Ranoik

Comrade Roq has seized the means of production.

*Ominous Music Plays*

I mean, when SK it's involved, why not both?

I dunno Rose, has a history of making some pretty bad Blitz's of their own

Why wasn't the NPO invited to this bloc? We're as collectivist as it comes man. Down with the bourgeois!

I want to suggest a project to get rid of some slot taxes for power plants National project name: Experimental Fusion Reactor Small description: Provides a base amount of power for each city Project effect: Provides power for 2000 infrastructure in each city. Consumes 1.2 tons a day (0.1/turn) of uranium per 1,000 infrastructure. Resource cost: 2,500 Steel, 750 Uranium Cash cost: $40,000,000

I mean, that's not how this works at all. He just said that when they've recovered, they are going to want to look for someone to fight, and it'll probably be you. All you've done is prolong that a little bit. Unless you are going to destroy TEst, or keep them at permanent war, at some point, they are going to recover. And now 100% they are going to go for you now. You may put a term in the peace deal like "We agree to no hard feelings" and they may sign it, but paperless doesn't forget. They'll manufacture or use some other kind of casus belli, but this will be the reason.

Damn, isn't that a little too much on The Coalition?

No matter what, Lilac, you're still the best thing about Rose

You're definitely not wrong, and the fact that such things happened are a testament to incompetency on our side. Instead of thinking long-term a lot of alliance leaders tried to gain short term advantages. This being said, it was also a different time, a time when our alliances were competitive to yours at least. When Rose, UPN, VE were at the top of their game, and at the top of the alliance rankings. Our leaders decided to destroy relationships with plots because they thought they could take Syndisphere in a fight. Obviously, we were wrong. Now, the question is what to do moving forward from now. We can't catch you anymore, unless you let us catch you, is the point I'm making. If you don't want to let us catch you, then it's just going to be curbstomp after curbstomp until our side just stops playing, or someone gets ambitious in your camp and tries to upset the order of things by breaking up your bloc. Just a disclaimer, I'm definitely not speaking for the NPO on this issue nor do I have any idea where our FA guys and our Emperor want to take the NPO. I'm speaking for myself, a person who considers himself part of the opposition. Not because I don't like you guys or anything, many of you guys are pretty awesome and I've always had great war conversations with you all, but simply because I've always been part of an alliance who has fought Syndisphere in the past.

Joke is on you, we don't need a CB!

You got a nice flag

Freedom is overrated

Yup, they did band together for survival, and that's a good point. A few years ago, it was tC & Paragon that were the monsters, not the Syndisphere. However, unlike Paracov, those core groups didn't really have an established history of bad blood between them. The struggles and friction between SK and Rose, Rose and tC, and SK/Guardian and VE were always apparent during those eras. When it was time to band together for our survival/hegemoney, many of us did not think well of each other, and that fragmentation translated to miscommunication on every level. And that miscommunication leads to things like Rose only have 1 day to mobilize, as in during the Silent War. Losing a war with someone often makes bonds stronger between those alliances, but losing enough wars with someone makes you resentful and lethargic. I'm only speaking for alliances that have been here for some time, obviously the NPO hasn't been here too long, but being NPO also comes with its own baggage as well.

