[[DoW] Dead Men Tell No Tales]

Oil is yes. In any case, I hope TFP don't lose too much infra before the actual blitz.

[[DoE] The Elysian Empire]

RON

[[DoW] The Second Atomic Crusade]

This is dangerously based. All the best burning those pixels!

[State of Baseball]

24 minutes ago, Zevari said:

So you are telling me that players who can't dedicate time to a game deserve to be equally progressed as those who can? 

Yes. Time is money. Politics and War is neither a p2w nor a t2w game. One might put in hours trading, but can't really prevent that since it's a market inefficiency they are taking advantage of. Can nerf a game mechanic though.

[State of Baseball]

4 minutes ago, Canbec said:

Can you please clarify what "skill" is required of a c40+ nation who doesn't even need to log in once a day to earn 50+ times as much income as the proposed 1m baseball cap? I apologize if my question may sound arrogant but it's not my intent. I'm legitimately curious because I don't think longevity should be considered a skill.

Whataboutery doesn't answer the question, does it? Every new player on Orbis has the same opportunities to watch ads or raid or trade and make it to the big leagues quick, and that is respectable. Clicking buttons in a screen to make money off baseball, it's a privilege, the privilege of time which a lot of us lack.

[State of Baseball]

1 hour ago, His Holy Decagon said:

Where are the comments where people are complaining about baseball? I’ve never really seen any actual person bring up baseball of all things, as an issue.

I think raising “issues” because a few people go wild, is almost a form of gaslighting, meanwhile I never see a single soul complain.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but who is actually complaining?

(Also, I literally just maxed my team/stadium and have had a lot of fun delving into this little baseball sub-community; really unsure what the big whoop is.)

My apologies for not making an explicit thread and raising a hue and cry about baseball. I sure would have had I known that you would find the will of the majority of the game, which hasn't been explicitly expressed as being equivalent to gaslighting.

FYI back in the days of NPOLT, baseball was much more serious than it is now and me and Changeup worked together to stop IQ from using baseball money to finance the war against us. While the issue is less 'serious' now (hence our lack of posting) it by no means is solved. 

This game is based on skill, and by keeping baseball as a viable cash generator, me and other players who don't have enough time to invest into baseball are being left behind by those who do. 

39 minutes ago, BigMorf said:

In a game where people complain consistently about Whales and the lack of any meaningful catch up mechanics, nerfing something that can serve as a potential catch up mechanic to me is seemingly foolish. 

I don't think there is any issue with people who want to get some extra effort in can make a little extra cash. Also, let's not act like Alex isn't getting a bit of money coming in for these baseball games. When I play my two fifty games, I get an ad every time I click! 

Cap it if you want it, but 1million a day is only going to hurt smaller nations who are looking for a chance to catch up with a little effort. At least make it comparable to rewarded ads, which I notice no one is complaining about. 

For a catch up mechanic to be viable, it needs to be accessible to players who have time as well as who don't. Rewarded ads runs in our backgrounds with a script while we are busy doing other things, so no one complains about it, naturally. Baseball is a much more significant time and cash investment.

[State of Baseball]

3 minutes ago, Florania said:

The previous nerf was also a mistake. If baseball isn’t profitable, then it’s just a money pit that only exists to be a number on a screen. With the money I invested into baseball I could have made multiple cities, or other more traditional things. Having some like baseball as a money maker adds depth, removing it would make the game more generic.

I might say it makes the gameplay more fair to all players, actually. I played baseball manually back in the day without bots because I had time, and I don't have time to use bots these days. Politics and War is a game that fundamentally relies upon a player's skill, and keeping baseball high favours just clicking on a screen as opposed to an actually skilled gameplay.

[State of Baseball]

9 minutes ago, Florania said:

I strongly disagree with your points. The threat of a ban, while not preventing all exploits, is surely a better way to prevent cheating then a 1 mil cap. I don’t use any form of bot, and I collect about 2-4 mil a day from baseball, excluding any home game fees that we give out. Putting a cap of 1 mil would utterly destroy any reason most players play baseball in the first place.

Baseball was never meant to be a means for making money. We have precedent for that in Alex's earlier nerf of baseball when GOONS exploited it. Main money earner is national income.

