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The Emperor and His Chocolate Preface It was a hot summer morning as Emperor Lord Vader had just gotten out of bed, he was heading to the royal kitchen to receive his morning chocolate, as always. Then the cook handed him his chocolate bar, but to the Emperor’s surprise, it wasn’t his favorite, Hershey’s, it was Swiss Chocolate. “What is this?” Vader said, glaring at his cook, to which the cook replied “the best chocolate in the world, just trust me,” Vader, being very trusting in his cook, took a bite of the chocolate. He had never tasted anything so perfect in his life. “Where did this come from?” asked Vader, the cook replied, “Chocolate Castle.” Vader then said “send the entire army, we must have their chocolate.” The Imperium and Chocolate Castle hereby enter into this treaty of Mutual Defense and Optional Aggression. Article I: Peace, And Chocolate The Imperium and Chocolate Castle, referred to herein as the signatories, agree that no acts of aggression should be made towards the other, whether diplomatically or militaristically. Neither signatory will be permitted to lie to, poach from, or manipulate the other in any way. The signatories agree to share intelligence in private, that may affect the other or both the signatories in any way. Article II: Mutual Defense Should either of the signatories come under attack, they may request aid via the proper channels, in which case the other signatory is required to provide both militaristic and diplomatic assistance. The signatories are encouraged to provide financial and technological aid when necessary, however this is considered optional. Article III: Optional Aggression Should either signatory wish to engage in offensive action against any party, the other signatory has the option of joining them. Article IV: Bravery, If Necessary If any signatory is forced to cease hostilities while in the aid of the other, the remaining signatory must respect their sovereignty, and wish them luck in the rebuild. Article V: Amendments With unanimous agreement by both signatories, this treaty may be modified in any way, as the signatories see fit. Article VI: Cancellation If either signatory gets tired of eating so much chocolate together, they must give the other signatory 72 hours notice, during this period Articles I, II and IV are still in effect. Following the completion of this duration, this treaty is considered null and void. Signatures On behalf of The Imperium, /s/ Lord Vader, Emperor /s/ TigerFire, Primarch of Economics /s/ Pewdiepie, Primarch of Internal Affairs On behalf of Chocolate Castle, /s/ Menhera - Popess /s/ Lossi - Queen

Congrats on your treaty!

Preface While a lot of us might log into P&W multiple times a day, overall player-retention in P&W is not very high. In fact, I would guesstimate that 90% of new players don't make it past the first month. I think a lot of this is due to the nature of browser games in general, not just P&W. You need specific qualities to be able to spend enough time on a text-based game for it to be engaging, in my opinion. Nevertheless, this suggestion is another step (in addition to my tutorial idea in another post and maybe future ideas) that I think could help slightly in raising P&W's player-retention. Main Issue Currently, city/project timers last 120 turns, or 10 whole days. When I first joined P&W years ago, this seemed like a slightly odd number to me. As a new player, seeing double-digit-day-long timers is a bit discouraging. New players want to start playing as fast as possible. Now, P&W is a long-term game, but I think shortening timers could have somewhat of a psychological effect in helping with player-retention. Proposed Solution What if we reduce city/project timers to just 84 turns, or 7 days/1 week? Having to wait 10 days (double digits) might seem like a lot to people. Whereas one week simply seems like more of a normal thing and even though it is only 3 days less, might be more acceptable. In real life, people are used to waiting for things on a weekly basis. School/work deadlines, meetings, etc. It's far more natural to use a week-long cycle instead of a 10-day cycle. In addition, the average city count in P&W keeps going up with time. Thus, being able to build cities a bit faster would probably help new players get better integrated with the majority of the active playerbase, especially when global wars break out. Testing the Solution Let's disregard the build-up from 1 to 10 cities as this has no timers. To get from 10 to 15 cities currently takes 50 days in city timers alone. If you have 1500 infra per city at 15 cities, then you also have 5 project slots, which means an additional 50 days. That's a total of 100 days just to get to a decent nation size that allows you to be competitive in a global war. With week-long timers instead, that would take 7 days x 10 (5 cities and 5 projects) = 70 days. So, you save a whole month in timers alone. However, timers are not the only thing that matter here. Of course, even if you reduce city timers, city costs are exponentially more expensive with each additional city. So, it will probably take you more than 7 or 10 days to save up to get your next city. Disregarding any sort of alliance growth aid, smarter players that flip on the market and/or raid actually could earn enough money that they are able to build their cities every 7 or 10 days for the earlier cities. So, I think it could be good to shorten these timers so that new players can get these earlier cities faster. Because of the exponential cost of cities, it's going to take a lot more time to get the later city counts, so once new players get a bit closer to the average point, they will start to slow down and match the growth rate of older players, so that way, it isn't unfair or anything. Furthermore, I think this could help new alliances in general. In my previous example, I disregarded alliance funding. However, it's obvious that most players who have 10 cities are in an alliance. Thus, they are probably subject to alliance growth initiatives. By reducing city timers, this could help newer, but well-planned alliances become relevant faster. If these newer alliances are doing their econ properly, they can utilize shorter timers to save a month in the catch-up game. I think it's good for game health that rising alliances are able to get into a proper war range a bit sooner. It could help make global politics and wars more interesting and dynamic. Conclusion New players are a bit impatient and want to be able to play as fast as possible. While the retention rate will never be high for P&W due to the nature of browser games and nation sims, reducing city/project timers could help, in my opinion. Furthermore, it could help new alliances with potential become relevant faster and shake things up and keep the game more entertaining.

