Raphael

Epimetheus recently posted a youtube video that broke down alliances into tiers based on their numerical rank, and that inspired me to make a post about it and share my thoughts. I disagreed with much of what Epi had to say once he got closer to the top AA's, and I've been government in various top AA's and probably have a unique mix of experiences to share. These are purely my subjective thoughts and observations, so if you feel like I've mischaracterized your group then I probably have. Post a long reply telling me how you disagree! Below Rank 75: The Abyss - This is where you find one-man alliances, offshores, dead alliances being preserved by their last fan, or micros that have a handful of active new players struggling to get off the ground. Other than offshores, almost every alliance past rank 75 has more inactive than active players, low membership, low average score. Light never reaches this low on the rankings. There is no advice to leave the Abyss, the pressure has crushed you. Best to leave your AA once it gets here unless you have a reason to stay (offshores etc). Rank 51-75: The Second Page - It's actually not uncommon to find household names floating around this tier, as a lost war can often sink smaller groups past rank 50. This is where low-tier raiding groups and true micros are usually found. Characterized almost universally by the phrase "I didn't realize they were that low!" on at least a couple of the names here. This is also where training AA's are usually positioned, as well as new alliances for their first month or two can usually be found here while they're first building up. The main advice for this tier is to use diplomacy to your advantage, the lower the ranks the brighter good diplomacy can shine. Secure a protectorate with someone strong enough to defend you against major threats, stop stirring up pointless drama or wars, focus on growing your members and recruitment. You may even want to strongly consider opening talks with your closest allies about merging into them in order to combine forces. This tier is often suffering from multiple terminal issues that will take more effort to fix than to scrap and try again later. 30-50: The Potential - This tier is where a lot of newer or growing groups end up who are missing a key piece of the formula. These are the household names who sometimes end up below rank 50 during a losing war, micros who are doing better than most, or even smaller whale groups like Yarr. Breaching the top 50 usually means you're doing things right, but you may be missing one or two key things that will push you up into the relevancy on your own. Many of these groups are key members of larger coalitions, but not necessarily powerhouses in themselves yet. The main advice for these groups is to identify what you're missing and try to flesh it out (most probably are doing this already). Pieces like: Recruitment, do you have enough members? Average score, are you missing mid/upper tier nations (I am aware this can take awhile to grow)? Maybe your FA is subpar and you're associating with too many sub-rank 50 groups who pull you into needless wars and prevent your success, maybe you don't understand the economic meta of the game, or maybe you're not culling your inactives like you should be. Usually it's only one or two tweaks that can start to bump these guys up the ranks. 21-30: The Swamp - The name sounds harsher than the intent. This tier is where many once-micros have found their stride, are coming into their own identity other than being a micro, and generally are striving to do things the right way. This is also the place where some household names go to die, groups who should be competitive with at least the tier above this one but for one reason or another have stumbled into a decline and now fight for their own survival rather than success. This tier is generally where alliances start being able to enforce their own will, in a limited capacity, and find success in doing so. This is also where Arrgh usually sits doing its own thing. All the keys to success are here: Money, experience, political connections, and membership. These groups are often some of the silent workhorses in their coalitions, but generally don't get recognition or a huge say at the negotiating table. The universal advice for this tier is that improved tiering will drastically change your outcomes. Advice to the older-but-fallen alliances: Favor activity over tradition especially for government positions, you are in a spot where you will have to experience pain one way or another in order to recover, usually this happens from a splinter if the alliance itself can't pull itself together in time. Rank 13-20: The Backbone - This is the tier usually comprised of high-member-count alliances with prominent middle tiers, beginning to breach into the upper tiers. These groups usually can and will enforce their ideas into the coalition, but they aren't necessarily the leadership. These are the groups where the most surprise is directed when they do exceedingly well or exceedingly poor. Tiering, time, and sometimes member-count are the only thing that really separate these groups from the tier above them. The advice in this tier is to start being conservative with your politics: Rather than being ride-or-die in someone else's war, take the backseat and let the powerbrokers take the heat for their decisions. Cultivate relationships with all corners of the web and you will benefit greatly when your time comes, otherwise you will end up categorized as a hanger-on to one of the bigger alliances. Rank ?-?: The Secondary Powers - A bit subjective here because we're now drifting into political opinion and that can't always be based on score/rank. Especially while a war has been going on for the past month. This tier is comprised of top alliances usually with their own robust upper tiers and political connections. These groups could easily form their own spheres of influence and most have done so in the past. These groups can probably fight any single or even handful of alliances in the game by themselves and win, and are usually considered equal partners in their coalitions. They just aren't ~1m score alliances, with the notable exception being TI - who are a secondary power purely by their own ambition or lack thereof. Rank ?-?: Great Powers - The powerbrokers and figureheads of any given sphere. These groups could almost be paperless and still heavily influence the politics of the game, the names of their high government often make the news when they retire or change seats, and generally a lot of the game's politics hinge on their decisions. These groups are almost universally years-old alliances with triple digit memberships and roughly one million or more score. Even the argument of who is considered a great power at any given time is a source of constant debate and content for the game. These groups tend to lead (or be seen to be leading) their own spheres. They take the brunt of responsibility for sphere actions, even if they may not be the ones pushing said actions. A treaty between any of these groups is considered a significant and a threat to the balance of power. These groups are usually the bulk of damages dealt and received during global wars and their presence determines whether or not a war is considered "a global" affair. Advice at this or secondary power stage is pointless, as usually these last two tiers are arrogant enough to ignore any advice given regardless. They will rise or fall due to their own actions and probably take several other groups with them in either direction. I'll close this out with the disclaimer that a ton of what I've said is a generalization of the tiers at the time of posting. You could probably break it down further but I tried to tier based on where I thought made sense. Not every group in any given tier fits that tier, and a lot of what I mentioned was subjective. I tried to be positive but honest, so hopefully I didn't hurt any feelings. I recognize we all spend hours of our weeks trying to run our respective alliances and it's not as easy as taking a sentence of advice to succeed. Hope you guys enjoyed this!

