We lost a very good share of people when early game when our growth was effed, then we lost panda as well.
5 to 10 players is all we had, mostly always, and we did try to gather more players, a lot of them, but always by the time this was achieved we would have lost another batch of players, so things kind of always remained the same. Even in our ops, all we could do was hope that players at least launch their nukes so the active ones can make some use of them, but didn't work well at all.
So if solo or phips take over noobs leadership now (or even in the past) they wouldn't be able to do anything more than what we did, at any point. Unless ofc, you meant to bring a lot of players with you, but that defeats the stated point anyway.
We didn't join the world to win as rimnoobs, we had plans (Jeff had plans with panda while i had a good relationship with Steve and Raoul duke, and granny in inc. AND we made plans with and trusted sejn and goldie, over luke).
We are core players, joining a rim for a change was a troll. But that's the thing in being a core player, we don't quit until we are rimmed. And now we officially consider ourselves rimmed.
Anyway, at all stages, we had a good council and I feel that none of the steps we made were wrong or inadequate. We always made the right choices depending on the situations, but we were destined to lose against the mighty screw. If you guys remember, we never licked anyone's ass since day 1, not our nature, always straight to the point. If someone can recall the anti-sassy trolling on the world chat, i welcomed the trolls and stated my position right, while the people who were not screw and were trying to be screw being committed to their own tribes at the time (Shame on those shits, creating a ruckus in their own tribes to join the popular club, you know who you are), kept butt licking the screw leadership and ultimately ended up joining them which is okay, but the not cool part was how they did that costing a lot of players and their tribes this world.
"But hey you lost, so clearly you didn't make the right choices"- Aaah wrong. In whichever path we went, there always came a yes or no choice, no mid-way, no third choice.
"Jeff, we can only do this, or that, coz if we do nothing, screw walks over just like that" - my words mostly. Now, yes screw eventually walked over a lot of regions anyway, but that was the point, our choices delayed your expansion sometimes a bit (fall of avatar), sometimes really well (k55 front). And w71 was won that way, by slowing down everything, enemy quits. I think the same thing happened with w91 recently. Even on 93, its top few screw bearing all the load, and others seem to join once or twice a month. This is where I have to say hats off to daddy solo, but honestly tell me, was this worth your time at all haha?
What I am proud of in this world is the part where we did not give up at the stages where everyone thought we are done for, starting from LordBilly's Greatest words this world -"you shall disband in one week" to the time Jeff was banned - "Adios to the departing Duke".
Marathon runners as we say and yeah the cocky nature of some people always made us not quit at various stages or this world would have ended long back.
Don't mean to offend anyone, don't mean to sound cocky (i say that a lot, don't I?)
Cheers