Memph

I would say it was more like lack of information or maybe not remembering the details in some cases. Anyways, I'm not sure when the animosity with VE began, it seems like it was after the GPA war from what Pre and Impero have said, but my point was that relations were friendly initially and were still friendly as VE rose up the rankings. I'm pretty sure VE was #1 before the GPA war, and there would have been a hegemoney or close if Guardian became allied to VE, say sometime during the month prior to the GPA war, since we were friendly with SK, DEIC, and smaller alliances like TEst and a few others (I think ESA and GR were already around then?). The info Shellhound had basically suggested that VE assumed war with us was inevitably going to happen and were preparing for that eventuality in the medium/long term. That's what I meant by preparing for war. That doesn't mean they had specific plans to attack us. Maybe VE was just convinced we were going to attack them. If so, since we did not have any plans to attack VE at that time, you can see how it might have been misinterpreted and fed into the cycle of escalation.

There were posts about preparing for war with Guardian but I didn't say they were planning on explicitly initiating a war against us. Regarding Emily I think it was just one or two members that wanted reps on Emily's behalf but I don't remember Prefontaine asking for them.

There were quite a few missiles launched against us by DEIC, mostly against our high infra nations, I agree other damage was insignificant but the money put into war prep that allowed us to do the damage we did was not. I had 6 cities at the time with 800 infra in each, and was about even with DEIC's #10-15 nations. I think we did about 200 infra damage per city per nation, so about $3-6 million in damages at that level per nation. I think it was about 30 vs 20 on the Guardian vs DEIC front (DEIC had other nations on top of those 20 facing Rose). $6m x 20 = $120m in damages Guardian spent about $120m on militarizing, fuel and ammo. The DEIC nations I was facing should have been making about $750k pre-war and maybe $500k after the infra loss, so the infra damage should not have taken too long to rebuild. Even if you went from 800 infra to nothing which did not happen that would have only been $7.3m in damage or about 10 days worth of pre-war peace time income. So Guardian members had something along the lines of 7 days prep + 10 days war + 1-2 days fixing improvements + 1 day rebuilding infra = 20 days vs DEIC ~2 days prep + 10 days war + 1-2 days fixing improvements + 10 days rebuilding infra = 25 days These are just rough calculations of course, but I don't think they're too far off. And part of the reason why DEIC had a superior upper tier was their smaller war chest, Guardian started building our war chest weeks before the war, putting aside a little every day, we actually had about $200m in war chest but didn't spend it all. Guardian probably could've have closed much of that gap with DEIC if we had spent our war chest on building up our cities. I've taken about $65-70m in infra damages this war, plus about $35m worth of war chest. I was making about $2m pre-war but would only be making about $1m now with my infra losses. 17 days prep + 14 days of war + 1-2 days fixing improvements + ~50 days rebuilding infra = 80+ days worth of falling behind compared to neutrals No matter how you adjust the exact numbers I'm pretty sure this one is putting a bigger dent on growth.

Putting aside your speculation about ifs and buts, if what you're saying is true (I think it is) about MLP decom vs third round, that's not the same as non-negotiable reps. If we can get white peace after 3 rounds, which is tomorrow night by the way, I'll be perfectly happy with that. As for the Marionette war being early on in the game, I would say that that war set UPN back by maybe 3-4 weeks compared to neutrals. This war has probably already set Guardian back by - I estimate - about 6-9 weeks compared to neutrals.

