Okay, I think we need a discussion on the whole Peacekeep crisis between players of both sides.
First of all, don't worry, we're backing down. We're just discussing in private how exactly to do it from a RP perspective.
That was the easy part. Now, for the rest. First, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say it is me who came up with the details of our ultimatum, or, as we called it internally, plan DARK LETTER, although it was approved unanimously.
When we discussed it, we knew it was a very aggressive move. I, at least, though that it would create some nice drama, and tension, and roleplaying opportunities (although loosing the vote on the way to respond to the death of our spying team prevented me from increasing tensions progressively). We coming up with my demands, one thing I kept in mind was that the goal was not to get to an early game over, but to secure some advantage (mostly placing observers on your production for free spying) and humiliate Russia a bit, hoping to score points with the non-aligned. I mean, we could just have well have launched a nuclear first strike if our goal was to win.
It seems however that this wasn't perceived as such by the Russians players. As such, Drgong was forced to jump in to have prevent the game from collapsing. This lead to the present situation, where we feel punished because of our aggressive play style, and I'm sure you feel cheated because we basically abused the huge advantage that TN weapons give over convetional weapons.
So I'd love to hear how things were and are perceived from the Russian point of view. I think we should also discuss what exactly is within the limit of acceptable actions within the game.