HM Solomon I

I wasn't talking about raiders, I was talking about the thing that actually drives the game: inter-alliance warfare. Raiders have a comparably minuscule effect on how dynamic the game is. Games become stagnant politically for two main reasons: lack of incentive to strike first (thus creating longer and longer periods of peace) and difficulty rebuilding (the harder it is too rebuild the longer periods of peace will be). This game already takes care of the first one, but it hasn't yet solved for the second.

This just ensures that aggressors will always totally destroy their targets and thus make wars less interesting. Aggressors already have a huge advantage in this game, which is good as it keeps the politics dynamic (people don't have as much of an incentive to wait for someone else to strike first), keeping alliance banks safe provides a counter-balance to this, which while not sufficient to overcome the advantage that aggressors have (and thus not sufficient to make politics stagnant) is enough to at least give defenders a fighting chance.

Welcome to the party.

Actually this is a positive. The game heavily incentivizes preemptive strikes because it is much easier to win as the aggressor than as the defender, so defenders will naturally fare worse in wars. However, having the ability to safely store cash and resources allows alliances to rebuild at least a little quicker after war. Both of these things contribute to more dynamic politics and a more interesting game: more and more intense wars fought with a relatively short peace between them because alliances are incentivized to strike first and not wait to be hit and they can rebuild a bit quicker meaning it takes less time to be ready for another go.

So with all the various acts of cheating, there has been a continuous thread running throughout, which is the question of alliance responsibility. Because in this world alliances have their own assets separate from those of individual nations, there is a question of how much of a duty they have to use those assets in compliance with higher standards (i.e., the rules of the game). Of course, no one is going to claim that alliances should be able to cheat, but the matter is a fair bit more complex than that. Ultimately, alliances cannot do anything completely on their own, individuals can though and any cheating is going to involve individual nations. The question then becomes how much alliances themselves are to blame in these cases, particularly in cases where they are the beneficiaries of said cheating. There are multiple standards that can be used to decide whether an alliance is responsible for wrongdoing. The first and strictest standard is malice which is when an alliance actively conspires to cheat and does so with full intent to perpetrate illicit acts. This is perhaps too strict a standard because most of the time alliances won't be shown to have acted maliciously. The second standard is recklessness which is when an alliance knows that it is benefitting from cheating but ignores said cheating and continues to benefit. And the final standard is negligence which is when an alliance does not know it is benefitting from cheating but should know since a reasonable person would've known. The first standard is an obvious one, alliances should not be allowed to actively conspire to cheat. The second standard (recklessness) is perhaps a bit more challenging but ultimately it follows the same logic as the first one. If an alliance knows it is benefitting from cheating but ignores it, it has no excuse because it knew. Of course when I say an alliance knew or did something what I really mean are those members controlling the alliance's resources knew or did something. Once the alliance knows, any further benefit it gains is intentional because it is an intentional act to ignore. Negligence is not as clear cut as the first two standards. For one unlike the first two standards there is no intent, so an alliance could be negligent without ever trying. Negligence is the lack of sufficient vigilance rather than the presence of intent. So in order to avoid charges of negligence alliances would have to continuously scrutinize and monitor all transactions and activity within them and report suspected cheating. This would require alliances to become less about playing the game and more about compliance, in the most bureaucratic sense of the term. Applying this standard would hurt all the members of an alliance for the lack of vigilance on the part of but a few. Collective responsibility is perfectly acceptable as a political consequence within the context of this world, but this isn't about political consequences, this is about moderation consequences. The difference between the two is that political consequences can be combatted and are part of the meta-game, whereas moderation consequences cannot be combatted and are really outside the realm of the game itself (since they are not solely imposed by players). Even those who would never have even had the opportunity to find out about cheating could be penalized without any way of using strategy and tactics to resist, which is certainly very unfair. Of course, the response to that is that they benefitted from the cheating, but benefitting from cheating in at least some way is inevitable within an alliance. Through taxes and other means an alliance will nearly always reap at least some benefit from cheating, and the members will likely share in this benefit through grants, loans, aid, larger stockpiles, etc. Since it is effectively inevitable that all or almost all members will benefit from cheating in at least some way, it is a trivial response. They could not avoid benefitting any more than they could reasonably ensure they knew of the cheating. So if negligence is not a good standard, what is a good standard? The question itself is a bit flawed, a better question is what is the best minimum standard to apply? In other words, how much responsibility do alliances have to avoid benefitting from cheating. Recklessness is a fine place to start, since it's next up from negligence. Reckless alliances should be penalized and held responsible for benefitting from cheating. To demonstrate recklessness on the part of an alliance, it is necessary to show that they had at least some knowledge that they were benefitting from cheating. At a minimum, it must be shown that someone in the alliance in a position to take action at least had a suspicion that a specific member was cheating, which benefitted the alliance, but failed to report it and take reasonable measures to ensure the alliance no longer benefitted from said cheating. It is not relevant if they should have known, it is only relevant if they did. If a particular case does not meet this standard, the alliance should bear no penalty or responsibility for cheating for the reasons given above. And if an alliance acted with malice, which is more severe than recklessness, then it should be penalized even more substantially. The main distinction between recklessness and malice is that while both are intentional, in the case of malice the alliance is not just ignoring knowledge of another's cheating, it is itself actively conspiring to cheat by using its resources to aid, abet, and facilitate cheating. Yes some alliances may be negligent in cases where it seems absolutely clear they should have known, but to apply the standard of negligence across the game would be highly detrimental and so it is best not to penalize in the same way that it is best to allow those acquitted of murder to walk free without threat of further prosecution for the same crime, so as to prevent the state from steamrolling those it disfavors into prison (by prosecuting again and again until they get a conviction). And it is best to throw out evidence that was collected illegally because otherwise the authorities would have no reason to actually follow the laws governing search and seizure and privacy would effectively be moot. Sometimes a small wrong must be permitted to avoid a larger one.

