Auctor

Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.

If you want to start an alliance and the first thought that pops into your head is that you need to get a protectorate, you probably shouldn't. If you're not experimenting with a system no one else is trying, you're probably really boring and unlikely to develop a niche inside the broader context. If you don't have a recruitment strategy other than that maybe you'll have such a *fun* gathering of underachieving social circlejerkers that it will slowly accrete more and more window lickers, then you're probably wasting your time and energy on an alliance that won't last.

Problem with expecting a war to reintroduce scarcity is that for market prices to be higher, you also need a lot more cash rolling around. A big war scenario is more likely to result in high profit things for that cash to be spent on rather than resources at this stage of the market.

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

To clarify for a modern audience, Uncle Tom's Cabin was meant to convey an antislavery message, it wasn't an instructional manual.

these two positions aren't mutually exclusive.

quoting this so I can add it to my notepad later. I don't want to ever forget it.

I miss the good old days before so much goddam energy got spent prophesying failure and more got spent enjoying it when it came to pass.

Micros are basically unavoidable without a significant portion of the game committed to rooting them out, so it's not as if we are likely to run the counterfactual here. It's true that it's exceedingly unlikely that any of them will bring something new to the table, but it only takes one to make the best of a fact of life.

it's working!

Newer nations are more likely to be selling what they organically produce and less likely to be flipping the market, goofball.

Congratulations on the new leadership! I see only a bright future ahead under what I can only assume is highly capable leadership! I can truly say I am more optimistic about Pantheon's prospects than I have ever been! Farewell to the departed.

GL HF

One person can't "run train." That's not how that works. You're probably a little confused as to why your circlejerks aren't working either, I suspect.

Proxy wars only really work in an environment where there are two equally matched sides that fear the consequences of an open confrontation with each other. The technical term for that scenario is "boring".

What kind of short sighted fools would pay taxes into alliances that won't outlast their leadership's propensities for making new ones? It's like we've given up on critical thinking at this point.

Can we just put to rest this myth that "tiering works" already? If the last few years have taught us nothing, it's that it has no potential whatsoever to be a force multiplier, an overpowered strategy, or any impact whatsoever on political decision making at a high level.

Building perfectly balanced wars with equal resource destruction and equal determination to continue the fight until all resources are burned is like that game we all used to play where we'd hang onto the wheelbarrow handles and hop around on just the tire.

A longer war would not have addressed this, it was already past the diminishing returns point.

To @Buorhann's point, the micro mill dweebazoids are going to generally be low quality egotistical nutburgers just about anywhere they land, and there's always going to be a membership burnout rate regardless of how "good" alliances are. I'm not that convinced that that membership burnout rate is that highly correlated with the alliance choices individuals make early on. Also, generally speaking, if you're starting an alliance that exists as a social group and doesn't have some kind of mechanistic thought experiment behind it, you're really only going to drop off over time. Complacency kills "high activity, exclusive membership" models quickly, and the egos involved tend to not brook any kind of adaption once things take that course.

Lay down two ground attacks and then quickly delete all ground units before you can be countered. Follow up only with nukes and be sure to post frequently about how nukes are the only valid and effective ingame unit.

Everyone has their ambitious small alliance phase. Beats the heck out of their perpetual purity spiral flameout stagnation phase. In general, it's always good to have some kind of goal in mind and some kind of way of assessing what "success" and what "failure" will look like. I don't particularly care much to define it for others, but if you can't state a clear goal for your alliance in the mid and long term, you probably are spinning your wheels and better off seeking alternative employment. I could give two shits about how many members and how much NS an alliance has if it has a purpose that it's making continuous incremental headway on. It's also just really hard to give government members a chance to experience true responsibility if it isn't something they've never captained their own ship before, as well as just being really hard to turn the keys over to a very large AA to someone to give them a chance to just figure it out. I'd rather choose an ambitious, driven guy from a modicum of success in the micro to medium world to place some responsibility on than try to train from scratch, all things being equal and the creek don't rise.

challenge accepted

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

New Pacific Order protects Dark Brotherhood for the time being. If this should concern or alarm you in some way, do not hesitate to let me know. Thank you.