Grasslands Gambit: Difference between revisions

Gang Shi had initially been dissolved in the [[SEC–Gang Shi War]] in April 2023, as part of a war between Gang Shi and the [[Security Enhancement Coalition]], including Icenia and Yoahtl. Following the end of the [[Butternut-SEC War]], in which Icenia and Yoahtl, still in the SEC, fought a failed war against [[Butternut County]] and fighters from Gang Shi, Gang Shi was reestablished (with the SEC dissolved). Subsequently, Icenia and Gang Shi were the subject of several incidents,<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/CivMC/comments/17u0xqo/gang_shis_drama_factory/</ref> including the TNT-bombing of unreinforced Icenian structures and the pearling & spiking of 2 Icenian senators. Meanwhile, Yoahtl and Gang Shi signed a non-aggression pact to ease post-war tensions and promote peace. But after a leak including plans to divide and conquer Yoahtl, Icenia and other nations (detailed extensively in the "[https://www.reddit.com/r/CivMC/comments/18dkxm7/pearled_harbor/ Pearled Harbor]" post on the CivMC subreddit), Yoahtl and Icenia decided to preemptively strike Black Mesa, Gang Shi's primary pearl holding vault.

 

 

On the evening of November 29, 2023 a meeting was arranged between Fastestgrass and several Icenian and Yoahtlan officials where Fastestgrass stated that he intended to inside Gang Shi and damage the Black Mesa Vault as much as he possibly could. With the help of an insider, later revealed to be Antea4204, Fastest planned to add several of his friends to Black Mesa groups and then have them break as much of the vault as they could before being caught and pearled. Following the reveal of this information, the beginning of a significantly more detailed plan was drafted by Quanton_Biscuit, Gjum, Huskydog9988, and Shadno and a planning discord was created.

 

After speaking with Fastest and determining exactly what Antea had access to, Quanton requested a censored download of the Gang Shi discord as it was determined that Antea was still an admin in the Gang Shi discord. The download was scrubbed for personal information by Antea and Fastest prior to giving it to Quanton and access to the download was never extended further. Following the completion of the war, the download was deleted.

 

Another major breakthrough occurred when Antea and Fastest were able to secure a schematic of the Black Mesa Vault. Additionally, a webapp was created that allowed the DGP to determine active times for Gang Shi's citizenry.

 

After gaining access to the Black Mesa schematic, Quanton examined the design and developed a detailed plan on how to assault the vault. A major obstacle that the team faced was that Antea only had "member" level access on bastion groups which prevented the assault team from placing anything inside of the vault, pearling, or removing the bastions. Due to this, a more complex plan was developed that would maximize attacker safety without the need to build structures within the vault. The plan included splitting the Assault team into three different groups:

 

To assist with the plan, Gjum created a branch of Nexum (DGP's client mod) to include waypoints of lodestones, targets, and other useful utilities.

 

After analyzing the discord leak, Quanton began writing a subreddit post designed to justify the use of a first strike, expose Gang Shi's server wide intentions, cause a diplomatic / public relations crisis, and convince members of Gang Shi's client states to stay out of the war. The belief held by the Planning Team was that hitting Gang Shi on every front (including the subreddit) would both shock them and cause mass chaos, further reducing their ability to retaliate following the strike on Black Mesa. There was also a significant portion of the post intended to inform and convince the Elysian Pact to join the war on the DGP's behalf by highlighting the threat Gang Shi posed to Nara, one of the Elysian Pact's members.

 

Gjum, Drekamor, and Husky developed a system where they could disable Gang Shi's snitch relay by adding a member to the snitch group and then spamming snitches via rapid movement. This tactic proved to be effective but also resulted in several player's game crashing so use was discontinued.

 

Shadno and Drekamor determined a way to add DGP members to groups and then hide them from the group admin, thus allowing limited DGP members to continue to be on groups even after the initial insiding incident was discovered.

 

Once the Black Mesa assault plan was complete and the subreddit post prepared, Quanton, Husky, Gjum, Drekamor, and Shadno developed a broader strategy for the war and created a list of "next day" targets. Due to most of the DGP fighters needing sleep and the likelihood of a Gang Shi counter attack, it was determined that a shaping operation was best and the primary targets would be iceroads and exposed bunkers as this would limit Gang Shi's ability to consolidate fighters and launch counter attacks. Once the targets were identified, specific commanders were chosen to lead team that would target each Gang Shi position.

