After action report "The Great Bobian War"

[vondrack]

Originally posted by BigFree
I'm not exactly sure where the 'intel' came from but I do rember getting it. I also remeber that I did not 100% believe the information either. I won't even bother with searching through threads to find out how the info got to RP but I'm pretty sure it happened in a chat since that's where most slips of info happen. It's also posible it was a gesture to try and help RP and not something done as a spy. A slip up is most probable. I have a hard time believing that there are any persons who are spying for another team.

Well, yes, I can imagine this would be how it would be arranged. But the person must have been well aware of acting against the will and intentions of the Lego team, whatever his motivation actually was. You can't disclose a top secret info on your own just because you feel like doing a gesture to a team that happens to be an ally of your allies' enemy. It's like (or even worse than) telling numbers and positions of troops - which is what spies do.

Keep in mind, that at the time, we were 100% part of a military alliance. Disclosing the location of saltpeter, no matter the motivation, was clearly against the goals of this alliance. Just imagine you would be able to secure the source and upgrade all your and GS pikes... due to how the alliance was arranged, not only GoW/ND would lose more troops fighting, but we would likely lose our own troops, too, because the war would quite likely escalate and our troops would not only make a token appearance, but actually get involved in the fighting. Causing the harm to or endangering the troops of one's own team is an act of treason. As simple as that.

If that person did not agree with the official policy of the team, it was his right to say so in the private forum. But he had no right to act on his own against the will of the majority of the team.

What makes this worse is that nobody actually seriously suggested betraying GoW/ND in our forum. So someone who didn't have the guts to try pushing the idea in the team simply went ahead and disclosed the intel.

And to make it 110% clear... I am in no way blaming this on or in any way holding this against RP or GS. I hold it, very strongly, only against the person that disclosed the info, as I am having a very hard time believing it could have been a mere slip-up.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Tricky, though, on this point. H_E couldn't exactly paste up a thread saying "How did GS know the SP was there under their stack at Barc-4411 or whatever?". Our eyes would have popped out.

good point. sounds like a calculated risk.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Here's a scenario. Lets say GS, ND and GoW are researching Steam Power. GS finishes a couple of turns ahead and as sees the sole source of Coal on Bob is in an ND border city. Concerned about an ND takeover of Bob, GS whispers in MZ's ear "hey guys, the only coal on Bob is at xxyyzz location. You've got one turn to take it". What do GoW do?

Would it be not better to start a separate BAD* thread for this?

* Before Action Discussion

[Cort Haus]

Yes, sorry - we're getting off-topic.

[Hot_Enamel]

I recall GS making a incorrect claim in the main forum about GoW abusing the rules and getting double shots with catapults.

That caused another week of flame wars.


Given that GS was losing members by the handful, I felt this issue would be better handled with a behind the scenes request of the Eye.

Question for the All Seeing, All Knowing, Eye


Trip,

Just a concern about GS.
Not about GS per se, but more about how they are gathering their intelligence.
This is not the first time I have had concerns.


{two examples listed here that no-one would care about}
blah blah blah ......I asked NYE & Shiber (? I think) directly, if there was someone on our team who was a “spy” and deliberately leaking information to them.
They said definitely not.


And now, we have the saltpeter issue.
They obviously know where it is, when they really shouldn’t know.
Again, the information has leaked.


My concern is not with GS.
But if there is someone on some other team that is feeding them this information.
I don’t feel, that this is in the spirit of a demo game.

It’s normal that some people cant hold secrets and spill the beans.
And it can be expected that members will accidentally let intel slip.
And there is always the possibility, that another team is intentionally feeding them information. (Playing both sides)

This is all fine.
I am more concerned that an individual on some team is deliberately helping GS.
GS may in fact not even know that this person is feeding them information not sanctioned by their team.

Could you please confirm that this is not happening?
That GS is getting all of their intel through valid means.

Again, I don’t suspect GS is cheating.
I just don’t think spies are within the spirit of the game

Thanks Mate

Hot_Enamel

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by vondrack

I was serious. From what Arne said, the saltpeter thing was not something that just "slipped away" (info of this magnitude cannot "slip away" anyway), it was said with a clear intention to communicate the information - and it was even made to look like it was what Lego (as a team)wanted. I feel uncomfortable knowing there's someone inside our team capable of doing that. I do not take this lightly.

I know... there's the wink smilie... but anyway, with something that spans over many months and hundreds of hours, you feel strongly about things like this.

Vondrack-

I mean no offense to you personally, but it is difficult for me at least to take anything posted in this forum at face value. Lego has proved exceedingly apt at knowing exactly which strings to pull (both in game and out of game) to accomplish its goals. I think you personally are an exceedingly cunning player, one that could successfully pull off a brilliant ruse such as this.

This game has been dominated by misinformation, which has made the game much more entertaining, but unfortunately has also made GS (or me at least) be much more suspicious of anything and everything.

A brief non-exhaustive list
-Lux holding out vox contact
-vox's 2nd bob campaign
-Genghis farb's faked intel screenshots to us
-Vox vetting of public announcement threads and subsequent canned responses by other world figures
-GS listening to both sides in the Bob war, before jumping in for RP
-Lego claiming to be neutral all the while defending GoW

Now the above things have all made this game very very interesting and fun. Frankly more fun IMHO than the ISDG where there is very little interteam forum contact. But at the same time, I hope you see why we have to be a bit skeptical that this wasn't just a leak, and that this wasn't just a ruse to keep Bob and Stormia bogged down in war.

