Ok folks, let's bring this back on topic.
The main thrust of the points of several Venom 2.0 members in this thread is that Black Legion cannot be trusted to keep friends. This is patently false and clearly the intent is to attempt to isolate Black Legion for their own person gain. This comes in light of the fact that Venom 2.0 has had difficulty taking more than a handful of cities from us in any given op, despite their obvious immense effort.
Clearly BL is fighting well to have forced Venom to take to inflammatory propaganda against us.
It is true that Black Legion and League of Delos had a very close relationship in some ways, despite the fact that coordination between the alliances was very small. Monord and I were both large players in o43 in the early days and had many conversations together. In the war between LoD and Chaos (Imperium) which determined dominance of central and eastern o43, BL members had an important hand in assisting LoD win that war. Until a few days ago, BL only had about 100 cities in o43, a number largely unchanged since May. We had agreed early on that we liked each other and were interested in pursuing wars in opposite directions - LoD into o53, and BL into o34 and o44. At various points in time we exchanged cities as positioning and refugee policies dictated.
There are some other alliances in Paros which BL has attempted to engage, and which diplomacy fell short of achieving a desired outcome, specifically Villainy being one. We began talks with them in June when they had 40 cities in o34, which we considered out ocean. However, by the time the talks ended Villainy had recruited up to about 100 cities in o34 and had opened up an academy in that ocean as well - feeding off of our targets. In light of the fact that Villainy has
to this day only ever lost 4 cities to Venom 2.0 despite the fact that Villainy has a high concentration of cities in o45, a Venom 2.0 stronghold, it was safe to assume then (as it is now) that Villainy only ever had intentions of either simming the rest of the game or invading our oceans, both of which are crimes and a declaration of war.
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In reality, I like the leaders of Villainy, and have had some wonderful conversations with Bolina. The Black Legion experience would never have been so much fun without wars against Villainy and Venom 2.0.
The recent island colonization in o45 was a conscious decision by Monord and MrShaw that stemmed from a skype conversation in which BL asked
"Now that you've conquered o53, what is your next plan?" This question was not posed because BL was going to backstab LoD once they committed to a battlefield - it was to gauge whether there was a possibility of opening up a shared forum between the two alliances where members could coordinate conquests and defense. This is the time of the year when every alliance faces attrition, either from players going back to school/work or getting promotions. Having played grepolis for the past three autumns (and as a leader for two of those autumns) I was attempting to judge the best way to deal with the inevitable attrition. The decisionby Monord and MrShaw to found on that island in o45 was motivated by several logical reasons which I will not go into in this forum.
Ironically, it was those holdings in o53 which brought LoD into conflict with Truculence.
Well, I'm sorry to see LoD set back, I really like Monord, Rawtorp and the other LoD players. That said, their war with Truculence in o53 had nothing to do with BL, and besides, LoD fell apart from a leadership void - not some BL conspiracy. We all win some and lose some, and it looks like the ultimate winners of this round are Truculence.
Cheers to Doug and the Truculence crew. Cheers to Sereton for posting this thread, a final farewell to an alliance he liked.
Now everybody suit up, zip up your pants and stop being rude to each other. Like my grandma used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, bend 'em over and shove an LS nuke up their (W)