This is my exact thought. We see way too much victim-blaming in this game when people pull dumb stunts, and not nearly enough accountability for the people who are constantly screwing people over. Camelot is doing alright trying to help other alliances and on way-to-generous terms (allowing them to exist as an extension).

Interesting project. Good luck with it!

Happy birthday! Nice poem.

A high gov position given from a merge! TKR is evolving.

This should be Alex's favorite suggestion ever because it'll incentivize donations for more than just selling a credit or quick cash. Player choice! 1. Change the donate for infra option to "bring a city up to 2700 infrastructure" instead of additional 100. The ingame tool tells me (with discounts) that this is roughly $32.9m so makes it slightly more cost-effective than actually redeeming a credit for cash. Even more cost-effective without the discounts. 2. Reduce VIP party to 20 credits and I think a lot more alliances would be buying this regularly. Even though it's less per purchase, I think it would result in more purchases making up for the difference as many people buy 20 credits a month as-is and may do so for this purpose. 3. New City Timer Reset: Reduce to 2 credits. 3 is a bit rough and uneven. 4. National Project Timer Reset: Increase to 2 credits to make it even with city timers. 5. Location Change: Reduce to 1 credit and I think you'll see an increase in usage similar to the VIP party reduction logic. 6. Even at wartime prices the resource redemption is perpetually less cost-effective than redeeming a credit directly. I think cash should be the least cost-effective option rather than the most as the "king" resource people really want. Most people would redeem resources to sell, so adjust appropriately to be slightly more than $30m at least in wartime pricing. example: 150k food for 200PPU is exactly $30m, what I can redeem a credit for directly. Selling a credit would probably get me an extra few mil on top of that. 7. New donation idea simple to implement: Your vote on your color bloc name now counts for double for VIP members (so 1 vote turns into 2 for VIP, this also factors into the VIP party change as now smaller AA's trying to take color names will snag cheaper VIP party to do so).

