I think I now understand Cohen

[Cainehill]

Historically, I think it's damn rare, to say the least, for a nation to say "If you attack me, I'm giving all my gold, weapons and ships to so-and-so so they can destroy you".

They used their weapons and ships in battle themselves. The gold, they may have given to another nation as an inducement to the other to ally with them, but they did _NOT_ say, "If you attack me, I'm giving so-and-so all my gold so they can conquer the world."

There's a difference between sending gifts to someone who may avenge you ("France may destroy me in the month to come; in case they do, here is the location of weapon stashes in the mountains, and the information about their plans that my spies have gathered...") and de facto threatening suicide by promising to give all your resources to someone else in retaliation.

Germany didn't send all their gold to Japan when it was obvious they were going to lose. The Confederates didn't threaten to give everything to England and France if the Union didn't back off.

I do think Arch over-reacted to Lintman's post, which was _NOT_ advocating throwing the game, but frankly, threatening to throw the game is a bit of a childish tantrum. I expect I would have attacked with a vengeance, forcing him to decide whether or not to _really_ send everything over and totally throw the game away, and then avoided playing with the person again.