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| 22 Jul 2016 12:25 AM |
This thread is our official response to the full extention of our negotiations with the Federation of Arcardia (FoA). Since they declared war on us on June 24th, we made a concerted effort to record evidence wherever possible for this seemingly inevitable situation. War negotiations are a fundamentally broken system and we as a High Command have known this for a while - in fact, it is one of the key reasons for the invention of the RoVerse project - to steer clans in a new direction, one free of negotiations, one where fun prevails over ferocity.
Nevertheless, despite our own personal thoughts on war negotiations and the bleak outlook that comes with them, we knew we owed it to our members to make our best effort to make this work, because our members were looking forward to a war of any kind after a long period without one. This was completely understandable of course, but the unfortunate reality of the situation soon takes hold - amicable war negotiations are a glimmer of hope in the distant skies when compared with the inevitable drama that we all knew would ensue from the very beginning.
And lo and behold, it did. Very quickly. Even as I write this very message, FoA is taking to the forums to flame us with only one side of the story while our men were instructed to stay clear of the forums during this time - again, because we KNEW this would happen from day one. Although, as with most negotiations I have been to in my time, the first few days are always the most pleasant, the calm before the storm, before it all goes south, and nosedives into the kind of situation we see before us today.
So let's start from the beginning. Once FoA declared war on us we immediately looked to their track record, which, surprise surprise, was anything but stellar. Since FoA had already negotiated with several clans this year, we got into contact with some of the people involved to see how cooperative they really were. This Pastebin is a conversation with Polymorphic who told us what to expect from FoA during the negotiations: TdzHS3bm. This next Pastebin is Seviro sharing his experiences with FoA, notice the pattern we're starting to see here: 3UuwwBSB. It's even worse when you look at their track record and see the amount of failed wars they've been involved in only *this year*, as recorded by our old friend Falsewarrior of UAF. https://forum.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=193982574
Knowing this, we took to the table with FoA's three 'main' leaders: Shadownize, Reversonal and Paul321321. We had opened Kaznan as we usually do during the summer time, but FoA completely distorted this situation to make it seem like we closed SMO because of them declaring war, which they hadn't even done at the time we re-opened Kaznan. Their first request at this meeting was to get rid of Kaznan and re-open SMO - this was a fair request and one we intended to fulfill, provided the negotiations went well and Stronghold 2 was edited to be at the same standard of fairness as SMO. We told them that Kaznan would remain open as per our plans until the negotiations were successful.
Clearly the negotiations weren't successful. Why? Well, when FoA declared war against us, they declared war with Stronghold 2 as their base. We expected them to use Stronghold 2, their own members expected to use Stronghold 2 and we didn't see any reason why they wouldn't want to use Stronghold 2. But in an immense stroke of hypocrisy and after we had already conditionally pledged to reopen SMO, they introduced an entirely new base that was apparently made to 'satisfy' our requests. We never asked them to make a new base in the first place, all we wanted was for them to take our requests and apply them to the base they declared war with, but they forced this base upon us and didn't look back to SH2 ever again (until we made them, that is. More on that later.)
For reasons unknown to me now, we let this slip by for time being and proceeded to negotiate at this random new base they had pulled from thin air. Looking back, this was a big mistake on our part and we should have not accepted their poor excuse of a base from the start because it has caused us so much trouble since. This new base of theirs made negotiations INFINITELY more difficult on both sides. In reality the changes we wanted made to SH2 were not all that difficult to make and this new base required 10x the amount of work to make it anything comparable to SMO. This is where most of the time in negotiations was sunk, trying to fix this wreck of a base which they claimed was 'fair'.
Now, LordMiltonious claimed through Steam that he gave us all the requests that we asked for, as seen here: 9db0645322245482b0a2bc460b22d472. So for this, we created two albums showing different areas of their thin-air base, explaining what we asked for and what we actually got in return: /a/H1V4a & /a/6VV0V. Just getting them to agree to these half-measure concessions took weeks and it still wasn't up to standard with SMO, but since they refused to reason with us anymore, we went through with a couple of tests at this new base. These tests did not go well, as expected, in part because of them not making the updates properly and also due in part to the mesh spam which caused heinous amounts of lag - we're confident it was the mesh spam that caused this because the server lagged much less when it was all deleted.
