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Guardian: strength in unity On December 7, 2007, a baby Guardian was born from the merger of Genesis and Mutual Defense Coalition. From our birth on the moon, we have journeyed across many different planets, before finally coming down to Orbis in December 2013, which we have called home ever since. To celebrate the occasion, we've prepared a history of Guardian, covering all the major games we participated in prior to P&W. History of Guardian Feel free to join us on our lawn this evening and to share in the 'member berries. Guardian Public Discord

I haven't been a member of Guardian for all 15 years, but I was there at the beginning as an ally. One of the best communities around. Also I feel so fricking old.

Borgs Assisted Loot Liberation Service, the New Polar Order, Moms Friendly Robot Company, Crusaders of Holy Boogaloo, and World Task Force agree to a cessation of hostilities and a 6.9420 month long NAP. Signed JadenStar10, NpO Nintendo, WTF Borg, BALLS Jack Rackham & Church, CHB Sweetstorm, MFRC

I still remember logging into the high school library Windows 2000 computers during lunch break to message our protectorate in IRC to log in and deal with the rogue and avoid causing a global war because this was in the days before most people had smart phones or laptops.

Crazy to think that some people who play PnW are younger than this. Happy birthday Guardian!

Cheers to another 15 years.

The post that started it all for me.

that's like 180 years in Orbis time. Congrats.

Happy birthday to the Guardian community! never actually knew Guardian on LW was originally a merger, neat

This is an unreasonably long NAP for such a long war thereby violating Section 2 of the @Roberts accords. In the wise words of the almighty sheepy "If you want peace, prepare for war". s/ AAA

Congrats Guardian, hope your legacy continues on for years to come.

Happy Birthday!!

Man. Y'all are old. Happy birthday, gramps. To many more

Congrats to you old fellows. Been an honor to be allied with ya'll in the past.

15 years is too long, you guys

Damn. Gud luck in the many more years to come

Wonderful to hear! Long live Guardian! 15 years is impressive indeed! ❤️

Congratulations Guardian on an incredible milestone. I hope your community enjoys many more.

