Zim

The alliance announcement system, can be made into a fairly strong discord alternative in small alliances. Members can comment, and ask question through it, guides can also easily be made available through the announcement system. And members can be given permission to create their own posts. Arrgh still have sudden tradition around it's use. Many people don't know that discord first started popping up here in 2016, two years after P&W first got startet. And why many of the oldest alliances got some abouned forum site tucked away somewhere, heck NPO is still using theirs https://npowned.net/ The main issue with the ingame annoucement is that everyone in the alliance can read them. If alex made it selective who should read what post, then you got solid discord alternative even for bigger alliances.

It has no effect on gameplay. Read the wiki. Believe me, when i say we got the mid maxing of this game down to it's teeths. https://politicsandwar.fandom.com/wiki/National_Tax_Rate

Not to bad, well it is more a roleplay element then anything. But you can increase it either by buillding some commerce building, supermarket, banks, shopping malls, stadiums in your citiies. Creating some service jobs, can't expect sweatshop workers and coal miners to have the greatest income. Else you need to change some of your answers to the question sheet that determind your nation economic politics, https://politicsandwar.com/nation/policy/ But is just roleplay flavour, it dosen't have any effect on the gameplay.

To be frank, i do see capitalism being fairly self destructive, in more then one way. As a economic system i see it in automation. Technology inovation that lead to freeing up workers from food production, was what made capitalism into the world dominating economic system. Capitalism is still a fairly young system, with it not being to many decades since the majority of the world population was employed in agriculture. With rise of Industry, we started taking steps towards automation, to reduce the amount of workers, and time a task required before it done. Which is a process we have never stopped doing. And now we at a point where we have data, a limitless source of value, that can make machines without human imput, that perform task faster and better then humans. Capitalism will keep pushing for automation, to save on cost and increase efficiency. Now what happens, when a large part of the labour force is no longer needed to work, like when we start hitting 10-20% unemployment rate. Not because of fault of their own, you can of try to reeducate them of course for new jobs. But how long before does jobs get turned over to the machines. And now, we have a large and increasing part of the population unable to find work, that means they don't get a salery, which means they have no money to spend. Eroding profit from business. That is when universal bacis income start to look real good, together with reducing the maximum amount of work hours people can work. You don't want people starving, you don't want crime out of control, or mass riots in the streets, or companies declaring bankruptcy over losing their enitre customer base. You saw how a positiv impact stimulus payments had on the economy doing covid. A new check each months, and the economy would soon be boombing like never before. As people would have money to buy stuff from the economy. But with universal bacis income you also starting to reach the death scream of capitalism, because now people don't need to work to live anymore. Giving an enormous amount of power to the workers. With companies having to increase their benefits to keep people employed, atleast the few jobs that can't be automated. While Space minning, can possible push us towards a post-scarcity society. And than you start eliminating the point of money at all. Of course Capitalism having been taking this lying down either. We see it in the creation of bull----jobs. Where the job themselves generate no value, but that they have money to use in economy is what is importent, entire companies, who don't produce anything but is instead focused on gambling on debt and stocks. And when they make a lossing bet, the goverment will bail them out with tax money. The inflated importances put into the stocksmarket, it's deregulation in the 70's and 80's, that still !@#$ the global economy. So it keep going up, even when the rest of economcy seems to be collapsing. And payouts to investors is put before a companies long term growth. When bonds that kept produtives saleries connected was ripped apart, globalization moving jobs abroad in gambles of short term cost servings, to be abused by China in the long term. While serving the connection a company used to have with their local communities. Continuously reducting of workhours, was put on hold, with slaries stagnating, with every oppitunity used to squeeze as much short term profit as possible. Capitalism is a great system, when it's regulated. if not, then business dosen't mind sacrificing the health and lives of it own workers for profit, buying ressources that use child labour, or posion the local drinking water with polution, or the air you breath, or using literally slaves, or selling weapons and equipement that countries are activilily using it to commit genocide. It wasen't with their good wild that we started having days free from work, the weekend was something workers had to fight for, or workdays that didn't last 12-14 hours. Similar if you want to use capitialism to raise the living standard of the many you need it to be regulated, or atleast allow the workers to form unions to strenghten their position. Else buisness will be looking to squeeze out as much value from your work as possible, capitalism will never in good faith pay someone the full value that their labour is worth. Else there wouldn't be any profit. Regulated capitalism is the best system we tried so far, but when automation take over i do really hope we start switching over to universal basic income, because the other alternatives are worse. But on the other hand, i don't believe pure socialisme is a good system for us right now. the tech for it to work dosen't excist yet. Of course that shouldn't stop countries from pushing towards a model similar to the nordic countries, that does seems to have found the best ways to regulate capitaslime.

