Leaderboard

Dear Orbis Friends, Colleagues, Peers, and Acquaintances, I come to you with a very important update: Today marks the sixth (yes, sixth) birthday of The Knights Radiant. As we enter our seventh year, we would love for you to join us in celebration of all of the happenings of the last year. This has marked my first full year after couping politely displacing @Adrienne, and it has been marked by two wars, two spheres, and lots of friends new and old. TKR and our members are proud of the growth we have seen on Orbis, and hope you can continue to join us in celebration of this place. We have high hopes for our continued growth and fun in the coming year, and we hope to see you on our Discord, your Discord, our forum, @BigMorf radio, our private Slack, or via carrier pigeon soon. Without further ado, the best birthday song I know: @Benfro out. My personal birthday wish is for my theme song never be heard from again. Love y'all.

Speak for yourself, my nation will be over 16,000 days old

To all my friends in TKR. It has always been a pleasure working with you no matter the circumstance. Hope another year is filled with the joys of the previous.

Happy birthday to the best ally that will never let us down and is even willing to lose wars to us

*whines in reaction limits*

So I suppose my questions are: what combination of factors makes a good alliance? Not every alliance will reach that path in the same way, and it is difficult to give a lot of universal truths about it. In general having good member activity and a good understanding of the mechanics of the game is about as universal as it gets. From there I would posit that you need to find some niche in the game. Most of the newest alliances in the game today seem to take a very active approach in raiding and small-scale conflicts, which does require activity. Becoming a macro-alliance is a different story, and will definitely take a lot of time and effort. I would also suggest that at this point if you do not have some kind of automation or programming ability, whether you make it or buy it, you will be at a major disadvantage in the meta compared to those who do. How does one revive a dying alliance? This is difficult. Most alliances that are at this point generally need some established players to right the ship, and have the activity level to do so. And most do not have this, so they fail. Black Knights grew rapidly and then had a major exodus following NPOLT. But, they had some of their founding government come back, along with a few others, and they were able to succeed from that point. There was an alliance called Viridian Entente which rebranded into Guardians of the Galaxy, and that helped them get through a period of internal struggle and conflict. In general though, you are probably better off following some mix of the two, if you can pull that off, and most alliances are not as successful as BK or VE/GotG. How does one create a good alliance from scratch? As others have pointed out, it generally helps to have a base in the game already before you take your own venture. People making their own micro and getting rolled out of existence because they do not have the economic or manpower resources, foreign connections, or just plain raw ability to survive the initial stages of an alliance happens a lot. It would be good if it happened less. I do not think everyone needs to join a macro-alliance to be successful, as there are several solid mid-tier alliances that one could be a part of and really grow with. But to start your own venture you do need some leaders to run things, and it helps if you have a good mix of skills to administer all of the affairs of your alliance.

Reviving a dying alliance is extremely difficult to do, generally its dying because of a mix of poor/inactive leadership and poor/inactive members. Trying to fix those issues is a ton of work, and generally not worth it, because if it was worth it, they wouldn't be dying in the first place. But you would need to replace your gov, and try to recruit a bunch of new members to re energize your alliance. as for making a good alliance from scratch, as an alliance leader that has accomplished this, I find having game experience is the first step, and then having a clear goal of what kind of alliance you want to make, and sticking to that, along with having some friends to come join you is super helpful to get you up and running. End of the day tho, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so you need to make sure you can keep your players/gov engaged and active.

Lemme answer that: >4chan tier sense of humor >active community that knows it's a game and enjoys clout/griefing >bro squad >memes >isn't all noobs, seasoned players and a mix of competent, literate players >inside jokes from the amount of talk room tier community Basically, aside from the basics of git gud, if you don't have that, you're just a soulless AA

Hodor hodor

You seem a little jealous but, don't worry, there's plenty of attention to go around friend. I brought you some and some leftover cake from TKR's birthday party

Is it bad that I dont recognize atleast half of these flags? Edit: So I did one of these for you guys on who I do and dont recognize, the rocket one looks familiar, I thought it was CoS, who isnt around anymore, so I guess I dont actually know who that is. Also I assume that brown one is gato, and the one between KT and RnR is Polaris? If that is not right please consider them back down to the ones I have no idea who they are. Did TCW change their flag? I didn't see them on here. I only recognize the Legion flag from CN, also when did Legion move to PnW? I had no idea. Also nice work on the flag Eclipse, I had no idea what your flag looked like, but I figured it out when I was like.. oh its an eclipse.

