I don't really like arguing with people. So forgive me if this pisses anyone off. But when HELP! were at their peak (In members not points) XpRd would not have had a walk through, but HELP! had 1 dead account, followed by the second leaving Geroge Armstrong (Not very active) by himself; all these players were the most frontline. I'm in no way saying this is XpRd's fault and fair does to taking advantage of it. But it is not always easy to internal large accounts or find new drivers, that was a big trouble of ours.
HELP! and Mask council had been close for a very long time and even though we shared a border, people didn't launch upon each other unlike XpRd even though they held a NAP with us. Our MOST isolated member - Finalfantasy made your job too hard despite the 0 safe zone, and no matter what you say the fact is you recruited them.. whether ya'll wanted to play with friends or not - friends can battle each other and still have fun in the game.
Again this happens with andyh370, doesn't matter if he asked to come toXpRd you guys could have seen him as tribeless food but instead another recruit and its not like you had a free space, had to kick one of your inactives. Now, Xlapa, andy and one other un-named player were excellent players that would have made the stats much different had Mask have them still with us.
Mask were down to 26mill ish, HELP! at 16-17mill? Rank 1 is around 53mill.. whats the most logical thing to do in that situation for us? Combine our family tribes (Cause of the stupid member limit) to even stand a chance. To the rest of the world this may have looked like HELP! caved, but for anyone who asks we tell them the story of the merge. Where all this Mask launched first thing came in is a mystery to me... Mask now have experienced players from both Mask and HELP!
And if you are dissapointed in Mask? A smaller tribe not doing as well or better than the rank 1 with 2k more villages? D1 for an example has the largest ODD still standing and his conquer ratio is 1:4 to XpRd. For a player with 0 safe zone that's not amazing coming from XpRd either. Then you look at Assassin222 in a similar position, even more clustered and arguably your best defender.. hasn't got an account worth playing now!
That all said, this is war. People will disagree and try make their side look better, but at the end of the day it is the wars that are the fun in the game, so lets get some more banter going rather than us all arguing like silly little girls