What happened as I see it/afaik: For a good amount of time, Guardian has had somewhat of a balance of powers approach to the game. We were opposed to the idea of a "hegemoney" and even if such a large power was not necessarily making specific threats against other alliances. I suspect this is at least part the reason why Prefontaine decided not to have us ally with VE as they were getting increasingly powerful, even though we were on relatively friendly terms. Also around this time, Grillick's (GPA leader) actions did not reflect those of a neutral alliance, and GPA's members were increasingly dominating the game's upper tier. So Guardian and SK start a war against GPA to avoid having them become too powerful. Speaking personally, I was also hoping that this would encourage other alliances to make moves since they would no longer have to worry about falling far far behind GPA if these other alliances went to war against each other. The Marionette war and GPA war were both more costly to Guardian than some seem to realize. Although it's true that it gave us the upper hand, I suspect that with the Marionette war, in terms of how many weeks of growth the war effort cost Guardian vs their opponent, the difference was not that huge. For example, while DEIC lost more infra than Guardian, a big part of the reason that DEIC had more higher infra nations was that they didn't put as much into war chests. I wouldn't be surprised if the value of Guardian's war chest before the Marionette war was greater than the value of the infra we destroyed. And Guardian did lose some infra too, mostly from missiles which DEIC had a bit more of. The war still allowed Guardian's top tier to overtake DEIC's, but then we got into the war with GPA. Guardian actually lost a fair bit more infra against GPA, since a good chunk of GPA's nations (at least those Guardian was fighting) had missiles vs just 3-4 nations in DEIC. Plus there was the cost to make sure we'd control the air, gas, ammo, etc. I think the war with GPA allowed DEIC's nations to regain what they fell behind by in the Marionette War, or just about. UPN's upper tier by the way was always a bit behind Guardian's by the way, definitely after the war with TAC but I think before too to a lesser extent. Anyways, VE began to be concerned that we would attack them around this point. They militarized significantly in response to our militarization to hit GPA thinking we might be hitting them. And with GPA out of the way and the CB used to hit them, and solid growth from VE putting them into the number one spot, it was understandable they would feel that way. However, at least at first, we weren't planning on making a move on VE. If we kept trying to knock down the top dog, with one war after another, we'd eventually get worn down, and the list of former opponents looking for revenge would get too big to deal with and we'd get stomped. We weren't that arrogant believe it or not... and we certainly did not think we could knock VE off the first page. Once the war with GPA was over, we were willing to let someone else get into the driver's seat. One of the things Shellhound found out while spying was that VE was preparing for war with us soon after we hit GPA. No-one else in Guardian knew he found out about this through spying and it's not like spying is the only way to get this sort of intel. Also the intel Shellhound gained did not make it clear if VE was just preparing for a war that they expected we would start or if they would start it themselves. However, it did add fuel to a "cold war" of sorts. It meant that VE was going to try to counter our power, and it made it seem unlikely that the next major was would be between anyone else than VE and Guardian/SK's spheres. You basically had a 1913/1914 type situation where it's safe to say that the Triple Alliance wasn't going to start a war with the USA, the only war the Triple Alliance was going to commit significant resources to was one with the Triple Entente. VE signed a bunch of treaties, and Guardian responded by dropping our paperless stance and signing treaties of our own. I think the thinking was if war was going to happen, might as well get ahead of it and use the advantage of surprise. Whether or not that was the right call is debatable, but it is what it is. At the same time, SK makes their plans to have Rose take much of the damage in the war with VE/allies and then backstab them. I'm pretty sure even Shellhound only found out about this after Rose got the leaked plans from SK's forums. That eventually got its way to VE and we found out that VE/allies and Rose/allies were planning on doing a pre-emptive strike against us. Even with DEIC on our side and UPN/BoC/Terradoxia neutral we would be at a numerical disadvantage and our best and only chance would have been to pre-empt their pre-emptive strike of our pre-emptive strike... So basically it was a long build up of tensions on both sides, and it just so happened that Guardian/SK/Mensa pulled the trigger first. People mentioned that the reps being asked are just token reps or insignificant. Maybe they are not that big compared to the damage dealt, or to reps in planet Bob. Fortunately this is not Bob, and honestly I'm glad because I don't think it's a good for the game to take several months if not more to recover from losing a war. Shorter time frames makes for a more dynamic game. Also if you're going to compare it to the damage dealt, there is simply no chance that we would have accepted those (which I'm glad VE gov understands). Just because we caused billions in damages (I'm sure we took over 1 billion in damages too) doesn't mean we spent billions on the war or are able to pay billions in reps. The reps being asked would probably take about 6-7 days to repay for Guardian and maybe 8-9 days for SK if we dedicated 100% of our income to that for those days. It's not permanently crippling but no insignificant either. It's not much less than the total value of Guardian's military + all our infra. The difference in how many days of delayed/lost growth the Marionette war cost us vs TC is probably in the same ball park too. Also a few people mentioned that if you attack someone and lose reps are to be expected and expecting anything else is arrogant and used rogues as an analogy. Well I'm not sure about other alliances, but when a rogue attacks Guardian, there's basically two options, either pay reps, or get destroyed. What getting destroyed means exactly will vary, it's not necessarily zero infra, but definitely heavy damage. However, we don't destroy rogues and then expect them to pay reps (not even token reps), so bad analogy...

I wasn't highly involved in the negotiations during the Marionette war, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing about reps. There was talk of making UPN/DEIC decom MLPs and going for a third round. I didn't have much of a say at the time, but my preference was for two rounds and white peace, which is what ended up happening. BTW I'm not sure if the two rounds of the Marionette war were "more damaging" than two rounds now. I do think however that the nations on the Guardian side (and possibly Rose and SK) in both wars had relatively low infra levels which meant they had less to lose. I actually think war is a bit more damaging now in terms of how many days it would take to rebuild.

My opponent blockaded me in this war. https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=46154 The war started on 5/20/2015 9:54pm game time. 5/25/2015 9:55pm game time the war shows as still active, and I show up as still being blockaded. I'm not sure if the war is supposed to end at exactly 120 hours 0 minutes after it starts or at the next maintenance period (10:00 pm). In any case, despite the blockade still showing up as active on the war screen, I was able to trade and send bank funds/resources to my nation. The war then ended at 10:00 pm.

