Charles Bolivar
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Posts posted by Charles Bolivar
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On 7/26/2023 at 6:06 PM, Big Mac said:
Wondered when you'd pop in and say something unnecessary. Hope you're enjoying life, Charles.
On a separate note... 24 months later the fabled Duck returns.
And here I thought people would have realised by now that joining the top 2 alliances together was a ridiculous move.
Typically I do enjoy a good big Mac, but lately I have discovered that the usually pleasant sauce tends to be a little bit on the salty side. I guess it's time to return to the colonel 🤷♂️
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35 minutes ago, George Clooney said:
So when faced with a group of alliances that have the potential to act in concert to suppress any smaller opposing bloc, what do you recommend? Hope they'll accept your offer of a NAP? Or maybe see who else sees the threat like you and then band together with them to create a much larger bloc to eliminate or reduce that threat?
Oh. Apologies. I was under the mistaken impression that tS's FA dept had imploded from a lack of ability and that was the reason they had kept changing allies and spheres over the last couple of years.
Now I see my mistake. What I originally mistook for incompetence is actually a burning desire on tS's behalf to courageously bring balance to this game by constantly changing treaties and spheres so as to prevent any one alliance from assuming a position of preeminent dominance.
I unreservedly apologise for my mistaken presumption.
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- Popular Post
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The real question to ponder upon is if tS can hold onto this new treaty for longer than a single war before it goes pear shaped like much of their recent treaty partners over the past couple years.
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Eerily similar to some points I was making in a private AA membership chat a week or so back. But yeah, I'm in total agreeance with you on this one. The traditional alliance leadership model is one we largely inherited from CN/NS, but with one minor correction. NPO back in 2005/6 operated with two councils comprised of 4 elected council members each. If I remember correctly there was an alliance council (Econ and IA), alongside a war council (milcom and FA). This was the model they used until I think it was 2007 in which Moo reformed it into the Imperial Officer system which resembles the more traditional exec model but even then with caveats. The IOs did have their own portfolios, but they also had the authority to be involved across multiple portfolios and depts as they weren't entirely tied to their own. It was the deputies of the IOs who had greater resemblance to our current version of dept head in being responsible for a large portion of the internal organisational aspects of dept management along with a minor focus on matters outside of the AA itself. So basically the model used by both incarnations of NPO at that time did differ in a significant way than that used here in this game.
Truth be told I believe the alliance models used here are quite simplistic in general compared to CN ones. The common perspective is that because alliances here are much smaller so there isn't a need for larger and more comprehensive govs. I think that point has some merit, but I don't believe it totally engages with that issue at hand on a structural level. As I said to shiho when discussing this, 'does rose have a big gov because it has a a big membership, or does it have a big membership because it has a big gov?'
Usually appointments to gov in this game are based on two factors, merit and a gov vacancy. This seems fine until you consider the issue that arises when you have two equally talented potential FA heads but only one vacancy. This usually results in one being selected and the other equally talented individual hopefully hanging around as a deputy, but I also tend to suspect that this situation leads to many of the splinters and micros in this game we see formed by ambitious potential alliance leaders forced to do so due to a lack of gov spots. In comparison, if we utilised a model purely on merit, so two equally talented FA orientated individuals would as dual heads, then we would avoid that issue entirely.
Whilst people may say that smaller govs are more ideal and responsive, I tend to believe that perspective to be inherently flawed. I've seen alliances of 1500 members with govs of 20 plus members plus react and make decisions quicker than smaller AAs with smaller govs. What matters in alliance responsiveness and decision-making capability is the actual standard of ability present in associated gov members, so if we are using a limited model which incentivises talented and ambitious members to go elsewhere then you can see the issue which begins to develop overtime. Plus having a larger gov in general really allows for newer players to become involved and learn the necessary knowledge which is also a reason people utilise for why smaller govs are more ideal. I think this perspective, namely that it's difficult for new players to learn everything needed, isn't a legitimate reason for keeping small govs at all. If anything it's a reason to expand govs so as to actively educate up and coming talent.
Personally, I think the smaller gov perspective isn't actually based on smaller memberships at all. I think it's more so a result of current nation simulators existing in a time of discord which allows for more centralised and instant/realtime communication across multiple wires devices. This being in comparison to earlier nation sims forced to rely on forums and IRC/Skype which generally needed a PC to utilise. A good gov needed a large amount of gov members online at any given time, and forums itself usually led to greater alliance engagement at a membership level because forum topics would be active convos spread out over a period of days and weeks. And that's the key benefit, alliance engagement at a membership level. It's the hallmark of a good alliance and the only thing that really matters in measuring an alliance's capability.