It was after these tests that we realised that we should not have given FoA a free pass in using this new base instead of the originally intended SH2. Recall what I said earlier, we did *not* have all that many requests to be made to Stronghold 2 when compared to their new base - the changes we wanted mainly consisted of deleting some bricks and sealing up some areas. Despite this fact, FoA instantly began to complain of all the wasted time, when it was *them* that introduced the new base in the first place without being asked. We demanded that they bring Stronghold 2 back. FoA claimed that their new base was much fairer than Stronghold 2, implying that we should be grateful for this valiant act of generosity. Suddenly FoA had become a completely new clan, full of noble men who would not want to swindle VAK by reverting back to their supposedly horrible old base. You would think FoA as everyone else knows them would be jumping at the chance to use a base that favours them more, but after seemingly turning this new leaf they were completely looking out for our best interests instead.
Still, we stood our ground and eventually brought FoA high ranks to a copy of Stronghold 2 that we have in our possession. I outlined to them the changes that we wanted, such as sealing up some of the terminal room entrances to bring the total down to three, the same amount of entrances into the SMO hangar, and making the spawns equal once again, much like SMO and the base they were wanting to use before. After much outrage they proposed to do a series of tests to prove that Stronghold 2 with our requests would be hugely unfair to them as the defenders. We couldn't possibly see how the base was as unfair as they were making it out to be, so we agreed to do the tests the next day and left it there. As part of the agreement, there would be two tests at SH2 and two tests at SMO, with both clans testing both sides of each base. Elites were agreed to be used for both sides.
We started with Stronghold 2 on the day of the tests. Generals Ttom and Hunter were assigned as the leaders of the test on our side and they were feeding back to me on what was going on there. Almost immediately, both the Generals and all the soldiers involved started calling them out on throwing the test to make Stronghold 2 seem unfair to their side. Keep in mind that elites were agreed to be used for *both* sides, so either the Dragoons had suddenly become 'below average' at their own base, or they were purposely ruining the results of the test in the hopes we would change our minds and want the other base back. Look at these screenshots and you might think 'below average' is generous on our part when we're talking about the notorious FoA Dragoons: 868142a6c5c617e0f06a0830ef802e1b & 62c496a6377cb83f48b622cf8449c290
We knew for a fact that FoA was throwing the test, and we also knew that they would never admit to throwing it. That is, until they ACTUALLY DID admit to throwing the whole test and wasting our time in the process: d2d58f83061ceefb2f3605ad58cb285a & ccf5d229240b71632437387446ed24ec & 361c26ca1db5caea502efc4fac3759e7. It doesn't end there either, they were caught admin abusing during the simulations: 4607de3c3c90e41c2e420ad56d30cadd. This is the video of them throwing during the test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQwJgupfZQw Piece it all together and some might come to the conclusion that they knew the base was fair all along and had to fake the results in order to get what they wanted. Just a theory.
It was at this point that we were very seriously considering suspending the negotiations for all of the hassle they had caused us, if not for the majority of our members who were looking forward to a war to keep them interested in the game and relying on us to get it done. Since our members desperately wanted this, we took Shadownize up on his offer of a '100%' test the next day even though we could have done all of this the first time around. Generals Ttom and Hunter took up the responsibility yet again and led the tests on Stronghold 2. This time, it seemed like FoA was taking it seriously after we made it clear that we weren't going to put up with them wasting our time again.
Second time around yielded the results that we should have gotten originally. VAK and FoA both won on the defending side of Stronghold 2, which completely contradicted their original claims that the changes we wanted would be 'giving us free wins'. We made sure to record the tests as well, here is the YouTube video showing the results at SH2 on the do-over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp7UPuB-bTs. Now here's an image of the leaderboard while we were on the defending side of SH2: 0415cc43a699b9d4531c67fd37642f2a. This proved our point that Stronghold 2 was not unfair whatsoever to the defenders and actually still favoured them, and it should also tell you how bad the other base was that we saw this as a significant improvement.
Since we recognised the legitimacy of this test over the previous one, we let them test SMO as was originally planned. We beat FoA on *both* raiding and defending sides and proved that we could win at our own base, something they couldn't do. Images from the test: e802b2c97c00e4711d35b33478db7e9d & a3ea63c5be5cc4409571984fcdb0468c. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaAUp18_JlQ. This proved our other point that we could practice what we preach and win at our own base, and that SMO was not in desperate need of changes like FoA's base.
