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Everyone Expects This


Roquentin
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Guest Curufinwe
12 hours ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

Oh man.

It was not the intent of IQ as a whole to cause change, and this is part of the proof. Anyone who actually had that intent is now gone from IQ's leadership, leaving a core who think, for example, signing another 40 lower tier nations into IQ is a thing that is anything less than lame.

Well the founding leaders of IQ were Aerys, Bezzers, Rache, Roq and myself.  With the exception of Bezzers (who's off in AIM), all four of us are still active in gov and supported the decision to add Lord to IQ.  Drawing a distinction between those who founded IQ and 'the core' isn't really valid here, since both old and new leaders were in agreement on this.

12 hours ago, Felkey said:

Lol, BK fa...

So, award winning? I mean we appreciate the compliment, but it doesn't seem germane to your other points.

12 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Clearly you don't remember because we only attacked the members that hit Zeon and left those that didn't alone.

If even that wasn't the case, it's pretty standard practice to dogpile in wars. Look at Papers Please, Roz Wei recently with SGM/Nuke Bloc/SK (and with Duat and Rose, for that matter). There was also how tTO got dogpiled shortly after we dropped each other. Dogpiles are generally how wars are fought.

All I've really taken from this is KT likes dogpiles (at least when they're not the one being dogpiled).  I don't really feel like this is new information, but unless your argument is that you're upset that our treaties make it harder to dogpile our members (in which case, sorry I guess), I really don't see how our decision to add a new member impacts KT's FA one way or the other.

12 hours ago, Hope said:

lmao talk once you add an alliance to IQ that leads to something 

it’s almost like SK and KT are taking a risk by trying to form a minisphere who’d of thought

What's the risk that has been taken exactly?  KT's participation in the new sphere gets them new allies to replace the ones they lost following the Pantheon gaffe (*waves at Thalmor*) and tTO going defunct, while SK has been a fairly peripheral member of IQ's sphere following their decision to make a separate peace in Tiers, so neither has really sacrificed much by trying to do their own thing.  Unless you're suggesting the quality of their partners is risky (which seems unfair to BoC 2.0 and Durm, since neither has done much to prove themselves one way or the other yet)?

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Guest Curufinwe
12 hours ago, Lordship said:

I mean we can pull up statistics that demonstrate it is unipolar at this point, and with the increase of cancellations, isn’t an interesting, dynamic world not the very thing you tried to create? I’m a bit confused as to why you’d continue in the opposite direction of this. And uhh, you guys spent the whole year denouncing syndisphere after you guys left, and even still when alliances disbanded and went paperless, so I’m not sure that’s true 

Actually, in international relations the definition of unipolarity is a system structure where one actor is so strong that every other actor in the system, if they were to work together, would be unable to defeat it. Orbis had arguably reached that point (if you consider Syndi-OO a single actor) by March 2017, at which point it transitioned to bipolarity (with the formation of IQ) and now (depending on your opinion regarding the EMC split) to multipolarity, since there are several sizeable groupings (TKR and friends, Rose and friends, Nuke bloc, KT's bloc and IQ) of considerable strength present in the system.  Even if you could produce stats that indicate that IQ was the single biggest bloc (which is itself debatable since counting up formal ties doesn't take into account any paperless arrangements that may exist between members of other blocs), it doesn't follow that the system is unipolar, since the AAs that made up EMC constitute a larger chunk of score than IQs members and IQ certainly doesn't hold a hegemonic position over Orbis in the manner that Syndi-OO did following Silent.

Edited by Curufinwe
Apologies for the double post
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3 hours ago, Curufinwe said:

and now (depending on your opinion regarding the EMC split) to multipolarity, since there are several sizeable groupings (TKR and friends, Rose and friends, Nuke bloc, KT's bloc and IQ) of considerable strength present in the system.

