UPC vs. HaHa Jr

Ok, if I hear back from Elle, I will pass those terms along. Love 'em.

It also helps to have people attack the diplomat while you do this. Adds extra stress and emphasis on concession

I got a message from UPC’s acting diplomat, Elle Jade. She raises several points. I have not responded, but have placed what would be my response in italics after each point. I feel like I need to get an official OK on the stuff I put in bold with everyone first, and would like anyone to point of anything they think should be worded differently, or deleted and changed entirely before I send it.


1. One Shot (who is our largest point player - and the one HAHA wants booted) found farms within your alliance. Pillaging is what we do and that is done by finding farms (not just inactives).

My answer: Of course pillaging is part of the game! However, it doesn’t hurt to pick your targets wisely, and pillaging a training alliance will bring heat down from the parent alliance. That’s not an opinion, that’s not a rule, it’s just simple logic. If UPC wants to farm training alliances, it should be expected that they will get heat from the larger alliance.


2. You asked to have these people pointed out to you and time given to train them. On the surface that sounds reasonable, however not practical. It is too easy to not be a farm - stop or slow down mining - donate excess goods - spend resources on a larger hide out. I have been hit every day in this war (and before it officially started) even though I never pillage anyone, and yet I have still been able to increase my donations in all of my mines by 20-25k without losing a single resource. If you want time to train - give those farms the guidelines - cut their tags - then when you can pillage them yourself and they can dodge/defend/and not be a farm, then let them back in.

My answer: I don’t think you have a reasonable grasp on what it is like to keep track of 30 odd newbies. Sure, we have standards in regards to hideout levels etc… and try to send spearmen out to each town to keep track of progress, but to be honest, the work can be overwhelming- not to mention recruiting in new members, and answering questions like “How do I send resources from one of my colonies to another?” That is why it is called a training alliance- to train. We leave the ultimate defense of our alliance in the capable hands of HAHA, and do our best to keep on top of our newbies.


3. Not having a diplomat officially is a screw up on our end. Arrest me came out of V-mode to find the heavy attacks upon us, and tried to work out the PT with you. You admit to dropping the ball on your end, and we can admit to dropping it on our end as she had to go back to RL before those with the power could transfer the title. The leader has been gone longer than she has so she was not able to do a transfer sooner.

My answer: Sure- I’ll freely admit to being a training alliance. I think I already have, several times, and have no problem doing it again. I’ll freely admit that there are farms within our alliance, just like there are farms within other training (and standard) alliances. We have solved our problem by being attached to HAHA. I’m waiting to hear how you guys are going to solve yours.

4. The DoW being official is that after the two non-declared wars our members have had enough of the 1 vs an entire alliance instead of people sticking to the 1 vs 1 and went for the all vs all.

My answer: I have no problem with understanding why you guys dropped a DOW. However, since you are the ones who dropped it, it’s up to you to decide what you want to do about it. I have told you that we are looking at Dec. 20th as the end date. All we need is a simple answer to a very basic question: Do you want to resolve this with HA Jr. by then, or do you want HAHA to take over after the 20th?

5. HAHA joining up by switching to Jr tags to even things out is a wash to me, however, having HAHA dictate the terms of our and I stress OUR (your and ours) war and peace talks makes me wonder if I'm even talking to someone with authority or just a puppet (no offense to you - please understand me). The way Devil talks on the forums, it's as if he threw you guys under the bus then wondered why you have tread marks on your back and is blaming the bus driver and not his pushing you in harms way.

My answer: Easy answer! I’m a puppet (no offense taken.) HAHA and HA Jr are part of one large “Hammer family” which is lead thru HAHA officers. They were just kind enough to allow us to fight under our own tag. However, their patience is wearing mighty thin. Ezza3003’s recent attacks on HAHA members just added to the absolute disrespect of declaring on their training alliance.

do not talk about Dec. 20th as an end date. Pretend like we are about to enter the war on your side.

Use threats and imply that other alliances are about to come to your aid.

