Dubayoo

Whether it's impossible or not is irrelevant. The point is joining the order is necessary to qualify, but insufficient by itself, to get a prize. I've very deliberately designed the giveaway this way since I've no interest in paying people to join the order. Quality comes before quantity.

If you find someone else who joins the order and someone agrees to have you help write the paper, you can split it with someone as you two see fit.

People get in game resources if they write a paper which has no real life purpose. RL money is transacted for joining the order one way or another. It's the process, not the result, that counts.

Those tenets don't expect character. Compassion and empathy are about making people comfortable instead of supporting long-term well-being, and synthesizing that with reason yields practicality, not principle. Practicality is subjective, so all you have there is an arbitrary opinion. The struggle for justice forsakes victims after fair rulings. Laws and institutions are only bad when they're corrupt. We shouldn't throw them out altogether. Inviolable bodies seems right on the surface, but that tolerates apathy both in industrial laziness as well as civic responsibility negligence. The freedom to offend is a contradiction. Offense violates freedom. That's why we expect good manners in society. Scientific beliefs treat human nature as if it's predetermined whereas character requires free will, and this is something Catholics debate against other Protestant Christians as well when it comes to the treatment of callings, grace, and good works. Yes, people are fallible, but part of responsible living includes not taking on responsibilities beyond your capability. Merely doing your best isn't always enough. While guiding principles are nice in putting spirit first, that's a very vague claim that requires clarification. Hence, we have dogmas to clarify it that have gone through the scholastic process of dialectic consensus construction. Authority is not automatically bad. It can be, but only if it plays favorites on a passive-aggressive basis which is why authority must not be based on empathy. Practical common sense is again subjective. That puts pluralism before universalism. The individual will is the foundation of a good society, but it's only the foundation. We must also have a fraternal spirit of cooperative teamwork that is not materially grounded in order to appreciate the many-to-many connections between cause and effect rather than simply learning from experience about previous connections and extrapolating them. Corporal punishment is not automatically bad. People who behave disrespectfully and learn from experience about facts and relate with what they feel must be physically hit in order to learn from experience a fact which feels badly that they don't relate with. If they're not, then they learn from experience that they can get away with disrespecting others. Equal representation of religious monuments is not always justified as in the case of mockeries that don't truly represent the spirit of faith as well as in the case of pagans which by their mere display automatically oppress fellow cultures. Catholic monuments are not culturally biased due to their intrinsically universal nature which is not biased towards a specific form of grace. "Women's reproductive autonomy" is just a guise for being pro-choice. Pro-choice positions must be opposed just like how society uses police against hostage takers. Hostages do not deserve to be killed just because they don't behave functionally in the opinion of their takers. It is also nobody's obligation to prove their functionality to others before being treated with respect. That's no different from slavery. On the side, 10 times more abortions have been had than Jews killed in the Holocaust. Nazis were once thought to be the epitome of evil, but the pro-choice movement has vastly outperformed them. Calling its advocates "Feminazis" is an understatement for how evil they are. Mental health care is highly problematic due to its practical and empirical focus. It has no consideration for how victims of abuse are defined from violations of principle. Instead of identifying abusers and punishing them accordingly, it simply focuses on treating the victim which misdiagnoses mental problems when people are really just abused by others with attitude problems. It also ignores how abuse is often not recorded, expecting victims to pretend they were never abused and driving them mad in the process behind the threat of being accused of delusions simply due to a lack of evidence. In sum, your other organization has no idea what it's talking about when it comes to character. Not quite. Joining the order itself is an exchange of your dues for the order's services. I'm only requesting people join the order to qualify for the giveaway.

Yea, sure. Just prove to me you're a member of the corresponding order and you can qualify.

If the prize was purely to join the order, yes, but it's not.

No go. If you're scandalous, you get kicked out.

Merely having resources doesn't mean you'll succeed with them. You need to use resources the right way to succeed. Lots of missionaries aren't given extensive stipends either both for security reasons (especially in the past when money couldn't be wired and had to be physically carried) and because missionaries are sort of like outcasts. They depend on fundraising to get their work done which is helpful, but not lucrative. That's part of why I'm looking for papers to be written here as well as for people to join the order. I don't want to throw money at just anyone to leave an impression. It has to be given to people with convictions who actually care to make something of it. As for pagans, the point of the Catholic Church is to tolerate many ways of life. Catholic literally means "universal" in Greek. It's not a nationalist faith, and if anything, the rise of nationalism happened from the Protestant Reformation. If some pagans become too powerful, then other ways of life will be implicitly persecuted. If anything, Catholics have often been accused of being internationalists who seek to undermine sovereignty. Is it apparently sarcastic? No, I'd say it's half-sarcastic in being passive-aggressive. It's nasty when it wants to be and nice when it doesn't. If anything, that sort of prejudice is even worse.

