Every time the descision to go to war with other cities is made there's always the chance it will fail badly.

In time every leader will perish sooner or later. My bloodline started from the time when SamTheAmericanEagle was the last man standing after a bloody v day massacre,My great grandmother watched as MrEvilman ruled the cities with an iron fist. My bloodline has watched history repeat itself over and over again. It wont be long till Demine, Iota, Lucretia are all dead and their children make their way onto the streets to make a living.

So before you go insulting people remember the deed the  father/mother can  reflect onto their children. and people can be a lot less forgiving!

You're absolutely right. From this moment forward, I will stop insulting people.

Nothing says "I have faith in my family and I trust in their abilities" like constantly demoting them to civilian.

Nothing says "I have faith in my family and I trust in their abilities" like constantly demoting them to civilian.

Nothing says "listen to me" like saying the same thing twice.

"I know you are knew to this thing of ours. However, you show every CL
respect, especially the one
that feeds you and gives you shelter..If not for him/her, you would be living
in a box on the street."

I am not new to this thing of ours, My bloodline goes back 4 generations
and I was in agreement that we should any CL respect. However you calling one a
coward or idiot or whatever isn't respect. Passing judgement becomes
disrespectful when you resort to name calling. 

I can't believe that a well-educated head of a city would think that twenty million was a figure too large for a Don going rogue with the ol' pea shooter. If I was Lucretia (thank God I'm not as we would all be fighting over bridges) I would have demanded twice that amount and have Kates pay a certain amount back every week. Twenty million is NOT a lot for a family head to supply over a time period of two weeks.

A bad decision in my eyes.

Going off on a slight tangent,  I have always classed myself as better than Gwarble. When our fathers worked together, his father was always carrying my fathers slack, giving him advice, tieing his shoelaces and various other jobs. People would generally think that my father has some sort of cognitive deficit. I see it as planned laziness. Therefore, I will carry on with my fathers great work.

Puts my untied shoe in front of Gwarble.

normaly twenty million wouldn't be to bad but since Mardi Gras all taxes and tributes were suspended so their was not as much money going to Kates until St.Patricks day.

I would encourage people to read more carefully- Kates never disputed the fact that 20 million was a fair/lenient price for what had happened. Rather, she seems to have said that that incident was part of the larger picture that suggested a conflict down the road.

And Gwarble, while you stated that "Any time a leader makes the decision to war, knowing that they have very slim chance of victory they have failed their members and deserve to be soundly beaten", surely you would acknowledge that any leader who truly believes their family will be attacked (and would subsequently be immediately destroyed) should instead pursue the slim chance of victory rather than wait?

The obvious answer to that is that they should never have fallen into a situation where the only option they believed was available to them was to war, which they knew (being generous) they had only a very slim chance of winning. By then, they had already missed the opportunity to rectify the situation through diplomatic means and had failed to prepare appropriately should conflict occur. In short, they had already failed.

~G~warble.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that, particularly Kates.

wiggles his ten toes at gwarble and exits, pursued by a bear

Anything said by this woman, I'd stand by. And truely in my regards for her actions,it was justified. I'm a humble man and respected her to the end. She did what she had to do, and in this Life of ours it's Blood In and Blood Out. We are mafioso's, And yes War happens,shit happens people get miserable and Die. And even if she didn't want to pay the huge payout SO BE IT,she was free to speak it and paid the ultimate price for it.

I agree with the Sgt Pepper, with his post.

The twenty million was never disputed by Kates Timmy?

" I considered 20 million to be a fairly outrageous sum."

normaly twenty million wouldn't be to bad but since Mardi Gras all taxes and tributes were suspended so their was not as much money going to Kates until St.Patricks day.

Not Lucretia's problem, surely?

The obvious answer to that is that they should never have fallen into a situation where the only option they believed was available to them was to war, which they knew (being generous) they had only a very slim chance of winning. By then, they had already missed the opportunity to rectify the situation through diplomatic means and had failed to prepare appropriately should conflict occur. In short, they had already failed.

i must point out that even the best laid plans of mice and men (and women) go awry. even if godmother kates did everything in her power to avoid it, it is possible that she still would have fallen into a position where war was the only option. sometime things will happen no matter what you do. thats just how it is.

That, once again, is entirely the point.

There was no best laid plan, or any plan at all. They had the same amount of time, if not longer to prepare. They should never have fallen into anything. ScipitaRourke and Kates have been leaders for in excess of 6 months. They had just as long as Deimne, Iota and Lucretia_Borgia to ready themselves for a conflict but were either incapable or unable to do so. She didn't do everything in her power to avoid it, because she made the decision to war, not the other way around. She led them down the path, that was leading straight to decimation.

This defence of Kates' decision is admirable but ultimately misplaced. It is indefensible for all the reasons I've already provided many times.

If you're looking for a quote, I'd suggest this one:

This is business and how can you even begin to justify a business decision that causes you, all of your employees and all of your business associates to end up out of business? Then take this a stage further applying it to our business and the realities of this situation. How can you begin to justify a decision that causes you, your entire family, your Captains and all of your allied cities to end up dead? You simply can't.

Until you can provide an adequate answer to that question, I'd suggest just accepting that I'm right and learning the lesson.

~G~Warble.

I think the lesson that everyone needs to learn is a quote from a wise man: "History is written by the victors.." It is a short quote, but it is essential to the work we pull around here. Were the cities of New Orleans, Los Angeles and Philadelphia to pull off the highly unlikely victory against Las Vegas, New York and Chicago then perhaps the mindset would have been about how dreadful, mean and wicked the leaders of these cities are. As it stands, Las Vegas, New York and Chicago triumphed and the mindset is that it was a mistake to war someone with such shooting prowess in their ranks and that Kates, Scipita and PJ made an awful decision in attempting a particularly audacious takedown of the aforementioned cities. Put simply, that has become the truth of the matter and it hardly matters how many individuals who lost parents in the war come forward and attempt to defend their parents crewleader's decision, it wont change the truth of it. That is because the obituaries are littered with corpses, and mainly the corpses of the aggressors in this case. One glance at that and everyone knows who was victorious and who made the right decisions.

As much as this pains me, I have to partially agree with what Gwarble has already stated: "It isn't the quality of the speeches or the strength of your arm that makes the difference between being a good and bad leader; it's getting the big decisions right." I only partially agree with it because having a strength of arm here would have allowed PH, LA and NO to triumph, hence allowing them to write history and be the "good leaders" in this scenario, but it's correct in essence.

The point about decisions is all encompassing though. Had they had the strength of arm, then the decision may have been the right one. As it happens, they most likely knew this was folly but chose to head down that path anyway, to their demise. In this case, an ounce of foresight will have told them it was the wrong call. I don't think anyone has mentioned it either, but you'd have thought some people in these cities - L.A./Philly particularly - might have learnt from their last foray into the war domain where they fought far smaller cities relative to New York/Las Vegas, ultimately struggling to get the job done and having to call on, firstly, Detroit and, latterly, New York to tidy up their mess, so to speak. I would argue that they were weaker yesterday than they were at that time, so it should have been apparent that this wasn't the option to be pursued.

now that i will agree to.

Oops, I let a smelly