Welcome to the trap.

Oh thank god Village, sorry about freaking out so much. Emotional time at the moment, and well us pirates have normally have to deal with fairly consitent raiding nerf since the Purple Spy War, with just a few updates that benefits us, which is often just lessening of a prior nerf. And then when it started to look up, with some good updates for us over the last year, i just read the line: " this will reduce raiding income as the nation's regular income increases, making them less reliant on this feature and better adjusted to the main game as a whole." And well without the prior context it dosen't come of doing us any favours.

Any reason in particularly, for why you pushing your playstyle as the only acceptable way to play the game? Because that what it sounds like, that your group is activilty trying to kill high tier raiding, because you don't play it, and would be more convient for you to not have it around, so you can build up to 3000 infra with the most worry, being a insulted guy on the market, that you undercut. Raiding income is already crippled compared to farming in the higher tiers. The problem should be to make raiding more comparable, not less. To encourge different playstyles, so you can maitain a larger playerbase, and a higher player engagement, and inovation. Discouraging the most active part of casual player base, aren't going to be a benefit to the game.

Happy now? Are you on light mode?

See the full story here: Part 1: Piracy against Journalism [link] Part 2: 6 out of 7 captives released [link] Not-so-breaking news: The last Arrgh captive has been released,and Arrgh's war to protect journalistic integrity has now come to a close! You can now all feel safer, Orbis. You're welcome. Here you can see the safe return of Euron Greyjoy to the Borg Collective, Just mere moments before Arrgh captured... the rest of the Collective! A moment later. Our brutally clever plan of sneaking our swords past the metal detectors by making them out of plastic, made it possible to capture the Borg fanclub too, in in the middle of the ransom crisis. Euron was of course set free, but was not allowed to play with waterguns anymore. The rest of Borgs Assisted Loot Liberation Service was now up for ransom. That Borg got around to paying for their freedom some days later. Here is Admiral Ripper napping, surrounded by the things he loves most in this world. We have to thank Borg and the fine people employed at The Observer, for making it possible for Ripper to sleep-in, as he can only get a good night rest when he is weighed down by other people's money. Arrgh!

By not making it your main focus, wars are expensive, many doesn't really realize how expensive. One of the main problems with merc services was that they where extremely underpriced, often even on purpose to try and pull in customers, but even when they try to raise prices they normally don't earn enough to cover for what they would have earned doing other stuff. So in general merc services don't last to long with the exception of Arrgh, that can use it's reputation to pull in customers, instead of offering low prices, and has a better understanding of actually cost. Merc contract isen't always going be a daily thing, and when it is, it often new players trying to hire a merc, while not being able to afford one. So do other stuff, that give you money while you wait between contracts. Second thing is that people have to trust you, which is something Arrgh build heavily on, Arrgh normally demand payment upfront, but if they where to fail the contract or something unexpected happened that prevent the contract being carried out, the client get their money back, while being offered an alternative solution if possible. Arrgh has a rep for being expensive, but trustworty and getting the job done. That is around the 3 point you need to work with, price, trust, and war experience. So i would suggest trying to join a raider alliance, and get some war experience in, try to get some insight into how they run merc services, and not just the direct cost of war, but what you might have earned declaring on another guy, or farmed doing that time.

And you think that will get you some better war names? oh honey, no.

