CDS Alliances Prepare For War, A Second TCol Planned?

I've recently had the following mass mail sent to me from PTC (formerly DSA). It discusses plans for the CDS with regards to its war with Iron.

From: Pink Camo [PTC]
Subject: RE: NEW PLANS
Received: 21 Sep 2018 15:49
Original Message:

Greetings DSA!

I have some exciting news to share! DSA will be going through some  major changes. I am changing the name of DSA to PTC, Peaceful Traders Coalition. PTC will recruit peaceful players who want to trade, craft, hunt NPCs, and support TCol. Everyone will be REQUIRED to contribute and support. PTC's cities and members will also be in direct danger of being sieged/attacked. The reason for this is that as soon as the enemies of TCol find out that we are a support alliance, they will try to stop it. Because of the horribly placed cities due to sitting next to rare items that we harvest, TCol will NOT defend us. They cannot waste troops attacking on mountains and/or in forests. The only cities they are obliged to defend will be cities that are surrounded by plains, and inside of the CDS. 

The other part of my exciting news is that Zenorra will be leaving TCol to create a new alliance called TCol2. This new alliance will be filled with defensible cities (surrounded by plains), and instead of troops, they will have diplo forces like thieves, scouts, spies, saboteurs, etc. TCol2 will be the first of its kind in Illyriad. We believe that a well timed force of thieves has the possibility to wipe out huge amounts of armies.  All cities will be required to stay inside of the CDS land claim for defenses.

Please let me know your thoughts on this, and if you want to participate in the above alliances. Unfortunately, anyone who does not want to participate fully will have to leave. The days of a free ride is over.

Pinky

When asked to comment, Grombrindal said this:
On content, it is largely a brainstorm session that got send out too soon. We are trying to find a use for DSA, have been for years. DSA city placement has always been a liability. I can only assume this was meant to persuade some of them to fix it.

He also sent me an exchange between Agalloch and Pink Camo in which Agalloch referred to PTC as 'new targets' after one of them was found harvesting gear from the siege of Death INC.

UPDATE:
Further IGMs  between Agalloch and Pink Camo have been sent to me showing that they resolved the issue non-violently.

Author: Eowan

Death INC Razed.

Death INC, belonging to Tool of Iron was razed by Simba of TCol today at 02:57.

The town had previously been sieged by TCol as referenced in the article on the declaration of war between Iron and TCol.

When I asked Agalloch and Grombrindal about the raze, they gave the following comments:

Sent By:	Agalloch [Iron]
Received By:	Eowan Splintspur [Cala]
Date:	24 Sep 2018 13:44
It took em 7 days to raze an isolated town that had 2.5k trrops in it originally with 0 level coomanders :) it cost them over 500k troops a confed oh and babyboy spend 300 prestige to change his name to Ihateyouall! i(s that the cherry on top?) P.S and as a bonus i got a couple players out of it :P

Sent By:	Grombrindal [TCol]
Received By:	Eowan Splintspur [Cala]
Date:	24 Sep 2018 13:47
Not much to tell about the siege. It was not one of out finest works, but we managed despite massive pres building and enemy support by Aesir and Saints. We really did not want to fight this war, but if Aga declares and leaves his alt in our back yard, we have little choice but to remove it.

Author: Eowan 

IRON vs RE War

As with their last war, Roman Empire [RE] has declared on an alliance around 40% of their size by land claimed. Last time it was The Company [TheCo] for violating a land claim they never publicly asserted (see our story on The Invisible Land Claim), a one-sided war that TheCo never recovered from. This time it was against Iron Crusade [IRON], where they had a 200% advantage in terms of land claimed, and nearly 300% including their affiliated alliance REBEL. The backbone of IRON is a number of former members of The Unfettered [TUF], who have been in alliances like Asatru [Loki] and Screaming Valkyries [SV] in the meantime.