After this, FoA high rank LordMiltonious started making irrational claims that we had a ton of practice at SH2 despite that not being true. FoA has had more experience raiding SMO from all the times it was open before the war declaration than we ever had on Stronghold 2, not to mention the changes made to Stronghold 2 changed the tactics much more significantly than SMO, meaning any practice we did have would have been largely nullified. LordMiltonious came to the decision that they wanted a copy of our base that we put a lot of effort into, as seen here: 4202e97e68403ffde6dabb35ab097faa. This was later denied by Shadownize 2eb509da18e9a7d05ce7e690ff3ad4a1 - this just goes to show the lack of communication and competence in the FoA high command.
Speaking of the FoA high command, the three 'main' FoA leaders I mentioned near the top of the thread ducked out of their own negotiations roughly only a week into the work, leaving everything to lower ranking Officers of the group except for the occasional appearance from Shadownize. Paul went missing after the first few days and hasn't been seen since while Reversonal barely contributed to the negotiations, and caused problems wherever he did. These so-called leaders are one of the main reasons why the war negotiations took so long and should accept the blame for their lack of leadership, or at least communication with the VAK HICOM: grHO1Bo. They should have never declared this war if they were too busy to negotiate for themselves. Even Shadownize himself agrees with the state of the FoA Officer Core: 958bba183581b9279eb5dfa40906ea19
We also have evidence of Paul criticising FoA for stalling the negotiations when he himself didn't put the effort in and bailed after the first couple of days. e6d50b0fe28206eb9a5bea73b819c5e8
This would have not been so much of a problem had it not been for the incompetence of the Officers chosen to replace the FoA HICOM during the negotiations period. While LordMiltonious has already been covered in a fair amount of depth, the other Officer given the task of negotiating was Bballer. Here are some chat logs of Bballer during negotiations: a/i9EUX. He threw more insults than propose actual solutions to the problems.
On top of all this, FoA used this state of war negotiations to shamelessly try to snipe as many of our members as they physically could. This is one example of FoA HICOM desperately trying to recruit any members out of VAK during a time that is supposed to be for discussion: 27b9df3f358dbd7487b7966940eb79a9. We could find more examples given a little more time but it is immediately clear that FoA has manipulated this situation to lying and manipulating our own members. I could keep going on and on about shady tactics employed by FoA like this evidence of Damien lagswitching 59043b64de5747fb21899de0953ed8a7 but this thread will need to come to a conclusion.
Just this evening, we discovered from FoA leadership that they are planning to pull out of negotiations for a war *they* declared and "moving onto different matters": 0c4f69a4d095363f4ce5b20a432096f0. Even though previously stating Vaktovia was the 'great enemy', it is only reasonable to be concerned for the future of FoA as a result of this decision to bail. Nonetheless, we wish to offer Arcadia the chance to reconsider this and legitimately work with us this time to come to a mutually beneficial conclusion to these war negotiations. We do not desire such an abrupt and unfulfilling end to this war which carries such great potential for fun and exciting times for our troops. Don't let this be FoA's latest failed attempt at war just because you can't bring yourselves to sit down with us and be civil. You have 24 hours to decide and make a fair offer. b811ec6c8a0e96f056ce69e1bf29615e
(Written by Supreme General Bisho / K. Bektor)
- Emperor Vaktus - Supreme General K. Bektor - General Astrochemistry - General Ttom25rocks - General Hunter7777 - General VeitMyani - General Anakin_Skywalker
- Colonel Danthein - Colonel DemonTitan - Colonel Spike - Colonel AstralStrike - Captain Scelus - Captain Xaela |
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ox771
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Danthein
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888min3
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| 22 Jul 2016 12:25 AM |
Hail Vaktus.
Make Vaktovia Great Again |
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Xaela
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Scelus
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| 22 Jul 2016 12:25 AM |
Glory to Vaktovia!
-Captain Scelus- |
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Brutecus
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| 22 Jul 2016 12:25 AM |
| I hope FoA will allow this war to happen, and hopefully the clan world finally sees the truth regarding these negotiations. |
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BOBONASIR
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| 22 Jul 2016 12:26 AM |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKy91KjrkRM
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Synoan
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RebelXVI
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