Exactly, you guys have a strong links among your core groups, and each of these links also contain a significant amount of strength. It's very true that more could have been done, or could be done, to foster a cooperation between our side, to make NPO/tC/VE as close as MenSyn, or Voltr-OOSyndisphere, but at this point, strength on our side is basically tapped out. In order to try and "dominate", we'd probably have to move to your sphere and co-opt those other alliances, all of which you have probably been good too, treated well, and have warm relations with, making it really difficult to poach. And the question is, as soon as we start making some treaties, will we get rolled? If we need to get to the point where we are going to start being friendly with everyone, we can just simply join your sphere for real. Of course, thats not really how it works. People get bored, and its been shown that both sides are more than willing to use weak or non-existent CB's for war, which is fine, but it also means that as soon as any core group from the syndisphere feels like we may be becoming a threat, we'll get rolled. Even if your bloc implodes, I cannot see anything to break OOSyndisphere short of a massive leadership change, you guys are just too good friends, and you control too much NS. I didn't even include Guardian in my numbers average (sorry, I forgot about them :[ ), which means that the OO/Syndicate/Guardian/Mensa Core Group is ~913K, which is just under 30% of all the NS for all alliances in the game. That's pretty insane and well earned. The total combined NS for NPO/VE/tC/Polaris is just above 14% of all the alliances. Syndisphere as a whole just shy of 50% in terms of the total strength of all alliances. In order to compete for dominance, we'd have to unite every other non-TS aligned alliance against you, nearly impossible or try and cause your bloc to implode by you allowing us to break your bloc apart, after which we would need to poach at least 15% of the other alliances that break from you due to remain competitive. Otherwise, its just another curb stomp. Oooh, can we join and be the MIGs!? We should make a Mutual Enmity Pact (MEP). The treaty simply binds the Top Gun signatories and the MIGs! to only engage each other in the event of global, multi-alliance war, and we agree to defend each other from all outside parties that wish to ruin our battle royal in the sky.

I'm late to the party here, but I really enjoy threads like this. It gives people a chance to really think critically about the game state. If I had to say what was the biggest problem with the Syndisphere hegemoney, it would be the idea of the "core groups" that are in the game right now. A core group is like a concentration of power that is not likely to fragment, because as many in the Syndisphere point out, their FA is great. They've built relationships and trust and very likely friendships that extend outside that game, and that translates to an incredibly hard to fragment center of power. The "hegemoney" currently around 1.5 Million NS. I know that NS isn't everything, but its the easiest to compare stuff too. I would definitely consider the OO and Syndicate/Mensa to be a core group together, and that equals roughly 850K of the hegemoney's strength, about 57% of their total power. The rest of the Syndisphere is made up of a lot more different core groups, none of which come close to matching the core group of Syndicate/Mensa/OO. This means that even if the other core groups of the hegemoney were to split off and start a civil war within the bloc, all of them working in tandem, the Syndicate/Mensa/OO still take it. On the opposite "side", our problem is that there really is no comparable core group at that level. All the major non-syndisphere alliances aren't as close as the alliances that make up the core group of the Syndisphere. There is communication problems, philosophical differences, and distrust between some alliances on our side. Even if I was to lump in NPO, tC, SK, VE and Polaris together as a "core group", we'd only be around 400K in NS. We'd have to poach 400K from Syndisphere to make it *near* equal, but that's assuming that NPO, tC, SK, VE, and Polaris are as close, tight-knit, and efficient as the Syndicate/Mensa/OO core group, which it definitely isn't. I'm not saying that its impossible, but it is really, really hard. As Partisan said earlier, the fundamental relationship building took a lot of time, energy, and trust. In order for the Syndicate/Mensa/OO core group to be beaten, our "side" would have to befriend and attract the other core groups in the Syndisphere without getting rolled, because no one is going to join a war they think they are going to lose for an alliance they don't know, like, or trust. As for attracting alliances outside the syndisphere, every other alliance in the game only has about 4000 more NS than Syndisphere. It would be a Herculean task to convince every other alliance to join us in a war to fight you, and it would likely lead to loss even if we could. The only realistic way to take down Syndisphere is to start peeling off alliances that are not part of the Syndicate/Mensa/OO core group, but that leads to the big question, would you let us? If the NPO decided that it wanted to take down the Syndicate/Mensa/OO group, made friends and began to treaty with all the other core groups and Syndisphere, as well as pursue ties with our previous allies outside the Syndisphere, would you let us simply build a coalition with your former allies and former enemies? I don't think you would. I think you would get closer to your bloc, and shut us out, or you would mobilize against us and roll us or probably do both (nothing brings alliances together like rolling other alliances.) You would simply let alliances conduct such business knowing that it may hurt you in the end, or would you put an end to those ambitions before they become a threat to you? I'm just using the NPO as an example, in reality, it could be any alliance. Perhaps maybe, a Shogunate-themed Alliance with a certain flower in its name >_>

Don't feel so down Kurd, the last time Rose won a war (besides this most recent one), you were Emperor. That's gotta say good things about you.