A lot of people don't know this, but Catholics are supposed to tolerate pagans as written in the Councils of Paderborn and Frankfurt as well as discussed in the Valladolid Debate. As long as they're not like Druids who engage in cannibalism, torture, or sacrifice, they're supposed to be treated as practitioners of grace so long as they don't try to establish another Church. This is why missionaries around the world have been so successful. They recognize pagan faiths as just another form of culture to be adapted and refined. As for Satanists, I don't know about that sect, but this sect defines the word as a guise for atheism, and its standards aren't exactly nice or understanding: https://www.churchofsatan.com/nine-satanic-statements.php There's a difference between confidence and arrogance. The sin of vanity comes from excessive pride, not simply being proud of your convictions.

Yea, I do wonder if PnW lacks humility a lot. It's important to have fortitude despite that. People will accuse you of vanity when you're not actually vain to accommodate for their own.

I guess that's the difference between us. I offer something not just for membership, but also a demonstration of character. Quality comes before quantity. You can join the KofC but still get nothing if you don't write an applicable paper. lol Envy is a sin. You should learn to control it instead of trying to control those you envy.

For those who don't know, I'm going to be leaving after this summer (or at least go into very long vacation mode in case I want to come back in the distant future). In turn, I'm going to be giving away $1 billion in-game in a giveaway event. This will happen in the beginning of October once I've gathered up the prize money. My country makes about $6.5m everyday according to the in-game revenue calculator, but my own spreadsheet says it's more due to the spread between buying and selling resources beyond average prices, so I know I'll be able to afford this by then. To qualify for the giveaway, however, you have to do something in real life. Note that I'm not specifically benefiting from this. This isn't a sale of resources where we're transacting in-game assets for real life assets. This is a charity event where you get involved with a good cause that can help you. You have to join the actual Knights of Columbus. For those who don't know, the KofC has designed an online e-membership program very deliberately to engage younger people to join as well. This is a recent development which has been tested over the past year, and is just now being implemented. Obviously, everyone can't join since the KofC isn't open to everyone. If you can't, then nothing can be done. At best, you can sponsor someone else who wants to qualify and split the prize money as you see fit. If you live in America, you're 18 or older, you're male, and you're a Catholic, you can go here to join: https://www.kofc.org/apps/newjoin/en/registration/index.html Feel free to peruse the main page as well to find out what they're about before considering anything. To be clear, it costs $30 per year to be a member online, or $60 per year in real life once you're assigned to a council with a parish. To be clear, no, this again isn't a transaction. When you're actually a member, you get all the benefits of being one in the order. The prize money is just a further incentive to join. Once you've joined, I'll expect you to send me a picture of your membership card that includes your ID number. I don't need your real life name, address, or any other personal information. I just need to know you're an actual member. You can block out the other parts of the membership ID while verifying your in-game name. After you've qualified, the giveaway is going to have a paper contest involved where everyone who joined the order will be expected to write what's usually expected for scholarship applicants among participating councils with scholarship programs to nearby high schools. The paper will have to answer three questions: 1) What are fraternal benefit societies about, and what was the Golden Age of Fraternalism? 2) What are the Knights of Columbus about, and what does it do? 3) Who is Father Michael McGivney, and why did he want to help people? I will judge the papers based on how comprehensive, elaborate, and enthusiastic they are. The more areas of interest, details, and personal consideration involved, the more highly they will rank. If multiple papers are comparable, I'll put them up on the forum for people to vote on. People will also be allowed to resubmit papers in case they want to revise previous submissions. When a paper is submitted, I will announce how many pages and words it contains so people have a feel for their competition. My expectation, though, is the papers should be 3-5 pages long. To be clear, I'm not a stickler for grammar. If you mess up here and there, it's OK. However, I like refined vocabulary that expresses the exact message you want to get across. The prizes will be distributed as follows: If five or more people qualify, $500m, $250m, $150m, and two $50m prizes will be given away. If four people qualify, $500m, $250m, $150m, and $100m will be given away. If three people qualify, $500m, $300m, and $200m will be given away. If two people qualify, $600m and $400m will be given away. If one person qualifies, $1b will be given away. For those doing the math over credit purchases and comparable paper writing services, the average cash prize of $200m in case five or more qualify is worth more than the real life cost of joining the order by far for a year. If you're considering joining the order, but don't know if it's worth it, then this should easily afford your incentive. You don't need to stay with the order either if you don't like it. Just try it out for a year, and see if it's worth your commitment. We believe in charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism, so those are some of the themes you can expect if you do get involved. Other than that, I really have nothing more to say, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

The goalposts were simple: how does communism work in this game to maintain a competitive spirit? You still haven't answered the question. Your departure from the thread is a cop out for the failure to do so. Don't tell me I've failed to prove it's unviable either. Burden of proof is on the affirmative, and that applies for any strategic ideology in this game or anything at all in anything for that matter. Don't think you get special treatment either just because your SI is communist.

- It's not relevant. The question is how an alliance is run, not what the leader believes in. We're not talking about OOC beliefs here. - Indeed, it's the only example. You're just repeating yourself over and over while grasping for straws. - You're ignoring how the players in the alliances were motivated by intergame politics which invalidates your example. - CF's protection suggests it's not a purely socialist situation. - Now, you're cherry-picking in choosing when to pay attention to smaller alliances. - Claiming I'm personally biased is ridiculous. I deliberately RP things I don't believe in just for the fun of it. The point is there's no fun to RPing communism in this game unlike how piracy can be fun. Heck, the HoI4 crowd knows this because of how I play communist countries in MP games for fun. - Of course Nuke bloc doesn't need to. Its strategy is viable. Communism is not. The bottomline is you're just defending communists who are carrying on a childish temper tantrum.

