Ranoik
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Posts posted by Ranoik
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12 minutes ago, LeotheGreat said:
They used to. Not anymore.
*Ominous Music Plays*
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7 hours ago, Partisan said:
having serious flashbacks to the leadup to the alpha war right now.
1 hour ago, Alkaline said:@Partisan this reminds me of Great VE war when Rose flipped after the SK leak.
I mean, when SK it's involved, why not both?
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Your CB is worse than your blitz and that's a low bar to clear.
I dunno Rose, has a history of making some pretty bad Blitz's of their own
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Why wasn't the NPO invited to this bloc? We're as collectivist as it comes man. Down with the bourgeois!
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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
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Gonna stick with this talking point? They reached peace after 2 days of fighting before we, polaris, nights watch and loarderon were going to blitz. I don't know why things were resolved to fast, I wasn't in those talks. But I don't think its unreasonable to expect allies who were caught unprepared to take a few days to militarize (I admit we were woefully unprepared for that) and then hit when they have the chance to actually change the impact of the war. In this case things were wrapped up almost immediately before that could happen.
Its not literally a direct threat in the same way the typical "hate to see something happen to this place" isn't technically either. No its just, you know, we'll build back up from this in a bit. When that happens we'll want to start a new war. You'll be really popular as a target if you don't give this back. But if you do give it back I bet you wont be so popular. Its not exactly subtle in its implications.
I'm not, to be clear, offering any righteous indignation or moral anger over this. Its a lot of money to lose and its not unreasonable to want to try and get it back, even if it was legitimately raided. This is, after all, a game of politics. And so he chose a political gamble. Will be back down under the threat of force or not? Given the perception people have we were scared of them before, and given even a winning war stands to do more damage to us than what you asked for, its not unreasonable to think we might choose to surrender the resources. Maybe other alliances would. Maybe we would with other leaders or in other circumstances, though I doubt it. But it any case this time we chose not to. Now we either let your suggested course of events - wherein you recover from the papers war, look to start a new one, and choose the overwhelmingly popular SK option - take place, or we start that war now.
This is not a "good" fight. This is not a "fair" fight. We are not looking to demonstrate our military power or anything (how could this be so given the militarization disparities?) We're just speeding up the options you gave us so we can get it over with now rather than later.
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.
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Should anyone who participated in this war break that peace and, instead of rebuilding, re-declare in revenge for things that happened in this war, it is agreed that the coalition will come together to counter the aggressor once more.
/s/ The Coalition
Eldest: Aurelius
Elders: Bollocks , Chunky Monkey , Gandorian , Shakyr
Damn, isn't that a little too much on The Coalition?
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I feel personally offended by this.
Rose currently is working on implementing a progressive taxation system. To do this, we need to log tax data on every nation, extrapolate over a week, work out a tax return and send that out to each nation at the start of each week. Its a lot of copy and paste.
No matter what, Lilac, you're still the best thing about Rose
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There were multiple times when the other side had treaties with the main core alliances that make up Syndisphere. Every time that happened, they have always went full retard and destroyed those relationships with plots that have been foiled. So even if it was allowed, the other side wouldn't allow it for themselves.
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.
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Joke is on you, we don't need a CB!
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You got a nice flag
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If they could somehow click the buttons for you then you wouldn't have to do anything at all!
Freedom is overrated
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It's a good post, something to remember though is that originally, all the AAs you mentioned as being core members originally banded together for one common purpose and that was survival. It was a different era back then and all these core AAs would have been wiped out if it hadn't been for the differences amongst their opponents which prevented them from working together.
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.
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There's a couple of "core groups".
Guardian, Mensa, Syndicate were the original 'MenSyn/Syndisphere/Kickasssphere' (Along with Seven Kingdoms)
You also had Syndicate, BK, TKR (?), and a few other small ones (Coalition was part of this maybe?). If I recall, BK and TKR were for a time a protectorate of Syndicate's during their initial phases.
Then OO formed - BK, TKR headed it up (Wasn't there a third alliance?). Later joined by BoC.
Of course through all that, and the warring going on, the mentioned alliances here all bonded together to form Voltr- I mean the OOSyndisphere.
Don't get me wrong, there's other alliances involved nowadays, but those been the big ones were alliances usually gravitated towards through our history.
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.
Oh, finally, there's Top Gun. Which is just Mensa and Black Knights. The others haven't reached that pinnacle yet. Gotta feel the need for speed to achieve this.
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.
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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 >_>
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Same, though most of the memories to choose from include getting rolled.
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.
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Getting rolled as Rose?
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When I jumped out early because no one told me about the time change. Classic move imo.
I too have fond memories about getting rolled as Rose.
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So good news and bad news
Bad news is because college semester is starting again way more brutal than before, not gonna be able to work on the mod for awhile. Not sure when I'll be able to pick it up again, maybe around May-June.
Good news is until then, you guys can try the unfinished version instead > http://www.mediafire.com/file/np9u69z11b4ag16/Orbis.rar
Fair warning, content-wise it is really, really empty. There are no events nor special national focus at all so feel free to work that console command magic if you want.
Every alliances will have 0 divisions and no division templates (I was planning on adding them last due to balance issues being annoying af) so you guys will have to create them from scratch (again console command is useful and most units are unlocked).
One last thing is that because of my laziness, every flags aside from the TEst will probably have issues when zooming in and out. Fixing it is easy though if you got enough patience to spend 15-30 minutes in Paint copy-minimize-pasting-repeat.
This is still very cool. Thanks for all the time
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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.
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Well, it looks like BK skipped straight into Season 2 of the Anime.
Shame.
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GG NPO
Hey Codo, how has it been!
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Sk pretty much won this war through attrition. If these are the reps you agreed to you might as well done white peace a week ago. You would have gained more economically and saved more of your blood sweat and tears.
This post makes me sad. In what way did SK win this? Their only victory is that they still exist as an alliance heh.
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This this still a thing? I love SE.
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Essentially correct. I don't think the concept of a "Just War" is universally valid, but you've more or less described the functional aspects of a CB. Attacking without a proper CB increases backlash, makes it so that swing (not neutrals, since neutrality has a specific meaning) alliances are more likely to turn against you, and creates long-term grievances that will eventually be used against you.
I would disagree, though, that precedent is as important as international support or reducing the PR backlash sustained as the result of an aggressive incident. Precedent is dissimilar, both international support and PR control are immediate effects, whereas precedent matters insofar as, first, by creating a precedent, it subtly changes the rules of the game, while second, when you appeal to precedent, this mainly matters when the E-Lawyers or rather the propagandists have gotten out with the objective of minimizing or maximizing the PR hit you receive for your actions.
You are correct taken the better word for them are swing alliances. I also agree that precedent probably is worse than the other two, since taken from a viewpoint of just keeping in mind the current Global Political Situation (I'd call it realpolitik), it's simply a function of the other two. However, taken from my viewpoint of "just war", it makes sense to make it it's own category, because if it follows precedent, even if its unpopular and even if it increases PR backlash, it would still be a valid CB, and I don't think many alliances would fault you for using it in that fashion.
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Say something good
in Orbis Central
Posted
Comrade Roq has seized the means of production.