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

RE/HRE conflict

In light of the recent activity in GC and apparent hostility between the two, I interviewed both Roman Empire's leader Patience King, and Holy Roman Empire's leader Princess Botchface. the following is their interview

[17:35]<Dakota> may i ask why you declared war on both slr and re?
[17:37]<Princess Botchface> I started an alliance to amuse myself called Dark Carnival [ICP], I declared on Slayer because its a band name.
[17:39]<Princess Botchface> I changed it Holy Roman Empire [HRE] a few hours later to troll PK, I was planning on leaving the following morning and accepting an invitation from Loki
[17:41]<Princess Botchface> When I got up and checked on the incoming I saw two new ones moving quite slowly with one arrow on the map and 6 days travel time. I decided then to update the alliance page and start recruiting
[17:41]<Dakota> so there are no true hostilitys between hre and slayers?
[17:42]<Princess Botchface> No
[17:42]<Princess Botchface> I forgot about that until now
[17:44]<Dakota> what are your current intentiond towards RE?
[17:45]<Princess Botchface> I intend to continue fighting RE, even if only in defense of myself, until either they pull out or I'm n00b ringed.
[17:47]<Dakota> you previously stated this was the latest in a series of trolls between you and pk, may i hear some of the previous trolls?
[17:48]<Princess Botchface> I don't really recall specifics, little things like calling me by my alts name, Lord Moonpie, hitting on me, etc.
[17:50]<Dakota> is this truely a alliance vs alliance matter? or simply a few specific players?
[17:51]<Princess Botchface> At this time, it's Alliance vs. Me
[17:52]<Dakota> do you have anything to add at the end?
[17:53]<Princess Botchface> RE's leaders whining about being trolled as a justification for ganging up on one player is a bigger joke than I could come up with.


[18:04]<Dakota> may i ask what your responce was when you were declared on by hre?
[18:05]<Patience King> I was a little surprised when HRE declared since it is turning it into a full fledged war from a skirmish
[18:05]<Patience King> but i`m ready for anything.
[18:06]<Dakota> have you spoken to princess botchface about it since?
[18:07]<Dakota> (in a diplomatic setting, not in GC)
[18:07]<Patience King> no
[18:08]<Dakota> princess botchface has previously stated this is the latest in a series of trolls between you two, can you confirm or deny this?
[18:09]<Patience King> deny
[18:10]<Patience King> I have never trolled her
[18:10]<Dakota> is this truely a alliance vs alliance matter, or simply a few specific players?
[18:11]<Patience King> since he declared war , rome will use all its resources to bring a quick and decisive end to the war.
[18:12]<Dakota> do you have anything else you would like to state?
[18:13]<Patience King> That we are simply responding to a troll who clearly instigated the whole thing and is now being punished for it.

It has since been confirmed that attacks were sent at Princess Botchface prior to her war declaration. Patience King has stated he is awaiting Princess Botchface's surrender

Author: Dakota

The Invisible Land Claim

Well known Land claiming alliance 'Roman Empire' appears to have an unlisted addition to their land claim, their original annouced expansion into coanhara in early April stated the following:

As to the aforementioned extension of our claim, effective immediately, Rome lays claim to the Southern portion of the desert of Coanhara which borders Westmarch. This claim encompasses all "desert" tiles in the area from -690x to -500x, and under coordinate -2040y. The Southernmost border will vary based on the natural border as desert tiles give way to more fertile land in Southern Coanhara. We also hereby complete our claim on Westmarch, claiming the easternmost section in addition to our earlier claims. Those whose cities already reside in these newly claimed areas are hereby granted a special exemption. These cities are also under Roman protection as per the new policy announced above. This is but the first of many planned benefits to be offered by Rome. As we continue to grow and prosper we will pass that property along to who reside within our land claim.

However, after the retirement of jtk310, it appears Patience King did not agree, as he continues to declare the entire desert as part of the RE land claim, on september 19, a player disput
ing this forced him to rewrite his land claim, it now states the following:

As to the aforementioned extension of our claim, effective immediately, Rome lays claim to the Southern and northern portion of the desert of Coanhara which borders Westmarch. This claim encompasses all "desert" tiles in the area from -690x to -500x, and under coordinate -2040y -579 2011 , -638 -1964 , -549 -1879 , -514 -1883 , -497 -1962 .

However RE continues to enforce thier claim, even over 20 sqaures away from it, when asked for his reason for doing so, alliance leader Patience King qouted the following section:

This claim encompasses all "desert" tiles

Any attempt to point out the rest of the listed claim has the person simply declared a 'troll' and summarily removed.

On an unrelated note, The Guilds former leadership is still waiting on its 119 million gold payment from patience king, for goods traded.

Ppjotr Breaks Siege / Goldy1 returns to SIN

A recent RE siege on Ppiotr's city of Pir Urbas was broken by his alt, Ppjotr at 9:36 on the 14th July. Reportedly, the siege break was preceded by a number of elite cavalry hits and then by some larger hits.

I was online at the time of the siege landing and got in touch with Patience King, the sieger and head of RE. His response, which indicated that this was the start of something larger, has been deleted since the siege break. I would ask all players to not delete messages sent to the Telegraph's reporters as it makes writing articles much more difficult as we have to rely on our memories. If you do not want something reported, mention it in the message or in a message afterwards.

The past week has been a tough one for RE; between the 2 razed towns and this siege break, it seems like they might have bitten off more than they can chew.

Goldy1, who defected from SIN on the 25th June and joined TUF on the 27th rejoined SIN on the 11th July. This could indicate that Goldy1 was a spy, sent to keep an eye on TUF's operations.

UPDATE: I am crap at this news thing. I would like to apologise for my earlier accusation of deletion.
Patience King had this to say about the siege:
'The glorious roman empire is sure that the goals of the siege will be met in full, some people may be surprised on the main purpose of the siege but they are to find out in the future.
Rome has lost several isolated towns and participated in a tourney but we are far from spent.
Consul Patience King'
In this, Patience King, indicates that the objective of the siege was not the raze or capture of Pir Urbas. It will be interesting to see whether the result will help RE break TUF's momentum.



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