Alastor

Noot noot

The memes are on point I cannot even lie. Have fun everyone! "State-owned media (Roberts)" made me laugh pretty hard.

Everyone knew this was a long time coming, really the better part of a year. Hope everyone has fun and enjoys the carnage. Food hoarders: you're welcome.

TL;DR - you made something up and dragged an alliance that you essentially couped into a war. To the actual membership of DB: Welcome to the war, have fun.

I agree with the sentiment of the solution and I would point equally at the community and the game mechanics as to both fault and solution: New nations, new alliances, smaller alliances, or even large alliances who have struggled to find their place in politics are all essentially left out as shark bait for everyone else. You must seek shelter or die. What can be done to open this game up to a more casual playstyle and become more interesting/rewarding to be small and new? I liked your mention of dynamic war slots in theory, though I'd want to see hard numbers on how it played out. I'd also point to the lack of game mechanics that really make PnW a "Nation simulator." There's... not actually a lot of simulation going on, if any at all. Fleshing out internal politics even if it's just for show with a legislature mechanic, giving some meaning and mechanic to the RP stuff like government types, allowing baseball to be superficially adjusted to any sport of your choosing or expanding upon the baseball feature to see some like olympic game type stuff... Meaningless mechanics like the Moon Landing that ultimately add flavor into the game would be huge. The white backdrop with limited color and spreadsheet set-up where you just keep up with numbers for the sake of it is just not appealing to 2024 gamers. The culture itself needs to be more open to LARPing as a nationstate instead of focusing purely on maximum efficiency. This could come in many forms, only limited by imagination. It's just generally frowned upon to RP after a certain extent. Overall I think PnW does a very poor job of leaning into the genre itself. It's clear from adverts that Alex has a "vision" of what he wants the game to be but it's just not there. I highly doubt there would be more than couple hundred players in this game if it cost $5.99 on the app store, for example. The free-to-play and time-sunk are the two main reasons for most of us remaining I'd guess. I also think the pace needs to slow down. The game needs to be recognized for what it is: FtP feature-starved spreadsheet. The idea that you can go to sleep and wake up to being wiped out in a war is pretty laughable even by IRL standards. Slow the pace of warfare down significantly (and maybe flesh that out too) and I think you'd see higher retention and also more investment into the wars themselves.

Ah yes I actually forgot to include this in the essay. It feels like there's even more pressure now for perfect-play or risk ridicule/ostracization. Perfect play meaning both mechanically and politically: Fall in line, do what's expected, or get replaced because a sphere only needs like 4-5 alliances.

Does the current sphere meta help to solve or worsen political stagnation

I think I'm going crazy when I say this but maybe Partisan was right. A little background, before NPOLT (about 4-5 years ago!), this game was mostly divided into 2-3 major spheres of influence. This is not to say these spheres were uniform in nature, it was a chaotic affair trying to organize dozens of alliances in one direction and typically it wasn't governed as spheres are now with a centralized leadership. You had competing interests in each sphere, just as the spheres competed with each other. The idea of many different spheres was novel, it was even viewed by many as a fantasy. "Minispheres" as it used to be called. The idea had iterations upon iterations until it finally came into its current form: We now have a handful of medium-sized spheres, some bigger or smaller, and generally speaking they all revolve around a central figurehead alliance (or two). Many of us thought that formally dividing the major powers from each other and culturally dividing their interests would lead to dynamic and interesting politics as opposed to the sometimes-repetitive nature of bipolarity. We, as a community, have harshly enforced this new status quo: Teaming up to attack spheres that showed signs of excessive collaboration or "paperless treaties." A lot of casus belli from the last few years have been regarding the size or tiering of various spheres, or whether someone has sat out of too many wars while the other spheres burned each other. In a way, it has created a more dynamic political environment. Something akin to musical chairs. So how was Partisan potentially right? The sphere system seems to lend itself more to the uplifting and amplifying of any given "major power" than to the rest. Even in situations when a sphere or bloc truly are co-equal and make mutual decisions, the political scene is gridlocked unless your "shot caller" is directly involved. This is enforced both by the other sphere leaders, who will sometimes stonewall political discussions unless you're with a major power -- and by the sphere followers, many who will defer to their sphere leader as the only decision maker in the bloc. I'm calling it the vassalization of alliances many of whom are chained to their "master" alliances for years at a time without ever having the chance to start their own machinations or pursue their own agenda, if they have an agenda at all. Vassals, lapdogs, servile alliances have always existed in any meta but the sphere meta seems particularly harsh in ensuring that you must follow the leader, no matter what. There is no option other than to choose another leader to follow. I will also point out that the cultural enforcement of the sphere system has begun to blur over time. Lingering cross-sphere ties are seemingly present everywhere with unwritten rules governing the true state of these ties: Are they going to be honored? Are they going to be enforced? Maybe, is the answer. You'd have to ask and it depends on the day. There is also the issue of new spheres and their inability to form a competitive bloc despite they themselves being a strong central force that might otherwise exert a sphere of influence if the system was not so rigid. This decay of a clean sphere system combined with the rigidity of the politics has caused me lately to question the efficacy of such a political meta. Thought I'd write up a short thing about it. Let me know your thoughts!

