd just be a slaughterfest, which should be obvious to anyone with half a clue.

@Andraste I kept trying to point out during our chat how we've accomplished much more than the Village during the war, but tbh I didn't really even try to push for a surrender -because- of everyone saying Eleusis never loses war, to the point that after we raided and blew a tank someone would joke about how Eleusis won that raid. We definitely did a lot more offensively during the war, and I would've liked to see more raids by Eleusis since it felt like we were putting more effort into the war, getting people to raid every day. And by the end it was hard to even get a response anymore when we went in. Could've been timezones, like I mentioned before there were also times when we had few soldiers and Eleusis had a ton.

One thing that gave us problems especially at the start of the war was defenders not being in the Eleusian army. So we'd fight a group of say 15 Eleusians+Cyrenians+Ashtani, successfully kill them all, and the tank would have barely charged at all. And towards the end of the war quite a few frequent defenders weren't in the army either, so they could still raid and defend but wouldn't charge tank or be jumpable.

All in all, I think we ended the war at a good time (it did go on for 3 ig years!), before everyone got burnt out on having to raid/defend every day and not being able to hunt without getting ganked.

Rangor

Mishgul said:

Rangor said:

I always win. I don't care what the rest of you do! 😘

I have a game of tyrants of the underdark that says otherwise.

That was just me playing through the tutorial. Doesn't count.

Pixy

Myrddin said:

I thought it was a tremendous effoyea the ebemying t on both parts, and enjoyed being able to be part in many firsts for myself. I think Eleusis did amazing being able to get some to rally to their cause while Hashan had to face many variables.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Eleusis auto-enemying just because people were from Hashan even though no aggression was made from them, but I get it. However, I think it frightened some new players away that joined the City in the time of war.

yea the enemying people thing was a bit much imo, considering that even fresh novices were being enemied if they joined hashan out of the pygmy duengons