This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. I'll just leave it at this: Your personal political beliefs are irrelevant as an alliance leader. A minor example of one socialist alliance attacking another doesn't prove the rule. Your example is actually an extension of something from another game: http://cybernations.wikia.com/wiki/Antifa-Nordreich_War In fact, CF was protected by Syndicate for a while, so it doesn't even really count as a controlled experiment. There have been many more socialist alliances besides those two. Claiming they the only ones that have existed in the game is a flat out lie. I haven't brought up any personal biases here. In fact, I'm not even debating whether or not socialism is justified in this thread since I'm looking at it from a IC perspective only. If anyone has a personal bias here, it's you since you like the ideology and don't separate your OOC preference versus IC gameplay. If anyone doesn't, it's me. Heck, I played in Arrgh for a while despite not approving of OOC piracy, and I criticized TKR members just as much for taking OOC ideology too seriously in how they play the game which is the exact opposite of IC socialism.

That's total BS. If people believed this game was unimportant, they'd be at war all the time, never worry about losing their infra, wouldn't care about the risk of betrayal, and would mostly delete after playing for a far shorter period of time due to how sensation-less the game experience actually is. In order for the game to have as much value as the game leaders give it, they have to care. The truth is the game is played by a bunch of vain and sarcastic people who are too self-absorbed to admit to the truth in themselves. They feel good getting things wrong to get under other people's skin to compensate for their refusal to look at themselves honestly in the mirror. Put plainly, the only people who really seem to play this game right are the guys in Arrgh!... ...and I was there before, so I know what it's like.

I play this game to dabble on the side when I have moments of free time in my day now. Last summer, I had a lot of free time to throw at baseball, but now, it's just meh. The bottomline is you people have made this game way too much work to be bothered. I've more valuable experiences to indulge in. Some degree isn't a high degree. The amount of people who play hard to get to become the center of attention here basically means you have to be a tryhard to get anywhere. The real problem is the people in those alliances are just stubborn. They're fixed on past relations and have no acknowledgment of the opportunities to blindside everyone while realizing that put together, they would cover each other's score ranges. It's a huge opportunity, but they're just irrational at the end of the day while content with simply existing. I'd have more fun playing with a bed of pet rocks.

This honestly seems like a sarcastic response where you're denying the obvious just to make IG communism look good. I don't deny that leftists are fine at sectarian infighting, but it's because of priorities such as whether feminism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism, environmentalism, relativism, postmodernism, empiricism, or elitism should come first. Intersectionality doesn't really work out since it results in discrimination olympics... ...but communists fighting fellow communists doesn't have value in PnW. In real life, there was concern over how strongly communism should impose centralized bureaucracy, but in PnW, communism can only be simulated through centralized bureaucracy.

I concur there's a recruitability advantage since some players just want to RP communism, but I can't imagine it being easy to hold onto the members you recruit because it's not like you're creating a worldwide revolution. Like you said, players have to consent to join your alliance. Unless you plan on declaring war on non-communist nations just because they're not part of your ideology, there really isn't any enforcement you can do. As far as I can tell, communist alliances are stigmatized because they won't fight each other. This is unlike capitalist and fascist alliances which will due to their competitive nature. If communist alliances one day took over PnW, the game would come to a standstill. They're deliberately targeted to prevent that standstill from happening. If communists win, the game dies. If non-communists win, the game continues. I mean you can't even simulate a Stalin-Mao-Tito split in PnW because there's really only one way to run communism: tax your members immensely, vote in certain people to office, and let those people decide how to redistribute resources to achieve growth. Sure, you could tax varying amounts between say 50-100% as well as prefer to tax commerce or industry, but these are ultimately strategic calls, not policy doctrines. Say communists did take over PnW one day. How would conflict continue to exist in the game for players to enjoy?

The Ape will always be the master of how to peel a banana:

I'm arguing RL communism has no value in this game because this game has no space for communism to be practiced. Therefore, being a communist alliance in PnW is pointless.

No I won't. I've debated on RL political forums for a decade, and have played MMORTS for over a dozen. I'm also involved on Twitter now which is far more immersive than PnW. Put plainly, there are better alternatives out there besides PnW for political engagement. I'm also a 4th Degree Knight and counsel and chapter officer as well as life insurance agent in the Knights of Columbus which deserves my time much more than what PnW has to offer. It's too much work to be bothered. I have more important priorities. Besides, this is a game that's played for fun. It's not a job.

Right back at you. :-P

The only people getting triggered are the traps implicitly called out. Calling that virginity is rather pathetic too. As for ships getting called her and she, a bit of research on naval tradition would do you good.

Ayyslamic Crusade is still the best one around. Everything else sounds generic.