Summarizing what I said on discord: 1. I'm not sure about the shift to raws for a lot of the projects. Raws are already steadily decreasing in supply and this feels like an odd choice. I'd be interested to hear reasoning (sorry if I missed the reasoning in the OP). 2. City Cost Reduction Projects I think should be re-examined to be even less expensive than proposed. The goal is to reward actively growing new nations with faster/cheaper growth, having them be massive projects with big-ticket cost is the opposite of that goal. I'd rather see the "resource sink" aspect of these projects be shifted somewhere else like onto the Spy Satellites or other big-ticket lategame items. 3. Military Salvage and Bureau of Domestic Affairs I think are getting over-buffed. Resource sinks are still needed and you're handing out a lot of bonuses instead. 4. I genuinely think Spy Satellite is already way too powerful as it is. A coordinated spy effort like we see from Rose and others can often put up more damages than nukes can consistently produce. I was hoping for a nerf but instead it got a buff. I like the idea of something giving an extra spy per day other than the CIA, but not the spy satellite. Maybe shift it over to the surveillance network instead?

Definitely agree and definitely bumping

It's way past time we recognize that philosophy of game design mismatches with these projects. New nation catch-up mechanics should not also be resource sink mechanics. New nations don't have resources to sink, and it places undue burdens on alliances to supply these new nations on the front-end. This has naturally resulted in [most] alliances refusing to cover the upfront cost and new players suffer the most from it. UP is almost costing $400m at this point, a pricetag that is insurmountable to new nations. Let the new players prosper and catch up, slap resource sinks (like the telecomm satellite) at the end-game for whales to sink and ROI across years or even better push military projects out that let big nations launch multiple nukes or something destructive that can further "sink" resources for the bigger players who have near-infinite. Cut the pricetag of the catchup mechanics, or even make them free and find resource sinks elsewhere.

Thanks to everyone who came together to make this a thing, I'm looking forward to making this an extremely fun alliance to be in.

Solid post and I love forum engagement Thalmor. Thanks for taking the time to type out your thoughts here. I'll start off by saying that I disagree a bit where you're drawing the line, as it seems you're trying to play favorites a bit by distinguishing groups like Oblivion because "well just obviously not them." but for the sake of brevity I won't mire the conversation with this argument. Secondly, I do generally agree with the thought that alliances who form and stagnate at low member counts will eventually fail to achieve their goals but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. None of these groups founded to be single-digit-member alliances, I think a lot of them just ran out of steam or were created to be places those players joined to exist on their own terms -- be that their own chosen tax methods, different moderation styles, activity levels, etc. So the problem isn't these entrepreneurial groups trying to push innovation and change, the problem is that almost every larger alliance is a stagnant beast where players feel lost in the miasma of disengagement. The average player has very little to look forward to in any given alliance and at least part of that is caused by leadership who have lost sight of what it means to be a leader. Leaders should eat last, serve those underneath them, and represent their membership. Far too many governments in this game have goals that horribly misalign with their members and I think that's why we keep seeing new alliances form.

Some would call it a hostage situation, but you knew you held the leverage that Sketchy and Alex wanted the hole time.

