Tirol
Player: Tirol
AKA: Lorit
History: Founded Rage along with Halls and Insanity. Known as the "Good" one of the Good, the Bad and The Ugly. Similar sized "gun" to Clint Eastwood. Known for taking on typhoons 1 v 1 in Taiwan due to his immense whiteness. Loved to trick Rage FA's by pretending to be random alliance FA's/Prez's and causing troublesome FA deals with them, only to post them insite in rage for much lulz. Good mates with Nazar
Could an Rage Player please write this history. (do we have too?)
Achievements: Created the 'outposting' concept that allowed alliances to be stable with more that 200 active members (leading Rage to the Earth record of over 500 active members) To be completed...
Alliances: RAGE
Leadership, founded Alliances, or Head Positions: RAGE - Founder
Personal History
/---The following is a personal Earth History and general ramble Tirol posted when he stepped down from Rage President, probably some time in 2006 or so. Maybe someone without old-guy memory loss can help with the date---/
Tirol writes: I've been here a while, I try to stay true to facts, but things have been fragmented in my mind. Some of this info is misguided, but for the most part, its as it should be.
97 or 98, I got a deal on a 486 DX standard with a 28.8 modem. I kept it around growing dust for a few months while I was working security. This guy that worked with me, boy did he stink. But he was a comp nerd from hell. He had no biz working security. Come to think about it, he didn't know shit about comps either now that I look back at it. In any case, he convinced me to upgrade my comp, he had some cheep parts. Once I did so he said "oh yeah! and now you can get on the net!" I mulled over it for another month or so, then invested in a 56.k modem, and an account at IC computers Dialup access. Loading up my Internet Explorer V1.0 I connected to the net. I was ecstatic! a whole new place to explore... boundless! I got into quake for a half year or so, but soon became interested in other gaming venues. Places that offered more of a mental test. I got onto a site named badgers Online Gaming. I browsed for a while, and decided I liked two games, stellar crisis, and Earth 2025.
Nazar played a lot of stellar crisis with me, when I told him about earth, he really didn't want to get into it. But alas, after watching me play my turns in a random game for about one week, the re-set ended, and we both wound up playing a country from the same IP addy in game B. We had GREAT allies, the both of us were running hot in the 200o ranks, and steadfast buds like "Tom Servo" were ranked *all the way up* at 600 or so! ooohhh the power we had! After another set in game B, Nazar attaining rank 220 that set, myself ranking out at 330 or so, we decided to try Game 1a.
One week into game A, I was running near 300, so was nazar. I landgrabed a dude Named "Zardoz" the next day I got a message in my country, much like the messages I send in game recruits today. I decided I wanted to try this "alliance thing" out. As per usual, naz didn't want to come. He read the alliance rules and went red in the face. "I Have to follow Orders??! no way!" Nazar's adverse reaction to orders may have been worse than usual because he had witnessed the great Tirol geting chewed out by his alliance leader Zardoz the first day. I didn't know what the hell a members list was.. I can't believe they expected me to check a list of 30 whole countries before I went out Grabing! Well, it turns out 24 hours into my career I had landgrabed Zardoz 'spare country'. It's a good thing he believed in second chances. One of the huge reasons I firmly believe in second chances when a RAGEr screws the pooch.