Hello, world! I've been playing this game only for a short fortnight, but I've already been pretty fortunate to become slowly but steadily exposed to the rich (sometimes muddy, often controversial) history of the game. As I read through the forums and wiki, I can see that some alliance names repeatedly pop up -- they might play for different sides, they might be lauded as heroes or denounced as villains, they might be victors or losers, but they maintain their own unique position in the political system. Often, their military strength, or their economic system, or their trade in diplomacy is discussed. Recently, TKR celebrated their sixth birthday, which seems like a crazy long time for an alliance to be consistently well-managed. Even if there isn't some secret ingredient to what makes 'a good alliance', surely there are some key factors that increase the chances of a community doing well long-term. I have no real conception of how a conventional alliance works, only what is publicly available. So I suppose my questions are: what combination of factors makes a good alliance? How does one revive a dying alliance? How does one create a good alliance from scratch?

Set A - https://politicsandwar.com/nation/unique/id=317995 Nation A -https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=317995 Nation B - https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=325264 Nation c - https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=326909

Honestly airstrikes on ground/naval units are already rather weak and I really think we should be buffing them instead of nerfing them. Not only do the airstrikes on ground units kill less than a ground attack (without stealing money and while costing more MAPs, resistance, gas, and muni), but the airstrikes on ships aren't very effective at neutralizing an opponent's entire navy either, with navy not even being a significant threat that needs neutralizing in the first place. All of this coupled with the fact that, currently, these airstrikes will lose you a lot of precious planes unless your opponent has a huge plane disadvantage (like 1:3). Precious planes which need to be heavily conserved and not overextended because they are the bastion that protects your tanks from being cut in half by air superiourity, as well as protecting all other units from being airstriked. And so, with the above in mind, airstrikes on ships should not be nerfed either. Already at times the amount of ships killed by an airstrike is insignificant, zeroing them via airstrikes for the sake of breaking blockade (only necessitated in rare instances anyway) is hardly viable yet is frankly the best option. Alternatively you have to buy your own (otherwise) useless ships to break the blockade, only to decommission them later or they get destroyed by someone else's massive navy before then, all the while inflating your score like a balloon. None of that is an appealing second option and I think until there is, airstriking ships should be left alone or even buffed. Ship vs ship, small change and probably won't impact much, but good regardless~ Spy changes look okay, though with the reserve/active idea I see one of two things happening: 1. The kill rates are still too high and so one side wins the spy war and holds it for a few weeks while the enemy side rebuilds their spies, and then the enemy side activates their spies and either wipe the opponent's spies and take the spy war from them, or lose all their spies before they get a chance to utilize and rinse and repeat throughout the course of the war. Or 2. The kill rate is too low and the K/D is pretty much equalized to a point that the spy war becomes a grueling battle only to be repeated every time the opponent reactivates their reserved spies. I'm not really sure how I feel about either option at the moment, but maybe there are others that I missed, feel free to point them out to me Also I personally think that units (including nukes/missiles) should not be able to be spied away during beige because that defeats the spirit of the mechanic. I would only make exception to assassinations and intel gathering; Assassinations so that the person in beige cannot build up spies and conduct spy operations unopposed during said beige and gather intel because it does no actual harm to the target. Sorry for the text wall, I didn't feel like enough people were voicing their opinions on these and I certainly don't want them to get pushed through (as is) based on a lack of outspoken critique.

Experienced, Active Govt, and exceptional coordination.

Respect the NAP. Please don't attack my mental person. I'm not strong enough to think about that quite yet.

Happy Birthday! TKR has always been a valiant opponent to face during my time on Orbis - both Duck Hunt and Guns & Roses. Cheers to another year! Maybe this year i'll be fighting alongside you mighty knights!

Happy birthday TKR 🎂! TKR is now as old as a 1st grader. 😂

VICTORY! The phrase could be heard echoing around Oceania. The conflict with the forces of Roasis Inc had concluded. Big Brother had – however – convinced the citizens of Oceania that war had never happened. But we all know the true story. Oceania had fought side by side with The Order during the conflict, each earning the respect of the other. After further discussion both parties were decided to be better united then apart. TL:DR: It is with this information that we announce Oceania is merging into The Order. Until further notice all nations in Oceania and its extensions / offshores are under protection of The Order.

