As many of you know, I have left Tribal Wars because I am finishing up my master's and have a thesis to write. I have no intention of becoming another repinski and mouthing off about things I know nothing about, but many of the issues between HAWKS and DETOX stem from my time as Duke.
To begin with, k74 and the V!P merge. HAWKS and DETOX were a NAP then. I contacted Lord Hawk out of politeness -- HAWKS at the time had one player in k74 but k64 is their core K; I asked him if he was currently attacking V!P, and told him we planned to invite 10 members of V!P and attack and noble the rest. He told me he had no intention of expanding into k74 at that time, his plans were elsewhere. Twenty-four hours later, V!P merged into HAWKS.
Now, HAWKS is claiming that I did not speak to Lord Hawk, that he was being sat at the time. I am not sure how this makes a difference; I had the word of the person I assumed was the Duke, who then used my information to get V!P to move up their merge with HAWKS. According to Rufferto, a merge was being discussed already before the attack was planned and according to other V!P members who joined DETOX, HAWKS told V!P basically "merge now because DETOX is attacking you tomorrow."
I really don't care that the merge had already been discussed; Lord Hawk chose not to be honest with me then, and when I told him afterwards that this was going to continue to be a problem in our alliance he simply refused to admit that it was going to be a problem. First he told me DETOX could grow into k65 -- generous of him, considering we were ranked 10th at the time and k65 was in the hands of EVOKE, the #1 tribe. Then he said we could noble k84 and HAWKS would grow into k83... look at the map and you will see how well that worked.
Finally, Lord Hawk did let us invite a few V!P members -- none of the bigger members -- and we were able to noble a few on the k74 border, to the 475 line. HAWKS says they chose not to bring up every little border dispute with me even though I repeatedly asked them to let me fix border issues and not let them pile up; I certainly brought issues to their attention each time I found out about them and most of the time they did nothing, which added to the problems. Why have a border agreement if you are going to ignore it? And according to other people HAWKS have played with in other worlds, this is a HAWKS strategy: to put in accidental noblings and create clusters in the middle of an ally or NAP to be able to attack later.
Regarding k65 and the EVOKE members, Brett, Balkan, Uncle Sam, and the others: first, those guys were all HUH members who had first been in WHA, then DETOX, finally EVOKE before coming under attack by HAWKS after their merge with COLA and DRACO (I think that those were the tribes; there have been so many merges!). Despite being under attack by HAWKS for two months or more, with zero support from MORPH (as they were called by then) Brett, Balkan and the others had basically fought HAWKS to a standstill. HAWKS' only gains were in the SOUTH of k65 nobling barbarian villages and small players that were DETOX targets -- this after Lord Hawk and I discussed the HAWKS war and I told him he could noble war targets in the north of k65 but to leave the south to us, since k84 was all grey at the time and we had no place else to expand... remember he did tell us k65 was ours...
After some discussion, Lord Hawk indicated he would be happy to have DETOX working with him against MORPH. I told him that WATCH and LEGION were also ready to attack MORPH, but that DETOX had virtually no front with MORPH apart from Uncle Sam -- also Balkan Warrior had approached me because she was angry over some issues with sp.ag, and she and Brett and the other HUH members wanted to come back to DETOX. In effect, inviting them was the price of bringing DETOX, WATCH and LEGION into the war against MORPH, although Lord Hawk would prefer not to think of it that way. And anyone I invited then was cleared by HAWKS to invite. By the way, if you look back at the stats from that time -- Brett, Balkan and the others were holding their own against all of HAWKS' attacks, and when I sat their accounts I assure you if they had been troopless I would not have invited them.
HAWKS then invited Uncle Sam when I invited Brett and Balkan, neatly cutting us off from our new members. Uncle Sam quit and gifted his villages to HAWKS; again, to be fair, HAWKS let us take about half the villages, primarily the ones surrounded by Brett and Balkan already. Yes, we ended up with most of k65 after telling HAWKS they could have the north -- but HAWKS had told us before that we could have k65, and they were happy enough to get us attacking WHO (as they were by then called).