*sweats in micro*

Shout outs: Ogaden - Founder, leader, originator. Pioneer of Paperless, philosopher of piracy, set the tone for not only Arrgh but for PnW becoming a very different game than CN was. A lot of people don't remember or never played CN but a lot of PnW culture (and game mechanics) are a direct result of wanting to move away from CN status quo. Jacob Hansen - the OG successor to Ogaden's mythical founding. Carried the alliance forward from a philosopher's dream into a reality. Pushed early Arrgh through its baby years and held it all together when it could've easily turned into anything but the de facto raiding alliance that it is today. Buck Turgidson, CCT, and IM317 - The Yarr Boys, the keepers of booty, and the gears that kept Arrgh turning for so many years. Arrgh literally could not have functioned these nine years without a safe and trustworthy set of bankers. Tywin Lannister - the original whale, shattered so many growth records from raiding gains that he won the game and dipped out pretty early. Set the tone for what a great raider could accomplish. DragonK, Keza Purple, Warpool, Shadow, and many others of the middle-era that kept the flame alive through raiding nerfs and admin bias against raiding. Bluebear - the man/myth/legend and probably longest serving Arrgh leader. Bluebear held Arrgh together through slow times and fast times, and has always held an enthusiasm for piracy that few have ever matched. Truly a lynchpin of the community. Zim/Swedge/Mars/Shutter/NastyGamer/Vali/Murtaza - The originals from when I really got started in Arrgh. My OG lineup of Admirals and Commodores. Many a night spent in voicechats, DM's, and general chat with these boys. Ripper - the name speaks for itself. Really revived Arrgh's popular perception during his time, another great raider singularly unmatched in tenacity. Miss him in this game. Pascal - though not in Arrgh long, still an honorable mention Aya - Really got to know you in Arrgh and glad I did, pretty chill person under the reputation Raoul Duke - Did try to kill Arrgh, but was just a pained soul in the end. Not a bad dude when it came down to it. Vilktakis - No clue who you were when you started, but by the end you were as great a pirate as any. Blackbeard/Ainz/REAL - you guys were just great raiders, didn't cause much of an uproar, legit boys. Vicic / TheDoom - you guys rekindled my passion for raiding and I had a genuine blast running the upper tiers with you guys. You guys also put Arrgh back onto the map in terms of solid numbers compared to other raiders with theDoom even passing Dryad's long-held #1 spot. Sam Cooper - No one has done more for Arrgh in the last few years than you bro. You modernized the AA, turned it from a backwater hangout into a solid raiding group again, and now have even taked the #1 money looted spot for yourself. You're pretty quiet but I'll sing your praises good sir, you're going into the pirate history books for sure. Hatebi - You're a radioactive treasure, a terror of infra-holders everywhere. Potato - You kept the chat active at all times, good or bad. lol. There are so many more names to put on this list but I'm already posting a huge wall of text (again) so I'll wrap it up by saying happy birthday Arrgh, here's to another nine years of enjoying the game for what it is - in our genuine, pirate way! Arrgh!

Is it not possible to just make the bulletins function like in-game forums? Even potentially connect them to the forums? As they are now, it's impossible to really see anything but the most-liked or newest -- and I don't think sorting by views or dislikes would improve that. I definitely think anything that gives the game a direct-connect feature to the text-based politics of the metagame would be a huge benefit to player retention and engagement.

I know this was addressed earlier in the post as a potential achievement award, but it would be nice to see city discount projects become cheaper/free as they get added on the backend. Example: When the MPP got released, the UP became free and the AUP became half-priced.

Much like in real life, I personally ascribe to a belief that many problems we face in Orbis can be attributed to economics. I recently got pulled onto the New Pacific Order's remnant alliance page and noticed their score chart peaks at 400,000 score. After some digging into the Alliance Leaderboard thread, I noticed that their pre-NPOLT-militarization score lay somewhere in the realm of 300-350,000, I personally believe it leans more towards 350k but it doesn't really matter for the point of this post. At the lowest possible estimate, 2018-19 NPO would still be in the top 15 alliances. So why is it that over almost five years, only 14 groups in the game have reached a level higher than a major power from 2019? NPO wasn't even in the top 3 for much of 2018/19! I think to answer this question, we also need to glance at how people get to the top 15. There are some obvious trends: We see significantly older alliances in the top ranks, we also see more recent mergers, and we obviously see the vast majority of the game's upper tier within these top AA's. Generally speaking, critical mass also seems to be achieved somewhere above 50 members depending on your tiering with the top-most ranks being held exclusively by alliances with triple-digit member count. This really got my brain going a bit and I figured I'd post something here to spur some conversation about the economic side of running an alliance. What do you think your alliance is doing well or poorly with regards to econ? Conversely, if you're a top alliance what would your best advice be for the smaller groups?

Hey Palsada, it's Roberts AKA Justinian. I know I change nation themes a lot, it's part of how I squeeze enjoyment out of this dull game. Given this is your second or so attempt at merging your alliance into another, I think you need to take a step back and really analyze what a merger means, why people agree to them, and what your expectations are when you merge your alliance. Given my intimate experience with you and your process: You seem to think that you can make political gains by "merging" into alliances while retaining your PRIU identity and using your grouping as an internal bloc to push changes you or your group want to see. It's attempted subversion and merging in bad faith to begin with, so when you mention toxicity - don't forget it takes two to tango. The only thing really halting this accusation is that your group never truly seems to merge with anyone. You just... exist on a different AA for awhile. No merge will ever successfully happen that way, and I think that if you look to incorporate groups into yours that would go better than you trying to exist as an alliance within an alliance. Secondly, reread your entire essay and notice how almost all of your complaints are your own personal lack of control over literally every decision. Being a control freak and wanting everything to require your stamp of approval is again, subversion at best, and narcissism at worst. I actually think @Thalmor needs to conduct the trial of Palsada at this point, and leave poor Alan alone.