RE have not made public an casis belli for their declaration of war, but IRON were building up a presence near their land claim in Westmarch, and they might have been afraid that if they did not strike while they could, their land claim would be under threat. The war so far has not gone so well for RE, who might have expected IRON to be a pushover: despite IRON being unprepared for war, as Hyde has explained on the forums, RE have tried repeatedly to siege Spektor’s town of Hilland I, so far losing massive amounts of troops to have their first siege, smaller, broken (with help from HELL, who afterwards stopped helping IRON) and their second, larger, so far being badly damaged. Patience King, leader of RE has dismissed RE’s failure in the first siege, claiming that IRON would crumble under RE’s future offensives.

RE claim the title of Invictus, or unconquerable, on their profile. Will they end up being beaten by a far smaller alliance? An alliance that has, in the meantime, picked a fight with Loki. Anything other than a decisive victory would be an embarrassment for RE.
I reached out to Patience King and Agalloch, leader of Iron, for comments on the above.  First, Patience King:

> The war is going great and as planned the first siege was a test for hellfire to see if they would assist which they did RE declared on hellfire and after negotiations I secured a satisfactory deal with cerdarman . I don't care about population or size iron can keep using that excuse RE has declared on larger alliances without issue.

> The second siege did it's job iron forces attempted and failed to break our siege forces, ( our blockade and siege stayed up without issue in iron heartland ) so they relied on sitting each other in order to kill a small storm force which they managed to do .  The siege is seen as a success all my armies from all my cities including my alt are marching back with numbers intact and we will continue immediate offensives. Iron has been trying to exodus military cities down to aindara which get cleared by RE forces immediately while the cool down period is in effect.  Any comments that the war is not going well is idiotic and Rome will win and any notion that iron would have the ability to beat RE or make it surrender is a laughing matter NO one has razed a city in our heartland apart from SIN I highly doubt Iron can do anything they can't even defend themselves anymore .


Then Agalloch:
> I think the facts of the war so far speak for themselves,IRON is about 3 months old, although a lot of our players have played before we are returning players with only a few weeks of building our new accounts, REs inability to raze us is quite laughable in itself considering they been around for years and should have been able to wipe us off the map by now.Not only are they unable to raze us but they are also coordinating with a loki player to land a double siege on us, is it cause they are unable to field two sieges at the same time themselves? makes you wonder ......

> ALthough we werent looking for a war at this stage of our growth I am looking forwards to the ongoing hostilities,RE is welcome to bring as many alliances in this as they want, it wont change the fact they suck at war!

> Also our not launching any offensive ops so far doesnt mean we are incapable of it,we like to have a certain amount of succes in offensive ops otherwise there is no point due to the high ammount of troop losses a siege requires on the part of the attacker, the objective is to destroy the town and demoralize the enemy not some lame ass excuse about eating up enemy troops as some might claim. Anyone that says sieges are fakes or intented to eat up the enemies troops is living in another dimension.


-Alti

TUF under fire with a double siege op

AianNick's town of Freiburg and Kaven's town of just stolen both came under siege at exactly 4 am this morning. OleBlacklord is sieging AianNick's town whilst What The DEUCE? is sieging Kaven.

The siege on Freiburg was broken around 16:45 by ThorOdin, AianNick's alt, taking out over 200k SIN troops in a single hit.

Agalloch seems confident that the siege on Kaven's town will be broken shortly as well.

When I reached out to Saffron in GC, she declined to comment on the sieges.

TUF is now in confederation with EE, indicating that they are likely to cooperate with sieges in the future.

A siege by He-man on one of Janadorf's towns was almost broken by Walnut though due to a mistake, Walnut 'sent cav to wrong sq so siege force survived and captured'.

UPDATE: What The DEUCE?'s siege on Kaven was successful. The city fell at 10:12 on the 28th.

Author: Eowan The Short

Is STFU set to become next military power?