Dec. 20th is no good. Although that might be your soft target or goal to end it, it is not what you want them to know

You need to be MORE OUTRAGED. THEY DOW'ed you. YOU ARE ANGRY. You are winning - point to the DoW CR thread.

Tell them to agree to your terms or else.

KS-- I can not agree more with brbdc on this.. Put the screws to them until they break and call uncle. As for Devil and his board posts we will in act a policy towards that after this is resolved..

While awaiting word from you regarding what to say to UPC's acting diplomat, I was sent another message from Elle Jade. I won't copy it, but it was all about blah, blah 1vs1, whine, whine, blah, blah.

Here is my reply:
At one point, you sent a message asking if I was a puppet. The answer is an absolute YES. HA Jr. is the training alliance of HAHA.

I don't want to come off rude, but I don't need to hear anymore about your 1vs1 policy. I understand you have one. That is very nice. I don't. Mess with HA Jr, and you mess with HAHA. That information was, is, and will be on our external page.

HAHA wants to know if their terms will be met. Once that is established, we can move on to a resolution.

HAHA patience is wearing mighty thin. They need an answer, and they need it soon. Are you going to come to terms? As far as they are conscerned, they are willing to drop a DOW on UPC tomorrow, so please make your decision.

The terms on the table are as follows:
1. UPC must publicly apologize for hitting a training alliance.
2. UPC must kick their highest Military score player
3. UPC must keep all military scores below 5k until Jan. 1st
4. UPC must sent 1000 spears with cooks against the towns wall of our choosing.
5. UPC must promise to not target players below 75k total score anymore.

Please... no more obvious stalling tactics. I don't want to waste time learning about your 1vs1 policy while several of your players are increasing their MS scores. Return to the table with your rebuttle of these terms, and we will take it from there.

QUESTION: If Elle Jade wishes to speak directly to the HAHA player "in charge" of this, may I send her to brbdc?

Send her to me. I won't steer you wrong.

brbdc wrote:Send her to me. I won't steer you wrong.

For some reason, that pithy reponse made my laugh so hard I spewed coffee all over my key board. Thank you, brbdc. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Elle does contact you, this whole thing will be done and over the next day.

By the way- did anyone catch the UPC vs HA Jr post by John Locke? Love it!

At one point, when I was till working with Arrest Me, and this whole deal was more on the lines of a training excercise, we had a friendly relationship. TIMALMIGHTY suggested a comic ending with funny "terms" to be met on both sides.

After reading John Locke's post and reviewing the combat reports, I thought a good "term" would be that UPC had to post a video clip on their external alliance page. The video clip would be the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail, where King Arthur fights the Black Knight.

http://www.crackle.com/c/Monty_Python_and_The_Holy_Grail/Clips_Monty_Python_Holy_Grail_The_Black_Night/2474795

I think we are back at square 1 but with them knowing what a beatdown looks like and a really fast one. We are currently searching out crumbs of troops.

I dont think they wish to publically work with KS on any Dip solution so I feel things are positioned well for brbdc to take the Dip lead on negotiations. The CR's tell the whole story

I still think it was a necessary exercise for us to establish ourselves again but this time with a more direct connection with our training alliance falling under our HAHA umbrella.

Oh Yeah, somebody tell "tehfallen" that we(HAHA) have had to lower our Diplomatic standards in order to get some real fighting out of some of these alliances in Theta It has made us look shrewd at times.
Thats why IMHO brbdc is a genius

And..........I like the Monty Python terms of surrender

so what do you want me to do. you want me to go to haha jr. or negotiate from haha.

do you want me to end it or apply nore pressure?

Apply more pressure from here and get them to 'cry uncle"

From Elle:

I have not left the peace talks, and I am not trying to stall. As I'm sure you are aware, we don't have many members online especially those in charge.

I have sent a final notice to our council and leaders giving them 17.5 hrs from the time this message was sent to you to respond to me.

Our alliance wants this war to end, the sooner the better. So you will hear back from me whether any of the council responds to me or not. I promise.

At this point there are only 2 issues we have, the booting of Bash and the 5k military score (which effects exactly half of our members and would open us up to other alliances attacking us. I will let you know if we have alternate options or not.