[State of Baseball]

This seems like a good suggestion and a great way to level the playing field between individuals with time and those without. Naturally, there will be pushback from the players who have time on their hands. A 30 day grace period for baseball investors to redeem their investments seems appropriate.

[Till we meet again]

Shall keep this short, I had fun playing with all of you, and I wish all of you all the best both in PW and irl moving forward. Apologies in case I have ever pissed you off. Isjaki out.

[A Nexus Withdrawal™️]

Clever, clever

[City Score Changes and Attack Ranges]

Screw bloc narratives and other considerations, I support any measure that makes this game harder for pixel huggers. Yes to score being revised to 75 from 100, no to downdeclare cap.

[2021 Player Award Nominations]

Player of the year: Krampus

Best fighter: Hidude

[Curiosity Kills Dogs Too]

All the best!

[[Treaty] The Crime Syndicate Pact]

 

While the men of the Tojo-kai were busy draining the Swamp, they came across a group of people talking in an Irish-American accent, carrying a dead rabbit on a pike. Despite mistaking them for hooligans at first, it became clear these men were indeed themselves fighting the swamp-dwellers. The Yakuza admired the efficiency of the men with the Dead Rabbit, downing men after men with surgical precision. The people with the Dead Rabbit in turn, were impressed by the individual prowess of their Japanese counterparts, taking out scores of swampies through sheer might.

After the first wave of Swampies was taken care of, the two groups exchanged greetings and the Yakuza invited the 5P to Gindaco Highball Tavern for some Welsh Onion Takoyaki and Blood Orange Highballs. Idle chatter between the two soon turned into business talk. The Yakuza wanted to get a foot-hold in the Americas and an ally in the hearts of New York City sounded like a wonderful idea. The Dead Rabbits on the other hand wanted to invest capital into real estate in Kamurocho and Orbis hills sounded like the best place to invest their money.

Seeing profit for both parties in a mutual alliance, the bosses of both factions decided to sign a pact of brotherhood and help each other whenever they can.

Tl;dr- The Dead Rabbits and Tojo-Kai enter into an Optional Defense Pact.
They also both agree that RON did 9/11

 

Signed for Tojo HQ

Isjaki, Chairman of the Tojo-Kai and Patriarch of International Smuggling

 

Signed for The Dead Rabbits

Bosses of 5P

Dede#2907

JaxTeller

[Workers of Orbis, unite!]

Just now, Arln said:

#4 is already been done several times.

If essays don't work for Tyrion he should prolly write a full peer-reviewed paper, taking the history of Orbis into account, about why secret treaties are bad.

[Workers of Orbis, unite!]

Us, the ordinary members, the workers of Orbis are the ones who do the fighting, but the bourgeois FA and leadership think they can negotiate on our behalf. Screw this, I say, we should all present our terms to the enemy rather than the bourgeois presenting theirs. Post your terms here, and the funniest ones (as judged by most haha reacts) get 20M from me.

My terms ->

1. UU change their acronym to UwU for 1 month.
2. United Socialist Nations change their name to Individualist Capitalist Conglomerates for 1 month.
3. TFP pay $420 to Spanky as war reparations.
4. Lord Tyrion write a 600-700 word essay on why secret treaties are bad.
5. TI endorse RON as the most unbiased news network of Orbis in their announcements (and then the announcement in turn gets 'leaked' to RON). 

[The Eclipse of The Future]

I have no idea what you said but yes, I agree completely.

[Why we can't have nice things]

1 minute ago, Broke said:

Some of you are taking the game way too seriously. Touch some grass please. 

We are not the ones deleting infra to make stats look better, mate. Practice what you preach.

[Why we can't have nice things]

3 minutes ago, Grave said:

Oasis literally blitzed you by ourselves at the same time you blitzed Oasis and mystery with BW

We do have leaks from certain Oasis alliances claiming that they were about to get blitzed on the night of the blitz. Blitzing at the same time is the least that could be done to save face. Doesn't really contradict the points Vader made.

[Why we can't have nice things]

52 minutes ago, Alcyr said:

Except that was an argument against 1v1 minispheres because it would always encourage the smallest bloc to expand to be bigger to avoid being an easy target. Whereas LT was suggesting using temporary team-ups that can vary from war to war depending on circumstances, with actual politics deciding what any groupings end up being. Now, differences of opinion are of course going to happen, but it seems weird to quote LT's opinion of what would happen in your version of minispheres as part of an argument against his version of minispheres when you didn't actually address the concern at all.