Current status of the treaty web with alliances over 10k score, not 100% perfect but gives an idea

IQ and friends: NPO, BK, Zodiac, Cornerstone, Polaris, GotG, Acadia, Lordran, Cerberus, OWR, UPN, Dragonstone, ZahAharon, TCI, ODN, AO, Typhon, Wildfire, Hate Machine

932 nations, 1382k total score, 9961 cities

EMC: TKR, Pantheon, Guardian, TCW, TFP, Northern Realms, Entente

428 nations, 940k score, 5500 cities

Nuke Bloc: Fark, Alpha, NK, Spanish Armada, WTF, Nuclear Legion, Stratagem

109 nations, 423k score, 2017 cities

Rose and Bad Company: Rose, Oblivion, CKD, Vox Populi, Drumstrang, Ragnarok, HS, RUM, R&R, DB, Horsemen

312 nations, 634k score, 3965 cities

Templars and SK: KT, ET, SK, AIM, Yarr, Zeon, UNA, Avalanche

214 nations, 431 score, 2845 cities

What I see is an hegemoney

Edited by Micchan
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Guest Karl VII
15 hours ago, Buorhann said:

I mean, it's Leo.  BK's FA is basically "Ally with NPO and Friends then ayylmao around."

Only person you'll get any kind of decent convo with is Curu.  Rest are too paranoid or speculative.

Paranoid? How would you know? Are you spying on us?

*peeks through the shutters while panicing*

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Ok @Sketchy, now do a graph on alliances that are actually relevant and have participated in past conflicts.

(You know, the ones that will actually do something in the game other than just being another name on a list of alliances)

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11 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Ok @Sketchy, now do a graph on alliances that are actually relevant and have participated in past conflicts.

(You know, the ones that will actually do something in the game other than just being another name on a list of alliances)

That is completely subjective so gimme a list or some shit lmfao.

XLL3z4T.gif

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Guest Curufinwe
1 hour ago, Micchan said:

Current status of the treaty web with alliances over 10k score, not 100% perfect but gives an idea

IQ and friends: NPO, BK, Zodiac, Cornerstone, Polaris, GotG, Acadia, Lordran, Cerberus, OWR, UPN, Dragonstone, ZahAharon, TCI, ODN, AO, Typhon, Wildfire, Hate Machine

932 nations, 1382k total score, 9961 cities

EMC: TKR, Pantheon, Guardian, TCW, TFP, Northern Realms, Entente

428 nations, 940k score, 5500 cities

Nuke Bloc: Fark, Alpha, NK, Spanish Armada, WTF, Nuclear Legion, Stratagem

109 nations, 423k score, 2017 cities

Rose and Bad Company: Rose, Oblivion, CKD, Vox Populi, Drumstrang, Ragnarok, HS, RUM, R&R, DB, Horsemen

312 nations, 634k score, 3965 cities

Templars and SK: KT, ET, SK, AIM, Yarr, Zeon, UNA, Avalanche

214 nations, 431 score, 2845 cities

What I see is an hegemoney

At first glance, you're missing paperless (former) EMC AAs like tS, TC, CF and GoB, but even excepting that your own numbers have 1382k and 9961 cities for IQ versus 2428k and 14327 cities for the non IQ AAs you've cited (that doesn't count AAs not affiliated with either side, which would drive up non EMC numbers further).  That's a significant disparity in favour of non EMC, which doesn't really fit the argument you're trying to make for an IQ hegemoney exercising uncontested dominance over Orbis.

3 hours ago, Partisan said:

Curu. Your argument sucks and you should consider rewriting it.

 

By your own logic, Syndisphere has at no point reached a level of control high enough for it to push the political dynamic into one of unipolarity. Paracov has in all its wars vs syndisphere throughou its rivalry had a realistic chance of winning, but failed to deliver on one major component or another. Factors such as underachievement on one side (or overachievement on another side), third parties being swayed or external circumstances influencing a war's outcome do not translate to a revision of the prewar balance of power: That balance at most points, was tipped in paracov's favor, and around the end was even. Opposition merely failed to capitalize.