That's not actually true though. You may need resources to continue fighting and doing damage even if you're losing (you can still lob missiles if you're losing for example) and blockades can last much longer than 5 days if you're staggered in an inter-alliance war.

Except alliance banks can't fight, only nations can and blockaded nations can't receive anything from the bank. The biggest problem with keeping banks secure is it'll be harder to destroy stuff long term and wear down WCs, so I agree it probably still has to change but there is a short term strategy and in the short and even medium term it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

I actually feel like making banks secure isn't such a bad thing and actually injects some more strategy into the game. After all, you can deposit stuff into the bank and it'll be safe but during war you're certain to be blockaded and thus will be unable to access anything you've deposited. So you have to balance the security of keeping your stuff in the bank with the need to ensure its availability.

At least this provides math that can be verified versus logs that can easily be manipulated. And from reading, it does make a decent case that the alliance couldn't have been expected to know from the bank transactions alone that there was any cheating going on. Of course there could be other ways for them to know, but I'm unsure of just how much responsibility we should assign to alliances to actually police their members. I mean is it reasonable to expect alliances to constantly scrutinize the trade activity of all of their members for instance?

The compromise I detailed above is certainly going to be about members wanting low rates but members of course also want other things, like large amounts of cash up front to make significant purchases quickly, and the compromise will reflect that, which is why alliances with no taxes are bound to be rare. Nice to hear of it in action, I'd be interested in hearing other alliances' experiences.

