There is a lot of weird stuff being said in this thread, so let me clear some stuff up.
First off, my goal was always to destroy the Northern Empire. I spent a lot of time working on the project between strat 1 and the start of strat 2. Figuring out who would be where on the map and who would be interested in such a plan. When strat 1 ended the Fallen Brigade leadership had a long meeting about what our goals were in strategus, taking over the entire map was impossible due to game mechanics, so we decided that being a source of chaos in the game would be considered winning to us. The best way to create chaos, we decided, was to attempt to break-up the 2 mega alliances. The Northern Empire and UIF. UIF in strat 2 was a little nebulous at the time, they were saying they were disbanding but all the signs pointed to being bigger and stronger than strat 1. DRZ was claiming that they were working solo again and so I decided to take them at their word and see if they would be interested in a joint strike against the Northern Empire. Specially because of their place NW on the map and they wouldn't have any space to expand unless it was into NE territory.
LLJK, I could never figure out what their goals were, what their motivation was, or even who was leading them really. All we knew was that their were a lot of them, they seemed fragmented, but a force to be reconned with. I worked with LadyGAGA in planning some schemes to take DRZ territory and hand it over directly to LLJK in strat 1, but strat 1 died literally a day before the plan was to be implemented. In Strat 2 I just didn't know what the fuck they were doing. They were trying to join UIF then the NE, or at least this is what they were telling me. So we ended up mercing for them for 50k strat gold a week. When they couldn't or wouldn't pay up I went to ATS_Ecko and got 150k strat gold for agreeing to not merc for LLJK. Not really intending to live up to our end of the agreement one way or the other. I could have cared less. LLJK was doing a hell of a job fending off multiple aggressors at once. We just laughed and laughed, we couldn't believe that Ecko had given us 150k gold for essentially nothing.
When BRD and the Mercs finally came to a peace settlement, BRD had a fat army but nowhere to take it. So I just suggested that they attacked ATS and they would have our full support. That's when the full invasion happened. We moved a 10k army up into Tsardom territory to prepare for the attack, but I didn't want to blow our cover just yet. Eastern Tsardom was shitting their pants asking what we were doing with the army. I told them we were going to take a neutral castle just to the north of our territory. I'm not sure how much of that they bought. But Ecko_ATS came to me panic strickened, asking what our intentions were. I told him that we would send our 10k army to help fight off BRDs brazen attack against the Northern Empire and that Ecko should get Eastern Tsardom to move all of their troops to help against BRD. Eastern Tsardom leadership was obviously split on what to do. They moved about half of their armies to the west. The Fallen Brigade then quickly split our army into 3 smaller armies and took most of the Eastern Tsardom villages without a fight. I even managed to convince eastern tsardom not to show up for their own battles, so we took the villages without a fight. I don't even think most Fallen Brigade members knew that part. We than sat a 10k army on top of Eastern Tsardom's last village, which held their last remaining army. Basically in seige mode. We then funneled as many troops and supplies (including ATS's 150k gold) into BRDs armies. When NE was no more, I just happened to be in a teamspeak with all the leaders of chaos, hospitaller, occitan, ats and goretooth. They all pleaded that we let them keep Yruma castle and one other village (I forget the name). I told them that they would get nothing and that they would be scattered to the four winds. Goretooth was claiming that he would usurp Ecko and take the remaining loyal hospitaller and ATS members and form a new clan under his leadership. When I told him no, he went berserk swearing and crying and swearing that he'd fight me to the end of time. It was the best in life to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of Goretooth. But in retrospect, I think it would have been a smarter move on my part to allow these guys to keep the castle and reform; if not to keep them on my side, at least not have them be bitterly hateful enemies.
Strat 2 was a lot of backstabbing, lying, manipulating for sure. The Fallen Brigade had truly taken it's place as the only evil clan in strategus, and we had become the most hated clan in all of strategus. That is something I am still very proud of.
As for the middle eastern oil tycoon. We did actually have an oil baron in the Fallen Brigade, but he wasn't from Saudi Arabia, he was from Qatar. And we did pay for the LLJK servers for a time, after they were announced to be the official servers and Zealot was saying he couldnt pay for them anymore and that the ATS servers would come back online.
LLJK was always paranoid of me, always thinking I was scheming against them, but I never did.
