(04-03-2017, 10:17 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: If I may ask, what exactly will it take to "make things right" with Europeia? I ask because, at this point, it feels like, whatever we do, it's not enough. We get along just fine with Lazarus and the Rejected Realms, seem to have decent relations with Spiritus and the North Pacific, but for some reason things are always strained with Europeia. What exactly will it take?

We also spend significantly more time and effort on most of the alliances you mentioned. It's been a year and a half since we held a festival with Europeia. We spend more time militarily working with non-allies like the Grey Wardens and, of all people, the New Pacific Order, than we do working with Europeia. When we work with the NPO, it's usually on anti-fascist operations we could be conducting via CAIN, but aren't. Instead we're conducting those operations through a Discord server called "Ruining Nazi Sandcastles," which seems to primarily be spearheaded by TGW and the NPO.

So to answer your question -- what exactly will it take to improve relations with Europeia? -- a good start might be a bit more than the almost nothing we have been doing. And I say that as someone who doesn't even like Europeia, but who understands the value of that alliance for TSP.

Tying this back into the CAIN discussion, there can be little question that when our alliance with Europeia is already weaker than it should be because it has been neglected, withdrawing from CAIN with only vague reasoning is only going to further weaken our alliance with Europeia. CAIN has been primarily Europeia's project all along. If CAIN fails, its failure is primarily going to be perceived as Europeia's failure. How would we feel if, for example, TSP initiated a multi-regional cultural project, and if Europeia, having joined that project, then withdrew for extremely ill-defined reasons at the first sign of trouble? I think it's safe to say we wouldn't be very happy about it. We would expect our ally to work with us to make a mutual project work. We would feel slighted if they withdrew and left the failure of the project in our lap. And that is exactly what we would be doing to Europeia by withdrawing from CAIN.

Europeia is a highly political region. A project like CAIN is the kind of project that is of the utmost importance to them, and we need to recognize when a project is important to our ally and do our best to support them -- particularly when we have already agreed to participate in and support that project. It would not be at all supportive to withdraw from the project, possibly leading a domino effect of withdrawals because we're a Feeder, for no particular reason.