Charles Bolivar

No love for Roy Mustang? That's the real MVP right there. And yeah, there are a few places Roq should be. None of them glorifying though.

Nah, it's clearly all about these upvotes and downvotes instead. Catch up 😂

Who is using the Eureka flag?

Well...tS was once a sort of Rose protectorate 🤷‍♂️

I didn't realise people actually put much stock in downvotes 🤷‍♂️

Multispheres =/= multipolarity.

Name a single alliance from the multitudes who have been labelled as hegemonic over the years who haven't been eventually beaten? No one is unbeatable.

Clock are welcome to try. We all know after all that if either ourselves or Celestial had remained at max mil for the duration of the war, clock would not have dared to even contemplate an attack. Or maybe I'm wrong. Hard to tell..

Why does this sound so familiar? 😂

I tend to believe the forum reputation system grants better insight into the distribution of the active forum community instead of specific community response.

Use unconventional methods then. Consider it a test of ingenuity.

Ironic to criticise others for promoting self-interest whilst simultaneously promoting a vision for the game which happens to promote one's own self-interest. This game is governed by self-interest. Always has and always will be.

Always a good time to see Eumir rope a doping an entire thread.

Shout out to WANA for informing me that I appear to have temporarily rejoined Syndisphere. Now my day is officially ruined 😂

I can appreciate the humour 😂

So basically you don't like the idea that we didn't perform an action which if we had performed would have suited and benefitted your own self-interest.

I think it's more so an indicator pertaining to the relevance and impact of this specific war upon the collective psyche.

Nope. Gotta at least some grey on you first. I actually think the real test is how you feel about Bunnings. Once you become excited about going there to look at random stuff and ponder upon what projects you can do around the home, that's when you become officially old or at least middle aged.

Are either of you even 30 yet? 😂

I agree 100%. In fact, I'd sum up your WoT (a rather short one at that) as saying the general meta has seemed to abandon all sense of ideological motivation, and instead adopted an elitist driven strategic modus operandi in a manner of speaking.

The main problem with NPO's economic methodology, and it really applies to most alliances which tax high but not all, is that it essentially limits the potential of the more talented members of an alliance. This is only compounded further when you consider it is those same talented players who pretty much win wars and do much of the heavy lifting. High taxes, at least following NPO's methods anyway, basically handicaps the players you need the most and imposes limits both upon their potential revenue as well as giving up tier parity. Now, that's not to say high taxes are always bad. I think hypothetically 100/100 if done properly should be the better model. The issue is I've never actually seen it performed in an efficient manner without major flaws becoming readily apparent over time. Hypothetically though it's possible, but it would be almost a full time job for a decent Econ person and team to manage effectively. Plus it would likely require a real understanding of economics and not just google doc spreadsheeting balancing up the ledgers.

I've aways believed what you allude to here is the reason for why we see whale tier consolidation in the first place. Whale rebuilds are expensive, for both an alliance and the individual. On an individual level, a single whale or even a few whales within a typical mass member alliance are going to have an extremely hard time during a war with little direct tier support unless they are lucky enough to have decent allies and communication structures. It becomes problematic during rebuilds because then you have to justify spending the large amount of cash on a few versus the many. Of course with proper financial planning and allocation of rebuild funds it becomes less of a problem, but there is always that balance of distribution between your whale, upper, middle and lower tiers. So in that sense, you can't blame individuals for wanting to be around other whales. Upper tier focussed AAs offer better security for the individual, plus it avoids the rebuild dilemma mostly because any decent upper tier orientated AA should naturally have more funds at their disposal, and you don't have to worry too much about the allocation of rebuild funds because everyone is a costly rebuild. On a meta level regarding the relationship between alliances, a similar dynamic applies, namely security and safety in numbers. It's pretty much what drives relations between the established AAs who have an upper tier, with that drive being the protection of your principle source of wealth creation and force projection. I do agree with you in that it does make the political meta pretty bleak. I've said it for awhile that the notion of multi-spheres is flawed in this sense simply because of the mechanics around whale tier economics which favour upper tier consolidation. I think it's possible to have multi spheres ( we largely do anyway already), but it's a moot point because we certainly don't have a multi-polar world because the risk of alienating potential allies who can offer support in the upper tier against future enemies is simply too much of an expense if an alliance's whales get rolled. I also agree that it is something which largely requires an in-game fix and it's not something which can be remedied by a FA solution since all that does is encourage weaker alliances/spheres to engage in the creation of secret treaties and so on. As for the solution? I have no idea because we are attempting to remedy human nature seeking safety in numbers essentially in my opinion. Boost city costs, make infra cheaper? I've always thought having the in-game map assume more relevance would be a good way. Like say an upper tier alliance is based predominantly in North America, they would be unable to significantly project their full force without significant penalties to let's say south Africa without large penalties. That way we see greater political regionalism (multi-spheres) and we would also see the down declare issue resolved to an extent since an upper tier nation in South Africa would have a better chance against a whale tier nation based in north America ( sucks to be upper tier in Mexico or Canada I suppose though). Alliances would be forced to relocate to differing parts of the world map for security etc. It's probably not possible within the game's mechanics, and hence a pipe dream, but I think it would work. As for projects, I actually think there should be distinct trees within the larger project system which prevent a person from buying all of them and make it mandatory for a person to specialise. If a person makes say steel, limit them to specifically making steel and be unable to say farm or make alum, gas etc. You could apply a similar logic to the more Econ and military orientated projects. If you build an econ project, it should prevent you from building some of the military projects or impose a severe nerf on the effectiveness of the military project. It would encourage specialisation within alliances to fulfill certain roles, but also alliances themselves may specialise into certain roles. Just my thoughts anyway. Good topic

How interesting.

Multi-spheres =/= multi-polarity. It's the fatal flaw which those inclined to support multi-spheres ignored despite the obvious flaws being readily visible the entire time. Celestial's formation is simply the inevitable consequence of causation and escalation.

Where is a horsecock wall of text when you need it?