i don't think SOL leaving the game is good either. we need all the members in this game. you seem like a reasonable guy Jiman. if i was a SOL member i would be in your boat also, because as a SOL member i would want to be in an alliance that will give me wars which i deem to be fun and makinso's job is to find you guys such wars. but i don't think that's happening recently either imho (from a outsider's perspective).

just like a netgainer alliance's job is to find ways to keep their members netgaining and foster an environment that allows that. evo has been doing a good job of that recently for instance and monsters have been also (and historically they always has been).

i'm reaching out and saying that we NEED to find a way for both sides to be happy. i'll even make sacrifices and even volunteer to take turns in the round robin to war SOL and other aggressive alliances if it means i can at least enjoy it just a little bit. if it was up to netgaining alliances they would never want to war SOL but of course i understand SOL needs their fun just like netgaining alliances do and we do need to coexist here. it's not about winning or losing really it's about having fun also. this is what pre-planned wars would hopefully solve no? we only get wars where its guaranteed to be fun for both sides (because otherwise why would you preplan such wars if you know beforehand its not going to be fun for you).

netgaining alliances also have fun when they war, but they just don't want to war as often as warring alliances. do you remember as a long time SOL the SOL vs UCN war? do you remember why that was fun? that was probably the most epic war i ever saw (and i didn't even participate in it i was playing in LaF :P) but i remember being at the edge of my seat watching warstats everyday for a war i wasn't even a part of because it was such a close war (and it was just as fun for SOL as it was for UCN i bet).

we don't have those wars anymore. i remember there was some talk of netgaining alliances just all going on vacation mode and taking the reset off if warring alliances blindside them again for no reason as a solution to this madness. just the fact that i heard that brought up tells me something is fundamentally wrong. to most netgaining alliances there's no point in fighting a war that they have no chance in winning. it's not like this game is like state of the art and super fun as it is in the 90s anymore.

when netgaining alliances are backed in a corner, they have no choice but to take the extreme. i'm just as disappointed as you that it had to come to this extreme this reset. i deeply wish it would've never been this way. if you have prearranged the war with Sanct/Omega/Evo/LaF/LCN/etc. (just from the top of my memory alliances you war so far in EE, i think you also warred NA in EE right? pretty much every single netgaining alliance u have fought so far in EE through rotating political maniuplation) you would still get the same wars and possibly more challenging wars (and might have lost some, but would've definitely won some too of course)... but instead you guys play that political game and isolate each one of us individually throughout the past few years just to find wars. i think the result would've been the same (you still get the same wars), but at a way where it is less toxic to the server imo.

you can ask evo/sanct/lcn/omega heads yourself (some of them vocally have expressed the same ideas pretty much). i don't get along with all of those alliances personally but somehow we can come into an agreeance when it comes to that point. and it's not like we're stupid either and can't see it. we all do. we all know you rotate us through politics so you can isolate yourselves to FS us. it doesnt have to be this way.

i'm not completely blaming SOL for this either. i know we historically didn't cooperate with you guys either and try to limit you from your fun as much as we can too just like you do in the reverse. we are just as guilty. we don't get each other's ideals so we just assume the other is wrong and try to drive each other away. maybe we should come into a universal agreeance together and form a new era of earth.

it's not like it hasn't been done before.. we had fundamental server shifts in policy before (from C:C retal to 1:1 to L:L, etc.) we used to not have uNAPs and only NAPs, etc. we created the idea that breaking uNAP and DPs is shunned by the whole server, etc. we can all create the notion that only pre-arranged war is acceptable if we chose to.

and maybe the devs should be the one fixing it if the community refuses to. i think earth is fundametanlly flawed design wise (and hence why mehul gave up on it for utopia imo.. its not the current dev's fault because they copied mehul's design but they can fix it going forward tho). let's take a successful game like starcraft. very similarly you are forced to "net" (aka building your economy so you can afford more units) and "war" (aka attacking your enemy with your units and destroying all his buildings). very similar to earth. but because the condition of winning is that you must essentially war to win, you are forced to war to win. therefore there is no "blindsides" that make the game not fun, because everyone expects to be attacked eventually and you spend all game building up for defending against the attack as well as launching yours.

the problem with earth is that winning a war is a user/community created notion. nothing in the game says "you won the war!". the only game created notion of winning is actually netgaining (through the final rankings sheet). the winner of the reset was designed by mehul as the guy with the highest nw in the end. i personally think it is lame that the game doesn't accomodate the war related things. this is why it is so hard to fit netgaining alliances and warring alliances in a positive and community building way. and the fact that expenses are built in the way where you are pretty much doomed to not netgain well if you spent the time to build heavy troop and sdi defenses for instance makes the netgaining alliances not run to run troop and sdi heavy countries when they are trying to chase down that ANW/TNW title. maybe if we have AI countries that randomly killed countries to keep you on your toes so everyone is forced to be decently defended at all times (thereby making blindsides less effective), or anything that gives an equal playing ground to all netters to have an incentive to also be in a position to have fun in war. there's just so many ideas you can do to help this and i'm just touching the surface...

i can blab forever on this, but imo either the community does it (by doing prearranged wars) or the dev fixes the design flaw (imo) that mehul created in regards to war vs net, or we will be in this same position