Taxes are a powerful force. In this world, taxes are the only way alliances can physically impose policy on their members without expelling them. Alliances have the power, if they so choose, to seize all net income and all resource production from every member, forever. That is an incredible power, but of course alliances hardly ever use the vast power afforded to them. The question is what can we learn about alliances from taxes? I will argue that just about everything one needs to know about philosophy of an alliance can be gleamed from just two sources: what tax rates the alliance sets and how it uses the resources and money gained from these taxes. Let's start with the two most extreme cases. Consider a hypothetical alliance, let's call it the ABC Alliance. The ABC Alliance has no taxes at all. In this alliance, nations keep all of what they make and produce. There are a few important implications of this policy. For one, the alliance has no source of income outside of donations and thus will not have much in the way of reserves. It also means that the alliance trusts its members ... a lot, given that the alliance believes all its members will ensure they have resources and cash for war and rebuilding. If they don't, there is no net for them to fall back on, no aid will be arriving. This may seem like a terrible strategy, but actually while it's very extreme and would not likely be widely adopted, it could work well for neutral alliances. Neutral alliances would not experience the strain of war often, if ever, so there is not as much of a need to have alliance reserves. Those alliances would probably benefit from allowing their members to keep what they make, and if members do need aid, it could be arranged via members donating money or resources to one another. Of course, this scheme could easily lead to problems if the alliance's estimation of its members' competence is not entirely accurate and large-scale economic hardship, possibly brought by war, comes to claim another victim. Let's consider a second hypothetical alliance called the DEF Alliance. The DEF Alliance has maximum taxes, that is to say they charge a 100% cash rate and a 100% resource rate, seizing all net income and all production for the alliance. As you can probably tell, if the ABC Alliance is libertarian, the DEF Alliance is communist. In this world, it is actually possible for an alliance to be functionally communist, not just ideologically so. The DEF Alliance would use this large income to provide massive amounts of aid to its members. The effective tax rate (df. how much a given nation pays, proportional to its income, over a given period of time considering any income returned via aid and other such mechanisms where nothing is offered in exchange for said returned income) in this alliance is actually not very high at all for most nations as income is returned in the form of aid. If it wasn't, the alliance simply would not develop at all. The alliance simply controls the entire economy and centrally plans all development as it decides who will receive aid, when, for what, and how much. This could theoretically be more efficient if those making these decisions are better at doing so than individual members, but it is also likely to be inefficient. All income is essentially being put through several more steps before it gets spent and each time it does so there is the potential for inefficiencies. More steps before income is spent mean more chances for these inefficiencies to develop. In between the two extremes of ABC and DEF is the vast middle ground. The two hypothetical alliances described above are the two ends of a spectrum on which all alliances fall. It is likely that the distribution of alliances along this spectrum follows a bell curve skewed toward ABC; this is due to a combination of members' ability to vote with their feet and their likely desire not to pay very high taxes so as to be allowed to develop their nation how they see fit. Ultimately, every alliance reaches a compromise in which the members are satisfied they have what they want and the alliance is satisfied it has what it wants, this compromise largely defines where that alliance falls on the spectrum. In making this compromise, alliances are saying a lot about themselves. Higher taxes are associated with more centrally planned economies; the higher the tax rates, the more centrally planned an alliance's economy is; these alliances are likely to have a more collectivistic culture as all resources and incomes are turned over to society, in the form of the alliance, for the benefit of all. Lower taxes are associated with individualism over collectivism (everyone makes what they make, more or less, and does it with it as they so choose, largely regardless of how that affects others), less central planning and more nation-directed development. No point of the spectrum is the "correct" way to do things as at any given point, there is at least one way to make it work. Higher taxes mean lots of aid, at lower to mid tax levels loans are likely to be a more effective solution, and at very low levels individuals will have to save up for development on their own. In all three of these cases, the alliance can develop, doesn't mean it will, but it can, so no level precludes the possibility of development. What the levels, these points on the spectrum, do do is tell us what an alliance believes given how it conducts its affairs. Taxes are fundamental to who an alliance is.

Lunch is good. I like lunch.

Join us! You have to help us dilute the suckiness of MrHiott, for the benefit of Orbis.

Oh I agree completely, but to actually go into all the ways the Delian League had and caused problems wasn't the point of this entry. It was much more about the treasury at Delos. It just so happened that the establishment of this treasury is analogous to what I propose in the article, so I used the League as a jumping off point to talk about that. I'm actually reading Lords of the Sea by John R. Hale, which is a great book on the Athenian navy, and of course it spends time discussing the Delian League. I highly recommend it if you haven't already checked it out.