On the 3rd July at 07:42, Bob Diamond took the name 'The Unfettered' hostage by forming STFU. A ransom note was reportedly sent to Agalloch of TUF saying 'I am holding the name 'The Unfettered' hostage'. As yet, it is not known if any demands will be made for the release of the name but sources close to the telegraph indicate that a ransom payment of 1 Trillion gold is being considered.

Not content to simply hold onto the name quietly, Bob then proceeded to declare war on SIN, TUF, MEH and YARR! in the space of 10 minutes. Since the war declaration, MEH's members have fled leaving the alliance empty.

STFU's next target was WILD and when asked why he chose WILD, Bob Diamond replied 'He took my axe and used it as a toothpick! What else was I supposed to do?'.

STFU was then relatively quiet for around 24 hours until, at 00:17 on the 5th of July, Bob began declaring war on alliances again. In just 31 minutes, Bob declared on nCrow, SHAD, mCrow, ITG, Dlord, DKS and RE, mostly for saying cow puns in GC thought the RE declaration is though to be due to their involvement in the wars TUF is currently in.
During this spate of declarations, STFU's membership doubled which shows that many feel allied with Bob's cause.
A peace was negotiated between STFU and nCrow by Rill after she threatened to totally destroy Bob in GC. This appears to be a white peace though neither alliance has yet confirmed or denied this.

However, shortly after the peace was negotiated, TFs declared war on STFU. This was the first war declaration on STFU declared by another alliance.

Bob then declared war on GATE, M-X, X_C and ACHE. Soon after the war declaration on M-X, Bob appeared in GC and announced that the declaration on M-X was a mistake and he offered peace to M-X.

India joined TFs in declaring on STFU at 20:30. Dakota, one of this newspaper's editors, is leader of India.

In total, STFU has been at war with 19 alliances.

So far, there have been no sieges though Bob has sent a large army to attack Lone Wolf of mCrow. Artefore did send an army to Bob's town of Ponzi Scheme but recalled it almost immediately after sending. Bob has also been thieved twice.

Judging by STFU's aggression, high growth and ambition, it seems like they could be on their way to becoming Illyriad's top military alliance, a spot currently held by SIN after the Second Newlands War. It will be interesting to see how STFU expands and whether they move in the Broken Lands.

Author: Eowan The Short

Korlat2 sieged mid-exodus/TUF declares on RE

Korlat2's city of 'black coral' has been sieged whilst she was trying to exodus her towns out of elgea. The siege began landed at 21:03 on the 4th June. Both TUF and YARR! officials have confirmed that the reason why the town wasn't exodused away from the siege was that Korlat2's town of 'malaz city' was already being exodused when the first blockade on the city landed. 'malaz city' is now located at 669|-356 in Zanpur. Spektor is the one sieging Korlat2, it is his first siege for TUF since he joined on the 28th June from Unbow.
At the moment, there is 1 blockade, on the north western square and the siege is on the south western square. Both squares are on large hills with a jungle biome.
YARR!'s Solanar has said that even though the town is in an isolated position, they will try to defend it as Korlat2 was in the process of exodusing the town to the Broken Lands as asked and is active. This goes against Ranalos' comment on the siege of Hedeby when he said that cities in Elgea were 'indefensible'. Spektor has confirmed that YARR! are attempting to free the city as apparently there have been ' a few elite infantry divisions, and a moderate infantry force from his [Korlat2] other nearby town'. There were also some cavalry forces on their way to help free the city before the siege landed.

