Great War III

Alternative Names
The war is also known as: The Epic War, March Madness, Global War III, Great War II Part 2, The Everlasting War of Ethics, The Thousand Front War, The AfGATOstan War,

Names By UIO Forces:

The War of Retribution, The Big Brown Cleansing, The Sacred War, The Moon Sending War, HoLUEcaust, Final LUEicide

Names By Aegis Forces:

The War for Justice

Casus Belli
Not long after the Second Maroon War had begun, NPO claimed that GATO was spying on them as well as harboring intentions of hostility, as revealed by several leaked chat conversations between GATO and Legion leaders. NPO also discovered and banned a spy from GATO on their forums.

On March 19th, a post was made on the CN forums containing a leaked forum screenshot from mpol (leader of FAN) discussing an upcoming attack on GATO. The content was later identified as coming from a private Initiative leadership forum. The post outlined an upcoming attack by NPO, MDC, GGA and \m/ against GATO to be made that night at 15min before reset. Additionally, it laid out the Initiatives plans to deal with other alliances coming to the defense of GATO. Specifically, it allocated NpO and ??? to counter NAAC, FAN and TOP to counter The Legion and Goons versus the ODN. While these plans were laid out in response to possible future actions by GATO supporters, they were seen by many as a valid Causus Belli for the potential defenders of GATO since they were explicitly detailed in the counter-attack plans.

Declarations of War from various alliances which eventually joined GATO's side accused the Initiative of bullying tactics against any who disagreed with them, framing their fight against the Initiative as a war for freedom. They eventually went under the alias of Aegis.

Events of the War
The NPO made the first move by declaring war on GATO. It was well-known that GATO and The Legion had a MDP signed and it was noted that The Legion's members were at DEFCON 1, so the questions that would determine the path the war took became "Will The Legion remain neutral in the war as they did during the Second Great War?" However, on March 20, shortly before update, Ivan Moldavi posted a controversial statement praising The Legion on behalf of the NPO and officially reactivating their MDP with Legion, 'The Imperial Accords'. The statement could have meant many different things, but The Legion interpreted it as goading them, and would eventually activate their MDP with GATO.

At 8:54 PM on March 21st, 2007, the NAAC became the first power to enter on the side of GATO, by activating their MDP. At 8:58 PM the IAA became second to declare war. Legion's announced it position at 9:07 PM when VL Empire, Prime Minister of the The Legion, declared war on The Initiative. But Legion attacks on FAN, TOP and GGA had begun almost 10 minutes earlier at 9:00 PM thus breaking their NAP treaties with FAN and TOP, citing the activation of The Legion's MDP with GATO. Both FAN and TOP claimed suprise since it was the NPO who had attacked GATO and both FAN and TOP did not consider themselves to be in a state of war with GATO, and so questioned the NAAC and Legion's so called "defense" of GATO by attacking uninvolved alliances. Both FAN and TOP made loud cries regarding the supposed Legion "Sneak Attack" and made many references to Pearl Harbor because of the Legion and NAAC attacking prior to any declaration of war and while NAP's were still in force. These cries were dismissed by many since the March 19th, 2007 leak showed that FAN and TOP were spcifically assigned to attack The Legion if they came to GATO's aid.

"Ave Legio," the traditional battle cry of the Legionnaires, now became the battle cry widely-used by GATO's supporters, and the Declaration of War thread is filled with it. A reference to the movie 300 was later made, and after this reference, people in the LUE IRC channel became calling GATO and allies "Sparta." Many Aegis members wrote "Tonight, we dine in hell!" to quote the movie. The United Imperial Order later made jokes about this, saying: "Tonight you may dine in hell, but we will dine while still living." There was less than an hour until update, and more declarations began to fly.

Less than an hour after update, b|/b/, an alliance that had long been neutral in similar conflicts, declared war on the VE and other select alliances of The Initiative. The VE was outraged at /b/'s declaration and declared that they would never declare peace with /b/. This declaration caused Archon's DramaNations meter to go from Red (at which it had been for two days) to Black.

On the 3/22/07, alliances of the Sphere power block issued declarations of war. The first to do so was the BTA, citing a non existent defense clause in a unannounced PIAT as their justification for war. The BTA focused their attacked on the CIS. 5 more alliances declared war on the CIS on the same day, citing activation of their MADP with BTA. On the 3/29/07, the Sphere alliances EoTS, GoG, RnR, MCB, and MRA surrendered to the CIS. Their surrender effectively dissolved the Sphere MDP web.