Minispheres are meant to be independent regardless of how small and how large they actually are. Maybe some of the smaller spheres, if they are concerned about getting rolled, can sign prots within larger spheres. You can't have both safely and independence just as you can't have your cake and eat it to.

Different alliances from the smallest bloc can join different larger blocs to keep the relative bloc sizes in equilibrium.

[Why we can't have nice things]

1 minute ago, MinesomeMC said:

Why is everything so bold lmao

Statements about the great and glorious Tyrion must be written in bold

[Why we can't have nice things]

When Orbis as a whole decided to move to the minispheres model, the idea was to seek ‘political flexibility’. By political flexibility, the idea, I believe, is that the blocs don’t fight the same set of enemies in every global (like IQ vs EMC or Syndisphere vs Paracovenant) and fight different blocs based on changing political objectives, or maybe even for plain fun.

Indeed, the ideal minisphere world would be one where we have short, fun wars like Surf’s Up, where all the spheres act mutually independently and don’t try to play world police.

Unfortunately, not everyone seems to believe in this version of minispheres, least of all Lord Tyrion, leader of TI and one of the most important people in Oasis. Attaching some screenshots below, all of which are publicly available in RON.

 

The implication is clear, TI, and Oasis as a whole, are willing to play world police and intervene in wars they have no business intervening in based on how ‘threatened’ they feel. Multiple normal blocs will coalesce into single super-blocs when external pressure is (seemingly) applied.

Wait, there’s more.

 

Apparently, Tyrion’s definition of minispheres are rather different from what most of us think. I am sure there might be some of you reading this, thinking, “Hey, this is exactly what minispheres are! Why is this bad?”

This is bad because, in the past, most wars have been tossups and milcom actually had to work hard to ensure victory, coming up with tactics like tier-locking, planes only etc. Over the last few wars since NPOLT, it has become easy to predict the eventual victor from the first few days.

While this obviously means that competence has taken a hit, this also means that those who have been starting wars have been exploiting minispheres to hedge their risks. No self-respecting alliance leader in this game will greenlight a war these days unless they have a reasonable degree of assurance about the outcome. Thus, wars naturally tend towards being ‘uneven’, if not outright dogpiles.

The price is paid not by the experienced Orbisians, but rather, by the new members, the bloodline of the Orbis community who keep the game alive. As the new members VM or quit due to fighting against unrealistic odds, Orbis as a whole is worse off.

Okay Isjaki, we get it, minispheres have failed to work as intended. So, what is the solution? Once again, we go back to our good old friend Tyrion for his opinion.

 

That’s right, going back to a duopolistic Orbis is our best option. Wars will be drab, standard and boring, yes. But at least, both the sides will be more or less ‘equally’ matched, and competence, not numbers, will dictate the outcome.

“That sucks, Isjaki” you say, and I agree, it absolutely sucks. Unfortunately, we can’t have nice things, since Oasis has made it clear that they will seek secret treaties.

 

When one bloc makes it publicly clear that they will seek secret ties, other blocs naturally have to seek secret ties of their own (or get rolled out of the way) until we end up with a duopolistic Orbis. Rather than having a glorified 2 sphere world, united by secret treaties, maybe it would be better to have an actual 2 sphere world.

[Mysterious Clockwater in the Oasis Propaganda Thread]

[[DoE][RoH] Orbis Swamp Redevelopment Program]

Civilians of Orbis have recently been complaining about the Swamp behind West Park. Without proper care from concerned authorities and law enforcement officers, the Swamp has become a hangout for delinquents who use the area for consumption of narcotics and alcohol. There have also been reports of other illegal activities like smuggling of illegal goods, a fake currency printing facility and a gambling hall.

With a visible increase in incidents of assaults and knife-point robberies by these bad elements of society who are using the Swamp as their base of operations, we the Yakuza couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing. After all, it falls upon us to make sure that the peace in the city is maintained. As such, we have dispatched a small group of our best men to take out the trash and drain the Swamp. After being drained, we plan to use the land to develop Orbis Hills, a multi-billion dollar luxury housing estate!

Tl;Dr - Tojo HQ exists and we recognize hostilities against Swamp for their numerous attempts at our brain cells