This essay discusses the viability of investing in land in order to produce food. There is a misconception that land is a good investment. It is not. I wrote this essay 150 days ago, before I went inactive. I noticed that there was a misunderstanding regarding the viability of land and I wanted to write my thoughts down and see if I was actually right. Some of the numbers are a little outdated, but the market changes support my argument even more, with the food supply during peacetime increasing daily by 50% more than when I wrote this essay. It also diminishes during war-time even less than when I wrote this. I decided not to bother changing the numbers due to the core value of the essay being the idea that the situation is bad for food production in the long run, not 100 days from now (although it is also gonna be bad 100 days from now). There are structural factors that make land not a good investment. I recommend reading the FAQs. Investing in Land is Overrated and Here is Why Buying land to produce food is a thing of the past, investing in food production is not so good anymore and it is becoming even clearer every day. Producing food not only requires a huge initial investment that could be used elsewhere, but the price of the resource can also change dramatically, making it a volatile investment. Most importantly though, when you factor in everything, the ROI is abysmal. Producing Food v Not Producing Food I thought I would start by comparing the best 2 builds for 2.5k infra at current market prices and taking into account the small radiation of 10% with mmr 0250. I chose 2.5k infra since it is an infra level that works very well both with and without farms (which means you can switch easily in wartime), is popular and is a good general representation of a difference in revenue between farms and manus. On the left, the usual 2k land, 10 mines, 10 manus, 100 commerce build with 2 manus projects and CRC... On the right, the best build for 4k land with 20 farms, 5 manus and 100% commerce with the projects of mass irrigation, CRC and the munitions project. The numbers shown are the daily net monetary revenue per city per day, the bottom one takes into account mil. upkeep, which is irrelevant atm. There is a difference of 93k in net monetary income. The cost of buying land from 2k to 4k with all the reduction bonuses you can imagine is 26.5 million. With a quick calculation we can say that the time it takes to start achieving a return of investment (ROI) is: 26.5 million costs / 93k difference in net monetary revenue=284 days (of peace). Essentially, at first glance, we can more or less assess that it takes a shorter amount of time to begin getting a return from this investment than buying city 21 onwards, but that it has a generally longer return of investment than projects in the mid-high tier like the ITC. It gets worse though. Food is volatile To talk about the future price of food I will assume demand for food will remain almost the same in the long run regardless of the price. People are not gonna start starving their citizens bc food prices are higher and UP and AUP are still very worth it even if food prices increased “a little”. Virtually everyone already gets UP and AUP and the very few that don’t, would not change their mind if food prices went down since the reason they don’t buy them is usually ineptitude. Also, people would obviously not buy more infra or soldiers because food prices went down, it is simply not a significant enough factor. What if food prices just fall? As we can see, there is an increase of 19.5 million food per day during peace (we can only expect this figure to increase over time as more people buy more land since it is quite trendy atm). With 1.5 billion food in the market, we can actually calculate how long it would take for the food supply to double. 1.5 billion total food / 19.5 million increase in food per day= 76 days. With a food supply double its current size, we should expect prices to go down dramatically (more supply, same demand=lower price). Let's see the exact same food build from before but with 90 ppu for food(which would be a decrease in price of about 35%) and compare it to the normal build. On the left, the no-food build. On the right, the food build with lower ppu. The food build actually makes less than the normal build. Now, it would be disingenuous of me to just leave it there since we should also expect the normal build’s revenue to go down a little since manu and raw’s prices would also fall a little with a long peace. Nevertheless, I think it is clear that food prices suffer the most under an elongated peace, just check the previous graph of the total food over time to see how much it grows during peacetime. So, even if producing food would still be better than a normal build, we can only expect it to have a very small advantage over the normal build if there is a lot of peace ahead, meaning that the time it would take to achieve ROI would take even longer. If the scenario was even worse and producing food would simply not be worth it with 4k land, with only 5k land users producing it, you have just been left with a useless bunch of land and projects for a while. What if food prices simply remain somewhat stable? Well, my answer is, what would take for that to happen? As we can see, food supply drops by 20 million per day when there is 100% radiation (during a global war). Which is actually very similar to how much the food supply grows per day during peacetime (19.5 million per day), which makes things super simple. These numbers mean that, essentially, for every day of peace there must be a day of war to counter-balance it so that food supply doesn't go up, lowering food prices. Now, due to a general continuous growth in city count and newbies in the game, the supply must increase a little over time in order for the price to remain the same, so I will do a ratio of 8:10 for warday:peaceday for the actual “calculation” at the end of this section. First of all, I think we reached a problem. There are not the same number of days of war as there are days of peace, there simply can't be, war is too expensive. But let’s say there were about the same number of days of war as there were days of peace for the sake of the benefit of the doubt. This would leave the ppu for food at largely the same and wouldn't change the time it would take to begin getting a return of investment, giving you a pretty decent (for the mid-high tier) 285 days for a return of investment. Wrong, you can not produce during the days of war, so you would need to factor in war days to also get the actual time it would take you to begin getting a return of investment. This means that the ROI for buying land with stable food prices would be 513 days (using the ratio mentioned at the end of last paragraph). This ROI is already starting to look bad, but I think it's even worse. Extra investment and opportunity cost Even though I have already started to prove that land is overrated, we would also have to factor in the costs of projects. Tbh, this ain't a big deal since advanced engineering corps is already worth it just for the infra costs reduction. As for Mass Irrigation and Arable Land Agency, they just add a few more days of ROI depending on the city count. More importantly though, the opportunity cost of building other projects, cities or infra can start adding up (opportunity cost refers to the benefits not accrued due to not choosing another opportunity). The specific opportunity cost is simply not something you can calculate for the span of 513 days since God knows what the price of things, the FA situation or anything in general will be by then. But there are 2 main points I would like to raise. What about your 100% radiation build? When in high radiation, food can not be produced. This makes farmers switch to more manus or raws oriented builds. Now, to farm you need to use 2 project slots (for mass irrigation and arable land agency) that are useless during 100% radiation periods and could otherwise be filled with manus oriented projects, commerce projects, CRC, Green tech, RI or the police project. Obviously, the extra land can come in handy at certain occasions, but we can expect it to, very often, be rather irrelevant since 1. The decrease in disease rate between having 2k land and 4k land is rather small. 