I am looking forward to finishing this, as I am exhausted from this whole mess. And I also want to personally apologies for allowing my burnt out self to vent over this whole thing and label you a puppet. True or not it was uncalled for and I respectfully apology to you personally for my comments. You have been extremely helpful to me through this process and I hope your understanding of my newness to this position (untitled position even) and your patience with me continues.

Elle Jade

I have sent her messages bordering on harassment to contact me but she has never sent me a message back.

I think we have leeway with Elle's first issue- Booting Bash. On the second issue, the dropping MS scores leaving her alliance open to attacks, we should remain firm, and throwing some of her own words back in her face might be a fun.

At one point, I was trying to explain to her that hitting our farms is understandable, but since we are a training alliance, it is not OK to prey on farms... that our guys will need time between hits to be trained. Her response was:

"You asked to have these people pointed out to you and time given to train them. On the surface that sounds reasonable, however not practical. It is too easy to not be a farm - stop or slow down mining - donate excess goods - spend resources on a larger hide out. I have been hit every day in this war (and before it officially started) even though I never pillage anyone, and yet I have still been able to increase my donations in all of my mines by 20-25k without losing a single resource. If you want time to train - give those farms the guidelines - cut their tags - then when you can pillage them yourself and they can dodge/defend/and not be a farm, then let them back in."

Tweak a word here and there, and it's the perfect snarky response!

Annoying, isn't it? If you are trying to get a hold of her by contacting the UPC diplomat, you aren't going to have any luck- I think almost ALL their officers are on vacation... which is honestly one of the reasons they can't comply with booting Bash- no active Home Secretary to boot him, no active leader to re-assign the HS position. Stupid, stupid way to run an alliance.

Wow really ...

KS wrote:
I have sent a final notice to our council and leaders giving them 17.5 hrs from the time this message was sent to you to respond to me.

I never heard back... but then, I'll give Elle the benifit of the doubt. If she lives in the Midwest of the US, she might be buried under a million pounds of snow.

UPC has 5 or 6 members activly fighting. We take them down in MS, they rebuild, we take them down, they rebuild. The rest are running and hiding. It's a darn expensive way to make war. Some of the HAHA warriors stationed in HA Jr are losing morale, simply because it's so darn hard to find a decent fight.

One of our terms is asking them to kick out their highest MS score member. Elle has replied that she doesn't think it fair to punish a player for playing well. brbdc suggested when he made those terms that we had some wiggle room with that one. I'd like to propose to Elle that we will change that to UPC having to boot out the two smaller members who attacked us when all this started, and hid in the shadows of their mega-account players. I guess I want to smoke out the truth from them... there is no Home Secretary to boot these people. There is no leader to reassign the position. There is no diplomat to negotiate a truce. There is no general to muster an offence for the war they declared.



I know these things from talking to one of their ex-members, Pink Fluffy. Now I want to hear that truth from the horse's mouth, as it were.

KS. Regarding the details. Make provisions to make them happy. Tell them that they drop their MS score to 5k unless they get DoW'ed on or 30 days pass.

I told Elle that if the war isnt ended by the 20th, HaHa will get involved.

Thank you. I hope I get a chance to say that.

Yes, I like the idea of moving this back into HAHA's playing field in the near future. We are running out of gold chasing these rabbits all over the high seas.

I'd like let the HAHA fellows here know that they will be retuning to their home alliance soon. Is that OK?

Also, you might want to give your guys the heads up that UPC is fighting a war of attrition, hoping to cause as much economic damage as possible, since they are unable/unwilling to fight.

I'd also like to say, with the full understanding that this is just my opinion, that if UPC rejects, (either by out and out rejecting them or just plain ignoring them) the HA Jr terms, I'd like to see HAHAs be much more draconian.

I know it's not my place to say, but an alliance that leaves it's people out to dry with no diplomat, general, home secretary or leader for weeks on end does not deserve to exist at all.

The newest post on the board:

this is RezA,the UPC general

UPC declares that the declaration of War with HAHA Jr will cease as of 2200 hrs on 14/12/2010 Ikarium time.