In the 5th Century BCE, a number of Greek city-states led by Athens founded an alliance that later came to be known as the Delian League. Athens at this time was a powerful maritime state, which controlled a thalassocracy stretching across the Aegean Sea and eventually into the Black Sea. The name is actually an anachronism attached to the alliance by later historians and is derived from the place where the alliance would meet and where the league's treasury was initially held: the island of Delos in the Aegean Sea. This league had an inordinate influence on the events in that region both during its time and after it passed. But there is a lesson to be gleaned from this great maritime power: the importance of a centralized and at least symbolically independent treasury and member contributions to it. This world provides an opportunity that has scarcely been imagined in others: an economic bloc to rival the greatest trading empires in history. This opportunity comes from the the twin features of alliance banks and the markets. A Delian League revival here could achieve much. A rough outline of its structure would be an alliance set-up to provide a treasury for the bloc/league. The members of that AA would be appointed by the constituent alliances; they would remain members of their home alliances but would be given responsibility for managing and safeguarding the assets of the entire bloc, which would be deposited in that AA's bank. While this bloc could be military in nature, the real opportunity is in the power that the collective assets provide. Each constituent alliance would be assessed a tax, much like in the Delian League, which would be paid to the treasury based on that bloc-owned AA. Those appointed to serve on the AA would then use the funds to work the markets, using their own nations as middlemen to do so. Given that such a bloc would have vastly more resources at its disposal than a single alliance, since it has both more potential income and fewer expenses, it could corner markets, buying up all of a given resource to drive prices up, and then selling at the higher price-point. It could also keep reserves of resources to sell during large wars when prices are highest -- uranium skyrocketed last war up to more than thirty-five thousand dollars per unit, more than ten times its normal value. Of course, the question that must be asked is why. Why would any alliances form such a bloc? The answer is simple: profit. Sure they would be assessed taxes to provide the capital for these endeavors, but any profits garnered would belong to the bloc and would be paid out to the constituent alliances. Profits in a month could reach many tens of millions, adding extra revenue for alliances to then spend on growth and development, which would then be taxed by the alliances (and indirectly by the bloc) netting even more revenue in the future. The exact details of how this would work would need to be hammered out, of course. Such matters include whether larger alliances in the bloc would need to pay a higher tax rate than smaller ones, how much discretion the treasurers on the bloc-owned AA would have in their management of bloc resources, how frequent taxes would be levied on constituent alliances, how frequent profits would be paid out, and so on. But after these matters are resolved, a bloc like this could be extraordinarily profitable for its members. In many ways, it isn't so much a bloc as an alliance investment club, particularly if it doesn't include direct military obligations outside of non-aggression (which would be a necessity to ensure the endeavor isn't counter-productive). I hope you enjoyed this piece. Let me know in the comments below either way, and feel free to discuss this there as well; I'll be joining in.

While in reality, I'm not as full of wisdom as the legendarily wise King Solomon, I figured every blog needs a punny or otherwise amusing title, so I went with The Wisdom of Solomon. Periodically, I'll release a volume containing some (I hope) interesting musings on PW for you all to enjoy (or not, as the case may be). I encourage debate and comments, and you'll find that I have no problem engaging in some good old fashion logical argumentation. This means that I will admit when I'm incorrect about something, and that I'll defend my positions when confronted by insufficiently persuasive arguments. Hopefully you enjoy.

Hail peace in our time!

I get this message every time I try to log-in. I even searched on google, went to the home page, went to the log-in page, and it still read that error. I can't get around it and so I can't access the game.

o/ Vanguard RL is a right bastard isn't it? Onwards and upwards!

Yeah, I'd definitely like to see this implemented.

I've always liked how the (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) forums have blogs that are moderated solely by the creator of each blog. It provides a space to talk about things on the main forums where the normal rules don't apply but which is wholly separate from the rest of the forums (so people have to want that experience to get it). It's a great space for talking about all different kinds of things in a different kind of format from a forum topic.

o/

Luv u too Ragnar.

Or maybe not. I'm HM Solomon I of the Kingdom of the Truth. I've played (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) for nearly 3.5 years now, and I thought I'd give PnW a try.