Some of the forces sent to remove the blockades were from Blaxx Stoneaxe, a player from Roman Empire. There has been high levels of  tension between RE and TUF before, they were very nearly at war at one point this year however, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. TUF declared war on RE on the 4th of July at 03:20.
RE is the third land claiming alliance to join the war against TUF. When asked about why Blaxx Stoneaxe attacked the blockade, Patience King, the leader of RE, said the following:
'Yarr asked us to help break a blockade on a member in Elgea so i asked blaxx stoneaxe to break the blockade on korlat2 , I did not involve any other members in the fight and since yarr did  not ask us to officially enter the war RE did not intend to declare war or have the entire alliance participate in the conflict'

Since the declaration with RE, it appears that TUF have exodused at least one town away from an inbound RE attack. Kentbird's 'Flo's Road' was exodused at 17:52 today away from a diplomatic mission by RE. It is not currently known by the telegraph whether there was a military force inbound in conjunction with the diplomatic mission which would have alerted kentbird or whether the exodus was just a coincidence. UPDATE: Black Coral hasbeen razed by Spektor

Author:Eowan The Short

TUF declares on SIN after Josh sieged

At 3:40 on the 26th June, Deo Volente's sieges on  3 - Legion! Legion who? belonging to Josh landed. 7 minutes later TUF declared war on SIN in retaliation.
This is the latest in a string of wars for TUF which started on the 20th January with the Death/TUF war and since the start of this year, TUF have spent just 68 days at peace. It appears that their war with YARR! will continue.
Last month, SIN concluded the Newlands War 2 in victory, making them one of the most powerful alliances in the Broken Lands. Josh was involved in both the Newlands War 2 and the earlier Stomps/Claimers war which could be part of the reason why he was targeted in particular.
By attacking TUF, SIN could be looking to prevent the alliance from reaching a size where they could pose a major threat to them. As it is, TUF has already been weakened by months of fighting meaning that a war with SIN is likely to be very costly and possibly disastrous unless TUF receives support from another alliance. Support from another alliance is possible, a recent poll on the Illyriad Times shows that SIN is 'the Most Loathed' top ten alliance in the game by a large margin. However, the recent displays of military strength by SIN will go a long way to make alliances think twice before joining TUF.
When he was asked about his declaration of war on SIN, Agalloch had the following to say:' this is not the first time they harrass a TUF player but this time we arent willing to roll over to their dirty tactics we are taking a stand against shitty playing  of that sort enough is enough'

The siege on Josh currently has 3 sieges, on the North Eastern, Eastern and Southern squares around it. There are blockades on the South Eastern, South Western and Western squares and there is an encampment on the North Western square. The Northern and Southern square have dropped equipment on them, indicating that fighting has already begun over the city. All the squares around the city have the plains terrain so it is likely that cavalry will be used to try and liberate the city.

I have reached out to Deo Volente for comment but, so far, there has been no response.

Author: Eowan The Short

TUF targets Urlond Bloodaxe

In the space of 36 hours, Urlond Bloodaxe's cities of Haledur and Khedesh were razed. Haledur was the first to fall at 17:06 24th June to Agalloch. It was previously located at 845|-1817 in Pawanallpa. Khedesh was razed at 00:06 26th June by Josh.
It is believed that these sieges were partially due to poor terrain around the cities, with a building, small hills and small forests in the adjacent to the cities.
When asked about the sieges Josh said the following:"We chose Khedesh and Haleldur towns because they were also further away from the other cities in Pawanallpa and would be a bit harder to defend effectively with towns next door and spammed elite divisions, as well as other shenanigan tactics. Also, the fact that Urlond has verbally been trashtalking both me and Aga made it just a little more exciting. Furthermore, the battles have been a bit scarce. Apparently though, it was a very close race on the town Haleldur, with cav attacks from robmc, Ranalos and Solanar hitting the siege square Agalloch was on just twenty-thirty minutes after the raze came in."

The success of these sieges could show that YARR! is beginning to run low on troops in the Pawanallpa area after a number of successful sieges earlier on in the war. Ranalos, robmc and Solanar's late attacks could have been sent from towns in parts of the Broken Lands where there has been little fighting such as the Pirate Isles and Almeny.

In the past 4 days, TUF have managed to raze or capture three of YARR!'s cities. This marks a significant increase in their success with their only other siege win being Kaven's siege on Popayan in May. TUF seem to have found their stride and it will be interesting to see how YARR! fights back.

Author: Eowan The Short