I think most of those problems mentioned can be avoided by using the announcements tags. If you don't want to read DoEs, then just avoid reading the threads labelled as such.

Separate City & Project timers maybe? That's always infuriated me.

Wait a second...... Doesn't that mean the chocolate melted? RIP Congratulations on the treaty though; hopefully you can find a fridge or a cooler or something....

Not a good move. I hear CC is led by a mint chocolate nonbeliever.

starts mass producing chocolate for the interstellar empire

Nation ID: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=235729 Leader: Franco Francisco Accusation: Created multiple accounts and planted them in various alliances of the SWAMP sphere with the believed purpose of spying These are his two accounts in USN and (formerly) TFP respectively. USN also mentioned him creating an account in TI.

From the desk of the CEO Greetings all, Despite many headlines,the Acquuired Growth and Optimization Network(AGON) is totally not a terrorist organization. We totally don't threaten or take things that don't belong to us. We are not pirates or raiders. We are civilised and do things quite differently. 1. We have an internal bank where members can buy shares and get loans. 2. We have a innovative growth model for all of our members. 3. No taxes (unless you're inactive) 4. Great reputation. 5. Democratic We pride ourselves on being different and being able to prosper on fresh new models of growth for our members. COMMUNISTS ARE NOT ALLOWED AND WE HAVE PLENTY OF HELICOPTERS FOR THEM!! All members have a vote in election of government members and war declarations. Individualism is a prized virtue in AGON. Thanks for your continued support. For people that hate reading: AGON exists.

I know this has been tossed around over and over. "Make a Micro Alliance Affairs section" doesn't make sense as everyone in the game has a different idea what a Micro is. But why can't we have a subsection under Alliance Affairs like we have with national Affairs? But instead of making this a "Micro Affairs Section" make an "Alliance RP Section" and a "DoE" section. This eliminates: Micros that want to do stuff with other micros that may not necessarily be treaties, such as "We've opened up talks/embassies with the other party". People being annoyed that Alliance Affairs Section gets "spammed" with issues or topics that aren't full treaty signings DoEs (Declaration of Existences) won't flood the alliance affairs section every time a group of 4-5 friends want to make an alliance. People won't say "Who are you?", "Disband" and "Merge into us" reducing the amount of toxicity shown to some of these new players. This adds: A new way for alliances to work with each other and improve relations using RP as another means of communication A space for the RPers when Politics & War is advertised as a "Nation RP Simulator" that won't find discrimination/belittlement by posting in alliance affairs The ability for not just Micros but Macro alliances to enjoy having their IA/FA staff do some creative writing and add something extra to the game. A reasonable filter so people won't be spammed in alliance affairs and thus in the discords (Please excuse the aspect ratio of the Sub-categories). This change is not intrusive, doesn't change the way the forums act or behave it just adds the missing link that National Affairs has had. We don't need a Alliance RP suggestions section as that can easily just go in Game suggestions. The only other thing you could add is (just like with the National Affairs section) you add an "Alliance RP Archive". Please take the time and share this with everyone. This has been a change that needed to be implemented Looooooooong ago.

People of Orbis, lend me your ears! I joined this game later than many of you who I’ve come to know and love, and mainly it was just to mess with my nerdy husband @Once-ler. But I ended up sticking around, hopping on a hobo train, helping cook the hottest soup known to man, leading said soup through the end of a gratuitous war, running IA through mergers, and running off and having my own tour of Orbis before stopping back home in CotL to FA it up. But that is a lot of work for one ‘chu, and therefore I’ve finally realized my dream of retiring and creating (after all this time): Pika Party Protected by Rose ❤️ ❤️❤️❤️ MDP with that one weirdo in CoS @Spaceman Thrax Special shout out to my son @Squeegee, SK and TKR for also protecting me and letting me exist in space and do art things ❤️ Additional shout outs to @MCMaster-095 and @BelgiumFury just because tl;dr: I’m retiring to make more art

I STG EVERY TIME IM TRYNA TRADE OR CHECK MY WARS I HAVE TO DO A CAPTCHA AND IT TAKES OVER 7 TRIES BEFORE IT LETS ME THROUGH JUST USE RECAPTCHA 3 OR SOME OTHER CAPTCHA THAT ISNT INFURIATING

Actually I have an idea, increase down declare range to 0.66/ or even 0.6 instead of the current .75

Have you considered disbanding or merging into BK?