Incidentally, war stats against WHO: last time I bothered to look, LEGION had taken and kept nearly 400 WHO villages, DETOX had about 300, and HAWKS not even 200. I have heard HAWKS claiming we used them in the war on WHO and would not have gotten anywhere without them:
really? That's not what the stats say.
Regarding k55: when we originally attacked there, easty and pimpf were the ONLY HAWKS on the east side of the K apart from TheFuzzies, whose villages were across the bottom of the k. The agreement between DETOX and HAWKS there was that we'd be east of the 552 line, HAWKS would be west. We took our targets on our side; HAWKS invited Beware, who was on our side of the k. We protested, HAWKS released him to us on condition that we not noble him. Well ok -- but that made a big clump of villages we could no longer noble, at the very limit of our noble travel times from k75.
HAWKS was being attacked by Hoges and Ascendo and losing villages they were taking in k55; we were given permission by HAWKS to noble some of those villages on their side to stop them from taking back HAWKS villages. All discussed between leadership, with targets posted and approved. HAWKS, on the other hand, planned an op against br0nk including 20 villages on our side of k55, without speaking to us until (oops again) trains were launched. Per Lord Hawk, any villages that were taken in this op would either be given back or we'd get villages on the HAWKS side... and if HAWKS kept the successful noblings, they would not make clusters... all very nebulous, and none of it ever happened. HAWKS took about 6 villages on our side and all but one have had clusters made around them. Carvan is the best example of this. Generously, Balkan Warrior was given permission to noble a single 1900 point barb on the HAWKS side to offset those br0nk villages.
Regarding IFY and the NAP with WHO: I heard a lot of different stories from several different HAWKS players. All I know is DETOX, HAWKS and LEGION planned to attack IFY on October 26; HAWKS went back and forth, stating that things were heating up between HAWKS and the Scientists, but in the end we were told that HAWKS had listed 90 villages to attack. IFY stated he knew that he was under attack -- well yeah, by then he already had incoming nukes from DETOX and LEGION's southern villages -- and he told us that he was stacked. Brett scouted several villages and found them empty of troops. Uhtred nobled a couple, so did simran. I am not going to slam IFY too much because he's in LEGION now but he also told WHO before the merge with LEGION that DEYOX, E, HAWKS and LEGION had all offered WHO a merge and he'd decided to go with LEGION... and I know for a fact that DETOX never offered him a merge. Whether or not HAWKS and E did, I have no idea. I also read a tmail exchange between DITM and Awper in which DITM asked Awper to make sure that DETOX didn't attack HAWKS as WHO had a NAP with HAWKS -- this was a day or two after the planned attacks on IFY, in which HAWKS sent a grand total of 150 fakes from one player.
Incidentally, when I asked Lord Hawk wth happened with the attacks on IFY, he said that he had not authorized an op on IFY and we should not have spoken to anyone in HAWKS except him. Really? Then why do you have another duke and a whole barrel of barons? Why bother if you're th eonly one whose word is worthwhile? And by the way... how can I know it's you telling me this and not a sitter like before?
I just want to say that I don't blame Army or pimpf for any of this; I think they are good & honest players and if their hands were not tied and their authority undermined by Lord Hawk, they would have done a lot better. Lord Hawk isn't a bad guy, he's just a control freak -- which is fine if you're around ot play 20 hours a day, but not so great if you're only on once in a while and you're gainsaying the decisions of your barons and other duke. I left because I no longer had enough time to play the game properly and it was detrimental to the tribe to have a duke who could not be there when needed. Maybe it's a decision Lord Hawk needs to make also.
I made a lot of good friends in TW and I look forward to playing again when my thesis is done... late March or early April. Look for me in the world's scariest premade
. Hope all of you have a good Christmas or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.
Dom