LUE, at 8:58 PM, officially renounced the terms of surrender to The Initiative, activating their with GATO and declaring war on Gen[M]ay.

At 10:31, ODN and CDS jointly declared war on the GOONS. GOONS returned the declaration a few minutes later, and about an hour later Farkistan entered on GATO's side.

Many have drawn comparisons between this war and GW2 (FARK War). The lack of sanctioned nuclear attacks and the involvement of almost equally matched power blocs are the more notable similarities. However, in this war, the sides were more balanced than in the previous one.

On March 24th, with the war raging, the GOONS activated their MADP with TotalFarkistan. TF! declared war on TotalGenmay, a joke alliance created by LUE (like bLUE).

On 3/24-3/25 several smaller alliances responded to Legion and other GATO-aligned calls to 'join the good fight' and declared on Initiative forces. Their total Nation Strength added little to the overall fight and only temporarily masked both GATO and Legion's steepening declines in total Nation Strength. These alliances were condemned as 'Bandwagoners' by the UIO and were dealt with as such.

On 4/4/07, Ivan Moldavi made a public statement saying that NAAC had an information leak and that he had been informed that NAAC was planning to declare nuclear war. His claims for this were that a member of NAAC had sent him screenshots from their forums which showed the current protector, AlmightyGrub, wanted to "go out with a bang," as well as a regular member saying that he was going to use his nukes. On top of that, it appeared that St Heliers, a powerful member of the NAAC and member of the Blue Senate, had posted as a diplomat in the NpO forums stating that NAAC planned to go fully nuclear at update.

However, in that thread, AlmightyGrub clarified that the NAAC had no intentions to declare nuclear war. Virilus, the Minister of Defense, and numerous other NAAC members and even ex-NAAC members said that not only was this not true, but St Heliers was not even a diplomat to the NpO. St Heliers later confirmed that he did not even have an account on the NpO forums, and that someone must have made an account under his name. However, Ivan Moldavi asserted that he had prevented nuclear war by bringing this to the public's attention.

CDS Leaders later made the declaration of all out Nuclear war on it's enemies, but later that day it was couped and it surrendered to GOONS before much damage was done.

Dark Friday
Two b|/b/ rogues launched nuclear weapons despite the universal agreement not to go nuclear. Unable to control her members as many more were following suit and beginning to spam the CN forums, Furseiseki disbanded b|/b/ in order to protect the members who still wished to play from becoming outcasts.

With the disbandment, more prominent members of the b|/b/ alliance to include their emperor, began /b/ombing the forums with obscene images, as was the tradition of 4chan.org raids: child pornography, goatse, mutilated animals, and human torture, just to name a few. The moderators acted swiftly to try and erase these images, but they were not swift enough. With every IP ban another /b/er, using an anonymous proxy would take its place and continue the attack. Shortly following this incident, NAAC announced that in their disgust, they were ordering all their nations to stand down. The Old Guard also followed suit. LoSS did the same, and surrendered that week.

Shortly following the incident, the Admin implemented the "Confusion of Babylon" and closed down the Open World Forums -, the entire forum soon followed.

Thus with the forums and main site down, and the Month of March making way for April, March Madness ended with the very existence of CN teetered on the brink. And still the war raged well into the month of April.

Independent and Neutral Nations
This third great war of CyberNations has been perhaps the largest in all of CN history, involving more alliances and certainly more nations than ever before. This has caused some previously/unaligned neutral alliances to join the fight. The polar nature of this conflict has sparked discussion of entering the war in every alliance across CN. Some notable members of neutral/independent alliances have even taken a temporary leave of absence to fight alongside friends, whether they know them in person or through CN, or even just to fight for whichever cause they believe to be just.

The two largest alliances that are still declaring neutrality regarding GWIII are the Green Protection Agency (GPA) (see the Declaration of Neutrality) and Independent Republic of Orange Nations (IRON). The importance in mentioning these two alliances is that both were pressured to join, and either could have given a side a Numerical, NS, and/or Morale advantage. Both IRON and GPA have long term relations with alliances on both sides.

