You did it when we had a wider userbase my friend. If there were bigger numbers here it would most definitely be possible. But when you have to convince half the available population to do it, it becomes quite difficult. I'd love to see you try now. Bragging that you did it once is like me bragging that I've killed numerous leaders/important people in the past, it just does not matter.

I have no drive to back up my words with actions (as is the same with many other people), I refuse to waste so much time putting in the hard work when I can be doing things I actually ENJOY. And guess what? I'm probably going to continue whining until I eventually depart from this place, like it or lump it buddy (this probably goes for a few other people too).

And really... throwing the fact that you got to GF has no bearing on me whatsoever, I have never thought that rank means anything on here. Especially nowadays when ranking is easier than doing the alphabet. You pointing out that you got to Godfather holds about as much grandeur and honor as me putting up a new pair of curtains up in my house. Getting to Godfather has lost its "magic" as it is quite easy to accomplish (given that we have had many, many GF's now).

Most I can say is that I'd imagine that the admins probably have used player accounts to enact in-game player policies that they wanted to see without the appearance of the administration strong arming the player base.

Though, assuming that their player accounts earned their power legitimately, there's really no foul. Unless you want to argue that the admins should have no influence on player policy at all and therefore shouldn't play the game to begin with.

FUCK THE ESTABLISMENT

The first time I met billybathtub was when he was ThomasRourke and my city and its allies were at war with him. Of course we lost but god damn I had a hell of a time going up against him. After this I joined him and had the pleasure of learning how he ran things. For all those people thinking he might be cheating, well his brain is just a lot more superior to your own so I guess in a way that is cheating :P Afterward I again had the pleasure of going against him but when he was Roman. This time though my side should have won, Roman wasnt even the main target, he just took up what was left of his people and fought back like any honourable person would do. As this war went on I was truly amazed at how certain peoples brains would go to mush when up against Roman. The chances to kill him were there but for some reason they became all idiots, neglected to follow the advice of smarter people and lost their city and their lives to Roman. I give credit to Roman for using excellent strategy during war but in all honest any person who understood the simple strategies of war would have won against you. Instead you were up against idiots, the same idiots who most likely now accuse Roman of possibly cheating when the only reason he is top dog is because people were to stupid to kill him when they had the chance.

It is sad to see people accuse Roman of possibly cheating of having the chance to cheat when quite simply he is just smarter then you. In this whole game no one deserves the position they currently hold more then Roman does.

I'm not going to get into the relevance of the cheating accusations, because others have already done so. Instead, I'll present you with some facts regarding the heroic survivals of a man named Roman.

Roman was Premier's RHM when he was a Godfather and killed Tallien. Following this, Deimne and ScipitaRourke killed Premier and his allies. Roman then joined Aurora's crew, where Grin, descendant of Tallien was now RHM in BrianRourke's absence. I was literally bombarded with people demanding I HQ wack Roman and his 220 BGs. The logic behind this being that he was the RHM in a war and was walking away unscathed. I decided against doing that as I thought it would betray the trust that Aurora had placed in me. Do I think Roman would survive a HQ wack? Obviously not. However, I'm not in the business of letting down those people who grant me an authority position and so Roman went on his merry way to New York.

The second opportunity for Roman to heroically survive came when myself and SpaceMountain decided to war the New York behemoths. We fashioned alliances and we did what we needed to do to get the job done. The prospect of killing Roman was again discussed and the decision was made to let him live as he was a close friend of Colin and this served my interests better than him being a corpse. Therefore, we left Roman alive and true to the faith Colin placed in him, he subsequently came to Philadelphia and served diligently as his RHM. Do I think Roman could have survived the same strike force that removed the most powerful regime the game had ever seen up until that time? Obviously not.

The reason I'm offering these two heroic survival stories about Roman is to provide some insight into how he comes to be where he is today. People seem to think that he just happened to survive, either through luck or through admin cheatery, whatever. In actual fact, Roman survived because plenty of people made big decisions to leave him alive. Hell, I'm just one person (admittedly a pretty great person) and I made two that saw him go away unharmed when he would otherwise have died.

Think about all the other people who then must have had the opportunity and decided not to kill Roman. This wasn't through a fear of admin reprisals, at least not in my experience. Being successful here doesn't only stem from your ability to click the buttons. The better players understand the politics involved, appreciate the intelligence of other people even if they are your enemies and accordingly seek to bring them on to your team. Such was my decision with Roman and now I'm a Consigliere to a leader in Chicago. Swings and roundabouts.

To those who do not believe Roman can be killed, you need to evaluate your understanding of the game. Roman certainly could be killed; it is just that those people capable of doing it don't want to see that happen. Chicago is happy, Chicago's leaders are happy and Chicago's allies are happy. The reason Roman is succeeding is because he's the summit of a highly motivated and talented pyramid. If Roman's leaders left him, how long do you think he would survive? If Roman's allies abandoned him, how long do you think he would survive? Instead, these same people continue to work and fight to keep him where he is. That's not anything other than good leadership.

The problem for the detractors is that they are unable to capitalise on the opportunities they have had or indeed fashion new ones. That's a shame for them, but in the mean time do not resort to finger pointing and complaints of outside interference. Most people cannot conceive of a reality outside their own experience. This meaning, if they can't see themselves doing it, they can't believe anyone else can do it. Open your eyes, history would teach you that it can be done and dynasties can be overthrown, provided you have the right people prepared to do it.

~C~

Surely everyone will agree that killing well established mobsters such as Godfather Roman is a difficult thing, but then again, why shouldn't it be hard? I'm not going to get into numbers, because quite frankly they do not matter as I don't believe the numbers are the true problem.

