A) Raiding has been the one rule that all of NA could agree on for a long time... we "tried" to not gank or ninja roster, but "accidents" happened and it proved to be nonpunishable. Raiding however, that is easy to punish. For instance when the Berserks initially got back into this strat they raided HCE. HoC, upholding our end of the agreement, merced FOR HCE, our enemies at the time, AGAINST the Berserks, our friends at the time. Much of the community also partook in this public shaming and they learned their lesson after getting stomped in the subsequent battle/siege. The fact that we have never once raided anyone and have even gone so far as to merc on the "wrong side" in a battle or two to keep this "law" in place shows how dedicated HoC has been to keeping strat fun. Raiding is still just a shitty mechanic that rewards people who would rather "win" than have real battles and actual fun. There is no reason why you (or anyone in Acre) can't give back the raided gear after the raid goes down if you truly feel sorry for breaking the rules. Otherwise playing the "I am new and don't know things" card doesn't seem all that convincing.
B) Acre has used this abusive "gear bugging" tactic against other targets, so it isn't just HoC calling for your heads. Kalmar Union and now the Black Knights get to join us on that lovely pedestal. So this isn't just some massive Anti-Acre HoC conspiracy where we intentionally gear bug ourselves and lose each and every fief that has been attacked thus far. Every defending faction has always had peasant gear at their disposal for the
entirety of this strat. What is more likely, the core mechanics of strat decide to suddenly change (after being neglected by the devs for over a year), or something fishy is going on with all of these HCE attacks?
C) Bruttus, regardless of whatever beef you may have with us, I don't quite see how being the "laughing stock of NA" waaay waay back some 3 years ago has any influence on current events. Did we abuse known exploits to garner the rest of the community's hate? No, we were mostly all noobs at the time who were picked on simply for sucking. Oh no, we're so bad! Then we did go and declare war on basically the entire NA server, so there is that. But it's far better to quit strat in a blaze of glory (that actually provides battles for people) than to start cheating your way to the top (in a manner that deprives people of the only fun thing about strat).
D) If the Acre guy(s) who call all the shots are actually human beings, then maybe they would actually prioritize
fun while playing a
game. But it seems that instead of approaching KU/BK/HoC and saying "Hey guys, that was pretty shitty that you didn't even get a fighting chance that battle, if you promise not to change anything we'll transfer the fief back to you lads so we can try this properly a second time, alright?" that Acre would rather break the community-established rules, and the actually enforceable rules of strat just to try and "win." Seriously, that is straight up petty and pathetic. We shouldn't come to expect anything else from them after they refused to return the KU's gear from when the servers died and the battles never happened, but one could hope. I have faith that literally any other faction that had such "coincidental glitches" happening during their battles would have chosen the correct path, not the game-killing one... unless they weren't glitches and were more than a coincidence.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action.