As far as I know, the people in the New Empire were not newbies. They
were in from the beginning of the game, and started with the same assets
that the rest of us did. However, they made a number of mistakes that I,
in my rawest state of newbiedom in g1, would never have made:
They joined in with an "Empire," where, from what I can tell, decisions
were made from the top down and they had little input. This means the
whole alliance is only as good as the top guy...which wasn't too good,
apparently.
They entrusted their diplomacy to someone else, again with no input.
Diplomacy is life and death in this game. Letting someone else be your
spokesman is like handing them the keys to your house -- you'd better trust
them REALLY well.
They trusted their neighbors to leave them alone. Big mistake. Healthy
paranoia is a Very Good Thing. Once in g1 I abandoned a perfectly good
tower and level 4 mine, just because my neighbors were getting too close
and I wasn't sure of their intentions. At any rate, hopefully now everyone
has gotten the message: if it's worth acquiring, it's worth defending.
Now, I will agree wholeheartedly that bashing thoroughly new players is
pretty reprehensible, but so far we haven't seen a single person come
forward publicly and say "I was a brand new player, I never had anything to
do with the Empire, and Greg and Rob wiped me out."
And Eric, if you're a diplomat with a large stick, good for you! I doubt
that PLATO's attack would have worked against you.
The Carnival