Dio Brando

Praise Dio. Every. Damn. Day.

To the people that requested an update to the previous statistics compilation, here. Again, discrepancies are due to any changes that may have been made, between the starting of the compilation, and the end. Preview. Rankings: Top 3, Infrastructure Destroyed: Avakael, with 60,978.44 infra destroyed. Ripper, with 55,720.48 infra destroyed. Lene Hau, with 46,893.05 infra destroyed. Top 3, Soldiers Killed: Critters, with 1,071,818 soldiers killed. Partisan, with 793,051 soldiers killed. Avakael, with 775,901 soldiers killed. Top 3, Tanks Destroyed: Ripper, with 52,071 tanks destroyed. INH, with 43,065 tanks destroyed. Critters, with 41,081 tanks destroyed. Top 3, Jets Destroyed: Ripper, with 7,439 jets destroyed. Snuffles, with 6,350 jets destroyed. rapmanej, with 5,401 jets destroyed. Top 3, Ships Destroyed: Tim Armstrong, with 628 ships destroyed. Ripper, with 620 ships destroyed. Partisan, with 536 ships destroyed. Top 3, Cash Looted: Ripper, with $113,845,905.12 cash stolen. Robert E Lee, with $95,170,700.56 cash stolen. Avakael, with $79,964,28.06 cash stolen. I believe a special note should be made of Ripper, who has 3/6 top positions, and is in 5/6 Top Three's. We must also consider Avakael, with the most infrastructure destroyed, also holding a position in 3/6 fields. You guys should check both of these guy's war history out; the amount of wars declared by them, and declared on them, are amazing to see. I collected stats two days ago, and since then, this is the overall change: Notes: I will be compiling beige reports later today; that just adds upon the stats already provided.

I never stated pixel protection was/is the wise choice.

When it causes more damage than the alternative. This is not that case, however.

Oh?

"He slithers through the tombs of the lost, the once hallowed halls that man dared not tread upon. His eyes are the hawks, and his ears are the birds fluttering into the vast chambers the Princes rest in. All is known, none are lost under his guidance. Ave!"