The following is a combination of old updates that were never put in, changes based on feedback/suggestions. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions to alternative options. Try to limit additional content beyond the scope of what is in this thread. Thank you. Trading Treasures Treasures can be directly traded between players. Treasures cannot be traded while either nation has an active offensive or defensive war. A nation with a treasure already in it cannot trade for another treasure. City/Project Timers New City timers are not effected by projects. New Protects have their own timer of 10 days (120 turns) City timer resets are reduced by 1 credit to 3 credits. Project timer resets cost 1 credit. New Projects Research and Development Center Effect: This project provides two project slots (net: one additional project slot) Cost Cash: $50,000,000 Food: 100,000 Aluminum: 5,000 Logistics Center Effect: Opens an additional trade route for Commodities Cost Cash: $5,000,000 Food: 25,000 Uranium: 5,000 Aluminum: 5,000 World Trade Organization Effect: Opens an additional trade route for Commodities Requirements: International Trade Center, Logistics Center, Space Program Cost Cash: $20,000,000 Food: 250,000 Uranium: 15,000 Aluminum: 10,000 Gasoline: 10,000 Spies Casualties Spy vs Spy casualties are reduced by 33% for the defender on a successful op, and attacker for a failed op. Missiles Spy attacks against missiles have a 25% chance to destroy an additional missile. Soldiers 5% increase is casualties from soldiers fighting soldiers. 33% reduction in tanks killed by soldiers. Soldier only attacks/defends kill too many tanks. Tanks Tanks ability to kill planes after gaining ground superiority reduced by 33% 15% increase in casualties to soldiers by tanks 10% increase in casualties to tanks by tanks With soldiers killing less tanks Planes 25% increase in tanks killed by bombing runs. 10% increase in planes killed by dogfights Ships 10% increase in ships killed by ships. New Attack Type: Bombardment When a nation is blockaded naval units can bombard a city instead of performing a naval battle. This attack destroys 33% less infrastructure This attack destroys 2 non-power plant, non-military improvements in that city. If there are only power plant and military improvements, this attack kills no improvements. This attack costs 50% less gas to perform. This attack costs 50% more munitions to perform If a bombardment attack happens while the defending nation has defending ships, the casualties caused by those defending ships is increased 25%. Example: If you attack with 200 ships and they have 50 ships defending and those 50 ships were going to kill 20 attacking ships, in a bombardment attack they instead would kill 25 ships. You must use at least 75% of your max navy when performing this attack max navy is determined by the number ships you could have if all of your cities had max dry docks, not how many dry docks you current have If you have 20 or less improvements in a city this attack will only kill 1 improvement. If you have 5 cities or less, this attack only kills 1 improvement. Nukes Nukes can now kill 4 improvements per nuclear missile. 2 of these improvements are "general" improvements and have a chance to be any improvement. 2 of these improvements are any non-power plant, non-military improvement. In the event there are no available targets, it bumps up the target list. Effectively if someone only has power plants and military structures, the nuke will destroy 4 of any improvement. Missiles Missiles can now kill 2 improvements per missile. Missile Launch Pad allows a nation to build 2 missiles per day. Iron Dome Reduces the amount of improvements killed from a missile by 1. In addition to normal effeccts Chance of blocking a missile reduced from 50% to 30%. Vital Defense System Chance to block a nuclear missile increased from 20% to 25% Reduces the amount of improvements killed from a nuke by 1. The improvement category this blocks from is the non-power plant, non-military category. Quality of Life Alliances can only have 1 treaty between them. Alliances have the ability to create up to 8 alliance positions, 5 more than the default 3. All alliance roles will come with a check list for which powers those positions have. Bank Access Changing Roles Ability to see spy counts Ability to see daily reset timers (time zones) Editing Tax Brackets Accept new members View member caches Alliance Trades offers also show in the global trades. These trades will show in a different color Expand leaderboards Increase the leaderboards from top 10 to top 100. Alternatively, include all nations in the leaderboards (suggested filters, upon talking more with Roberts: active, non-VM players, perhaps also with a filter to exclude the brand new nations that only logged in once/haven't built up anything). Allow for a search by discord handle Send an automated email to players with nations emerging from vacation mode after an extended period of time. Allow for an option to hide trades of embargoed nations/alliances from the market.