The Starks will offer you protection, quick growth, free cities and education. Want to be a Northerner of House Stark, --Join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/dbBWxAv ask for sojourner#3895 to apply.

Congrats on the treaty! Make sure to save chocolate for the rest of us though!

Don't say you aren't a terrorist organization, say you are a group of freedom fighters.

Good to see two great alliances signing some ink. Good luck to you both. Enjoy the Imperialism and Chocolate, it will now be state mandated.

The chocolate must flow

No tldr, I'm mad... still waiting for the Chocolate Crusades upon the Chocolate heretics too. In due seriousness, good luck folks.

There's a balance here between making growth to slow and making growth too fast. My gut feeling is that this is on the side of making growth too fast. We are seeing a cycle of inflation, where cities and projects are easy to build, so they have less perceived value to players, and they get bored of building them faster, so admin makes it even easier to build them to account for people getting bored of them quicker, and the cycle repeats. And I think this hurts rather than helps new alliances. New alliances generally don't have as many big nations to fund faster lower-mid tier growth. With my 33 city income, in one week I can completely fund one new nation getting all the way to city 15. With city timers, there are limits to how fast alliances with deep pockets can supercharge a new nation's growth.

On mobile, it seems to fail everytime I use the PNW app, however if I go and use the browser version, I probably have to do it a max of 3 times. Its probably something to do with the app I guess?

If I have to explain how I did my tiers, I don't want you to know.

Squeegee, first of his name, mother of dragons, leaker of opsec info.

Splitting mine into, -Alliances that will almost certainly perform well next war no matter what, regardless of whether they'll be on the winning side or losing side; -Alliances that have the potential to perform well, but either haven't proven it before yet (or recently), or will be subject strongly to the performance of their leadership, or might have a significant drop off in effort if they're not on the winning side (or some combination of all 3); -Alliances that might do okay/average-ish on the winning side but will almost certainly collapse if they're on the losing side; -Alliances that I expect will probably put in a poor effort no matter what. EDIT: I've no idea why ASM and Arrgh are in here when there's 3 other top 20 alliances that could've been in here instead, but I'll put Eclipse at A, TLE at B and WTF at C.

tEST is poking the bear, Agon gonna wipe them out.

Lets be honest here, its both.

Because their leadership was them. They followed their leaders. If they had largely elected to remain in the game, that'd be one thing. There'd be a cloud over them, but they could eventually work out from under it. But most of them didn't. They left, in either obedience to, or solidarity of, a leadership that had blatantly cheated and been about as unfriendly to the spirit of the game as they possibly could be, in an effort to "win" an unwinnable game. Their leadership was disgusting. Anyone who follows them deserves zero respect. BK had even less reason to mass-leave the game. They weren't caught cheating. None of them were banned. But they did so... in defense of their allies who were caught blatantly cheating...? That's just pathetic, in addition to their part in a war meant to win an unwinnable game. Good riddance. Regarding Curu, he was/is just a terrible human. And I say that as someone who once counted myself among his friends.

as far away from here as humanly possible, i hope hopefully they've got cumfire under lock and key too

