Yeah like I told you before. FCC members are 100% opposed to the idea of messing up NA the way UIF did to EU strat. We refused to from an NA UIF with you and will always do so. We thought you had enough integrity to do the same and keep the game fun still on the NA side.
Although I believe this post is politically motivated (and bravo to that! this is not a condemnation of such), I speak to everyone else watching this go down not to grow too concerned about what is occurring.
This is an example of a low-grade
alliance; like the Allied forces of WWI (and look what Italy did!), they are by nature temporary. The UIF or Fallen+HRE are
blocs, they live perpetually; it's like the Soviet bloc of the Cold War, which was locked and unshakable in their adherence to a position (at least historically and by the view of outsiders for all three game and RL examples).
Note, these are terms that I'm creating, not actual definitions, for the sake of clarity on the issue. In reality, these two words are synonymous.
These two terms in the context of cRPG, alliance and bloc, are fundamentally different in that alliances are temporary. Allow me to draw some more examples from my own experience (which most of you share). Fallen and HRE are a bloc (GK is too, more or less). DRZ and Grey are a bloc. Hospitallers and Occitan appear to be a bloc, but that relationship may be changing under Arrowaine's new EU-First strategy. LLJK and Fallen, and BRD and Fallen, and TKoV and Fallen, and even DRZ and Fallen were all alliances. These relationships all changed, the latter even turning hostile at after Strat 2.
Do not mistake alliances for blocs. Alliances can, and have, broken apart as events unfold. Let that assuage any fears of the Sky-Is-Falling Chicken Littles out there. Alliances only last as long as they are convenient to the members. Theoretically, so do blocs, but due to innumerable reasons that kind of change never occurs.
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All that above being noted, there's certainly something to be said about the Concert Standing conundrum. If someone in the front row of a concert stands up, he has forced everyone behind him to stand as well. An alteration by an individual of little to negative value can cause a net loss for the whole. Everyone is worse off than they were when they started- comfortably seated.
In our case, comfortably separated and unbound by agreements.
This is a fundamentally flawed argument, however, as alliances are NOT a net loss. Alliances are often necessary for smaller forces to compete with a larger. Alliances bring more predictability and make the changes from expectations more interesting; as a player in the underdog faction against larger factions from day 1, it definitely has made my own experiences more enjoyable. They also allow you to fully utilize key mechanics of the game, like filling rosters and establishing full teams that can work together, and finding that ideal balance between the different archetypes of players (cav, inf, range).
I would estimate that to effectively accomplish these three things listed above requires around 80-120 active players. And, wouldn't you know, KUTT and Hospis still don't have that many combined (they're getting close though!). Anybody want to bet that they'll have to bring in outsiders to fill rosters?
That's why there are alliances, and that's not a bad thing.