You don't recognize them just from fighting them over the years?

Happi birthday ^.^ 6 years of great work, I hope to see 6 more years. Congrats on this milestone, I am proud to be a part of this journey with TKR, via originally SK and now CC. 🎂 <-- Specially baked Lindt Choco cake for you all to share =D

I fully want to live forever 👍

157

Happy birthday!

I hope I can be frozen some time soon, so I can comeback to rub it your face that I haven't aged. Also, I'd be around for the new memes.

The funny thing is lol that you all decided to lol say the same thing lol. I don't even think lol Joe Schmo is a real person lol just a TKR propaganda machine lol. Who in their right mind lol would want to waste another 5 years lol on P&W lol?

Please keep these posts in Games & Spam

Alliance Affairs is for Alliance stuff, Orbis Central is for Orbis-Wide Stuff.

pls post stuff like this in nation affairs please. Orbis Central is for Alliance stuff.

Merry Christmas!

Congrats on 6 years! A great achievement. ❤️

Not at all Air is extremely powerful even now, especially because Air Superiority on opponent cripples Tanks, the current strongest units in the game.

Happy birthday!!! Love you guys ❤️

Cheers for 6 more years ^^ Happy birthday~

The Order wishes to conduct all diplomacy with TKR via carrier pigeon now. Clicking on your server icon is too much work. Also happy birthday!

I think both of these changes would be bad changes. Air is losing / has lost its place in the meta and doesn't need to be further weakened in this way. Good stuff, feel free to go crazy

Would you rather have transparent skin that’s UV proof (so you don’t bake your insides) or have mirror skin?

Join an alliance instead. Orbis doesn't take kindly to pixel farmers.

Here's my tier list, but, it's not about who is better or not; it's all about those flags!

