First of all i'll now violate rule no. 1 - sorry about that but i have no other choice.
HG did you ever consider, that the reason i've been "hostile" towards you the entire game, is because of these arguments you keep comming up with. They are never objective and always favor you, eventhou you try to cloud them in historical claims and so on.
The DOW of KOJ was a clear violation of the rule, be it badly written or not, you can't earnestly claim not to understand it.
Furthermore, you gained MA from my sub, something that i would never have given you in the first place. I didn't notice this, mostly because i had no reason to think it was given to you. I do believe you knew i myself would never give it, so getting my sub to give it to you seems somewhat gamey in my view.
HolisticGod said:
But if you'd simply honored the alliance call, the point would've been moot. You didn't out of spite.......Six provinces down because you're a prick and a pedant.
I didn't because attacking my vassel is against the rules. That doesn't make me a prick and a pedant.
HolisticGod said:
Actually, I didn't break any rules. Nor did I try to circumvent them.
You did break the vassel rule.
HolisticGod said:
My argument is not that he was in the wrong, technically, by forcing me to DOW the overlord (which, incidentally, I did two months after Jerusalem, because I had to cancel MA first). My argument is that he could have simply honored the alliance call, therefore keeping us in compliance with the rule and sparing me two more stabhits after the obscene -3 I got for not paying attention. ..
So you attack my vassel and expect that i make sure, you suffer as little stabhit for it as possible?
HolisticGod said:
He didn't not out of a cloying dedication to the exact letter of the rules (i.e., if he'd simply honored the call, the rules would have been followed and he knew it), but maliciously so I'd have to take the stabhit.
Once again, it's not my problem that you have to take stabhits to attack me.
HolisticGod said:
The crux of the argument is that Aladar, as the player of Aragon, could've saved me the -2 stab if he hadn't viciously declined the alliance call. Because he didn't, he pissed me off. That doesn't mean I broke the rule or talked about breaking the rule or even considered breaking the rule (you can check the log-I followed it exactly). It's just that, as a player, HoG was not in the mood to be any more generous than Aladar was. So he lost three provinces for being an asshole.
Does making the argument over and over again justify breaking the rules? It appears that YOU think so.
HolisticGod said:
That's all I said. I didn't challenge the rule in any way. I just recommended that Aladar consider being a touch more chivalrous in the future. Rather than releasing one COT (which was my stated demand at first), he lost three very rich provinces and a three province ex-vassal/ally.
Yes i'm the bad guy here....i see it clearly now that you have pointed it out so many times.
HolisticGod said:
The reason I DOWed the vassal and not Aragon directly was to preserve the element of surprise, not to abuse MA. Although forcing the enemy to cancel and making use of it for as long as he overlooks it isn't bad play at all in my book (it's akin to planting loyalists and spies in enemy territory), when I got it from John I made clear I'd cancel it in the event of war. Which I would've done irrespective of the DOW situation. All I wanted was the surprise blitz.
I fight fair. Period. I may be brutal and ruthless, but I'm neither cheap nor gamey nor an asshole.
First you argue didn't cancel MA to keep the element of surprise, then that i would probably forget to cancel it, which would be great for you, and then that you promised John, that you would cancel it in event of war.
And in the same point claim to fight fair, neither cheap nor gamey nor an asshole
HolisticGod said:
And yes, Aladar was brutal and ruthless. But unnecessarily so, and I made it very cear to him what the consequences would be. Refusing to honor an alliance call so the other guy has to take -2 stab is only a viable tactic if you're up to winning a war.
Regardless, what I did wasn't gamey and it wasn't cheap. Aladar made a conscious choice to dishonor and paid the price for it. All I was saying-all I've been saying all along-is that being pedantic and unsporting can get you into trouble.
Once again, why should i make sure you don't loose stab? And yes "being pedantic and unsporting can get you into trouble". But it only seems to be you are are these things.
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I the light of all this, i therefore rule the following.
All provinses and vassels will be edited back to before the war, since they were taken in disrespect of the vasselrule, which is there to prevent these kinds of vasselraping.
Why this harsh ruling you might ask. Had England not gone around the rules, he would have had to dow every vassel on by one, since i would never have called them, loosing much more stab and gaining a lot of BB.
I realise that this will ofcourse upset HG severly, but as he posted himself, being pedantic and unsporting can get you into trouble. And yes, this did get you into trouble.
Furthermore, i'll rewrite the vasselrule to what Daniel posted so that i can't be misused later on, and add the rule that MA has to be cancelled if at war.
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Sorry again for making it such a long post, i know they are a drag to get throu.
Aladar
GM