In Response to the Recent "ACP Exposé"

Addressed to the entire CPR community.

This post addresses the recent "ACP Exposé".

Edit: There seems to be some blogger editing issues -
Please feel free to read the full response on Google Docs instead:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ap62VD3-YMBIX86Ii8bAagsxW-tUCVewAbUhy2SkFeE/edit?usp=sharing

We would like to preface this post with a warning to the community - This could happen to anyone. Most, if not all army discords use bots. ACP is conducting our own investigation that we assure everyone we are taking extremely seriously - there is a possibility though that these weren't leaked but were indeed "hacked" through the use of bot tokens. Please take the necessary precautions to secure your chats - such as ensuring your discord accounts are safe and making sure the bots invited can be trusted.

I would also like to address the ACP community - online safety is of our #1 concern. Staff chats were leaked, which is not a reason for alarm. No personal DMs or data was breached in the process. ACP will continue making sure the community and discord is safe for all to enjoy.

Now moving on to address the core contents of the exposé.

Part 1: CPAM

The core allegations made against ACP was "size inflation" and "influence over CPAM.

1) Size inflation - all armies inflate their sizes. I don't want to call out any other armies as I'm sure the
entire community knows it’s happening. Especially with the rogue event trend, there isn't always a clear
distinction between rogue and actual troops. I try my best to make sure we have a countable max -
any penguin doing the emote + penguins wearing the uniform are counted in our maxes. Screenshots
from a month ago, some from March 1st were taken. CPAM has worked hard to ensure the TT is fair
for everyone, but my apologies if some of our sizes claimed were ‘inflated’.

2) Influence over CPAM - What happened was that in the previous week’s CPAM TT, CPAM CEO Ayan
recounted all of ACP’s pictures, giving us a much lower max, without recounting any of RPF and HF’s. 

This was of course brought up in HCom, in which we thought it was unfair that ACP’s were being
recounted and RPF’s weren’t. In addition, we just had a battle with the PZF, in which we believed
we were (unfairly) awarded 2 tactic points, tying with the PZF despite having better tactics and
formations. (Full post: https://www.thearmyofcp.com/2020/04/acp-vs-pzf-battle-in-review_2.html)

Thus, higher command began a discussion about the CPAM bias situation - 2funky3 put it best in
one of the screenshots:

As ACP were being targeted for the “recounting” of our pictures, and due to the fact we felt the tactic
points were poorly given, we felt that CPAM held bias against us. The comments on “RPF would get
away with it” was in reference to the fact that RPF pictures were not recounted but ACP ones were.

In response to the allegations against myself and my involvement with CPAM - I was involved in the
formation and inauguration of CPAM. My statement was in regards to helping them set up in a way
that resembled CPAC, especially in the regard of posting. 

Below are 2 CPAM forming groups I was a part of:

I helped extensively in setting up the TT formula:

Mchappy put it best:

Perhaps what I expressed was put in not the most eloquent manner - but then again, I didn’t expect my
HCom chat to be leaked - all I wanted to do was, to a great extent, bring what I learnt from SMAC/CPAC into CPAM and model CPAM after something that has proved to be successful.

(I want to note here that I have since then - again these screenshots were from almost a month ago
- talked to Ayan and he has taken efforts to make the TT fairer for all.)

Part 2: RPF

1. Trash-talking RPF: We were recently part of CPAM’s Premier League tournament, and our greatest opponents were the RPF. All the “**** RPF” sentiments were part of that - trash-talking or whatnot is quite common - and to hype everything up, we trash-talked the enemy. I’m sure similar sentiments against ACP have occured in RPF chats; I’m sure the rest of the community can sympathize when I say - trashing the enemy is not uncommon when a battle is approaching.

2. ACP is proud to bring all troops to battle: I think this speaks volumes to what kind of army ACP is. We are proud to bring our entire army to every battle - RPF brought their staff team vs. smaller armies, but ACP’s philosophy was that we should respect the smaller armies and bring our entire force. (RPF has elaborated on their philosophy to me - and I can respect their reasoning). If PZF forfeited, ACP would automatically win, with 3 tactic points - however, we still urged PZF to come because we want to fight the tournament honorably. ACP doesn’t wish for wins to be handed to us. We could have easily taken the auto-win and full tactic points - but instead, we urged Retro to come on, and ended with 2 tactic points instead. (It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Max was joking about the server thing.)

(No servers were offered for them to show up, in case this wasn’t already evident)

Pre-battle tensions and trash-talking is common, regardless of whether it is a tournament or a war. RPF has supported ACP in the earliest days of its revival, even coming to our opening event to show support. We are far from enemies. There is a difference between being enemies, and friendly trash-talking in staff chats, during pre-tournament periods.

Part 3: HF

I want to say that the entire drama surrounding this has been solved. A lot of ACP troops, including mods and hcom suddenly approached me that they had been DM-ed HF invites. I immediately began talking to Moon and Tistle, and the situation was sorted out eventually.

Whilst not everything said was fair to HF - understand that recruiting is hard, and when you feel like you recruit just so someone from another army can DM them and recruit them - that’s annoying, to say the least. That is perhaps where the majority of the mod frustration came from - and you can see from the screenshots I tried my best to appease both sides to solve the situation.

Part 4: Trash-talking taken too far

Where does one draw the line between trash-talking, and what is too far? I would like to point out that, whilst this doesn’t excuse the behavior, the moderator in question has been known to the community as a “troll” - he periodically comes on to talk about bowing down to the Syrian government.

However, that being said, I want to apologize on behalf of my staff team for comments that may have gone over the line, especially ones about murder, that may have offended anyone. Moving forward,| we will do our best to navigate the fine line between “lets kill them in battle” and more extreme comments. Whilst all of this occured in staff chats and definitely not main to prevent fostering of public negative sentiments, be confident this will be addressed by the ACP higher command to ensure that comments made are still appropriate.

Final Thoughts

Whilst I personally feel like there was not much to “expose” about ACP, I do realize that many of the
screenshots look incriminating. I would be happy to discuss any of the above with anyone who is
interested in knowing more about the situation. 

In addition - we have no qualms with CPAM, nor is anyone in ACP trying to “influence” CPAM.
One of the reasons we recently went independent was to move away from the drama of the
community as well as the tournament “hostility” built against our opponents. This is something
that was already set in motion by our higher command in hopes to foster a more positive,
ACP-centered community.

I would like to publicly, once again, apologize on behalf of the ACP and our staff team for
comments made and sincerely hopes that the public takes time to read and understand our
side of the story. I welcome any DMs regarding the situation.

Signed,

CSY