Nov 8th 2014, 20:47:14
Things are so, so hard for small tags because those bad, bad large tags keep abusing them.
People are leaving the game because large tags are so mean and nasty to smaller ones.
At various times, Titans have claimed that they are having a having an unnecessarily hard time on this server because of these things. This reset at least, that is certainly not true.
Why do I say that? Because I know for a fact that it was a case of "what goes around comes around" rather than "big guys picking on little guys". How do I know this for a fact? A Reminder (#36) is my country: I'm the one who quad tapped them earlier this reset and later farmed them after their deletions.
I'm sure those in Titans who read AT, and maybe other frequent AT goers as well, will recall that I crashed their little farewell thread at the end of last reset because I was not happy with how they'd topfed one friend of mine, missiled another, and messed with the round of one more besides. I was deliberately an asshole about it because I was under the impression that they were not going to play this round; I would have not bothered with the AT mess if they were going to play, as despite the impression I may give by posting so much I prefer action over words.
I was pretty unimpressed by their response, as while a negative response to my hostility was certainly warranted, they denied they had ever possibly done anything objectionable and attempted to hand-wave away their actions by describing them in terms that were favourable to Titans rather than actually based in fact. They completely misrepresented the size of the countries in question on the topfeed, they completely ignored the missile, and they completely ignored their unwarranted aggression against my third friend.
However, they decided to return for another round and I decided that if the opportunity arose I'd return the favour they paid to my friends. Obviously, I got the opportunity.
Allow me a moment to detail what happened and how:
I obtained spy ops on all Titans countries, figured out their ally circles, figured out their defenses, figured out what would be need to break them and roughly how quickly I'd need to run to be able to avoid their retals.
On seeing the ops, I discovered that their countries were all pretty horrible. The commies had very little tech including no weapons tech, while their other countries appeared to have loaded up on agri tech only. Their ally circles were hilariously bad and mismatched, with their offensive alliances worthless while their defensive ally circles left their largest countries unpaired with each other and very vulnerable.
I made my hits, build my new land, and bought up to avoid the retal.
Their only genuine retal attempt was pathetic. Their main retal threat was a commie that had 12k A, 2k of which was unbuilt, with full turns and full turns stored. They had enough money to run all of their turns and not build, or to build up their land and attempt the retal a day later after properly arranging their allies, purchasing some weapons tech, and getting better prepped. Their commie immediately ran their turns, and immediately bounced their only real retal attempt. The defending report shows no ally losses for them, because their only offensive ally had no jets. They never made a real attempt to properly retal. They did the laziest thing possible then threw their hands in the air and ran to AT.
While their representatives were attempting to get in contact with tellarion, #308 launched all of their missiles at me and did a handful of harmful spy ops. #308 then messaged me "retal done" after they got one nuke past my SDI. This appears to be how things work in Titans, where the people who claim to represent them have next to control over their members and where they aren't even sure of what they are doing. This certainly was the case last reset, where they claimed to not have topfed my friend and didn't even realize they had ever missiled someone.
The rest of the tag launched their missiles at me shortly after, justifying it by saying that their inability to retal in a competent manner (they could have retalled me if they had put in some actual effort, though I fully admit I wouldn't have made it easy for them) somehow meant that 30 odd missiles were somehow appropriate. #308 threw in another bunch of spy ops. Most of these missiles bounced (yay SDI!), and the only real damage I took from this was BPT loss from spy ops; I was still about 4k A up. #308's owner posted on AT saying that they were done if I left them alone, suggesting that they didn't care one way or another about their tag's representatives and were acting solo.
At this point Titans had demonstrated that they weren't worth talking to, that they had no control over their own tag, they had no ability to properly retal, and now that they'd spent all of their missiles there was next to nothing they could do if they were hit in the future. There was no reason to show any restraint in the future if an opportunity arose to hit them, my only concern was for the rest of my alliance as I didn't want Titans suiciding on my alliance-mates.
Then, the deletions happened and eliminated the need for restraint as #308 became the only real threat. I acted accordingly, as did others. #308 responded to hits on their country by hitting countries in the tag that hit them and were accordingly killed by SoF, #141 dropped their land rather than lose it to others, and #412 was farmed out of humanitarian range. There is one real country left in the tag, which I'm surprised is still alive after topfeeding Pinoy and Paradigm.
So, why did this all happen?
Because Titans isn't and wasn't a real tag. Their supposed leaders had no knowledge of what their members were doing, and had no control over them. They had only a weak ability to retal, couldn't properly leverage the resources they had available, and no real grasp on what the consequences of their actions would be.
None of this has anything to do with them being a "small tag" or large tags being "out to get them" and everything to do with them being incompetent. None of this would ever have happened in the first place if they had any kind of a clue, as if they'd been aware of their actions and accepted responsibility for them I wouldn't have been annoyed in the first place, and if they'd been competent I wouldn't have had the opening to hit them. I can't really say that I'm complaining, though, as I ended up with 9k A from them and they're basically dead.
Thanks for playing, Titans!
tl;dr:
Titans got what was coming to them; their demise is their own fault.
PS: As one of the very few people playing who was part of the original Titans alliance back in the day (anyone else around aside from Hash?), I can't say I approve of your name choice in the slightest. We knew what we were doing and were actually a highly competitive group for the short time we lasted, rather than the absolute trash you appear to be.
PPS: Let this be a reminder that the first story to AT is not always the whole story, and that while everyone loves an underdog that doesn't mean the underdogs are actually deserving of the support they get.