Hello everyone, With a heavy heart, I am making this announcement publicly in an effort to be as transparent and forthright as possible. I am taking a series of moderation actions aimed at players in the leadership of the Guinea Pig Whaling Corp (GPWC) and New Pacific Order (NPO) alliances in enforcement of the Game Rules. It recently came to my attention on January 31 that there was an ongoing transaction between the majority of the members in the Guinea Pig Whaling Corp alliance and members of the NPO government. This is a violation of the Game Rules on Real-World Transactions for In-Game Materials: Over the past few days I have personally reviewed and verified the evidence and discussed the matter with the government of NPO. I have compiled the evidence and narrative of what has happened into a nearly 30 page document, available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMvEZjOwZySF5ENsPMliVfx79Inwgo4Dp0HSb9aDj10/edit?usp=sharing The tl;dr is that members of the NPO government setup a system to recruit people who were interested in Korean comics called "manhwa" (similar to anime or manga) and required them to set up nations for tax farming in exchange to gain access to "scanlations" (translations) of the comics. GPWC has been generating around $850m / day in money and resources, which all gets deposited directly to NPO's "offshore" alliance bank. Undoubtedly this has had an enormous impact on gameplay over the past 5 months or so, directly affecting the current ongoing war. At this time, I am making the evidence and narrative of this investigation public to be as transparent as possible. While I can't undo the past 5 months or the impact that this incident has had on the game as a whole, I hope you will find some justice in the following actions that I am taking to correct for the incident and deter similar rules violations in the future: Moderation actions against individuals are based on what I deem to be their level of knowledge and involvement in orchestrating this event given the evidence I have seen and verified. One-year bans from Politics & War: Yuno / Yuno / 70040 (Known on Discord as “Anna”) Six-month bans: Frawley / Strangerites / 14102 Claudia / Obelia / 174369 (Known on Discord as “Kylie”) Reinelynn / Lefamour / 174361 (Known on Discord as “Euphe”) Shadowthrone / Malaz / 40647 (Known on Discord as “Keshav”) Roquentin / Dreamcatcher / 11527 Yuri / Empire of Aria / 174610 Null / Silence / 179920 (Known on Discord as “chi”) Edward I / Seleucia / 33413 Akina / Anastyria / 180465 (Known on Discord as “Akiluu”) Daniel Storm / Altmoras / 69290 Nation strikes: Auctor / Wyrdgar / 28520 Lord of Darkness / Angmar / 28502 Sin / Orbus / 174989 Guinea Pig Whaling Corp is being forcibly and permanently disbanded. 511 inactive “farm” nations will be deleted. Member nations that were part of GPWC but were actual participants in gameplay will be permitted to remain. In 3-5 days after the posting of this announcement the alliance GPWC will be removed and any remaining members kicked to “None.” The contents of the alliance bank of Morgan Stanley (the “offshore” alliance bank for NPO and GPWC) has been reduced by a value of about $95 billion: $42,228,166,955.05 2,433,256.35 Coal 3,252,037.96 Oil 855,246.03 Uranium 3,157,581.26 Iron 855,053.60 Bauxite 6,795,287.61 Lead All remaining contents will be transferred to the New Pacific Order alliance bank. --- I have not made this decision lightly, and it disturbs me to have to do it at all. I am sure that I will be accused of partisanship in this decision, but please read the attached document that contains the logs and evidence relevant to understanding everything that has happened here and has been ongoing for the past 5 months. I have no interested in moderating this game in anything but a fair way, and I have done my best to do so in this case as well. I had no ill-will toward NPO going into this decision, and have worked with some of these very same government members that are being punished to facilitate many improvements to the game in the past. But, it would not be appropriate for me to "look the other way" and allow this to continue with full knowledge of what is happening. To ensure the integrity and fairness of the game I am taking this action. Again, here is a link to that document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMvEZjOwZySF5ENsPMliVfx79Inwgo4Dp0HSb9aDj10/edit?usp=sharing Please read over it in its entirety before making a judgement on this decision.

As this looks like a one-pokemon alliance, do you mind if the announcement is moved to Orbis Central?

Game of Thrones sucks though.

Instead of changing scores, how about making cities destructible? If a city has zero infrastructure and less than a specified number of improvements, then the city is destroyed. In this case, the issue the op mentioned, would be solved.

Disband

Chocolate is overrated

Geez, come on! It has been around 4 months & still this attitude? Not all of them were that way & even the majority of the regulars in IQ didn't know until the most latter part of the war. Why treat them like they all did wrong even thou they were just doing what they were told w/o knowing what was going on in the dark?

Quoting myself on the Dial-Up War ¨Correct me if im wrong... As someone who was able to be on both sides of the conflict, both struggled to work w/ each other. The majority of the time was spent figuring out who was where as well who agreed w/ who. Thus lead to those being against IQ & w/ them. Same w/ F1, it was a flip flop of who agreed or disagreed w/ em. That also lead to agruing in Coalition war chats & splitting & regrouping in different areas. Talks started around November but kept getting delayed by Coal. A & Coal. B cus of constant change of views, intel, etc. For the longest road, Alex, & his staff where alongside NPO & co for the fact they were able to control rss, econ, MAś, FAs, & even present a lot of complaints w/ solid proof while some others were slide under to protect their people. But just like what would happen in irl governments admit of aliens exist, those truths came out, alongside leaks from other aas which ended up starting the Great Leak War. After a couple months of more war & more leaks coming from both sides (adding to the chaos that was still happening that I mentioned earlier) NPO ¨Cheat Day" arrived which the mods flip flopped only to mass mute, suspend, & ban on IQ forces so other aa´ś could have chances to control. That lead to an uneasy peace, treaty cancellations, & splitting of what used to be a well interlaced treaty web.¨