We are all acutely aware.

The lie is that House-SAIL-Eclipse were in serious talks about a NAP, and that TKR was leading the charge on this, or that anyone in our bloc even agreed to anything more than listening to someone else's pitch. It wasn't us who pitched the idea, and it died in DM's within a very short conversation. I've brought it up in private with many already, but this just flatly was not a thing that was happening. It wasn't even a backup plan, it was just a pitched thought that never went anywhere after one discussion.

Just save the typing effort and say you can only photosynthesize in the light of my attention

I thought it would be nice of me to compile a list of things you could do between now and August if you are one of the roughly 3000 players affected by the handful of cowardly leaders who doubled an already way-too-long NAP after 24 hours of warfare back in February. In no particular order: Learn a musical instrument Start an exercise routine Coup your leaders Leave your terrible alliance Pick up knitting Give painting a try, Bob Ross is nice to watch Listen to some new, or old, music Read a book or 20 Start shopping for your autumn wardrobe - the NAP will end by the time the weather starts turning in many areas. Give Rise of Kings Online a try, a new nationsim game that doesn't [yet] have years of NAPs being signed Learn some basic Spanish Do some yoga Visit your family Post your ideas for how to spend the 2024 NAP here!

Peace in our time.

I'm not trying to flame you when I say this... but this reads like a post from a new player who just got raided for the first time. It's crazy how we're almost a decade into PnW and people still think the raiding playstyle is "just that easy."

Echoing what others said, I think this would be a neat flavor addition but see very little use. Applying tariffs would just actively harm your own members for likely no benefit. If you expanded the scope of this change a bit further, I believe it could be very impactful. Remove direct control of tariffs, base it on number of trades between any two alliances. Say it starts at a default 0%, ticking up by 0.01% per turn. Each trade reduces it by 0.01%. Only count trades above a certain value to prevent exploit. If this option is chosen, I'd then recommend the tariff money delete from the game instead of going into an alliance bank. Now you have a cool feature and a money sink.

Huzzah! Would it be asking too much to get an official announcement just stating the existence of the channel and its purpose?

I hope it will get people a little more involved in the political discussions, unless you want them all on RON @Dr Rush Was this a serious offer? There is definitely interest in using the PnW main discord for game functions and the like.

We're at 14 btw. You guys are bad at counting.

What I'm actually looking for is for a forum-style channel to be added for both. Please post your signatures below. 1. Roberts

So the NAP covered "All parties" in the war. Samurai is on CTOWNED with quite a few wars. Regardless of whether you claim them, Samurai is indeed breaking the NAP quite clearly. edit: Samurai was apparently #14 in Net for the war. Not a bad showing. 14 Samurai (NET)$3,090,208,310 (Offensives)129 (Defensives)115 (Inflicted)$9,083,203,364 (Received)$5,992,995,054

I can't believe TKR and Grumpy have formed another hegemony

I still never got a clear answer as to how Adrienne rhymes with pants unless there was some ESL thing going on and he was using his native word for pants.

Your honor, my client, Kastor Lordaeron, has had no dealings with pirates, scallywags, smugglers, sailors, privateers, or any characters-of-ill-repute. These false accusations are brazen, outlandish, and ludicrous. I will prove to this court that Mr. Lordaeron is innocent of all charges, and furthermore that Mr. Lordaeron is an upstanding citizen of this good land and has never had so much as a parking ticket before these accusations!

Congratulations on the new government and peaceful transition of power! 41 is an impressive number.

Since the war range and downdeclares have become so impossible to balance, the time has come breath new life into PnW's war system. Rather than each barracks adding a flat amount of soldiers, give it a tiny diminishing return curve. So instead of a c40 having 40 cities worth of soldiers, they'd have only 30. A c41 would have 30.25 cities worth of soldiers. etc. These are not finalized numbers, but just an example of what I mean. This way, larger nations are still receiving additional units and not being punished for growing - like some would argue the now pseudo-limitless updeclare range does. Rather, it just levels the playing field for the 90% of the playerbase that isn't above c35. We have to eventually recognize that asking players to invest 1-2 irl years just to be considered in a relevant tier isn't a good game design and will force ever-higher attrition rates as a result. I think this would also refresh politics again, as most alliances do not have an uppermost tier but this change would allow them to compete again. edit: For clarification, this is proposing we choose a city count to be an equilibrium point where anything above that point gives diminished military capacity. So, for example, if we pick c30: Anything at or below c30 would remain unchanged in terms of game mechanics. Every city above c30 would give fewer units per building lessening with each additional city. So c31 with max barracks would only give 95% of the troops it normally would. c32 would give 90%. Etc.