A few days ago, Shellhound was found to have planted spies in several important alliances. The rest of Guardian membership was not aware of this and does not support these activities. As a result Shellhound has stepped down and I have been chosen as Guardian's new President. Jim Beam has been chosen as my replacement to join John Baraboo and Tim Armstrong as Vice Presidents of Guardian.

The Big Leak.

One alternative that no-one's brought up is to just make it more expensive to grow for big cities. That means alliances won't benefit as much from sitting out on a war, especially alliances with high avg score, that goes for neutral or just alliances that don't want to be involved in that particular conflict. Alliances that are looking to fight will be able to get a leg up on their opponents (assuming they win) without falling behind as much. Another added benefit is that big cities will have a stronger incentive to provide low interest loans to small cities, or even aid in the case of alliance mates. And it would be pretty simple to implement, it could just mean raising the cost of 10th, 11th, 12th etc cities which no-one has yet, so it would also not retroactively punish anyone. The current system makes it such that alliances are going to be rather reluctant to go to war unless they can drag the whole of orbis to war and are quite confident they can win.

What kind of Famiglia has a protectorate? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. This is some shady business SK is involved in.

So from my understanding, wars are supposed to expire at the day change that occurs between 120 and 144 hours since the start of the war. However this war: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=25621 Which started at 9:19 AM server time, Dec 16, has already expired, whereas I thought it was supposed to end at day change tonight.

Even if you don't know that you're going to war, if you're the top dog, I think you should always have a half-decent war chest, especially if you have large alliances that could be seen as rivals.

So is the Neutral Menace going to make it to #1 next update?

Nah, way to many people whose opponents didn't fight back at all. One of my targets is currently the #1 DEIC nation and even though he has MLP he didn't let off a single missiles. https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=44 As for top attacks, this oughta be up there for top ground attacks. This one wasn't half bad either.

(at least after the current war is over) I think this could help make wars more interesting where one side has the upper hand. Soldiers are cheap to build, and can do a moderate amount of damage, giving underdogs the ability to fight back a bit more. At the same time, they're not particularly powerful, so the nation with tanks, ships, missiles, spies and aircraft as opposed to just soldiers will still be at an advantage. But you could organize attacks with team-mates to try to loot, take out tanks, get ground control and beige opponents.

Another possibility would be to have a way to temporarily disable missiles as has been mentioned before, like you can't fire missiles if your opponent has ground control (and/or air control). So it would require bigger nations to have other units, and make them likely to use them as well, even though you could potentially still fire missiles every 8 hours if you can hold off your opponent's air/ground forces. With something like this, the nation that has the upper hand is likely to put income and turns into try to get immense triumphs to avoid taking missile damage while the nation that doesn't have the upper hand might just try to turtle and fire missiles as long as they can.

Or -50% to unlimited? I don't see a reason for an upper range. For wars, I can see it, like new nations that don't know what they're doing screwing themselves over - and also just being a pain to the big nation by making them have wartime upkeep while posing no real threat.

Welcome to Orbis !@#$es.

Do you have enough oil to cover both your power plants and refineries?

TBH I think he only commented on EoS. I don't think giving out some funds for missiles to top nations is necessarily a bad idea, it's just a question of finding a balance between funding missiles and helping fund more "conventional" military for smaller nations. A big part of that depends on how long they can keep lobbing missiles for, and whether they'll run out of cash/resources. I'm curious to see how the various tiers do. TC was strong at the very top, with seven 7 city nations and two 8 city nations (used to be three until Firetrout left), while the "coalition" has six 7 city nations and one 8 city nation. On the other hand, TC is outnumbered at 5 and 6 city nations, although it does have the advantage for 4, 3, 2 and 1 city nations. The effect of blockades on the market is going to be interesting. I think in the last war they didn't have too much of an effect, but this time I think a lot of TC is under blockade. I haven't looked at UPN but pretty much all of DEIC's top 25 are blockaded. On the other hand, the coalition had big war chests and might not need to many resources. Last thing is spies. It's true that Diabolos was hit more often than was supposed to be possible in a single day, but still, over the course of a few days of spy warfare, he could have been taking out even with just 3 attacks per day. I think there were others that had their missiles taken out at 3 spy missions per day. Because you can only build 1 missile per day, it's useful to begin to stockpile them before wars, however, they can get spied away. Especially as missile nations get more common, there's going to be a big temptation ahead of future wars to take them out, especially since you can do so without getting caught. I don't think many other games have a feature like this, which essentially leads to "war before war" and could create interesting politics.

Yep. Sheepy if you check the timestamp on his post and mine, you'll see they were made before he lost that ship.

Actually the goal is to destroy ships, the only way you can destroy ships with airstrikes is if you target ships. Which also means that you're not targeting infra.

Daylight savings is over.

What if the nation's allies declare 3 offensive wars to beige? That hasn't happened yet (only 1 and 2 defensive slots were taken on the two instances that have occurred so far) but it could.