2. You very often want a flat 0 as your disease rate in high infra builds, so a small increase in disease rate will very often not even be felt. Besides, the projects mentioned in the previous paragraph would also increase your revenue during 100% radiation periods. In fact, let’s compare the normal first build of no-food (with 2k land) to the exact same build with one less project, which will be a manufacturing project, the munitions one, and 4k land (I decided it should be a manufacturing project since you don’t need a second manus project when farming food with 2.5k infra). I’ll do this to show, in a vacuum, the difference in revenue. Keep in mind that a person producing food has 2 fewer project slots available than someone not producing food, I’m being nice here. The 4k land build (on the bottom) actually makes 40k less revenue than the exact same build with 2k land and one more project (on the top). In addition, the revenue difference would increase during war-time with war-time prices (I have used peacetime prices) because the first build produces more manus. Now, I am not gonna attempt to add this revenue differential to the ROI equation for stable food prices since it is just an example and every player will find themself in a different situation. However, I thought raising this point was relevant since project slots do matter in the mid-high tier and having one or 2 extra project slots WILL increase your revenue. As for the whales with too many project slots, you are a whole other animal, more on that in the conclusion. What about profit? ROI (return of investment) this, ROI that, ROI doesn’t actually matter Boris, what actually matters is profit! You want to make profit off your investment. No one particularly fancies having a bunch of land, the literal only use of land is increasing your revenue. To compare the profit for this project against others for a 600 day long period would be rather absurd and maybe even counterproductive since every player is themselves and their circumstances. What I can do, however, is provide a little analysis on how such a huge ROI is a problem. The graph below will essentially represent 3 theoretical options of investment, and the theoretical profit they give over a theoretical amount of time. In essence, what I try to signal with this graph is that it will require extra time as well as the ROI period for land to catch-up in profit with an option with a shorter ROI but less increase in revenue than land. So, you would find that you would have to start adding days to the already long ROI of 513 days we calculated earlier to reach the profit you would have actually made with investments with shorter ROI. Keep in mind that the calculated ROI did not take into account the total drawbacks of a 100% radiation build. Flexibility I wanted to make a small comment on the fact that investing on land isn’t as flexible as investing on manus. If the market changes, manus people will be more capable of switching their economic strategy without turning their backs on a previous massive investment. Conclusion For the mid-high tier: In a best case scenario (the stable prices case), the ROI is just terrible, because, really, we are looking at a potential ROI of over 2 years. I would argue over 3 or 4. Not only that, but you will also have to wait for a long long time to really see the profit from buying land to be higher than the potential profit you would have gotten from spending your money on other projects or cities. In a worst case scenario, you will be left with a bunch of useless land and projects because only people that already have 5000 land or more find producing food worth it. I would just simply quit recommending people at this tier to start producing food. Unlike land, cities at least give a military advantage, so they are good for warriors. Cities also don’t have such an abysmal ROI if you are a war dodger, so they are good for war dodgers. For the whales: For the purpose of this essay, I will call whales those that have so many project slots there are not enough projects to fill them and have huge city counts. For those whales, the ROI they may be able to get from land may be the shortest ROI available(even if it is over 2 years). This whole essay does not really apply to them. The game is over for them, they won. Now they can spend their money on their friends. Conclusion + There are a plethora of game developments that could change this situation for the better or for the worse given how long the ROI is, that is inevitable and part of the reason why even cities are more useful and reliable investments. If you think there is a particular build path that makes farms worth it because they allow you to, for example, jump to 3k with just CRC and 2 manus projects+farms, you may be right. There is a chance that it makes sense for your aa, your sphere, but I doubt that is the case due to the number of drawbacks and the other options available. Other options should be assessed. also, as a final reminder, I think I was charitable to the farming alternative in this essay. I could have added a bigger gap between farming and non-farming in many places and decided not to so as to just focus on the main points. 2500 infra is outclassed by 2250 and 2400 infra in my opinion. The growth of food per day is bound to grow dramatically and, in fact, it already has. Check for yourself the current growth of total food per day. It is a 50% increase since I wrote this essay! Don't expect to ever see your money back if you ever invest in food production. I hope that with this essay members in the mid-high tier won't be advised to follow the now misguided advice to produce food so that they may grow faster to catch-up with the pre-existing whales. Bonus graph: FAQs Q. Why not just sell your food when prices are high during war? A. You can buy food during peacetime and then sell it during wartime without having land to produce food. Just resource-flip like everyone else. In fact, as a food producer, you are most probably gonna be selling your food when it is least valuable, during peacetime, since that is when you produce it. This means that you will very often sell your food below the ppu used here if prices remained stable (which was 125 ppu). Q. What if there are a lot of war days with 100% radiation and food prices go up due to a shortage of it? A. If there are a lot of war days, you will not be able to produce food… rendering your investment useless… Besides, thank you for giving me the opportunity to point out that, with a radiation of 50%, a manus and raws build will very often already be better for a person with 4k land, while people with 5k land may still produce food, adding to the food supply (just see the total food graph during the Johnsons v HM). This, again, would render your investment in land useless for a bit while food prices wouldn’t actually go up that much. Q. What about 4.5k land or higher? A. Same arguments apply, the ROI is just even longer. Q. What about the new UP? (a new UP at ~c21 is expected to be added at some point) A. idk how much food that project will require and neither do you nor sheepy. Besides, I don’t think many people would be surprised if it took a year for such a UP to be released. Don’t risk everything in the hopes of a new update at some point. PD: Now that the project came out I would like to add that this sets a precedent for any future UPs. Q. How am I supposed to more or less catch-up to the whales? At least farming gives me some hope for the long-run. A. Just raid, you will make a fortune raiding if you git gud at it. To give you a number, 200 million a week is a reasonable number for a good raider. Friends also help. Q. What should I do instead? A. Follow a good project path and just have normal builds without food. Q. But my revenue per city increased by 300k. How is that possible? A. You probably didn't have all the good projects you could have had or your build was just bad. Compare the food production option to other project options like ITC, CRC or manus projects. You should not compare the food production option to another option that doesn't utilise as many project slots or a build not as polished. Q. What about the new Fallout Shelter? A. Paradoxically, this new project harms new, active, food producers. For a person with 4K land, there is almost no way farming food with only 10% output will be worth it. BUT for those massive whales that already have 5k land and more, the prices don't have to be as high for it to be worth it. Making it more likely for your investment to be rendered useless. + Inactive or half-inactive whales with farms will still produce some food for a while out of ineptitude during 100% radiation periods because they will be too lazy or too inactive to change their build. This will mean that total food will diminish slower during wartime now, lowering food prices by increasing supply.

