The tide of the war is often dictated by the horde mentality. All sides have it to some extent and it doesn't really help gain anything. What is more important is how many people don't subscribe to the mentality.
The knits were fighting on both fronts yesterday. We had numbers (70 knits, 55 bish, 50 rook) and we were still down to one island not making progress. There was a bish CV parked off of A17 and an endless wave of bish were attacking, being met by an endless wave of knits. Finally, someone spawned from a nearby base.. climbed to 10k and came in and bombed the bish cv. Not a single bish pilot was over 6k to defend... and not a single person knew what to do when the cv was sent back to port.
The knits quickly grabed 18 and the hord started again. The bish got the cv back near 18 and a battle started between 19 and 18 that sucked up 70% of bish and knit resources. The deciding factor was not how many people we had going after the CV/19 from 18... but rather how many people were NOT doing it. As the battle raged, several people got together and took A7.. then swept across the more northern bish fields as they were relatively undefended. The rooks began to take the northwestern bases as they too were relatively undefended... yet very few bish gave up the cv->18 battle.
Finally, we were able to take A19 and A21 from the north, rather than the east. Thanks to bish persistance, the CV for 21 was handily nearby for quick capture. The bish never recovered.
I've seen the Knits behave this way too. Afterall, we were down to one island because at one time 90% of the knits on-line decided it was more important to defend A5 than any of our ports. Basically, whenever 80-90% of your country is at the same location, you are doomed.
AKDejaVu