Without a doubt if you have a Chaos tag and in another strat faction ( you are obvs working together ). It's such a coincidence Illdist and mates attacked us at the same time when Chaos did. It's impossible for a 7 man faction to have twice as many troops(plate armor) then us without the help of Chaos. Stop denying it on the forums to make you look good. And stop posting in our faction hall. I made a thread in the deplomacy section.
Since some argument got cross-posted somewhere it didn't quite belong, I'll address this here, I guess.
I sincerely don't know what the Mates are going to do before it happens. As far as I could see, it
was coincidental when they went after Teutonic Knights, since Ildist has never really seen fit to make it clear what he's doing to me. It did just seem like they were rallying to the war on our side when Chaos attacked you, but the notion you're trying to imply (and Kesh, as well; see
these posts ), that they're full-blown allies with us, is not the truth.
You didn't directly say that directly, but here's the rub: the S&D in the Mates' territories empties out relatively routinely, or pert' near. They're actually active, as far as I can tell, and apparently more active than you've been, considering the amount of S&D leftover in your fiefs compared to theirs - but more importantly the fact that they've got
three current fiefs, and had another for over a week until you took it. It's easier to get gold when you've got the means to do so and territories to generate S&D in. I can't tell you how they've managed to get the gold to afford as many tickets as they bought from us and gear them up, let alone to gear them with armor as heavy as varangopoulos part way. They haven't gotten any money from us, whatever else we've exchanged with them.
"Working together" is not the same as allied, and it is not the same as handing over resources for free, either. Not to disparage, of course, the fact that it happens or the people who do that (such as Chaos and FIDLGB). The Mates haven't gotten their plate armor from us, and they haven't gotten the gold to buy it from us. Any "working together" is by way of trade agreements and access to the same information, nothing more. Malaclypse wasn't trying to make us look good; the Mates (incidentally now a 10-man faction) have not been given anything by us for free, and you're just being accusatory to make us and them look bad, in your faction thread or not.
Yet another close battle...
Now this is something I think we can all agree on: These recent Art of War vs. Republic of Mates fights have been incredibly engaging, intense and
fun as a result. Cheers to us all for you guys' war, I say.