The funny thing McMassahole is you guys blaming me for not filling roster - the people filling the other sides are all people butthurt by being attacked at one time even months ago by squids - astralis, lco, mb, and acre. Even when we attack as a random group giving battles or sloths or even taser the 1-man faction just fucking around - every single person from those factions sign on same side. Thats whats filling the roster (and all the mercs you guys buy from semenstorm, boomshakalaka making a killing off you, james_cry_king pays lumetta to fight for MB too lol) All the factions that wanted to do nothing but trade all strat and had their caravans hit even once by squids months ago all merc for each other.
Most of the squids dont even play this game (their leader board alone - half their leaders dont even play, whereas every single MB leader listed does). 20+ MB show up for every single battle no matter 3 am or noon whereas about 8-10 squids show up at primetime. You obviously have the largest active merc pool even if not all of them on strategus ladder so you are the biggest faction. On top of that acre, lco both some of the largest merc groups. Half of Random Ai barbarian horde cant even make most of our battles. Sloths will merc for us but thats like 2-3 people left. There are so few random neutrals anymore and they often leave early unlike dedicated clan players that having 70% of the active playerbase all mercing together guarantees another UIF where only 1 side always has 10-20 more mercs.
We know how hard it is to fill roster. Its funny because MB has repeatedly made incredibly stupid mistakes on the strat map (main reason we took half your fiefs with 7 (now 8 as of a few days ago) guys. Aldo is not 9Finger or really any leader who actually knows what the fuck he is doing - loses countless troops to crime and upkeep and unarmed defenses of hundreds of troops in the desert. Even now you guys tactically made a huge mistake trying to save a shitty village like emirin. If we could even get close to your number of mercs (and you didnt abuse nighttime settings) we would easily flag cap a village like that, hell we were doing a 1 to 1 in that village and i was 23-1 while we were still only down 12 mercs until people got frustrated fighting 1 v 2 every fight being outnumbered by so many mercs and we ended up down 15 and our respawn timers much higher having so many less mercs. (44-29)
Knowing it was tough to get mercs we spent all day getting every neutral that plays and we barely scrounged together 29. You on the other hand, didnt even bother recruiting until an hour before and just hopped on your allies tses - and got 40+ of lco, acre, mb and astralis - 18 MB alone. A few random neutrals joined you (and I heard this in steam as i was recruiting - because aldo cried to them that you were outnumbered in mercs and desperate, meanwhile he waited till last 20 minutes to hire the 15+ MB he hadnt hired but were showing for battle to make it look like he had less mercs when he cried to the very few neutrals left.) We also have heard he told Soft_Juicy_Mango to change his nighttime setting (it switched to being started exactly before the ending of our first wave attack) to buy time to save their gear, but that argaloth hopped on too late otherwise both battles would have been pushed.) Talk about sad, he resorts to lying and shit like that to save his pixel crack.
We were leaving strategus and actually providing the first large battles in months not initiated by the squids. A LOT of battles as we wiped out half of MB's fiefs despite all their plate armor (i think squids initiated all of 3 battles against MB (busy fighting half the map), 1 by sloths and 2 by one-man faction taser - we have done like 20+ - you really were getting wiped out by 7 guys and not some large group) and meanwhile you had LCO attack us after aldo begged for help and had them give you troops as well to defend against 7 guys with your 50+ members on strat and 200+ ladder. I understand you are incompetent on strategus, its fine. We can't take advantage of it anymore. You are allied with most of the remaining active playerbase a UIF on NA side that only mercs for each other and we cant even fill a primetime roster with more than 30 guys showing up.
Asked around a lot for these battles and lots of people have school or work or the vast majority dont even play this shitty mod anymore - we were quitting too but at least giving the remaining trolls some fun battle before we left. The only people left active are about 150+ guys on strat in lco, mb, acre, and astralis (400+ on ladders) and they all merc only for each other as they run around map only doing trade runs the entire strat. Squids, sloths, the eu factions and us are the only active attacking factions left. If we leave early and do xp battles only with our friends then all of your members lose out with no battles and no xp ( I understand Aldo might not care as level 37 after playing over 100,000 hours in this mod, but his other members might actually enjoy fighting lightly armed opponents in their plate and getting xp). Plus all you do is defend like LCO did all last strat, its always easier to fill roster if you are defending, just like its easier to make allies for roster support if you NEVER EVER attack anyone.
Frankly, thats what we are seriously considering. The people we like and were giving the xp too, majority don't even play anymore and we have to put enormous effort to get even 30 guys for a battle - not worth doing that to feed your e-peen even as we do a near 1-1 with 2/3rds as many mercs and lighter gear, until the sheer larger number of mercs allows you to get on flags and spawn rape to make the K/Ds look better. Its not fun doing every fight spending a lot of effort to barely get enough mercs to have 1v2 1v3 every melee fight because we are fighting UIF (except biggest difference UIF actually attacks people on EU side, if we didn't attack you would be doing trade runs for 4 more months). We can go sit around and do nothing too except our xp battles for our friends alone and watch as you do absolutely nothing but maybe attack some unarmed 200 pop villages.