The GPA has issued statements that they are holding to their neutrality. Any deviation from this neutrality will fundamentally alter the basis of the alliance. []

The Independent IRON decided protection of their members required that they stay neutral in this conflict. Since IRON's bylaws do not forbid an aggressive war, IRON was under considerably MORE pressure to enter the conflict than the GPA.

ONOS despite attempts by other alliances to trick ONOS to go into the war, has avoided it. ONOS and their associated Bloc remain neutral.

Other Events

 * 3/21 - FAN announces its "X Nuclear Rogue" Policy.
 * 3/29 - Legion member uses his deceased friend's nation to aid fellow Legionnaires. It is attacked and he begs the attackers on the CN forums to spare it, but later evidence proves it was planned from the beginning.
 * 3/30 - "Black Friday" -Various former b|/b/ members attack CN Forums by posting various shock images or other spam. Various DOS attacks are also carried out on CyberNations and the source code was stolen.
 * 3/30 - CN Forums brought down from 1pm 3/30 to 8am 4/2
 * 3/31 - Cyber Nations momentarily shut down
 * 4/2 - Forums brought back online as of 8:00AM, game itself remains off-line
 * 4/2 - Admin responds to question about Game Time during the temporary shutdown of Cyber Nations with: "Time will continue on and when the game resumes you will collect taxes on all the days that the game was offline. There will be no inactivity deletions due to the downtime. If the game is down for 5 days I will put the cleanup schedule on hold for 5 days to allow everyone time to access their nations."
 * 4/3 - Cyber Nations comes back online.
 * 4/10 - A coup occurs within CDS and the new government immediately surrenders to GOONS.
 * 4/10 - VE withdraws from The Initiative, but continues to attack nations holding the b|/b/ alliance affiliation.
 * 4/11 - NAAC rejects surrender terms given to them.
 * 4/11 - NAAC terminates MDP with GATO

Surrenders and Withdrawals
Part I, March Madness Surrenders

3/26 - APIN has an coup d'etat and surrender to GGA

3/30 - Furseiseki disbands b|/b/.

3/30 - The Sphere alliances surrender to CIS.

3/30-3/31 - Old Guard announces their surrender with intentions to pay forty five million to FAN and TOP.

3/30-3/31 - RIA and MDC cease-fire. RIA agrees to pay sixty million in reparations to the MDC and replace their maroon team senator due to the sanctions imposed on MDC members at the beginning of the war.

Part II, April Finale Surrenders

4/4 - LoSS officially surrenders to the Viridian Entente under the terms of downgrading their current MDP's to PIATS and an alliance wide move to the pink sphere.

5th April- ASC surrenders to the MCCF

6th April- ODN surrenders to GOONS under the following terms.

6th April- LUEnited Nations disbands.

9th April- Prime Minister of the Coalition of Defensive States, Seleucus Ontuas, declares nuclear war on GOONS. CDS members stage a coup d'etat in response. CDS establishes a new government and surrenders to The Initiative.

10th April- The Legion surrenders to The Initiative. (Legion's Surrender Terms)

11th April- Global Alliance and Treaty Organization surrenders to The Initiative

14th April- National Alliance for Arctic Countries disbands

14th April- GWIII officially declared over

Aftermath
Sanctioned Alliance Audit:

After the war, Admin performed an Alliance Audit. The Initiative would have liked to have seen Nordreich and \m/ become sanctioned, but they failed to do so.
 * GATO lost sanctioned status.
 * NAAC lost sanctioned status. (for the second time.)
 * ONOS was sanctioned. (Making it the first of the Maroon color sphere alliances to receive Sanctioned Status)
 * GOLD was sanctioned.

Alliances disbanded During or Due to the war:
 * b|/b/
 * LUEnited Nations
 * ~Dies~Irae~
 * Socialist Workers Front
 * Syndicate
 * NAAC
 * Powerful Alliance of Green Nations

The CDS was also couped and replaced with ex-CDS leadership(including members of NPO and LUE after their Prime Minister Seleucus Ontuas had declared nuclear war on GOONS.

IRON and ODN had an incident that severely damaged relations between them.

Many people had lost respect for the Legion who, up until the war, had been the second strongest alliance in the Cyberverse. It was given the name, the Paper Tiger Alliance, or PTA (Compared to GATO and WAE), for its inability to fight the war effectively.