So to wrap up this phone written wot, I think alliance leaders advocating a smaller gov are looking at it from the wrong direction. I think we have smaller memberships because we have smaller govs, and that this small gov is the result of the changed way we communicate.
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11 minutes ago, Keegoz said:
Vacation mode exists. Use it.
This.
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A few of us other day were discussing alliance projects which require an absurd amount of resources to purchase whilst offering significant benefits as perhaps a way to act as a resource sink for the game's economy 🤷♂️
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14 hours ago, Pascal said:
You don't even know what you're talking about or saying.
Oh cmon..you can do better than that chump.
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Eclipsed.
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13 hours ago, Apocalypsa said:
Only daring to hit someone with 3 times their size proves that someone is 4 times more incapable.
So say the defeated. Always and every time.
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20 hours ago, Pascal said:
A lot of whining from people who tried to get us dogpiled several times in the past, and whose justification is now "Eclipse deserves what they got" for foiling your plans and beating you in the past.
But if that makes you more comfortable into (unnecessarily) bringing 60% of the game by your side, shrugs. I also understand that it's a matter of convenience for many alliances to just bandwagon on us at this time. At least that's more honest than trying to come up with a justification that does not make any sense.
People upvoting those kind of posts without knowing anything should rethink their critical positioning though.You may call it a bandwagon. The rest of us call it karma.
5 hours ago, Firwof Kromwell said:
Idk what they were thinking...but I like where this is going!
They all deserved thisIt would be highly ironic if Pascal takes this to ron and boasts about it after his constant ranting in regards to guardian's stats during the last war.
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On 1/14/2023 at 3:13 AM, Lord of Puns said:
See but there isn’t. There are a few alliances that absolutely will not ally themselves with other certain alliances, but for the most part in the past two years everybody done did everything with everybody. This dichotomy that you’re depicting does not exist any more. tS went from fighting rose, to allying rose, TKR went from allying tS to fighting tS. Midguard arose as a tripartite to the typical TKROSESYNDICATE rivalry (which in itself is a set of three poles) HOGG has arisen as a separate sphere again. The idea that the entire world operates around two poles is blatantly false. Time and time again, the three major players in orbis politics continue to be consumed by other mini conflicts that begin to create new powerhouses.
The reality is that you’re seeing these divisions because you’re looking for them. Age old rivalries shaped our spheres and our mindsets as players for years. New rivalries and lines are being drawn and it’s not just straight in half. I mean shit, we had three major conflicts occurring with completely different parties in the past two months alone.
The presence of two poles does not mean that alliances are unable to cross from one hemisphere to another though? We had plenty of that occurring in the past too? BK being a rather prominent example
A bipolar world doesn't automatically imply a non-changing world. It's simply a term used to describe a set of relations which exist within the game's larger meta as it exists at any given point in time. Alliances will change in their goals, interests and alignments much as they always have done.
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On 1/14/2023 at 2:47 AM, Roberts said:
I think rarely anyone purposefully seeks out to grief others, but if you think it doesn't happen at all then you're fooling yourself. NPO was very interested - as shown in publicly available discord logs from their highest gov chats - in ruining other player's game if it meant fewer political enemies to oppose their group. To the extent that they actively wanted and tried to get people to delete their nations by refusing peace deals and extending the war. This is to say nothing about inadvertently ruining the game via creating an unchallengeable force.
Just to be clear: A hegemony is not a group with a tiering advantage or the largest bloc in a multipolar world. A hegemony is a force that cannot be challenged even if the rest of the game combined. People called Hollywood and Quack a hegemony, even though they both easily lost wars when coordination was applied.I agree with parts of this, and it's been something on my mind as well in this past year. TKR only sought out maybe 3 or 4 wars this past year, yet we were actively involved in some conflict or another for almost 11 out of 12 months in 2022. Be that from rogues, raider groups, Midgard, HoF, etc. We spent almost a full year at war, 2 months longer than NPOLT. I know you're in Guardian so maybe you'll empathize here: I was a proponent of splitting up Hollywood for a more interesting world - yet now that we've conformed to the minisphere meta we've seemingly been punished for almost a year since. Security is starting to appeal to me more than everyone else's "interesting" narratives.
Solid WoT overall, even if I disagree with bits. Have an upvote.
I think you are confusing NPO's motivations for forming a hegemony with what they did when they finally achieved (albeit briefly) that hegemon status before it all imploded. I'm the last person to be an NPO apologist since I despised them as much as the next person, but I think we can all generally agree that the only way to achieve real security is via being able to project some form of indirect dominance upon the game from a position of strength. One is never totally secure as long as a serious rival is present. Once you take into account NPO's earlier history of defeat after defeat, their economic and tiering models and so on, then NPO's motivations for attempting some form of hegemony really aren't all that surprising. Now, what they did to maintain that hegemony is a whole other different story which can't be condoned. Not all hegemons are the same after all, and I don't recall tS, TKR, rose or any other current and/or previous hegemons employing the extreme methods utilised by NPO.