About two weeks later, I was a team leader of the Knights, a prestigious OOA team, taking over for a gent named Occams Razor, who had been promoted to Sec War. Well, shortly after Occams razor went AWOL. They picked ole Tirol to lead up the Sec war spot. About a week previous to that, naz had finnaly decided to join up and play with The OOA. Our Foreign affairs officer went AWOL about the same time the Sec War did (pattern here?), so I talked with Zardoz and told him about this Nazar guy who just joined, was taking uni courses in politics!, the perfect man for the OOA FA! And naz was hired on the spot. (Imagine joining a major alliance and being moved to head FA within a week with no 1a experience)
So we tooled about in the OOA for a wile, taking it from a 30 member tag with a bad reputation to a 200 member multi infested tag (including our own, we didn't know any better) with a BRUTAL reputation. Fighting Avengers, and HAN, and near the end even our best buds SOL few times. My first and second last *huge* foriegn affairs screw up was against Avengers. I let Our Buddy Cougar from KOH pressure me into hitting avengers with em. He was a sweet talker and I was a new guy with no outer alliance friends. We hit, Avengers came online and said "WHAT ARE YOU HITTING US FOR??!!" We said, " well.. we aren't really sure...." Cougar had bit off more than he could chew with Avengers, since they were allied to UCN, who joined the Fray. Avengers, along with Fingolfin convinced the OOA to pull out. leaving poor old Cougar, his personal 'brigade' (fork, spoon, plate, knife, sink, ect) and KOH to fight for themselves. We forked him good, in other words. I still claim ignorance. I was new, no ones perfect. Sorry bout that :)
(It was about three re-sets into the Growth of RAGE before he forgave me. Incidentally, I think a week after he got over the whole avengers thing, RAGE hit TGA. Sent that out the window pretty fast didn't it? Poor ol'e Coug.)
Anyhow, Between the second rise of the OOA and its Janga type fall, Nazar and I got into more fights than a guy would ever want. he was using my comp to do FA, I was using it to do War stuff, then got promoted to VP. Prez guys do FA as well. So all the sudden I was doing a bit of Nazars job. Ok, A lot of it. If there's one thing I can say about Nazar, he is very territorial. When it's the guys turn to buy toilet paper, he hides it in his bloody room and I have to knock on his door to get more once the current roll is out. It's like a bad version of halloween. Step on Nazar's FA shoes? Minas well wind up and kick him in the nards. There were even silly times we stopped talking for weeks at a time. At the final blowup nazar got his own comp, the damn thing sounded like an air liner. Not the queen of the fleet either. He left the OOA and played solo for a time until UCN picked him up, being quickly promoted to team leader due to his past OOA experience.
In the mean Time, I had moved to Full Prez of the OOA, along side Zardoz and Snort. Insanity who had been playing with us for a while moved into the sec war spot, and did a great job. we were actually a force that was feared. We didn't really know what to do with the power. It was a new thing. Mater of Fact, Insanity and I hauled a fresh new Samoan into a chat at 4:30 in the morning one night and tried to convince him to merge his new small MD clan into the OOA. We would show em how to play, no probs! *groan*
OOA started to spiral when we got into a tiff with SOL. We had not built the alliance on anything solid, so at the first sign of trouble, things started to cave in all over the place. Both SOL and OOA traded a limited first strike in a day or so. I went out and resolved the issue. Twenty minutes later, Lord Slert (New OOA VP, old game vet) went to the SOL boards and declared war. I had spent hours solving things. I lost it, resigned, and quit.
Slert, he was a good guy. Great to talk to, but all events considered and culminated at that one point, it seemed. I had just had enough. One of the last OOA members lists can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/ooa.html Still liked the game though. Oddly enough.
So, I went out and joined A new alliance, your old friend and Mine, Deity Lord (or was it Diablo?) had started up. The OOD. (order of druids). Insanity booked it at about the same time, leaving for EOS. Well, what do you know?! two days in OOD picked a fight with SOL. I had nothing to do with it, I was a lowly member. SOL promptly began to crush our 20 member tag. OOD was defending their right not to be landgrabed, they were doing the right thing, I was behind it. However, OOD surrendered. stating "the good of the members". They didn't want to ruin thier countries. This was a new thing for me. The members will always be pushed around if you don't stick up for yourself, I thought. I quit the OOD, and didn't play for the remainder of the reset.
In between that, halls and Insanity had decided to start a new alliance. Halls was Insanitys brother, and had stayed on with the OOA, being promoted to VP at this time. Halls pushed for a new alliance, and thought he could get at least 30 guys from the OOA. Insanity eventually got excited, and convinced me it was a good idea. We were going to launch the Glorious alliance "Lords of Mourning" Insanity simply stated that that was "Gay" and that we should be RAGE. The name stuck. RAGE was born.