Circling back to your logic however: The above only takes into account the actual warring parties. If we follow your argument and include neutrals and fringe players ("The rest of the game") in our assessment of whether or not the world is unipolar, we can assert that it indeed...was not. Why?

Had the entire world banded together to fight syndisphere in any of the wars from proy to silent and after... Syndi would have lost. The tiering of syndisphere was not cohesive enough, and its numbers were too low in each individual tier. Syndisphere might have held out in the top tier for a while, but losing the oher tiers means eventually being dragged down. That's how the mechanics work.

Ergo, by your logic... the game was not unipolar and your narrative is founded in quicksand.

Now flipping this logic to the current situation: IQ is quickly approaching or might already have approached the point where it can no longer be contested mechanically, even if the game world bands together. While IQ lacks a history of success and its raw score is less than impressive, the heavy low tier concentration allows IQ to capitalize on the game's score mechanics to render it invincible. Matter of fact- BK's components can technically even underachieve and come away with a W by virtue of a lack of opposition in its chosen tier.

I'd daresay that the game at this moment, using your deductions.... is more unipolar than its ever been, with a far less interesting history of rivalries and war bringing it to that state.

Someone should do the actual math on my assertion. But i'm fairly sure I have the right ballpark.

So Curu (and roq).... if your goal was indeed to be an alternative to unipolarity, you have failed spectacularly. If this was a powermove with an OOC-grounded narrative to win the game ("WE'RE MAKING THE GAME GREAT AGAIN"), then it was your good right and well... up to the game to react. But drop the pretense. That's all Partipoo asks.

 

Well Partisan, here's the stats from Feb 15th 2017, a month before the IQ split.

https://bkpw.net/stats.php?f=2017-02-15&t=2017-02-15

As you can see, the figures for then core Syndi-OO (TKR, Pantheon, BK, tS, Mensa, CS, TCW, Rose, tTO, BoC, Chola, Guardian, CF, GoB, TC, CKD) represent 1429k score and 9906 cities (I'm excepting AAs like OWR and Rag that could conceivably be argued to be in Syndi-OO's sphere, as well as smaller protectorates like the Fed and KT, but I think you can see where I'm going with this) versus 627k score and 4809 cities for former Paracov AAs (VE, NPO, Acadia, SK, UPN, Polaris, Lord, HBE, NW - I'm also excepting smaller AAs, but I don't think I'm missing anyone important [correct me if I'm wrong]).  Other blocs at the time included Nuke bloc (which was neutral at the time) and Spectrum (which was tied to Syndi-OO), as well as the former TEst AAs (protected by KT for Pantheon, BK and others for CKD and allied to BoC for WU).  So while you can reasonably claim that bipolarity existed up to Silent, it's harder to make the case that Syndi-OO was less dominant than IQ is now based on the numbers.  In fact, it's not difficult to argue that Syndi-OO had reached a unipolar position following Silent and then the dissolution of the Paperless sphere (at least in terms of organised opposition, which basically consisted of Paracov at that point), which certainly isn't the power distribution that IQ faces today, as Micchan's numbers indicate above.

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I mean, it took some time to even be argued that Syndi-OO achieved unipolarity.  That was a work over the course of -  what, 3 years almost?  Compared to now  (Less than a year with IQ, by default).

 

Just happens when people move, shift allegiances, or disband - a massive power vacuum.

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3 minutes ago, Curufinwe said:

At first glance, you're missing paperless (former) EMC AAs like tS, TC, CF and GoB, but even excepting that your own numbers have 1382k and 9961 cities for IQ versus 2428k and 14327 cities for the non IQ AAs you've cited (that doesn't count AAs not affiliated with either side, which would drive up non EMC numbers further).  That's a significant disparity in favour of non EMC, which doesn't really fit the argument you're trying to make for an IQ hegemoney exercising uncontested dominance over Orbis.