Cataclysm and Paradise have agreed to our surrender terms and admit defeat to Midgard and Eclipse. After an unconventional entrance from Cataclysm and Paradise into the war, they have also agreed to enter a NAP with MG members + extensions and Eclipse + extensions for a period of 2 months. The complete terms are as follows: - Admission of defeat / surrender - 2 month NAP between all parties involved in this war. Cataclysm + Extensions, Paradise + Extensions, Eclipse + Extensions, Midgard members + All Extensions - Cataclysm, Paradise, Eclipse will go back to their pre-war color blocs, MG will follow once the war is at its full conclusion. - Kev admits Cora is all knowing, forever right and never wrong - Midgard will decide the name of the war at its full conclusion. All existing wars declared before DC will be finished to completion or peaced if the two parties decide to. No new wars post DC. All wars declared post DC must be peaced out. Midgard signatories: Aurora: First Explorers: ToxicPepper, Kan0601 Second Explorer: AlexW Head FA: Xi Jinping Goon Squad Capones: Limi, Xonera The Immortals: Leader: Scratchy Second in Command: Lord Tyrion Head FA: James United Purple Nations: Prime Minister: Cora Mcstrap Chief of Staff: Cameron Axley Minister of FA: Malichy Dark Brotherhood: Listeners: Yoda, Jon Keeper: CCJK Speaker of Destruction: Superdead The Commonwealth: Prime Minister: RightHonorable Chief of Staff: Jeric First Lord of the Admiralty: LinkCostello Chancellor of the Exchequer: ChristianD Church of Atom: Pontifex Atomicus: RandomNoobster Cardinal of FA: Kongo Jack Serene Repubblica Fiorentina: Goblin Leader: Doge Matshaa Goblin Heir: Alexio, Draks Not a Goblin: Arc Goblin of FA: Proceo The Wei: Leader: A Noble Death 2IC: James the Definitive Head FA: Blair4932 The Lost Empire: Ocean Master: Atlan Imperia: Damon Milcom Head: Epic The Hive: Queen Bee: MinesomeMC Left Brain: Witherskella10 Roman Empire: Imperator Augustus Caesar of Rome: Germanicus Julius Caesar Imperator Caesar of Rome: Tiberius Aurion Caesar Legatus Diplomatica of Rome: Valentinian Eclipse / TEst Signatories: Commander and FA Specialist: Vein Defense Specialist: Pascal Whale Specialist: Sphinx Cataclysm / Paradise Signatories: Cataclysm: Leaders: Keegoz, His Holy Decagon 2IC: Cadn Daedalus Lead: Saikat Paradise: Leader: Kev, LeftBehind Head FA: Hodor TLDR: Cataclysm and Paradise surrender to Midgard and Eclipse Sorry in advance for the awful format, had to make the post from phone