We only got about 15 guys, but what a 15 they were. Between the time it took for Insanity and I to get a refusal for the MD merger while still in the OOA, and the time we put together the final touches on our new venture, the RAGE alliance, MD had become a major political power. Only having 50 members or so, but great players the lot of them. MD only had about two leaders that used ICQ on a regular basis at that point (that's right folks, a major alliance with only Two ICQ users on daily).
Mid way through the set, RAGE was doing ok. maybe ranked 15th in total net, recruited to 30 or so members, when trouble with the ROCK coalition started to brew.
By looking at the news, and taping my foreign affairs contacts, (all 10 of them??) I was the first to deduce ROCK was about to put that upstart alliance MD back in its rightful place (the ground). Just my luck, No MD contacts were online. So as the somewhat famous story goes, I did know of a place to find MD members. The online MD mud.
Tirol don't do MUDS.
I know one command to this day. SHOUT. I wander into this medieval setting, swords, bows arrows, town folk. And I scream "ROCK IS ATTACKING ROCK IS ATTACKING!!" Well, that just was NOT in character for the MUD it seems. Within seconds a good host of local warriors had traveled to my area, and begun to dissect me, piece, by piece. Until my Hero, Magellan (or was it Tokugawa?) came along, and disarmed/halted all of the attackers. (the flurry of text was nothing short of amazing). He got me on ICQ, and about ten minutes into the ROCK attack (my timing was impeccable as always) RAGE and MD mounted a feeble counterstrike. None the less, it was a counter strike. In the next day, three or four other small alliances, FOE being one of them, perhaps CWG another, joined the MD counter assault.
We were beaten badly in the end, but not a one of our alliances broke. We had our foothold on 1A. And we were going to take advantage. Within a resets time, RAGE had blossomed to about 120 members. A good bud of mine, whom some of you know as GRIN187, Who others know as Drapp, had joined up with RAGE. The guys trouble. Midway through the set, He landgrabed one Ragnarock player. Ragnarock retaliated six or seven times. So, he LG'd em back a few more times. So, RAG laid out a good 20 hits on him, and TGA laid out six or seven, god knows why. Remember my good buddy Cougar? Seems Grinn was messing with his "personal friend". the message Drapp sent about how Cougs freind should be raped like a dog probbably didn't help things much. True to RAGE style, we whacked Ragnarock one day later.
Rag didn't like this very much So they decided to even the field just a bit (we had a very large initial advantage) and called in TIE, TGA, SOL, and Elitez on us. (overkill perhaps?) SOL pulled out two days later, they were prime politicos in those days, and they knew MD was changing the way things worked. Once SOL left, so did Elitez and TIE. Leaving RAGE, TGA, and Ragnarock on the field. Until our old friends MD, FOE, and CWG decided to join in for RAGE. Well, TGA didn't like that one bit, so they called in the old time powerhouse again. ROCK.
It wasn't the same MD anymore, as RoCk was soon a bit Vexed to find out. MD went toe to toe with ROCK near the whole time, until HAN came in and put MD under. HAN had obtained a post from the MD boards where a few members had stated their dislike for HAN. I believe HAN told Samoan something like "MD no like HAN. MD not friend. HAN attack MD". And so they did. This brings us to Tirols second and last major Foriegn Affairs screwup. UCN had engaged EOS, EOS lost brutally. Having my dirty fingers in politics, I had given my UCN ambassadors access to Scarface from EOS. Then got busted by Fingolfin. Captain Truth Honor and Justice Nazar saw it fit that he personally take up my punishment, and LG'd me quite a few times, in the middle of one of our Rock fam strikes. Man did that piss me off.
(EOS, was Never to be seen again. Though they did retain some small form in the shape of NLS, and recently IX, in a very small way.)