[Arnelos]

Well, I'll say this vondrack:

As I recall, the information was revealed in chat and at first it came out from what APPEARED to be an accidental slip-up or someone not really thinking through what channel they were chatting in and who might be idling in the channel (or away at the time) and able to look at a log and send it elsewhere later. This type of thing was all too frequent during the Bobian War and where RP (and I'm sure every other team) got the large bulk of their intelligence information... just waiting for someone to talk about something they shouldn't in a public channel or a channel shared by members of other teams.

In terms of this piece of intel, we'd had enough experiences with similar bits of intel like it "accidentally" revealed in chats or even intentionally "leaked" in chats to know that some of this stuff was just purposeful misinformation campaigns... afterall, we'd engaged in some of that ourselves.

Because of THAT background, anything that came in we obviously took with a pretty heavy grain of salt. That's why BigFree, for instance, remembers being highly skeptical of the claim that Stormia had no saltpeter when we first heard of it. I believed it was true, but also believed that the leak was likely intentional by at least one of the three belligerent parties seeking to one-up the other parties... My leading theory at the time was that perhaps at least one of the parties was hoping one of the OTHERS was going to assault Pamplona first and hoped they'd face muskets rather than pikes so that they'd take more casualties before another party could take it more easily... that theory changed with time. I'm still somewhat suspicious that this is the case, though it wouldn't be productive to talk about that with events still ongoing.

Over time, we became reasonably sure that the intel was correct, largely by letting it be known we knew and seeing how each of your teams would react to this... your reactions indicated to us that it was likely valid. Before that, a good number of people had been quite skeptical. I remember discussing it with notyoueither in one of my chats with him and he expressing concern about it and that while the claim may or may not be true, we should at least plan on the assumption that it was (worst case scenario).

This is really what I mean by the PTWDG is an environment where it's nearly impossible to keep your secrets... it's inevitable that someone somewhere is going to goof and say something that either explicitly tells someone a secret (because they forget who may or may not be watching) or tells them enough indirect information that, when combined with other talking elsewhere, can be compiled into a complete image. The sheer AMOUNT of chatting in various channels on the Apolyton IRC server has made it a Herculean effort to conceal anything for very long or very well in this game.

[Cort Haus]

I remember now a couple of ideas that got raised we were discussing whether the rumour that we had no SP on Stormia could be true or whether it could be a deliberately leaked misdirection, which of course we now know it wasn't.

1. Persuade GS that they were without an essential resource needed for military parity in the next era of the game, so they'd be forced to give up the fight. If Knights vs Muskets was grim, Pikes vs Cavalry was an even worse prospect.

or

2. Persuade GS that because they lacked the resource on Stormia, they'd have to fight on in the hope of controlling some, thus lengthening the war and stretching Lego's lead.

Both wrong, of course, but when you're in the dark, as we were, guesses are all there is to go on. When we said to GoW in Diplo that this was like 'playing poker where the other guy knows your cards and you don't', he thought we were bluffing, but we weren't.

[BigFree]

Originally posted by vondrack


And to make it 110% clear... I am in no way blaming this on or in any way holding this against RP or GS. I hold it, very strongly, only against the person that disclosed the info, as I am having a very hard time believing it could have been a mere slip-up.

I, being a person that frequents the chat rooms/channels, know that slip ups can and do happen:

It may have been assumed by the person doing the telling that the information was already known and they were just discussing it and not revealing anything unknown. Example: GoW thought that GS knew where the SP was since GS had a stack of troops on it. Maybe it was a chat with GoW that told RP/GS where it was in an inadvertant manner. Maybe GoW wanted to cut a deal with GS in order to make the war less bloody by saying: "Look, we know you know where the SP is. Yes, it will make it tougher for us to dislodge RP but, we will still be able to do it. We have Lego units on the way to help that cause. Could you not withdraw from Bob and we will compensate you at a later time?"

I won't go on and on with more examples but sufice it to say that the information 'leak' is not limted to only being able to come from Lego.

Or it may have been a message meant for another channel.

As you can now surmise, it can go much deeper than you have already imagined.

[Cort Haus]

(erroneous post)

[Hot_Enamel]

Oooh ... BF

Can we start quoting some of the PM's & messages we got from RP ?

We got some absolute beauties !!

[Hot_Enamel]

Actually, I would love to know where the leak came from.

Only just to see if Master Zen needs to schedule an appointment

Originally posted by Master Zen
I'll bet my right nut it's lego.

[BigFree]

Originally posted by Hot_Enamel
Actually, I would love to know where the leak came from.

Only just to see if Master Zen needs to schedule an appointment

Originally posted by Master Zen

I'll bet my right nut it's lego.

With as little as he has, I'm surprised he'd be willing to put it on the line.

[Cort Haus]

{edit}
I first said "Hang on to that left nut, MZ!" but you won your bet. So you're now Master 'Three Nuts' Zen'

Who did you make the bet with, that's what we need to know.

[vondrack]

aatw, no offense taken. I understand what you mean and fully agree one needs to be careful taking info posted in this public forum at face value. I commented on the issue as this is an AAR where we tell "how it actually happened". So, believe me or not, it's up to you... I could certainly be just "messing with the evidence".

Anyway (believe-me-or-not still applies here )... I was actually surprised to read Arnelos' post about the leak today. After some discussion inside our private forum, I have personally believed it had all been a coincidence (back then I checked some older posts and their dating, finding out that the first battle near the saltpeter had happened before we discovered gunpowder, which somewhat weakened my suspicion). Perhaps I am more suspicious (and feel stronger) about the issue now because of one other affair that took place during the war...

But... thanks for all the info, Arnelos & BigFree. I am going to hope it really was an unintentional slip-up only.

Though, come to think of it... reading the posts of RP/GS members now, it's amusing to realize that even if that mysterious person intended to do harm by "accidentally disclosing" a top secret information, the actual result at that moment was just... uhm... "more smoke".