Hi @Ceres. Glad to see another player wishing to enter into the (as discussed ad infinitum) stale politics of the current game. New minds breed new ideas, new ideas bring change, change is the antithesis of stagnation; something as terrible to most of us as anything else. In regards to politics, it is wise if you contact a few people to learn history for them -- most of which you wish to understand can be given as an account from Abbas, but the consultation of multiple people from differing backgrounds, and thus the learning of different view points, is how creativity is born. There are a few things I will go over in this post. First, I will discuss the two broad classifications of alliances, which I will then further break down, and then shed light on their political standing. For this part of the post, I'll discuss only the currently 'active' alliances. After, we will look at examples from the past. Let's start with the classifications. The simplest way of categorizing alliances is to look towards their public stance at treaties. Alliances are either "paperless", or "with paper." In a broad sense, these two terms refer to the (lack of) presence of publicly seen treaties an alliance may have. These two things, how they interlink, how the lines can become fairly blurred, what can be classified as paperless, have been discussed ad nauseam, across several threads, platforms, and even realms. Relevant to the questions that arise as an eventuality of digging deeper, we may consult a few quickly-found sources of discourse. First, we have a TEst* (more on them later) declaration, which was continued on the basis of them allegedly breaking the paperless philosophy they, and a handful of others chose to follow. That can be viewed here. We have "debate" upon why treaties are bad. Perhaps reading a few blog entries is also not a bad idea. Some of them may not be coherent, or things I agree with, though. Perhaps it is also a good idea to revisit old threads about combating "the paperless menace". We may break these classifications down into "neutral", and non-neutral. The collective deemed neutrality as a health hazard, and have attempted to stomp it out of the game since quite some time. Neutrality claims freedom from participating in politics, which again has been debated upon - sides claim that by virtue of existence in a politics simulator, you are by default a player. Inactive politics is still, at the end of the day, politics. You may gain further insight if you chose to click upon the wikia links and follow relevant threads given at the bottom of the pages. Neutral alliances included GPA, The Fighting Pacifists, and some others I'm probably missing. Now, let's look at examples of paperless. Arrgh!, The Syndicate, The Coalition, Terminal Jest, Grumpy (Old Bastards), Church of Spaceology are all examples of paperless alliances. You will find the list on the wikia. Political leanings of different alliances have changed quite a bit since years past, as would be expected. In the summer of 2016, the game was dominated by two major power holders - the same continued, with the sphere-leaders changing as time passed. The dominant bloc at that point in time was Syndisphere, named after The Syndicate. Fastforward a couple of months and you had chants of "Hegemony!" being thrown around. It would remain so till the recent past, and for some would only get worse. The main opposition for Syndicate were New Pacific Order, Rose, UPN, VE, etc. The summer of 2016 saw changes in political leanings - Pantheon shifted towards Syndisphere, Roz Wei was rolled by The Knights Radiant, and the opposition had lost a war at the hands of Syndisphere. The months that came after saw another war, this time waged by what I will call NPOSphere. You may find a summary of that war by searching "Silent War". Some alliances (including yours, Rose) reconsidered their FA; they signed Mensa HQ, a community that had migrated from another game. Due to the odd rivalry (never attacked each other directly, yet hated each other's guts) between the two, it was quite the move. The "Paperless Bloc" (indeed, an odd phrase considering the definition of paperless) had by December garnered heat - this heat ultimately culminated in Papers, Please. The rest is recent history -- the slight shift of the center of "Syndisphere" towards TKR, the disbandment of OO, formation of Inquisition, and then Git Gud Friday (or Trail of Tiers, as the yet-to-git-gud players like to refer to it as) occurred. From then it's been a slow rumble, with little of significance that has occurred. I hope this sheds some light on what happened. Why it happened can be found in the threads I linked, and others that can be found using the search-bar. Happy reading!

I wanted to create an automatic one, but I decided that due to the relative scale of the war it would be less trouble doing it manually. (Or well, “manually”)

Someone wanted beige reports, and... Here you go. Money Food Coal Oil Uranium Lead Iron Bauxite Gasoline Munitions Steel Aluminum $277,795,028.00 991,678 11,231 17,547 34,648 6,102 4,323 6,735 83,433 99,032 104,590 118,185

Stats for the Stat God

I compiled some statistics. Discrepancies if found are due to the time it took from starting the script, to ending it, and the war-screen. Here you go. Preview. All Terminal Jest nations are found in the spreadsheet. Other "rogues" may be added later. Rankings: Top Infra Destroyed: Ripper, with 37,291.95 infrastructure destroyed. Top Soldiers Killed: Critters, with 910,958 soldiers killed. Top Tanks Destroyed: INH, with 33,932 tanks destroyed. Top Jets Destroyed: Snuffles, with 5,499 jets destroyed. Top Ships Destroyed: Ripper, with 514 ships destroyed. Top Cash Looted: Ripper, with $69,288,352.58 cash looted.

Dio. Dio. Dio. It’s as if you wish to summon me. Say it thrice, believe in the Sand, drop a steamroller... Dio is pleased.

Yep, that’s why I mentioned it

You must not like gitting gud, xdxd.

Your proclamation of never ending love for Our Lord and Savior, Dio Brando (the real one), xdxd.