I also disagree with your definition of what a hegemony actually is. There have been many would be and actual hegemons labelled as such in this game's history. They have all fallen one after the other. No one is untouchable. This game's own history actually indicates as much and if the current meta isn't indicative of former hegemons being humbled then I don't know what is. We could argue over who was and wasn't a hegemon, but considering the term gets thrown around rather loosely I think such a venture might be ultimately futile.
And that's precisely what minispheres was, an idyllic narrative divorced from the game's own material reality. Particularly in regards to the upper tier dynamics which render the notion of minispheres particularly problematic and hard to achieve.
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22 minutes ago, Fulcrum said:
Fair, but imagine how much worse it would be if all those alliances were also democracy fanatics
I'm not so sure tbh. I admit there would be a few, but no more higher a percentage than compared to regular alliances I suspect. Considering the other game, which has a lengthy history of functioning democratic alliances, democracy if implemented correctly is perfectly viable. In a lot of ways, most democratic alliances end up resembling meritocratic AAs overtime anyway.
Personally, I'd be interested in seeing a more radically inclined direct/consultative democracy if only to see how it would operate. Indeed, as a few might know, I've contemplated creating such an alliance in the past 🤷♂️
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17 hours ago, Fulcrum said:
You make interesting points here, but I wanted to mention one point in particular:
This seems like a strange way to phrase the issue. "Democracy" would just allow the most charismatic and arrogant idiot to take charge and likely run things to the ground. I think what you meant is more the realm of scouting or meritocracy. Alliances would have better success if gov members actively seek talent within their membership and help train members who are interested in volunteering. Being more open to giving interested members a chance to show what they can do would be a good way to keep the ones with potential on your side and let new ideas have a chance in even the most established of communities.
There are plenty charismatic and arrogant idiots in charge of more than a few alliances already, and that'a without democracy.
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6 hours ago, Roberts said:
It's actually scary seeing the small minority go "!@#$ yeah let's form a hegemony and !@#$ over the game"
but it's also heartening to see most of the relevant players posting that this is a bad post lol.
As usual I will begin by saying our game is multipolar but not made up of minispheres. Minispheres is a catchall phrase we've distorted from the original vision of like 250-or-fewer-nation groupings.
Spheres work together, they break apart, alliances move between spheres - fluidity is what makes politics interesting. NPO as a villain wasn't interesting, you can see from the data itself that many people simply deleted rather than bang their head against some stubborn fool on discord for 9 months. In any other game you'd call what NPO did with IQ "griefing" and looked down on. NPO was cringey with how seriously they took everything.
Frankly, this post calling for hegemony is too.
This is A+ level strawman posting right here.
First of all, I don't think anyone is wishing to screw over the game. Second of all, if you think hegemonies arise out of some desire to screw over the game then you are failing to understand the motivating factors which lead to the formation of hegemonic authority at a foundational level.
Very few hegemonies, if any for that matter, arise out of some general desire to dominate the game and ruin it for everyone. Hegemonies arise due to a collective goal of providing security to nations and alliances grouped around a common collective 'pole' who stand in some form of collective opposition to nations and alliances grouped around an opposing 'pole'. The only sure way an alliance leader or group of alliance leaders can provide this security is via greater numbers (with a dash of quality and superior internal systems of organisation but at some point it is still a numbers level).
That's all it is. Providing security to members and allies. Something which the likes of tS, Rose and now eclipse/test will openly agree with since they have taken definitive action both FA wise and internally to achieve some form of collective security aimed at protecting their members against the domination of GG/HW/HOGG etc (pick your era). Action which I entirely agree with for that matter from a meta perspective and which I have voiced both here and elsewhere so it should not come as a surprise.
What you are confusing, perhaps deliberately, are the motivating factors which lead to the formation of hegemonies with certain actions taken by power drunk hegemons who cross the line and 'break' the game's accepted sense of fair play. The game has had a series of hegemons over the years and I'm sure we could all agree some have been relatively ok and others not so much based upon their actions performed in order to maintain their hegemonic status.