Well Partisan, here's the stats from Feb 15th 2017, a month before the IQ split.

https://bkpw.net/stats.php?f=2017-02-15&t=2017-02-15

As you can see, the figures for then core Syndi-OO (TKR, Pantheon, BK, tS, Mensa, CS, TCW, Rose, tTO, BoC, Chola, Guardian, CF, GoB, TC, CKD) represent 1429k score and 9906 cities (I'm excepting AAs like OWR and Rag that could conceivably be argued to be in Syndi-OO's sphere, as well as smaller protectorates like the Fed and KT, but I think you can see where I'm going with this) versus 627k score and 4809 cities for former Paracov AAs (VE, NPO, Acadia, SK, UPN, Polaris, Lord, HBE, NW - I'm also excepting smaller AAs, but I don't think I'm missing anyone important [correct me if I'm wrong]).  Other blocs at the time included Nuke bloc (which was neutral at the time) and Spectrum (which was tied to Syndi-OO), as well as the former TEst AAs (protected by KT for Pantheon, BK and others for CKD and allied to BoC for WU).  So while you can reasonably claim that bipolarity existed up to Silent, it's harder to make the case that Syndi-OO was less dominant than IQ is now based on the numbers.  In fact, it's not difficult to argue that Syndi-OO had reached a unipolar position following Silent and then the dissolution of the Paperless sphere (at least in terms of organised opposition, which basically consisted of Paracov at that point), which certainly isn't the power distribution that IQ faces today, as Micchan's numbers indicate above.

Right. You created a sketch of a bipolar dynamic in that graph. That's not what we're discussing though. You claimed unipolarity existed. It did not:

- CKD was not affiliated with syndisphere (and would sooner be counted with paracov at the time)

- The alliances you left out (such as nuke bloc, former TEst AAs etc. etc.) all fall under "non-syndisphere". Again. Your logic, not mine.

- I'd like to see another sketch of that period, featuring *all* AAs, divided into "Syndisphere" and "non-syndisphere". Feel free to add alternative sketches if you feel they strengthen your own point.

- Lastly: You're using raw score and cities. The entire point of IQ's fundamental strategy is to disregard raw score and concentrate/lock down an entire tier. IQ at the moment, by virtue of its concentrated tier distribition is -at least on paper- far more dominant than syndisphere ever was. And again, i'm not arguing your right to make such moves. But i'm definitely calling out your BS narrative. ;)

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os9LcJK.gif

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3 hours ago, Partisan said:

Curu. Your argument sucks and you should consider rewriting it.

 

By your own logic, Syndisphere has at no point reached a level of control high enough for it to push the political dynamic into one of unipolarity. Paracov has in all its wars vs syndisphere throughou its rivalry had a realistic chance of winning, but failed to deliver on one major component or another. Factors such as underachievement on one side (or overachievement on another side), third parties being swayed or external circumstances influencing a war's outcome do not translate to a revision of the prewar balance of power: That balance at most points, was tipped in paracov's favor, and around the end was even. Opposition merely failed to capitalize.

Circling back to your logic however: The above only takes into account the actual warring parties. If we follow your argument and include neutrals and fringe players ("The rest of the game") in our assessment of whether or not the world is unipolar, we can assert that it indeed...was not. Why?

Had the entire world banded together to fight syndisphere in any of the wars from proy to silent and after... Syndi would have lost. The tiering of syndisphere was not cohesive enough, and its numbers were too low in each individual tier. Syndisphere might have held out in the top tier for a while, but losing the oher tiers means eventually being dragged down. That's how the mechanics work.

Ergo, by your logic... the game was not unipolar and your narrative is founded in quicksand.

Now flipping this logic to the current situation: IQ is quickly approaching or might already have approached the point where it can no longer be contested mechanically, even if the game world bands together. While IQ lacks a history of success and its raw score is less than impressive, the heavy low tier concentration allows IQ to capitalize on the game's score mechanics to render it invincible. Matter of fact- BK's components can technically even underachieve and come away with a W by virtue of a lack of opposition in its chosen tier.