I too have fond memories about getting rolled as Rose.

This is still very cool. Thanks for all the time

In my opinion, one of the more interesting parts of the game is the resource system. The idea of raw goods vs manufactured goods is a good one, and in theory, I really like the dynamic that the resource system creates, which "resource producing nations vs resource consuming nations." In practice however, this dynamic doesn't really exist in any meaningful way, as the the only real "consumed" resource is food and whatever your cities are currently using for energy. Everything else is basically stockpiled for use in combat, and once an appropriate stockpile has been reached, you sell off the rest. This focus on "military goods" means that markets only really get volatile during wartime, as nations rush replace their stockpiles or find that they don't have a big enough stockpile. I think the introduction of another type of manufactured good, a consumer good, can really change the game for better by giving an opportunity cost to stockpiling. A consumer good would be something that directly competed with military goods in terms of resources and slots. Instead of simply adding more "things" to mine, I envision that these consumer goods would be made with the same things that the current military goods are made of or at the very least, consume those military goods passively. This gives an incentive to burn your military stockpile for added peacetime benefits to your nation, such as direct increases in income (small increases), better approval ratings (if/when this becomes a mechanic), lowering disease/crime, lowering infra/land purchase costs, lowering maintenance costs, or even things like alliance wide benefits, such as all members producing X amount of consumer good add 0.00X% increase in alliance income, a certain amount of Y consumer goods will spawn a treasure in the alliance, or even a slight increase in tax rate without member nations paying the additional increase. I would like for this to be done as an actual resource that nations have to manufacture and can trade. I see a system where oil can be turned into either Gasoline (Military Goods) or Plastics (Consumer Goods), lead can be turned into either Munitions (Military Goods) or Industrial Chemicals (Consumer Goods). Even if we keep the same resources, just having another way to use them would add a lot more depth to the game. Do you stockpile your Gasoline, or use it to power your citizens automobiles? Do you spend your aluminum and money making war planes or passenger jets? Do we care about tanks and ships, or do we need to build more industrial machines with that steel? These consumer could be done with something as simple as a webpage, from which you set options from a drop down menu and subtracts your resources per turn or with a new subset of improvements that drain these resources in order to give you the benefits (like a power plant or food). This would make the game deeper, as nations and alliances now have to make choices for their resources. Do we stockpile or do we try and grow as fast as possible using consumer goods, and what is the best mix between the two? It could also make the market could possibly be more volatile not only during periods of war, but also periods of peace, as consumer goods replace the high demand for military goods, and there would be more ways for nations to play the market, as there is now a whole new set of resources with a different "supply & demand" rationale. At the very least, I see there being more trade going on between nations, and more trade deals, as nations and alliances that focus on consumer goods could trade with those that focus on military goods and vice-versa. The idea of resource treaties and resource protectorates become more viable, as smaller alliances produce consumer goods and share with the larger ones, and larger ones protect those small alliances in return. As of right now, the best thing to do with resources is stockpile them and sell the rest off when you feel like you've reached an appropriate stockpile. Resource prices tend to be relatively stable except in times of crisis. With a system in which resources can be consumed during peace time for some benefit, you've added an additional way to play the market, as well as an opportunity cost to stockpiling. A nation that is fully ready for war is one that sacrifices it's growth, and one that grows quickly may be the one that is least prepared for the fire. The resource system becomes more strategic, as you'll be able to create more of those "resource producing vs resource consuming" situations which make the game more interesting.

Well, it looks like BK skipped straight into Season 2 of the Anime. Shame.

Hey Codo, how has it been!

This is great!

This post makes me sad. In what way did SK win this? Their only victory is that they still exist as an alliance heh.

This this still a thing? I love SE.