My comment was more a reference to all alliance wars in general, not you know just the globals. That is not to say that white peace has never happened in globals, they have, and even more where it is as close as can be to it. What would be your suggested solution here? And even when there is a victor, it isn't exactly much motivation for keeping people in the ring, with gains being so minimalistic. If we should get some harsher demands we might actually start to get some more interesting globals, and once lasting longer than a month. We should really require a minimum length for a global. A "global" that lasts for barely a week, isen't a war, it is a skirmish. If a promise of bragging rights can help achieve longer and more fun globals, be my guest. We haven't even had a global break the 1 trillion mark since Dial-up, even though Dial-up wasen't the first one to do so. And that is despite the fact the Orbis wealth has more than doubled since then. Another issue is thought if we let the winning side decide the name. Who will actually decide the name? the members of the winning alliances? or just the governments? Will it only be the "big alliances" in the bloc that get to vote? Will it be with Byzantine elections? where the higher-ups decide what names can vote for in the first place, how would names get nominated? What if the allied can't agree on a name? or what if the names chosen a still terrible? We really should plan out the replacement system in more detail before we start to dismantle the old system. Frankly, for most people the issue, seems to be mainly about their preferred name not being chosen. Else most hiccups with the systems should be simply solved by getting more people involved in the nominations and voting, if only something was around to motivate and inform players, oh right it called alliances.

Dosen't most wars end in a white peace? or "white peace" with secret terms.

No the person with the most ships is going to run out of ships before the one with most planes run out of resistance to be beiged. The plane guy have the advance, simply because planes are better at killing ships, then ships are at killing ships. But the deciding factor is likely going be ground, how of much of distraction it going to be. And if causing the most damage, or beiging is the goal of the war?

We don't know how many of Russia's nuclear weapons actually work, or if the amount is accurate. I say it extreme overestimation to believe Russia has that amount of working warheads. Nuclear weapons and their delivery system require expensive and near constant maintenance, with the most importent part, the core of fissile material needs to be replaced every 15 years at least, due to nuclear decay. Now consider the fact that China with 300-350 nuclear weapons has a bigger budget for its nuclear arsenal than Russia, with its close to 6000 nukes, which should raise some eyebrows. The US is spending over 44 billion dollars a year to maintain it stockpile of some 5000 nuclear weapons, and Russia has recently gotten past 8.5 billion. In comparison, the UK is spending 6.8 billion to maintain 225 nuclear weapons. You can well see the issue here, now factor in Russia's extreme corruption issue: "He who doesn't steal, is stealing from his family." One gotta starts to wonder how much of the nuclear budget actually reaches the nuclear weapons, especially as these are weapons that are never meant to be fired, in comparison to more urgent stuff like fuel, ammunition, and entire tanks, that have seemingly gone missing due to corruption. Another issue can be seen in Russia's tanks, Russia liked to brag about having the most tanks in the world, you likely heard the claim of above 20.000 tanks at some point. 12.000 is more frequent these days, but here lies an issue, because that number is still too big. By most generous satellite estimates, Russia's true tank numbers hit closer to 6000. With 3000-4000 in storage. With over 1000 tanks destroyed or captured in Ukraine, it dosen't leave to much left. This makes more sense because it would better explain why Russia has started to deploy units with t-62 in Ukraine, not their puppet states, does they arm with WW2 era weapons, but actually Russian troops. The t-62 were outdated in the 1970s, which Russia has said have fully retired from service in 2008. So what ups with that? beside Russia not wanting to take part in turrent toss competitions anymore? The t-72 is up, Russia has claimed they have 8000 t-72 in storage, with 2000 of them in active service, this was before the war. Now we know Russia has lost atleast 1200 tanks according to Oryx, adding 30% and we reach somewhere around 1600. Russia tank losses still need to be 5 times as big as that, for it to make sense that they pulling t-62 out of storage, if we take Russia words on their own numbers. So we got to the conclusion that Russia has been lying about its tank numbers. The same is hopefully the case for nuclear weapons, else it might be a miracle we hadn't seen any accidental explosions.