I'd daresay that the game at this moment, using your deductions.... is more unipolar than its ever been, with a far less interesting history of rivalries and war bringing it to that state.

Someone should do the actual math on my assertion. But i'm fairly sure I have the right ballpark.

So Curu (and roq).... if your goal was indeed to be an alternative to unipolarity, you have failed spectacularly. If this was a powermove with an OOC-grounded narrative to win the game ("WE'RE MAKING THE GAME GREAT AGAIN"), then it was your good right and well... up to the game to react. But drop the pretense. That's all Partipoo asks.

 

If third parties are more likely to sway to one side rather than another, then it doesn't mean the other side had an edge aside from a purely academic sense between formal groupings. It's good that non-statistical factor like performance are taken into account as there's been a divide for a while. Curu's argument isn't that it had always been unipolar, but rather that it had become unipolar by February 2017. Between Silent and February 2017, even if everyone else had banded together, it wouldn't have been enough especially when one of the biggest constitutent alliances of Paracov had become aligned to Syndisphere and more previously unaligned alliances shifted allegiance to tS/OO.

The arguments about IQ have mainly been about it having an advantage in a specific range. A specific range doesn't guarantee overall supremacy nor the ability to project especially given the anti-IQ climate. In fact, many on this forum are typically dismissive of IQ.  Many have left IQ alliances for EMC or others not tied to IQ since IQ alliances were unable to offer the level of security/prospects they desired. Most people don't really take much stock in it. A low tier doesn't mean the world when a lot of people are getting higher and higher up and less likely to be impacted by war and make money. Unipolarity implies overall supremacy not just in a specific range. In the previous unipolar periods, people gravitated to the unipole. There is no such phenomenon here and it's mainly just been retention of alliances. IQ having a tier as a redoubt doesn't mean its projection capacity is equivalent to Syndisphere which ended up winning every tier. I wouldn't say the point of IQ's strategy is just to concentrate one tier, but rather it is the best option since there are no would-be upper tier backers for anything else and IQ members who are bigger often get raided regardless of activity.

The goal, in part, was to end the previous unipolarity and change the trend of some alliances winning every war/joining one side to be the equivalent of pressing the easy button. By then, it had become obvious who would be more likely to win.  I don't mean on paper favorites but by that point, everyone who had historically won and perfomed better. Due to the war mechanics, a smaller grouping can beat a bigger one since the thing is once people are zero miled, they're often down for the count. People didn't need them to have a bunch of numbers to be more worried about facing a Mensa or tS than about facing a VE. People right now feel fairly safe to make their own spheres and they don't actually fear IQ in the slightest. IQ's ties are confined to its base for the most part excluding protectorates which are less likely to intervene in war or are unproven. The other spheres have interconnecting ties still.   We haven't really seen the "split" components drift apart entirely yet.

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29 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Due to the war mechanics, a smaller grouping can beat a bigger one since the thing is once people are zero miled, they're often down for the count. People didn't need them to have a bunch of numbers to be more worried about facing a Mensa or tS than about facing a VE. People right now feel fairly safe to make their own spheres and they don't actually fear IQ in the slightest. IQ's ties are confined to its base for the most part excluding protectorates which are less likely to intervene in war or are unproven. The other spheres have interconnecting ties still.   We haven't really seen the "split" components drift apart entirely yet.

 

The game is dead.

 

FYP

Edited by Buorhann
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Guest Curufinwe
1 hour ago, Partisan said:

Right. You created a sketch of a bipolar dynamic in that graph. That's not what we're discussing though. You claimed unipolarity existed. It did not:

- CKD was not affiliated with syndisphere (and would sooner be counted with paracov at the time)

- The alliances you left out (such as nuke bloc, former TEst AAs etc. etc.) all fall under "non-syndisphere". Again. Your logic, not mine.

