If there had never been a War we would all still be playing
Gotta disagree here, and I've tried to not get involved in the argument, but hopefully I can help explain what happened here. This isn't the first time such an issue has occured either, I can think of at least 2 other instances where it got out of hand and 2 were it got stopped cold.
Regardless of what happened to the rest of SANCTA, Memphus was holding it together. Memphus only left for one reason:
the allegation of cheating after the admins had investigated the game. It wasn't the war that did it, I think he'd have happily fought to the bitter end (just as he did in the SANCTA PBEM that got started).
This has happened before, and some old timers may remember it: the PTW ISDG had incidences of a team, GCA (GameCatcher Alliance) winning battles at insane odds (horsemen killing Numid Mercs in Civ3 against Apolyton) and against CFC in an earlier war. This lead to bad feelings between the teams, and the players on the teams, and the game eventually got abandoned. A mod was called in to check the results...it took him a week to sort it out, and he didn't have the
moral authority over the players to keep them happy to continue playing.
If there is one important lesson to (re)learn from this game, it is that accusations of cheating should be carried out tactfully, and ideally when there is some evidence.
And once a ruling has been reached, accept it and don't continue to antagonistic in public.
This is one of the reasons I wholeheartedly believe an active game admin is needed. Any problems arise, the admin can nip it in the bud right away, in one day maximum. One team starts to wonder about combat results (and guys, you aren't the first and won't be the last, so don't think this is aimed at you) then the game admin will have known that the battle was coming weeks in advance, and can be around for when the battle takes place. The game admin can anticipate potential points in the game where something
that appears untoward may occur, and moniter it closely behind the scenes in real time.
Always peace is not a bad game type to play, on a large maps with lots of space and an interesting diplomatic set up then there can be lots of decisions to make. Just make sure that the decisions keep on occuring. This entire gametype is designed to create those questions, and the teams survive on making those decisions (which is why the poll idea works for some teams). No decisions to make = No forum activity = Team death.