A Short Remedial Lesson in Warfare: I got the time to read through this thread. While the gargantuan heaps of salt piling up on us should not surprise me, it pains me to see such obvious tactics thrown away in favor of claiming unfairness. For those of you who are yet to git gud, consider this your nth free lesson for MilCom (really, when are you going to stop needing this? xdxd). 1. Never forget to keep a war-chest. Your planes, tanks, ships and soldiers are all useless, useless, useless if you fail to keep a proper amount of munitions, and gasoline. Never keep 0 of these two on you. Why am I pointing this out? Let's take this war into consideration: Yes, he declared on her, yes, he nuked her city, but what did he accomplish? Absolutely nothing, other than to render a good 20 city nation useless in the first round, where the heavy duty fighters from Terminal Jest will be kicking your butt. (yay Katie btw). Learn to use your time properly. That means you don't deal infra damage in the very beginning of the first round. 2. Have war sensors. You have some of the most competent coders in P&W, learn the principles of resource mobilization. The first war was declared on 02/05/2018 11:42 PM. That is 18 minutes to get people to double-buy. You should have known about the heavy buildup and influx of members that was experienced by JEst, and thus have been able to get people on at update. This should not be hard. 15 minutes before update, and 15 minutes after. Learn this, practice this; win. 3. Once you know you're being declared on/your alliances/allies are being declared on, for Dio's sake do two things: a. Switch to 5/5/5/3, or a suitable set-up, and double-buy. If you are incapable of doing that, at the VERY LEAST single buy. b. Coordinate BEFORE declaring. Case in point: That's a 3 minute difference from point of declaration, and initial attack. Don't do this. This is idiocy. 4. Learn how to mobilize resources. I saw someone complaining about their lack of people in that range. Learn how to use your resources. Learn up-declaring. Last war, it was NPO carrying your shit. Short FA tip: use peripheral ties/maintain peripheral ties; they are the ones people don't account for, and hence lose. Learn to prioritize: rank your members and your enemies from 1-10. A 8 or 9 from your side can lead a war with two other 6s or 7s. This is not hard. The last thing I will mention is the usage of economic foci: for anyone with even the slightest experience in managing growth circles/rings you’ll know what I’m talking about. Use the vast swathes of drones to fund your fighters/create new ones. I would write more but I am on a borrowed laptop, so I have less time than necessary.

You sure have a weird definition of the word “direct”, xdxd.

Hi, my name is Dio Brando. Some of you know me, most of you do not. I migrated to this community from CN, although I participated in other games (eRep & LW being some of them) with a similar basis. I've played P&W for quite some time, just never really gotten around to making one of these - I suppose it's better late than never. Pleased to meet you. (Most of you, anyhow.)

@Hope DM me on Discord before you leave; I'd like to have one last chat with you, maybe answer a few of the questions I didn't, and likely should have sooner.

Has waited weeks for this. Thanks for finally stepping up, Smith! <3

----------------------------------------------------------------- Almighty Atom has granted your wish. Your move.