Alright, legitimate one because there are not enough hot takes in this thread and I wanna stir up some controversy. Alliances I would pick on a dream milcom team: Guardian: People who say Guardian couldn't live without Grumpy are seriously kidding themselves. They have been criminally underrated yet overperform so consistently on so many occasions. In my tier, I would absolutely dread fighting these guys the most. The Syndicate: Leave it to tS to have one of the most consistently strong leadership groups in the game; put these guys in a bad spot and they will always find themselves a way out. ASM: Tight-knit; IMO they deserve much better than Rose. Equally capable on the spy front, willing to suicide planes in a heartbeat, great for coordination. And they dropped WTF, which is based af CoTL: These guys were always raring to go during the last global and I could always pull people here to go with me if I needed it. Eclipse: IMO the majority of their membership is fairly young and inexperienced, but strong leadership tells me the only way Eclipse can go is up. CC: Besides the whole getting their bank looted a lot thing, they are solid in their tier, surprised with a good spy performance, and are always communicative outside the alliance. Weebunism: Out of everyone in Roasis Inc, Weebunism probably performed the best pound-for-pound out of everyone in their tier; their coordination within the alliance was solid. BK: Solid in their tier for both fighting and spies. Literally any time you saw one of their guys get hit they'd be sending counters to bail em out almost immediately. Also Clown is gud E404: They got knocked down pretty early in GW18, but through resilience pulled the net damage back and grew into the war nicely. Grumpy: Something something upper tier domination; during round 1 they pulled huge weight. Only in B-tier because I think Guardian is better and because I think it would be equally fun fighting against them. tO: Boyce, 'nuff said TKR: Solid, pushed us all to beige cycle during GW18. Were off doing their own thing most of the time but did that job pretty well. DB: Probably more tight-knit than most Roasis Inc groups. Nothing if not persistent, perhaps with the right guidance they have room to grow. TFP: Has its fair share of pixel huggers but I'm putting this here solely because of Vice lmfao TLE: No one will like me for saying this, but I like the smack talk; it all comes down to how willing they are to back it up and go the distance. Arrgh: Most Arrgh members are pretty much inactive these days. There are a few decent ones but almost all the good raiders are in separate alliances these days. Carthago: They have a few standout members that distinguish them from the rest of Nexus, but beyond that are unmemorable in most ways. Aurora: Much more flexible than Camelot. KT: Individually I would put them in the high end of A tier, but as it stands right now I doubt they would actually listen to anyone else in a coalition lmao TI: Mixed bag. I feel like some of their gov/members would be reasonable and chill people to work with, but the other part would also be a total headache. &, AT, GATO, OWR, TFed: Eh, I have never been impressed or seen anything particularly notable in the past year by any of these alliance performances. BF: Have the most experience out of anyone in Johnsons at knowing how to defend themselves (rofl) but that isn't really saying much. Cam: Underwhelmed horribly in GW18. Pursued all the wrong objectives and were so inflexible and stubborn-minded that I wouldn't enjoy working with them at all. Rohirrim: Seem to have significant difficulty defending themselves from outside threats even during peacetime. Rose: Milcom likes to give up after the first round, only thing they have going is their size from being rich. Needs to spend much more time recruiting top milcom talent and much less time recruiting useless meatshields. SoL: Probably the most reasonable of the alliances in Johnsons, but again, that's not saying much. SoS: They performed okay in... some aspects? Seems like they treated GW18 as another Locutus raiding exercise but at least that's better than collapsing immediately. Alpha: Pixel huggers, they won't mind being in this tier because their goal is more or less to just make everyone hate them lmfao CoA: Imagine choosing Alpha and Polaris as your closest allies and treating them better than your own training alliance and protectorates lmfao Fark: Inactive meat shields and loot pinatas. Genesis: Bloated micro, imagine struggling against TCM lmfao HS: More loot pinatas. Had an absurd amount of people VMing during GW16 and when they weren't doing that, almost always kept juicy loot on their nations or built free ships and tanks to statpad off of. Polaris: Are they even playing the game at this point? RnR: Are totally incapable of defending themselves, drop massive amounts of loot, and would almost certainly refuse to fight all wars if given the chance. SMC: One of if not the worst gov lineups in the top 50; I have no clue why they are bloc leaders other than the fact that scientifically people tend to listen to the louder voices rather than the correct ones. TCW: They may have stopped bleeding members and leaking drama for now, but that has done them no favors in terms of competence or also being massive inactive loot pinatas. Legion: All my opinions of HS naturally extend to Legion; I see literally no difference in the two alliances lol Wei: Free stats, horrible beige control. If anything their presence probably hindered the entire Roasis Inc war effort. TUA: With their previous leadership they were already helpless enough. After they jumped ship, I can't imagine that the quality got any better. UPN, WTF, Yarr: Did these guys at least know how to press the declare war button? Sure. Are these guys active enough normally to know how to launch the correct attacks? Nah. USN: I am honestly not sure why they aren't simply just a protectorate of another alliance. aight now time to prep for downvotes \o7

156

Was fun being Oceania gov. Good luck to the bois, have fun and good luck. Love ya'll. We're unmerging. They missed out on this opportunity...

Oceania is a farrrrrrrrr better theme. Star Wars

What's the The Order's theme anyway?

Why do planes vs ships need to be nerfed? My 2250 planes already magically find themselves incapable of killing more than 40 ships once their total drops below 100, and incapable of killing more than 25-30 once they're low enough that one more airstrike should clear them all. Because reasons I guess. If you wanna buff ships fine, but I think a more potent solution is making ships more useful than just a blockade. Into something more than a nuisance.

They're the times which provide the greatest community feedback on changes which may improve the war related aspects to the game. I listen to that feedback and work on possible changes where applicable.

New and smaller alliances should be targeted though. We have far too many of them hogging up the incoming member base and then losing these newer members to inactivity due to the smaller AAs having little sense of community to keep the newer players active and engaged. We have currently 369 AAs ingame, 250ish have likely less than a dozen members, and once we discount banks and micro raiders, a good 150 of these AAs are just open fodder without the knowledge and protection offered by the larger AAs. And rightfully so A larger threat posed by raiders will force these newer players into the larger AAs which will in turn force new talent into these alliances' govs leading to a turnover in government faces. It's probably one of the main reasons why most of the major alliances have had largely the same gov lineups for years, simply because it's easier to just break away and form your own micro, and remain attached to the parent AA via a protectorate agreement, than it is to actively seek greater influence within the parent alliance. Plus, if you buff raiders, the larger alliances can likely be subjected to raids all the same too 👍