[P&W Mount Rushmore]

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.

[[DoW] The Second Atomic Crusade]

14 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

Never thought I'd see the day you complained about an alliance having an active and engaged membership.

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

[The Grand Coalition (half game wide MDP)]

Who is using the Eureka flag?

[Oh how the mighty have fallen]

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

[Peace in our Time]

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

[Peace in our Time]

10 hours ago, Thalmor said:

TKR's actions nearly half a decade ago is overshadowed by their moves against minispheres in more recent times. Those moves being the formation of Hollywood and this treaty. 

If a Pastor went on a mission trip, to then come back home to stop preaching, deal drugs, and commit armed robbery, does his old mission trip mean he's still a man of God? No, it doesn't. 

The mission trip was a good thing, sure; as was the formation of Chaos. But I just don't think the past is validating present bad acts. 

I also disagree that minispheres is dead. There's 6 distinct spheres. These past two years have had very organic, unpredictable, and fluid politics occur between the spheres. I mean, nobody saw this treaty coming. Nobody saw Mystery-Oasis happening. Nobody saw Guns and Rose happening (or ending) the way it did. Nobody saw Hollywood forming. Nobody saw Quack disbanding. The list goes on. We live in a multisphere world that is far different from the bipolarity of the early years of the game. It doesn't exist 'in theory,' it exists in practice in the present. 

Ironically, it's moves like this treaty that are taking steps to end this multipolarity. Very ironic to see  people from the same side sticking the knife in and say "oh yeah, crime is getting really bad these days." 

And to say that "The whole damn community is against the idea" is completely arrogant. You're not blind. This thread is 14 pages long because there is massive community backlash to this move. I shouldn't have to explain that the leaders and FA heads of t$, Rose, and TKR aren't the whole community. There are half a dozen distinct spheres because the broader community - and political decision makers who weld some kind of power - want and have wanted decentralized, freer politics. Right now, the only people who are acting like they're against multispheres are Celestial and Hollywood- who might have bigger nations on average but are still in the minority of active players. 

Multispheres =/= multipolarity. 

[Peace in our Time]

20 minutes ago, Azazel said:

Friend, 

 

I think we both know the terminology/definition is slightly different irl and here, however I do appreciate you taking your time to research this in such detail so I will keep this short for you! When speaking of hegemonic powers in Orbis as a whole, in my experience most people are referring to a bloc or group of alliances that are unbeatable. As I've said before the numbers are pretty clear in this case and if you wish ill happy provide them to you, HollyRo$e can not be taken down even with a joint game wide response.  You attempting to use this power offensively is quite irrelevant. However I still fail to see the point about arguing over trivial matters like the definition of what your bloc is.

 

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.

[Peace in our Time]

18 hours ago, Majima Goro said:

I'm not sure how no one has pointed this out yet but here I go.

By signing this treaty, you have successfully painted a big red x on yourselves. You know they will come for you. Not now but they will eventually come for you. The question is when. 

Once this treaty is void, either one of you could be a target of a DoW. You might win, you might lose, that's an entirely different story. But when the CB(officially or not) used is this treaty, the party that is not hit knows it could be 'chained'. Would it then be in the favour of the second party to help party 1 and eliminate the threat with numbers OR would party 2 stay sitting, waiting for the storm to hit.

This treaty is dog poop for a reason because if we go by the so called precedence, in all cases, both parties should be rolled. But both parties can avoid being rolled by treatying each other indefinitely, bringing us back to the start of the loop and the cycle begins all over again. 

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..

[People wanted me to write a thread.]

10 hours ago, Avakael said:

I'm forced to agree with this. After leaving t$, I didn't really interact with them much, but I wound up being present in their CoTL discord embassy for the start of the global war known as "Duck Hunt". I disagreed with their perceptions about why the war started, and their reaction was to immediately ban me from the embassy. It feels pretty shitty to know that I'm basically dead to them despite having been part of the community since 2014 era MI6, but it's mostly different people now, and I've accepted it.

Why does this sound so familiar? 😂

[People wanted me to write a thread.]

8 hours ago, Thalmor said:

This is like, a schizophrenic-level perception of reality.

Here's the downvotes on the HollyRo$e's announcement thread: 

Here's the upvotes in this thread to Keegoz's OP (after just 5 hours): 

This isn't a hard science, but the forum's reputation system is a good way of gauging community response to things. The community seems pretty hard against what y'all are doing, and are pretty happy with what Keegoz is saying. 

Bro, would it be easier for you if I just gave you my PO box? That way you can just write me a love letter directly and hopefully get you some relief.

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

[People wanted me to write a thread.]

1 hour ago, Cassia said:

Apparently this is an unpopular opinion but I don't see an issue with chaining if you're going to be fighting a bloc with a substantial tiering advantage. Is every other method to reduce nation score unfair as well? It does more than just make your stats look better, lower infra makes it harder to be massively downdeclared on. You're making yourselves undefeatable through any conventional methods and you're really complaining that a significantly smaller bloc might think of using strategies like this to stand a chance against you? 

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

[People wanted me to write a thread.]

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.

[Peace in our Time]

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

[Peace in our Time]

Shout out to WANA for informing me that I appear to have temporarily rejoined Syndisphere.