(1): Tell that to Partisan (2): I’d like to point out that certain competent alliances already practice or have practiced similar policies. That said, yes, the majority do not follow the same principles. There are quite a few reasons. One cause is that command economies are a hassle to work with if your Econ guy is incompetent. You’ll just end up doing things that are counter productive to overall growth. Secondly, the distinction that certain people fail to draw between NPO and “other groups” is where the memberbase comes from, and what main motivation is there for that memberbase to stay. Higher taxes tend to decrease activity (something discussed ad nauseam); but NPO isn’t necessarily affected by that issue when you take into consideration the crossover of other games in regards to the general member. Many of the people it hosts are either members of Pacifica in other realms, are aligned to Pacifica, or have at some point in time played with Pacifica. These guys have less incentive to move out of a community they’re already entrenched in, or are seeking to become a part of. That’s in fact a big selling point of NPO; multiple games, one community to enjoy them with. Then, you look at the time it took for an alliance like NPO to come to where it is now — most other alliances neither have the same level of loyalty from its members (something that is more a byproduct of the long standing community Pacifica possesses and has promoted through the one and a half decade its existed), and simply can not expect their memberbase to stick with them under such policies. (Individual growth matters more to a lot of people than overall alliance growth) We also take into consideration the considerable time and effort people like Roq have put in to get here — taxation policies and schemes aren’t the only reason they exist as they do right now. The majority of people (including me at times) are far too impulsive to play the long game. Finally, we must also look at something you already pointed out: the exponentially increasing cost of cities, and linear increase in income per city bought. Due to this, command economies take far longer to yield the same results as you go up if you do not already have a sufficiently existing quantity of high income nations; without taking loans it becomes even harder. (3): Their coordinatated growth exists more as a product of their economic policies, than purely the tax rate. To elaborate, the tax rate itself could be st 100/100 for the longest period of time, and there would still be a possibility that growth wouldn’t be coordinated. I have seen many people dump money on upper tier nations when there are several low tier nations that would give significantly greater returns on each dollar spent; NPO in that regard does not commit itself to something as stupid. It scales x amount of nations up at the same time, which is (obviously) possible due to their tax rate, but only made a reality due to careful planning and patience. I think people often neglect the need for micromanagement of nations. (4): Perhaps not to the same fanatical level of growth planning, but a slightly watered down version has been achieved without such high taxes, re:Mensa HQ. There are many parallels that can be drawn between the two (offsite influx of members, long standing community etc.), but the main difference between the two is perhaps the willingness to go upwards even when everything might not be the most stable, or safe. There are a lot more reasons as to why Mensa accomplished similar results, which can be studied at a later date (its 6:36 AM and I’m on mobile right now, xdxd) (5): Theres a lot more that goes into creating an “invincible phalanx” than just coordinated growth. Activity, the desire to not budge when pushed, and an overarching desire to win the long game are all necessary. The good thing about losing wars is that you weed out the pixel huggers — this way, your chain is kept strong and the weak links are cut. These things we can’t entirely quantify accurately, but we can definitely observe at war time. As a side note, perhaps it’s also not as much about their doctrines than what they can provide to their members (see the above mentioned points in (2). ——————————- It’s 6:44 AM as I’m typing this out, and I’ve slept a grand total of 2 hours, there might be errors which I might get to fixing later.

I was pitched the idea of Knights Templar in December of 2016 when TEst was still up and running — albeit without the actual name of the alliance. In January, Thalmor disclosed more details, and I slowly started getting closer to him, and Odin. Around late February was when I finally decided to join — shit, those were some good days. Organising many a thing in the very start, then slowly fading out due to real life, and popping right back in around late May, was a hecka good experience, not just because I liked Thalmor, Odin, the theme — but because I liked what Knights Templar was about then. No, I’m not referring to the majority of members political leanings in real life; rather I refer to original KT’s (well maybe a bit after original KT) desire to not treat their members as statistics. We didn’t have a lot of cash, and we didn’t have a lot of nations — what we did have, however, were some damn willing govt members, and by far one of the most active groups I’ve seen. (As a decade has passed since I’ve been playing these games that’s saying something.) I remember Thalmor, Odin, a lot of others and myself just dumping cash into the bank, or trading it directly to nations to help em out when our taxes didn’t cut it — Econ was a mess, we all agreed, but with a little bit of this, and a little bit of that we got past that. We had issues every alliance that was new would experience — few friends, many enemies, or former enemies, who to side with, who to not support, etc., and we didn’t always get things right — but we persisted, we persisted like hell. We lost a lot of our original members when certain alliances began to poach ? whales ?, but we recovered them in the form of new members — teaching them how to raid, build, and fight, was honestly an amazing experience — you got me through some very rough times in real life, and I’ll be grateful for that. Things changed when brilliant minds were added to our group, but one thing remained the same: we weren’t gonna die. We had a leadership change, lost three gov members in a relatively short period of time (myself included, I was admitted to the hospital, Codonian left because reasons, and vlad had an accident), but we never gave up. Don't get me wrong; there are things I don’t like about KT and would prefer to change, but damn it was a pleasure working with you, it was a pleasure managing your affairs, and it is a pleasure to see you grow. I haven’t always been able to help, and I apologise for that. For the people that don’t wish to read all of it: Knights Templar was by all means an amazing alliance — while I don’t know how it’s like now, I still believe it’s one of the best hands-down. You might not have your original crew (3/4 of gov came months after I had done the majority of my work), you might not have Thalmor as your leader — but as long as you have that spirit, you’ll be here, and you’ll be winning. o7 Knights Templar