RoCk fam was put down in short order the reset after. Being pinned for running the TIGER bot on Omega. The third and final ROCK war was the last one for them, our side prevailed, and did so overwhelmingly. ROCK was no more. This started a host of spin-off wars reset after reset, RAGE had made traditional enemies out of SOL, and Avengers along the way. Twice Quashing Avengers, though neither engagement lasted more than three days. Fighting SOL time and time again. Going after Legionz Twice. (if it looked and smelt like RoCk fam, and if they even snorted at us, or an ally the wrong way, that was excuse enough.) A screenshot from one of the Legionz wars can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/legionwar.html Politics were so simple back then.
RAGE DECLARES WAR! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You looked at us funny. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We engaged UCN once in the midst of all that. They refused us a DNH and pulled in the Area of 54k acers off us in just under a month. That was a lot of land for RAGE in those days. Our AB strikes ran strac, doing a lot of damage on the UCN. Kill runs were new this re-set, and we decided to start running them. Time, and time, and time again we were foiled. One day we got fed up and ran a large strike at 4:00am. Stonewalled. By every single country we tried. Ahh, the good ole days when login sharing wasn't an alliance killer eh Grant? ;)
Nazar was still a UCN team leader at the time, and had a few of his friends in the White Council (Azair, Slade). The weekend of the strike (yes Tirol attacked the alliance Naz was in, I was still pissed he had the nerve to LG me) Naz was camping. Just before he left he asked me not to hit anyone from the White Council. As a favor. Though I never told anyone, not even my own war leaders and co presidents, im sure Fingolfin was wondering what kind of Magical flute naz had ramed up his cakehole to take the White through the thick of battle and come out without a ding. Ok, so I nailed Azair a few times.. other than that. One reset or so Later, Naz left the UCN for a bit, and played in a clan called UND. Just a few friends. Clearly stating to me "Its just to mess around, I would never want anything big like RAGE. " Its about this Time our current site master, Inferno wanted to move himself into other areas of the internet. He asked me to Lead TIE. On one small condition. I merge RAGE into TIE.
Well, Im a guy who likes huge honking alliances, but I couldn't do that to our guys. We were, and always will be RAGE. Nothing else. The reset after SOL declared Operation Harvest on Arrow. Arrow hit the big leagues, and Nazar once again got sucked down the rabbit hole. The reset after Operation Harvest, RAGE had had massive internal Hemorrhaging. We were at 200+ members, and were not setup to take the bulk. I, among many other leaders wound up leaving over it. I didn't leave to spite anyone, I left because I just couldn't handle the inherent pressures of leading anymore. More than learning how to lead in 1a, surviving the test of leadership is learning how to balance it IRL.
I was burnt out. I needed a vacation. So, the gates of Arrow swung open, and I found myself a member of the UNT. I played out the re-set there, net gaining, I think. Not really though, because UNT was after Kill targs. Ahh how my trademark warrior Theo was once again pressed into service.
Returning to RAGE with much vigor the reset after, we began our re-ascent to the top ranks. It was long and hard. This is about the time when TSA was begining to surface. I have allergies to large organizations. Especially once that SOL likes to finger. Not a hate, but more of an invitation to play chess. Or in the very least kick the board over. In short order we found ourselves head to head with SOL for a couple of resets. They won. As usual. I've made a career of saying screw who's going to win, and taking rage out for a large ass whooping. We don't win many fights. Ever. But its the principal behind those fights that keeps us in a gel. I find alliances that have to win really go tits up fast when they take a loss. Which is inevitable. Things change.