Now my day is officially ruined 😂

[[Treaty] The War in our Times Agreement]

I can appreciate the humour

😂

[Peace in our Time]

2 hours ago, Jacob Knox said:

The answer is yes. I wanted to see Celestial and Hollywood duke it out. I don't care if it was at the same time as us or what, but I wanted to see it. This just shows that they're unwilling (which they even said, of course). .

 

 

 

 

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.

 

[[DoW] Your Time is Up]

5 hours ago, James XVI said:

Its a sign of the times when 3 days in these threads aren't reaching 20 pages of arguments that people pretend to read, but really just skip to the posts that have the most up/downvotes.

 

Disappointing.

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

[Retired Leaders are killing the game]

20 hours ago, Keegoz said:

No... is mid 20s not old age?

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.

[Retired Leaders are killing the game]

6 hours ago, Keegoz said:

I think I have gotten better in my old age though

 

3 hours ago, Agent W said:

I didn’t peak in 2016, I’m still out here getting cuter.

Are either of you even 30 yet? 😂

[Wall of Text]

On 5/12/2022 at 12:40 AM, roberts said:

I have no idea what the central theme of this really is, it may honestly be a stream of ideas that don't necessarily fit together. These are just some thoughts I've had regarding PnW as a whole lately, I felt like sharing.

 

Meaningless Wars

Looking over 2021 and 2022's great war list, it's incredibly hard to find a war which started for any reason at all. The best I can find are some CB's about poaching (which many of you know I already consider a weak CB in itself), while the vast majority of wars are listed as boredom or provocative raids that escalated into wars. I am a huge proponent of fighting for no reason sometimes. On the other hand though, when every fight is for no reason you begin to question why we're constantly bashing nations against each other. I've said it many times before, if you're only here for the war system I genuinely have no idea how you glean enjoyment from the game. Even (especially) raiding alliances like Arrgh have multiple layers beyond simply declaring 5 or 6 wars per week and zeroing out someone's resistance.

Politically speaking, the motivations for war seem to be... just boredom. Find something to pick a fight over because gov generally feels like fighting someone. Again, fine, but at a certain point where do the politics even come from or go to? This is a question that's been plaguing me for a long time, how do you continually generate politics in a sandbox game? Which leads into my next thought...

Internal Politics are gone/Democracies are scarce or extinct

Not to say autocracies cannot have internal politics, because they do. I just think democracies as a system are obviously better geared to encourage political engagement and "class" mobility within an alliance. Many established communities will probably read this and laugh, but when you think about it truly - we've all come into a nationsim game to roleplay to some degree. There are better strategy games, war games, etc. out there also free to play, but PnW has an extra element of political emphasis on top of it. Between external and internal politics, internal are by far the more content-rich. By their nature they are also the more dramatic, I think that fear has driven many communities into seeking shelter from such a thing. Avoiding democracy like the plague, discouraging internal politicking, and generally trying to create and facilitate a monolithic or unified community. Not a bad goal at all - but we see the price for it: Boredom in a game that should have way more politics in it than it does. 

Interestingly enough, there is a similar call for stability and security in IRL dictatorships/authoritarian regimes. Volunteer your rights away and toe the party line for stability's sake. Except in PnW there isn't really much you seemingly lose by giving up self-determination except your interest in the game.

Political Roleplay and formalities

I've ranted about this a handful of times and there are elements of the game who outright oppose the political RP/Model-UN-esque approach to the game. I get it, it's not for everyone. But the atmosphere of the game changes dramatically just by acting slightly more formal, especially in public spaces. The political roleplay such as discussions, debates, contracts, treaties, etc. all contribute heavily into the atmosphere of the game. Right now, I'd call PnW hollow - but there's always potential to fill it.

Forum usage

I hope the last few months haven't just been a trendy-revival of the forums, because I genuinely believe we need longform communication in not only PnW but in our lives as well. Intellectual digestion and discussion, even when you disagree with someone - being able to see their thoughts laid out and being able to lay out your own thoughts in full is satisfying in a way discord simply cannot compete with and often frustrates.

 

 

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.

[Politics and Whales]

On 4/16/2022 at 1:59 PM, Keegoz said:

NPO's main issue was getting new nations and waiting for them to catch up before moving up again from memory. So if they got like 10-20 more nations, they'd wait a few months catching them up before moving the rest over. They also seem to save up and then buy everyone cities, rather than just buy as they had the funds available.

Some alliances do run 100/100, I'm not sure if any do it NPO style however.

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.

[Politics and Whales]

4 hours ago, Keegoz said:

 

Now obviously wars aren't just fought in the upper tiers, they are fought in all tiers. However whales make a large portion of an alliance's wealth, lose your own whale tier and that's an incredibly expensive rebuild bill. It also means less income for a while. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

[End of Merge]

How interesting.

[[Sphere] Fate Lies in the Stars]

16 hours ago, Key said:

The moves which caused 2 of the Top 3 alliances to be part of the same sphere.
Thus, it reminded me much of Quack and the narrative pretty much stuck among Hollywood.
Also, I said a long time ago in RON that minispheres would never work. 
That everyone would use them for their own advantage and have secret backroom deals.
But no one listened. Everyone has gone back in circles. 
I respect the formation of Celestial and it's awesome to see two powerhouses work together again. However, foes will use this move as an excuse to push their own narratives.

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.

[[Sphere] Fate Lies in the Stars]

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