As someone with 45 cities, you should just stop buying cities now. its much more important to have giant stockpiles of cash than investing it in your growth. Why you ask? because growing a nation is for suckers.

Thanks for the war. Well fought.

Only been here for a couple of years, but I'm happy to call it home.

Congrats guys. One of the staple alliances in this game imo

Congrats Guardian, always enjoyed fighting with you guys over the years.

Happy birthday :D.

@Scatheon You're old.

To be honest, not the best, but good luck in the future.

What if (crazy lizardmen theory here) Aurora attacks Withheld sphere. So CATA hits Oasis sorry Midgard. BUT Eclipse cant let Aurora fall so they hit CATA. BUT WAIT why would you mill up only to hit a few alliances when there's a MDP between CATA and T$ UNLESS you knew T$ wasnt gonna join in? Blitz advantage is too big to ignore that. This is my essay on "Why Aurora/Eclipse and T$ will be signing one another soon" Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

We never 'won' any wars and we're still a monster.

people are opposed to losing wars. You can lose 3 wars in a row but the moment you win one you are a monster.

I love how suddenly people are 'opposed' to dog piling wars. Couldn't get a peep out of them when certain spheres/alliances went around dogpiling in much greater numbers.? nevermind the history of the alliance, likely the largest offender of 'dog piles.'

you mention clock hqving garbage wars and eclipse dogpiling Cata. I want to refresh your memory that Cata and Eclipse were most of Clock. What you saw here was Clock fighting eachother, you just don't like it because your friends lost.