 

The final question that remained was how to get the Assault Team to Black Mesa. The entirety of Gang Shi was city bastioned so any tunnel the attacker's were to dig would have to be unreinforced thus presenting a massive safety issue. Quanton determined that it would be safer to dig from Yoahtl's capital, Altepetl into a Gang Shi iceroad, then CTR that iceroad all the way to Black Mesa. This would provide a secure retreat route for the Assault Team and would also disable a Gang Shi owned iceroad.

 

Final preparations were made and it was determined that the first strike would occur on a Thursday night / Friday morning as that was the lowest activity period for Gang Shi. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, Icenians traveled a secret nether road from Icenia to Yoahtl to mask the fighter deployment. Additionally, all troop transfers were staggered as to not alert Gang Shi of the military buildup. Finally, a supply bunker was established in Altepetl and a pilot hole was dug to the border of Gang Shi.

 

On 8th December 2023, on the anniversary of the insiding of the [[Vault#The Crucible (Columbia)|Crucible]] on [[CivClassic 2.0|CivClassics]] and also a day after the anniversary of the [[Wikipedia:Attack on Pearl Harbor|attack on Pearl Harbor]], Icenia and Yoahtl launched an surprise attack on Black Mesa, Gang Shi's main pearl holding vault. A Reddit post was made, called "Pearled Harbor" (an allusion to the [[Pearled Harbor]] event in [[CivClassic 2.0]], which in turn was an allusion to the attack on Pearl Harbor), claiming that Icenian and Yoahtl fighters had disabled and ctr'd most of the vault with the help of an unnamed insider (later identified as Antea4204), before explaining the coalition's stated reasons for the attack.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/CivMC/comments/18dkxm7/pearled_harbor/</ref>

 

With all DGP fighters safely back in Yoahtl, Quanton posted "Pearled Harbor" to the CivMC subreddit beginning the Grasslands Gambit War.

 

 

On the morning of December 9th, a squad of Icenian fighters began a skybridge over the Florence bunker located south of Whole Foods, believing it was a staging ground for an attack against the farming complex. A watercubing operation was briefly interrupted by the arrival of [[XxTBxX3276]], [[UghBraces]], [[loo_wee_gee]], and [[7Joshhh]], but ultimately continued and was later augmented by a bombing operation on the 10th, firmly disabling Florence from being used. The Florence bunker was discovered to have been commanded by [[chosentwicelol]], at the time of its disabling.<ref>https://civwiki.news/newsletter/newsletter-12-11-2023/</ref>

 

Fastestgrass, the supplier of the initial "Pearled Harbor" leak, was friendly pearled by Antea on December 10th.<ref>https://civwiki.news/newsletter/newsletter-12-11-2023/</ref>

 

At around 2am on December 11th, chosentwicelol and [[Squilliam]] appeared in Icenia city. They briefly attempted to raid various shops around the city by breaking into them, but were largely unsuccessful due to the proliferation of relay chests. After Shadno, [[Jaimiemie]], and [[Raeders]] moved in, there was a fight at Jah Park which resulted in Squilliam being knocked into a foot grinder and subsequently pearled, with Chosen fleeing the scene.

 

In the early hours of December 12th, [[ComradeNick]] published an open letter admitting that he had turned coat,<ref>https://redd.it/18glq8g</ref> allowing the Dawn Guard Pact to completely seize control of what remained of Butternut and Gang Shi's defenses, a killing blow for the two nations. Soon thereafter, Icenian President [[ChrisChrispie]] announced that the Dawn Guard Pact would temporarily occupy the territories of [[Florence]], Lambeau, Butternut, [[Gang Shi]], Ma Seli, [[Asgard]], and [[Salerno]] until the sentencing of enemy combatants.<ref>https://redd.it/18gmvy2</ref>

 

Following the compromise of Butternut vault and the end of the war, Jbblocker used his primary ownership on many Gang Shi groups to transfer control to members of [[Estalia]], causing both the city and remainder of the vault to become owned by the [[Elysian Pact]]. This would lead to Estalia expressing claims over the city, ironically preventing some former Gang Shitters (now refugees in the Yoahtlan state of Exilus) from returning to their builds.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/CivMC/comments/18knx7x/land_claims_update/</ref> This would mark the final namelayer upset of the conflict.