Once again, when TSA was at the hight of its power, IRL was stacking up, and there was more in-fighting. We had built RAGE back up to the magical 200 member mark, but the structure was still wrong. I left RAGE for a game break. Just checking in on alliance talk once a week or so. Made it for near four months. I came back to RAGE after the four months to find we were 22nd in total net midway through a re-set and fighting off and on with RD. I didn't have anything better to do so I came back and played with the guys again for a while. We made some groths, nothing stellar, but for the most part we were ranking between 10 and 15 in total net the reset after. But, once again I decided it was time to take some time off. Or I fought with the leadership again. Its one or the other. I built RAGE with Halls and Insanity and we were all equal Ranks. As they left, Other reds moved in, retaining, in theroy at least 1/3 the total heads power. But I run things like a dictator, and im generally a power hungry dink who whines and bawls when he doesnt get his way. I didn't get my way :)
I left RAGE for a vacation in MD. I played out most of the set in MD, when TIE hit IX. IX asked RAGE and MD to help em out. So we killed all of TIE off in four days or so. Since I was In MD, but knew RAGE very well, I was pressed into service as a part time coordinator. Fighting with RAGE again was a rush, even if I was in the MD tag. I was soon sucked back into RAGE for the last time, with All appologies to Samoan and Ampy who were both at some sort of heads capacity at the time. The reset after, RAGE was starting to bulk the members again, now upwards of 220. We still didn't have a proper structure, but some of the bad apples in RAGE finally fell off the tree. I like community and friends. sometimes to perpetuate that, you have to keep bad leaders. Because their still good people. Its tough for any alliance leader interested in community. Keeping the Community strong is based in some part on success as well. Its such a fine line. So RAGE was running fairly prime for once under the bulk of our guys.
Another alliance, composed of ex Legionz, ROCK, and Avengers was made. Known as Genesis today. Wow, thanx for putting all my old targets in one tag! I giggled. However I stopped laughing when they refused us a DO NOT HIT. 1.5 months into the set and -50+k acers, RAGE declared war on Genesis. An ICQ chat transcript of Genesis complaining can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/firsttrash.html
We used an AB opener and launched hard at their fat tech theos. It was a sound plan on paper, but we paid for not using top down kill runs.
(Its the reason UCN got kicked by Elietez last reset as well. I don't care what UCN said, RaVes working in conjunction with UCN a few days before the strike left them friendly experience based advice to drop the AB's. They didn't, they paid. Initial top down strikes could have left you a DECISISVE victory, not a debatable one.)
So in terms of total net lost, RAGE won vs Genesis. In terms of hits and kills, final ranks, Genesis had beaten us. But once again, we made our point. They have signed with us every reset after. It was near the end of the Genesis war that I came up with the basic foundation for the Outposting system. For a long time I'd known if RAGE pushed the members barrier anymore, we would crumble, like every other alliance has upon hitting 200+. I posted about it, and the response was incredible. Everyone was for it, and the members and other presidents had many valuable ideas that turned the basic outposting foundation laid out, into a workable plan. The plan that's jacked us to near 500 members today. Shortly into the opening of our first outpost, we were asked by many allies to help out in the IX war. We were really split as to whom to help. As per usual, we went after TGA. A sceen shot of the notepad I used to decide our role can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/whos.htm
A joint RAGE/AOD vs TGA first strike screenshot can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/chat1.html Last re-set, as you all know, I got one of my personal goals completed by winning total net with RAGE. Yeah, MD would have won in the long run, Elietz probably would have passed us as well. But the fact is, they didn't. We picked a great time not to war for once in our 14 or so reset history. A screenshot of our last RAGE netgaining chat can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/earthwarguide/history/net.html
Well, here we are, today. Im getting ready to hang up the alliance leader hat. Most of my goals have been accomplished here. Most notable building a community, not an alliance. That's what's going to carry RAGE thru when im out of active leadership. I don't remember when leading stopped being fun and turned into work. But It did. In the next month or so i'll be dropping down to L10 active advisor ship. I'll be a team leader again for the first time since my rise to leadership in the OOA. I'll be leading a team of RAGERS who don't play. I'll be able to draw up my Island of Cheeze somewhere in the middle of Europe. I'll be able to crack open the Svenskar translator again and swear at my damned Euro's. I'll be able to answer Ewoks when he says, "Hey man, what's up?" In short, the Tirol most of you old timers actually liked, is coming back to RAGE very soon. I've Invited Insanity to help lead the first three RAGE kills with me if we war this reset. As it should be. Been trying to find time to write this for a while, Enjoy! Tirol, Prez/RAGE