- I'd like to see another sketch of that period, featuring *all* AAs, divided into "Syndisphere" and "non-syndisphere". Feel free to add alternative sketches if you feel they strengthen your own point.

- Lastly: You're using raw score and cities. The entire point of IQ's fundamental strategy is to disregard raw score and concentrate/lock down an entire tier. IQ at the moment, by virtue of its concentrated tier distribition is -at least on paper- far more dominant than syndisphere ever was. And again, i'm not arguing your right to make such moves. But i'm definitely calling out your BS narrative. ;)

- Actually CKD was a BK protectorate before the split and was upgraded and participated in Tiers as a BK ally, so I wouldn't conceptualize them as Paracov as much as an ally tied to BK at the time.

- KT was a Pantheon protectorate and WU was tied to BoC before going defunct and merging into CKD, so I'm not sure those are the best examples to raise.  NK is more debatable since they would soon be signed as a TKR ally, but even moving all of nuke bloc into the non Syndi column doesn't shift the disparity by more than 100 to 150k or so points (16 percent of the listed disparity).  If it helps, I also left out TFP, WTF and Oblivion, all of which either merged with or fought for EMC AAs in Tiers, which suggests that they should probably be in the Syndi-OO column too.  

- If you want to do the math, feel free; I'll provide additional numbers.  However, I don't see how you can reasonably claim that one group outnumbering its only organized rival 2:1 constitutes bipolarity, especially since many of the AAs i didn't bother to include had some tie to Syndi-OO (re: KT).  Going by relative score and city count Syndi-OO enjoyed a much bigger advantage over its rivals than IQ ever has, since the percentage of score present in non IQ AAs is much higher than the percentage in non Syndi-OO at its height.  In addition, your tier based argument regarding IQ AAs doesn't really address the non IQ AAs overwhelming advantage in the 20 plus tier, which has some pretty significant economic and downdec implications these types of debates tend to downplay when discussing our supposed 'dominance.'  It's kind of subjective to say that our relative control of one tier is so much more relevant than everyone else's relative control of every other tier, especially when Tiers demonstrated some of the advantages of controlling the mid to upper tier during a war.

5 minutes ago, Micchan said:

25688312e4d42abd8d2b68cd6b6eabbe28ac05c2

TKR is going to shoot Pantheon?  Smith must be really pissed about his cat.

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4 hours ago, Micchan said:

Templars and SK: KT, ET, SK, AIM, Yarr, Zeon, UNA, Avalanche

214 nations, 431 score, 2845 cities

o-oh...

  • Upvote 1

"YOU ALL BOUGHT IT! YOU ALL BOUGHT IT, HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER! YOU ALL BOUGHT IT! EVEN MY FAMILY - EVEN MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY BOUGHT IT!"

image.png.fe2319f8af6b9ffb33486c0f39b5f7b9.png

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I just wanted to use my monthly post to come out and publically say that this is !@#$ing retarded.

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[22:37:51] <&Yosodog> Problem is, everyone is too busy deciding which top gun character they are that no decision has been made

 

BK in a nutshell

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1, and they have 0 "wins".

Not quite sure why that's brought up.  Not sure why people are worried about IQ honestly.  They're capable of being beaten.  Sure, they have the strongest unity and competence so far in the current time, but that's not necessarily saying much.

The other alliances, if they feel threatened, just need to step it up and work on something.

 

It's one thing to make an alliance or a sphere, it's a completely different thing to work on competence and drive.  Every war we've been in, we've seen players just give up once they got zeroed out, or bail from their alliances.  Mostly because the communities in those alliances aren't strong at all.  People just create, recruit, and don't do shit further beyond.  Why do you think Arrgh is still around despite all the roflstomps they've received, for example?

Of course, is Roq a hypocrite from some of his past statements?  Sure, but the sphere they've developed is literally following the same shit that Syndisphere and previous other Blocs/Spheres did.  This isn't new.  People love to feel wanted, and they love success.

Edited by Buorhann
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