[Zotnam]

Originally Posted by lokken

From the smaller alliance's point of view, a friendly agreement with a much bigger alliance can make a lot of sense. You avoid incoming from a big fish, potentially avoid a scenario where a big hostile alliance treats you as a roid farm, and get access to targets you otherwise wouldn't without the kick back of being heavily targeted yourself. So they might be helping someone else to win, but they are protecting themselves at the same time.

I don't think this can be underestimated. While my 10-ish rounds involved in politics with Ascendancy can't really compare to your experiences in multiple alliance, for me steady smaller allies were always one of the most important factors. That and timing. Offer an alliance the right deal at the right time and you'll get what you want, while a week earlier or later the same suggestion would have been laughed at.

More than anything, pa politics seem to be moving in circles. All these fort naps and general avoidance deals without-using-the-wording-we-are-napped is mirroring a lot of stuff in the late 20's/30's. Nobody goes to war without trying to gain an advantage, block, counterblock, avoidance is all the same. There are no noble alliances doing things because it's fair, everything is to benefit the alliance. There never were either, it's a fairytale. But if you can sell it like that, of course that's what you do. Looks like Vikings have been able to this round.

If you look at it objectively, no alliance with 25% less members than the rest should ever be allowed to sit on top roid averages for the majority of the round. It's a major fail by the alliances with max members outside of Spore, who are obviously winning without pissing anyone off majorly. No matter what anyone says about ship stats, politics made that scenario happen and apparently it's accepted in hc circles now that an alliance is fat as long as they aren't going for the round win!

It reminds me a bit of the asc round with all the battlegroups banding together (I forgot the number). Back then alliances were bigger though, and we could roll up the smaller alliances fairly quickly once we got through the initial bullshit. Currently alliances like ND, HR, ROCK and even CT lack the ability to dominate those smaller alliances on their own.