Now, this question of multispheres and multipolarity. I'm not sure how anyone after the last 6 months can reasonably look at the current FA meta and hold the belief that minispheres as a concept is defunct but that we somehow exist in a state of multipolarity. If we view minispheres as amounting to the holistic interaction of various groupings/blocs and treaties across the web, then right now we have without a doubt something which comes closest to some ideal form of 'multispheres'. But multispheres does not equate to multipolarity as I alluded to above. Any reasonable person looking at the web right now can quickly ascertain that there are closer relationships between certain spheres than between other spheres, and that those closer inter-relationships can and do assert themselves, particularly when it comes down to the upper tier arms race which is essentially a numbers game of win or lose. There are only two poles,with these poles being comprised of multiple spheres linked by common interests, security and their alignment with other alliances within that same pole and most importantly, their opposition to alliances found in the opposing pole. Or in short, whilst minispheres are based on direct treaty relationships, the state of polarity, however, is one largely based on alignment against spheres found in the opposing pole in addition to common goals shared by spheres within a pole itself.
Or in even more condensed form. Multispheres =/= multipolarity.
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6 hours ago, Keegoz said:
I think you can agree though, Pfeiffer was the bad guy. I know from Rose, we thought of t$/Partisan as the bad guy for ditching us and then supporting Pfeiffer atagonising us.
Heh, it's publicly on this forum somewhere my interactions with Pfeiff and it's not all really that difficult to decipher how I viewed him. I even left tS and backed Rose over a particular war relating to tS-Mensa relations stemming from Pfeiff now that I think on it. I just don't equate someone on a perceived power trip as amounting to major villain status. Perhaps minor villain status? That would work I suppose and it's still a villain of some various description.
I suppose we have to make the distinction between bad guy who opposes us versus villain which admittedly may be difficult depending upon individual perspective.
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11 hours ago, Kastor said:
There is/was a huge section of the game who believed Partisan to be the bad guy. Pre was definitely the bad guy.
I don’t think you can argue Pre, Parti-Boi is a little different.
partisan had ve trying to remove him as tS leader, left, hit them, lost, got upn & friends to hit them too, lost. Then with Pfieffer and his whole toxicity and Partisan “protecting” him because Mensa was vital to the sphere
'Everyone belives it therefore it must be true'.
You can ascribe moralist motivations and labels to alliance leaders acting purely in the self interest of their own alliances, but that doesn't necessarily make them true. Particularly so on when it applies to persons who employ a more realpolitik mindset to their decision making process. Plus you left out a greater part of the context regarding that partisan - VE drama too which makes the labelling rather 'convenient'.
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Not sure if I agree with partisan and prefontaine being a villain. Influential and independent? Sure. Villains? Not so sure.
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3 hours ago, Kastor said:
Everything that happened because of NPO has everyone scared. The issue with these minispheres is everyone is using it as a cop out.
The goal of the game is to guide your alliance into a hegemony. One that you build, not that you form. You use that hegemony to inflict your governing rules on the game. Thats why a lot of things resemble Guardian, tS, TKr, Rose.
No one should try to do what npo did. But don’t let shat they did dissuade you from playing the game. Not making moves simply because you are scared of taking over the game is a bad move. The game needs villains. Too often we shy away from being the villains but trust me, you gain respect by being the bad guy. Not by being the yes man.
The appearance of minispheres is precisely that. An appearance. Once you delve a bit deeper you realise we merely traded in the previous autocratic state of bipolarity for one with a little bit more chaos is all.
Villainy, hegemony etc are all just labels whose usage depends upon an individual's perspective after all. But the motives which drove the game then are readily present now. The issue to really consider is that hegemonies arise from a need to ensure an alliance's own security against previous or future enemies. Very few, if any, arise from some general desire to impose control over the game for the sake of control (exceptions of course are present but one could argue that even NPO's brief era of dominance arose as a result of the continued series of wars over a span of years resulting in NPO attempting to find some measure of security for their members and allies by being in a position to impose some level of authority on the larger community).
Personally I believe the current state of affairs is going to be the seed for the game's next era or cycle in which we return to a more readily visible state of bipolarity. We have seen instances of this over the previous few months along with a few public statements indicating as such, but it will be interesting to watch how it all plays out.
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11 hours ago, Patrick Stewart said:
But he’s a founding member of guardian?! Surely you must worship the ground he walks on and kiss his feet????
or does that only apply to you regarding t$?
Who are you again? 🤔
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33 minutes ago, Agent W said:
Kadin used to lead your alliance…
Good for kadin.
Relevance?
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29 minutes ago, Keegoz said:
Just fyi, Kadin started playing this game from basically the beginning. 2013 crew represent.
So that explains it.
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48 minutes ago, Kadin said:
I'm pretty sure it's an obvious and transparent attempt at trolling. Or maybe the ignorance runs deeper than I thought. 🤣
Pretty sure? How sure?
I mean you can't blame us for being in possible doubt when you post like a newb who has created an alliance on their third day.
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I thought kadin was a reroll?
[PEACE] Been There, Dodged That
in Alliance Affairs
Posted
This post will 100% be used as a screenshot for the next war's CB.