From that time all members are requested to withdraw their troops and cease hostilites.

However UPC reserves the right to always defend our fellow pirates.We
make no apologies for attacking a training alliance, as farms are farms
and the DoW was in response to mass attacks on us by HA HA players
hiding under the Ha Jr tag. If they had defended their farms properly
we would have declared on them directly. You use your training alliance
as a shield, they will end up in a war."

Merry Christmas from the Pirate alliance

RezA,UPC general

Basically they had the thread closed almost immediately and called off the war without meeting any of our terms or demands.

I dont know about you but I think we have alot of players with MS and in the area. We could DoW and teach them a lesson but they really only have like 5 active fighters.

This war has looked really bad on us too.

brbdc wrote:Basically they had the thread closed almost immediately and called off the war without meeting any of our terms or demands.

I dont know about you but I think we have alot of players with MS and in the area. We could DoW and teach them a lesson but they really only have like 5 active fighters.

This war has looked really bad on us too.

I agree that we all are in unfamiliar terrritory with this whole UPC affair.
Thats why I perceived it as a challenge and a great opportunity to learn something different and how to manage something as difficult as this.

UPC feels by definition of their Tag that they can pillage whomever they want. They have already sold themselves that they are victims of HAHA when it was their members taunting our Leaders over at HA Jr. This isnt completely about trainees. Now they sit back after they called for a war against HA Jr and rescind that.
This outlines my whole point as to why I am so supportive of KS and Midnite.
They feel like they can do as "THEY" please and we are supposed to follow a preset set of rules for them to mock. They should have contacted KS and if they felt that KS was beneath their alliance then they sure as HELL should have contacted brbdc immediately.

Our HAHA arm has to reach to cover our training alliance or we look weak in our main alliance.
Diplomacy only works in our behalf if we have bigger guns on our side.

UPC wants to cry foul now against HAHA b/c we sent over fighters to let them know that HA Jr is very much a part of HAHA. Its within our alliance rights to send as many members we please. We dont owe UPC an explanation of our actions within HAHA or Ha Jr.
If we would have fought them from HAHA it would have looked worse. We have sent over 10....12 fighters. Thats not alot considering the size of HAHA and what we could do.

brbdc, I only quoted your post so that I could be in concert and apply my redress to the points you have just made
I have mirrored the exact way UPC did with their members except I did it from HA Jr. To send the msg to them to leave HA Jr alone. Just b/c their Tag says "pillage" doesnt give them blanket rights in Theta. They are delusional if they think they can pillage anyone without reprisals. Period....thats my point to them as the HS for HAHA.

I dont feel we should DOW them thru HAHA unless another alliance joins in. Again, I feel this would make us look worse. Trust me the guys they have fighting now are having their troops recalled due to lack of morale not to mention we are beating the snot out of them anyways. They cannot build a military.

I think that all diplomacy should go thru you at this point which will show that we are managing our training alliance from HAHA which we are supposed to do anyways.
KS I feel you should send whomever contacts you for diplomacy about this conflict should be immediately sent to brbdc. Who's to say that they havent orchestrated this whole scenerio anyways or have outside influences against us. We've went thru smaller alliances to get to larger ones ourselves.
Again, I feel that since they have rescinded the DOW that from this point forward all diplomacy should go thru you, brbdc.

In the mean time......DOW or not the hits continue until they meet brbdc's terms or we put them all in v-mode

P.S. I thought only a thread originator could request a thread to be closed on the IKA Boards ???

My thoughts:

I do feel it is time for HAHA to take the driver's wheel. I will start sending any diplomatic messages I receive to brbdc.

I don't know why you guys would want to drop a DOW- these rabbits run and hide so much, there isn't a single town worth hitting more than 6 times a day.

Arrest Me knew damn well I was going to bring in HAHA members to even up the fight. If he chose to drop a DOW, then go on vacation, too bloody bad for UPC.

I'm going to tell my gang to keep fighting, just limit attacks to under 6 times per day. I will await word from you guys as to when I send out a circular telling all original hammers to go back into the hammer fold.