If we think further back in history, several times we had cases of leaders and cities that have done well and were stronger/harder to be taken out. Even on the times that there were a limit on bodyguards and no bodyguard killing. I remember that in many wars, we needed to kill all of the 200 members that leaders could have, to weaken the leader in order to kill him, and even then sometimes it would take several shots to kill the person.

I also remember leaders that have acquired total power and led the game for months without even having a powerful gun to back that up. They led by making powerful alliances, by knowing how to maintain powerful hitters by their side, they won by being great in politics and having a good public relation.

While here all people do is sit and try to build up a massive gun, because they base it all on numbers. Everyone keeps on thinking that to do anything you need a huge powerful gun, so they sit there for months and months building it up, trying to catch up to something that's not-catchable, because in the end as the time goes by you will always need more and more.

It is time for people to stop blaming it on the code, perhaps the game should have bg limits, should change this or that, but the truth of the matter is that none of this would matter. We would still end up with extremely powerful leaders that would reign for a long time, that used to happen before the bodyguards as well. You know why? Because only a handful of people actually have the guts to take a risk. All you people want is to achieve a 2000 kill gun, so that you are 100% sure (which is not true) that you can hit the person and not lose your precious position within the game.

If you want to be big, you need to act big. If you want something, you gotta fight for it. That's the way it works, and let me ask you, how many times have people tried to fight for it? How many times has Roman been attacked? In fact, we don't even need to use only Roman as a base, think back a bit, how many times have the big stable leaders been attacked, shot at? If you were around, you will remember that usually it doesn't happen very often. What this game needs is not a change in the code, is a change of mentality and a pair of balls.

I can already hear the little voices arguing back.. "What's the point of trying if we have so little guns". This is one of the problems that goes back in choosing who leads you. Many and many times in the streets and coffee shops we see that discussion, What do you expect of a leader blah blah etc.. To me, the most important aspect of the game, is not how many kills your gun has, contrary to what most people think, that does not give you a win seal. What makes this game and gives you a win it's the politics, it's the relations you keep with other cities, it's how well you can bring people onto your side. After all, the leader is only one person, a leader without his members is nothing, and in the current scenario a city without good contacts and relations will not be up in the competition.

The latest war with NY, taking out Godmother Whatsername and her city, is one massive example of all the things I have mentioned here. NY was a huge city, with an amazing fire power. When Godfather Roman decided to take out that city, we started to check the city list and make our strategy and immediately we knew that it was a major risk going into that war. We didn't had enough hitters who could straight kill most of their hitters. We knew that there were people we would need to bodyguard kill before taking them out. We knew that even if we got help from other cities, we would still be in the same situation, some of their best guns would remain alive for hours to come.

Even though, we were one of the most powerful cities, we knew we would depend on measures of security (pro wacks) and a lot of luck. Most importantly, we went prepared to die because we knew that we had a high chance of dying, but WE TOOK THE RISK. It was a challenge, it was dangerous, some of ours did die and lost their positions, but we achieved the goal. That's how you play this game, at least I believe that's how we are supposed to play it.

Think back before Roman, everyone used to say the same about Deimne's city, it can't be done, it's impossible, there are too many guns, too many bgs. It went like that for over a year as well, until one guy decided to work his contacts up and arrange a war, and guess what, he didn't have the fire power to do it, but he got it done.

If people could come here and argue that they had tried and that it is impossible to do so, perhaps I would then consider the numbers, but the truth is, no one has tried.

There has been notable admin abuse since mafiareturns started. Let us not pretend that innocence flourishes. Consider the example of millions of dollars being given from an admin account to members of The CP. That admin was stripped of his title. We must also remember the events surrounding Evsie's death back in 2007 or 2008. He was the most powerful leader at the time and an admin shot him with his player account. The only thing wrong with that eventuality is that the admin checked to see his chances of hitting first. 

Just as an aside, am I the only one reading Katarina's post with her voice attached? I didn't think so. :-)

"Yes, it is possible, I know this, but I and many many others are not willing to throw away our lives in order to do so."

Then you all shall fail!  why are you so blind to this? is it because it is true? or does slandering people and making excuses turn out to be the easy way to admit you have no skills?

The oldest saying on this game has been "if you don'y like the status quo..fucking get to work and change it"

Obviously you misunderstood the statement.

"There has been notable admin abuse since mafiareturns started. Let us not pretend that innocence flourishes. Consider the example of millions of dollars being given from an admin account to members of The CP"

Such a laughable statement. Care to elaborate for those that must have missed that?

Most noteable Admin occurence with CP I recall is the one where they were all killed by people that misused some sort of glitch and admin never corrected it, meaning CP were killed when they shouldn't have been. If Admin favoured them so much, pray tell why they didn't correct the error that led to CPs death?

Again, this is going off topic, it seems people want to just throw around wild accusations now. To my knowledge there has never been a case of admins abusing their position here and I find it extrememly unlikely there ever will be, mainly thanks to Scott. Everyone here knows how hard he works and I dont know anyone that doesn't have complete respect for him, and because of this I highly doubt that we will find anyone that is willing to betray him by abusing any powers he affords them.

Bobacca, I'm not entirely sure who you are and I'm not sure what has caused you to choose the specific events that you have, especially as you weren't involved in them, but I must clarify this:

Consider the example of millions of dollars being given from an admin account to members of The CP.

Complete horseshit.

No member of The CP received money from any admin account. Nova, the account from which this all happened, died immediately after the reset. The CP takeover did not occur until several months later, orchestrated by three accounts that did not even exist at the time of Nova so could not possibly have received funding from him.

Kindly refrain from inventing lies after the fact.

~C~

shut up, Chuckle.


My job here is done.

I was in the Conceptualists with Billy back in the day when he was a really funny guy..

I can tell you one thing about him, he is a very clever and manipulative man.

All those CP people were cheats.

Cheats and even worse - CADS!