There is nothing wrong with a NAP. We're peaceful farmers who want world peace. I don't think any of us disagreed that us hitting cata was not a dogpile. We didn't hit them to "dogpile" them, but rather because they came into TKR's defense despite having no treaties with them which was a concern to us. as for fair wars, We've had one... It was against rose and it was arguably one of the fairest war orbis has seen in a while. Not that PnW tends to have any fair wars, most wars and by history has been a dogpile. Some of us just dont care enough to pretend to be the golden kid by being sheeps acting like NAPs are the real problem of the game to gain some pr points. Don't be deceived by the 2 faced people!

Oh hell no. All the hard feelings. Let's go! We need some grudging to happen here.

I, Kev, admit Cora is all knowing, forever right and never wrong. UPN will continue to reflect her greatness.

Investor Contact: Vemek Media Contact: WANA To Whom It May Concern: The Syndicate has issued it’s 72 hour notice of cancellation to our allies in Cataclysm and Paradise. While we value our time spent as allies, Cataclysm's participation in the current conflict has led us to believe we can no longer walk the same path. I wish them luck and good fortune as our paths diverge. /s/ WANA – Chief Global Strategist Lucas – Chief Operations Officer Vemek – Chief Financial Officer Golden Pope – Chief Security Officer About SYNDICATE, INC., SYNDICATE, Inc., based near Nassau, The Bahamas, is the world's leading gasoline, aluminum and munitions distributor for a wide variety of peacekeeping and humanitarian activities. Wholly-owned SYNDICATE, Inc. subsidiary brands include The Enterprise, which provides development and growth opportunities for multinational prodigies around the globe. For more information about SYNDICATE, Inc., and its activities, contact WANA, Chief Global Strategist.

@Scratchy I've sent you 20m. Feel free to announce white peace whenever you have a moment.

As I've been trying to not stir the pot lately I do feel it's my duty to state that a few tkr members that needed to vm for various reasons did contact us (tcw) directly to let us know. Sometimes stuff happens in RL and it can't be avoided... RL>PW any day.

Same hahaha. He can't take it back now; I will have this forever.... 😘 @Mayor

Mayor and TKR is not the cross-over episode I expected, but I'm absolutely down for this arc. Because he's the hero TKR deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

Let me tell you something Firwof, The Knights Radiant is an alliance dedicated to game health and making sure our community is an inclusive and open place for everyone, simply put we don't tolerate utter garbage like yourself and the pants-hating Deulos. We would be well within our rights to permanently war your shitty little nation to send a message and prove to everyone the majority of The Knights Radiant is pro-war and only VM in certain understandable circumstances. To see some of the biggest jokes in Orbis try and attack our members is laughable and pathetic considering you both never perform well in literally every war and get kicked out of alliances more than anyone else. Not only that but you repeatedly make fools of yourselves on the forums, ruin all your credibility with everyone around you, and I imagine this trend continues in your personal life (such as insulting anyone with a different ideology and especially LGBT people). Maybe look at your own glaring massive personal issues before you start attacking the determined, inclusive and passionate people of the best, most powerful and accepting, alliance this game has ever had because you simply wish you were on our level and had our talent. Anyways I got to get back to policing the world since my armor won't polish itself and no one else is capable of this task besides us.

Why don't you give it a try and find out.

Hi champ! Must be nice to have so little going on in your own life that you can concern yourself with other people's lives. Unfortunately that clearly still didn't leave you with enough time to notice that two of the three nations you identified started their VM a few turns before the Midgard blitz. Since VMs are for a minimum of 14 days, people who plan to be away without Internet access for shorter periods (say one week) may still choose to VM, and then find themselves online the second week. Food for thought, but I think you'll generally find it much more enjoyable to mind your own business than stick your nose where it doesn't belong, particularly when you have no clue what the heck you're talking about.

This is all fine and good but how about you guys stop messing around with stuff that works and fix things that don't work? How abut you fix ships? Ships cost too much to build, too much to keep and way too much to use. They have no defense against planes. I think that if you check, during wars most people keep very few to 0 ships.

Yes it's called a screen reader, it reads the screen. I hear that sighted people have one built in though.

Well, I'm almost 5 years older. I'm old.