If we can unilaterally join coalition-NAP agreements, can I unilaterally cancel it? Official announcement: The NAP from Dodge This is actually cancelled, as well as the NAP from whatever WELP's war was called. Thanks for reading.

It's been years of this game and the banking system is barebones, forcing reliance on playermade bots. Alliance banks minimally need to: Track inputs (taxes) Track outputs (grants and loans and aid) Differentiate outputs (Grants, Loans, Aid) Track individual player deposits separate from the bank's total sum This would change the landscape for many smaller alliances with no banking bots.

Earn extra money and resources for your nation by inviting your friends to play Politics & War! Each player you refer who plays for 60 days and reaches 500 score will earn you $25,000,000, 200 Steel, 200 Aluminum, 200 Gasoline, and 200 Munitions! To refer players, have them sign up with this link: https://politicsandwar.com/register/ref=Raphael For a limited time, you can directly buy $800,000,000 in-game money for your nation, 1 Year of VIP, and get a special nation achievement and nation award. This does not count toward your monthly credit limit. Limited to one purchase per player. Not available through the App Store or Google Play Store. Click here for more details. These two notifications that pop up when you login made me think that the referral bonus isn't really worth the effort of evening giving the code out. Figured I'd make a quick post about it. Given a month of credits is $600m minimum, you could easily slap another zero on the end of all the amounts and still probably be too low for modern standards.

A spectre is haunting Orbis: The attrition of new players has always been high. However, almost universally across the game 2023 was one of the worst years for new players in recent memory. I've seen call after call for the developers to do something, to create new content so that might help retain interest in the game. I've been around long enough to remember the other content updates though. A handful of new projects, poorly designed as resource sinks. A small rework of how superiorities work. Small graphics tweaks to the war page... Not exactly the vivacious lineup of amazing content that you would think had come in the past, given the amount of people calling for more now. While I respect and agree with the need for additional features and content, I think people forget the cosmic truth of a sandbox nationsim: In-game content has never been an attractor in this game. The game itself is dreadful. Most of us agree on that, it's a bit of a grind to login and do things. A rare few of us enjoy things like raiding with friends (Arrgh, KT) or playing the economic game (Kinns, Tyrion), but the vast majority of players don't want to constantly grind like this is Old School Runescape. If you joined this game after 2020, you probably don't know any better when I say this: Almost no non-raiding alliance forced, or even recommended, their lower tiers to raid when starting out their nations. Lower tier raiding became a meta once people saw what it could be. Except, that's the problem. It can be amazingly profitable and efficient -- and if you ask any alliance in the top 50 today you'll learn that most don't accept new players unless they agree to grind raiding for at least the first two or three months. I know this is starting to sound counter-intuitive because every Econ and IA head in the game is about to tell me that raiding is the best way to grow new nations and it also limits the amount of money lost to inactive new players if you're not giving them grants or loans in the first place... but I think what's getting lost is the human cost. The players who leave the game rather than grind raiding. It's especially interesting because active raiding almost always takes more activity than most high gov members put into their jobs, yet we expect brand new players to commit to such a playstyle. I know this is probably one of my more controversial essays, I recognize raiding as being highly efficient on paper, but when I think of how many great political players I've met across the years I always remember one thing that sticks out to me: Almost every great political player has been totally disinterested in the actual gameplay of their given Nationsim. The founders of many of the top alliances today had absolutely zero interest in things like raiding when they started out. Food for thought. I don't expect to change many hard-headed minds but I will never give up posting to the forums.

Aurora watching someone get rolled for chatting that shit on a news server:

It would be nice to see Alex come back and be super active again.