Clockwork wrote:Player b casts on player a
Player a retaliates and casts on player b’s ships w levies
Player c fixes damaged ships for free
This is repeated
Is Player b Griefing?
The scenario you provided is very basic with little information, which allows for far too many possible ways to look at this for me to provide an answer that can't be scrutinized by what-ifs.
That being said, to quantify griefing one would have to look at the actions that correlate toward the suspected griefee which in the scenario provided would be Player A.
Per the provided scenario, Player A is only being targeted by Player B. Player A is retaliating against Player B. The actions of Player C which do not directly involve Player A are irrelevant to Player B's actions on Player A.
Thus as Player A is causing retaliatory damage to Player B's actions, this would be considered war.
The pseudo-transference of Player B's loss through Player C's attempted recompense of Player A's retaliation on Player B is irrelevant. Additionally, 1 to 1 casting of Call Leviathan to Expedition Journey are not a guarantee of equal trade. While level loss to level gain may be equal, the attribute loss and gain are not guaranteed of being the same. Thus even with Player C casting 1 Expedition Journey to every Call Leviathan cast by Player A, the loss incurred on Player B's ships could result in loss to Player B. There is also the chance that Player B gains from such activity, but such is all done by chance and thus is excluded from the factoring.
So based on the limited information in your scenario, I would say that NO, Player B is not griefing Player A, as Player A is retaliating.
