Whilst DOA/IOA and to a small extent TH/Black and others was a massive challenge for TFP to over come. The very fact that such a strong coalition existed is not an excuse for TFP but merely a reason to say congratulations to DOA for getting its diplomacy right and credit has to go to Fortyfour for that.
Anyway, even against all this I do not believe that TFP merely lost the war due to the sheer size of the opponents facing them. For a start the majority of the war was conducted by DOA and this can't be taken away from them. IOA obviously played its part but the other alliances mostly just contributed biremes when a TFP city had a DOA CS in it. So the glory for the victory has to mainly go to DOA.
The reason why I believe TFP lost the war, I believe was down to the leadership of TFP being substandard compared to DOA. This isn't a criticism of TFP. It is merely an acknowledgement that DOA's leadership was better.
DOA may have been the bigger alliance but the simple truth is that TFP had a massive local superiority. DOA are much more spread out than TFP were and therefore even though they are a more powerful alliance TFP had the regional advantage. TFP totally dominated Oceans 74, 75 and 76. TFP also totally dominated Oceans 85 and 86 and had an alliance with God's Heroes who dominated 84.
In short TFP were free to concentrate all their localized power on the one front with DOA and did not have to worry about attacks from behind. This is where TFP failed. TFP failed to concentrate its strength in a meaningful way. Many players remained behind the lines and were never involved in the war. Possibly as much as 60% of TFP did not participate in this war as they were not on the battle front and made no attempt to get to the battle front. Moreover the leadership (including me) did not adequately do enough to get people who were behind the lines onto the front line. Conversely we did not do enough to help those players who were totally on the frontline to have a few safe support cities behind the lines. I believe this was the single biggest mistake of TFP's leadership. As a result, TFP simply did not bring its full strength to bear, which is inexcusable considering TFP's local strength advantage, and I believe this is what ultimately cost TFP the war.
Towards the end of the war TFP's Ruling Council fell out with each other. Oh heck, lets be honest I fell out with the Council. It wasn't a heated debate, it was simply a polite difference of opinion, but I believe this falling out is what led to the spate of top TFP players leaving. I could be wrong but this is my opinion. Most of the Council wanted to kick out most TFP players and form a small elite alliance out of TFP with a few bigger players. Maybe players with 20+ cities. I opposed this on the grounds that TFP was loosing big players and a small elite alliance loosing a few big players would feel the loss even more keenly. TFP's small players were mostly behind the lines and were not costing the big players any resources in protecting them as basically they were safe and didn't need too much protection. I also felt a bit of loyalty to these smaller players. If TFP was to survive in the long term then it needed new blood and this could only come from developing some of those small players, as TFP was basically surrounded even though there was only one front. Whilst Tibs stayed out of this argument I think he would have actually sided with me as it was during this argument that he announced that Gods Heroes would merge into TFP. It was shortly after this arguement that H17 and HTS Gavin announced they were leaving Delta.
It was very quickly after this that Tibs had his little rant on this forum. I looked at the situation and did not fancy being in a TFP lead solely by the vulgar Tibs and with no HTS Gavin and H17 to control him. I therefore just quit. I was without an alliance and am lucky FortyFour got in contact with me.
I may be bigging up my own feeling of self importance here but I believe that if I had stayed then we could have held TFP together, even if the war would have eventually been lost. Every other major player who had quit TFP had simply left Delta. When I quit TFP I was TFP's largest remaining player and all my cities suddenly appeared on the rankings as IOA cities, due to Forty Four snapping me up. After I quit I received many emails from TFP players saying along the lines of "my goodness me what shall we do now?" I was the one who argued most vocally that TFP could win. I was the one who argued that it was actually impossible for TFP to loose. This may be my own vanity speaking but I honestly believe my changing sides was the straw that broke the camels back.
Anyway a big hearty congratulations to FortyFour & DOA/IOA for a war well won. Also a big hearty congratulations to all the DOA/IOA players who fought in this war; and also a big hearty congratulations to all the TFP players who fought in this war. All sides made it a good and fun experience.
. I never liked the war from the start, maybe it was because I had the since if we started to obviously win TH would swoop in and stop us cold, It would probably not be be because then DoA could say they won, but for two important reasons, DoA have been supporting TH and vise verse for quite a while, they are very close allies, and second if DoA were to fall, TFP would pose a major threat to TH, with the combined pressure of LoC,EoTD,TFP and other TH could fall... None the less, I felt the leaders weren't handling the war correctly. H17,dog, and HTS Gavin leaving, was the the final blow, Not only did I majorly dought Tibs skills to leader a alliance alone, but to represent TFP ina good way, flying under the TFP banner IMO was a sign of bad sportsman ship.