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Recap of the Year 2020


Changeup
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January:

As we enter into the New Year, the war soon to be named NPO's Last Time is raging on. GOONS has stomped out any sort of low-tier safe zone for Coalition A, and massive amounts of member attrition combined with the lack of progression on peace terms keep the future of Orbis as a whole bleak. However, on January 6th, this began to change for the better.

A treaty cascade started when micro The Manhattan Cartel declared war on MinesomeMC's alliance The Galactic Empire as a response to Minesome's leaking of important information, and North Point pre-emptively declared war on Brotherhood of the Clouds, a Camelot MDP partner. Treaty cascades ultimately lead to The Commonwealth and their newly formed bloc, along with other Fark-sphere alliances such as The Immortals, The Federation, and Pantheon (among several others), declaring war on Opus Dei, a bloc that consisted of the now defunct GOONS, NPO, and old BK plus Camelot and Guardians of the Galaxy.

These new allies provided a surge of morale and energy to Coalition A. However, a week later, Schrute-sphere and Pantheon peaced out, removing much of the numbers advantage Col. A had just received. It looked as though Opus Dei's stranglehold on Orbis could continue for several more months as January came to a close.

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February, Part 1: The Roqpocalypse

February of 2020 was likely the most impactful month in P&W history. Because of the sheer scale of what happened over those 29 days, I will be splitting my review for February into 2 parts. The first part will focus on the GPWC Cheating Scandal, with the second part focusing on the end of NPO's Last Time war and the aftermath.

Not unlike the start of January a month before, the outlook for the game heading into February 2020 was grim. Although a renewed battle against Opus Dei/IQ had begun in January, a large portion of those who entered or re-entered the war to fight IQ had left under white peace, with only The Commonwealth and her allies remaining alongside the longtime Coalition A members of Chaos Bloc, KETOG Sphere, and The Syndicate. The recent push was in the process of being subdued, and more war seemed likely. 

Then, on February 5, everything changed, and IQ's dominance of game politics began to rapidly unravel. The game admin Alex announced that in exchange for access to illegal copies of Korean Manhwa, over 1000 members of an anime server ran by an NPO gov member created nations and joined the alliance "Guinea Pig Whaling Corp", essentially becoming tax farms for NPO. Over $800M per day was farmed into the game by these nations, and this had been going on for nearly 6 months. Many NPO/GPWC government members received bans following the scandal, including NPO leader Roquentin.

Following these revelations, most of Opus Dei's remaining allies made the decision to leave them and several alliances on that side disbanded. Coalition A made an offering of White Peace to all remaining Coalition B alliances, and many took it, Camelot, Acadia/UPN, and Polaris were among the first to exit the war under white peace. Black Knights and Guardians of the Galaxy announced their disbandment. With such a massive shift in the course of game politics, the future of PW was uncertain, but there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel.

Edited by Changeup
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February, Part 2:

With most of their coalition allies switching sides or peacing out, and core alliances Black Knights and Guardians of the Galaxy disbanding, the sole remaining fighters (aside from 1 or 2 micros) were GOONS/GPA/Bird Weed (who exited the war, but later rejoined) and NPO, who kept chugging along despite the in-game loss of many core gov members. By this point, they were being easily struck down by the combined Coalition A forces, and they were resigned to a guerilla war effort not unlike the one they inflicted on the game just weeks prior.

On February 12, NPO gov member Eric the Red was involved in another cheating scandal, which involved an exploit in the alliance tax rate. They used this to spawn tens of millions of resources. After some of Eric's personal information was accidentally leaked in the announcement, most of NPO deleted their nations.

On February 20, the war was officially declared over by Coalition A. All parties (aka most of the game) signed a 6 month NAP to give some stability and recovery time to the game. Alliances not involved in the NAP included Knights Templar, who officially became a raiding alliance and attacked a large coalition of micro alliances. On February 22, founding leaders of Black Knights re-created BK as a T$ protectorate. Many old BK members returned and several IQ-era BK members told to delete by their leadership also joined. A day later, on February 23, The Golden Horde disbanded after being hit hard during NPO's Last Time. On February 25, Soup Kitchen was reformed as The Enlightenment, which later merged to create Children of the Light.

After many months of permawar, peace had finally arrived in Orbis. There was a great void on the treaty web where IQ had once been, but there were 6 months of relative quiet to come and hopefully fill that void.

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March Following the tumultuous start to 2020, March was a month of relative peace. However, there were dramatic changes to the treaty web, as Orbis prepared for a post-IQ world.

The first was the dissolution of Chaos Bloc. After losing Church of Spaceology a couple months prior to disbandment, the bloc now consisting of The Knights Radiant, Seven Kingdoms, and The Enlightenment (formerly Soup Kitchen) was making its plans to disband for good following the end of NPO's Last Time. TKR and SK kept their MDP, and it persists to this day.

The dissolution of Chaos bloc came with the addition of a new bloc to the game. The Hedge Money bloc was formed on March 6 and originally consisted of The Enlightenment, North Point, Grumpy Old Bastards, and Guardian. Given that two of the alliances involved were former KETOGG-sphere alliances, and the third and fourth alliances had core KETOGG gov members, this bloc was often compared to KETOGG.

Later in the month, another new bloc appeared. Swamp bloc was formed on March 24, consisting of The Immortals, The Fighting Pacifists, The Lost Empire, The Federation, The Ampersand, and Farkistan. At the time of its creation, Swamp was often considered to be a band of misfits, but they have worked to disprove this since. After the creation of Swamp, The Immortals cut their treaty with T$ and TKR, finally splitting the treaty web from the mess it was at the end of the war into the distinct spheres that remained for much of the year.

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April:

April was perhaps the dullest month yet in Orbis, as the game entered the second full month of a 6-month NAP. However, there were still some events that were noteworthy or just downright hilarious.

If there's one thing to distinguish April from the rest of the year, it's the amount of alliances created. The month began with the formation of Error 404, which grew rapidly in member count led by Borg and Basebond. Eclipse was created on April 12 by with-pirate Vein at the helm, and also became a strong and competent mass-member alliance. A day later, Hedge bloc members North Point and The Enlightenment merged to create Children of the Light, an immediate top 15 alliance with an experienced government. All 3 of those alliances have grown into major powers in Orbis. Smaller alliances formed in April include The Stratosphere, GATO (a CyberNations crossover) and Crusaders of the Holy Boogaloo. Nova Corp, formed by former CoS and Valinor members, was created and became an excellent smaller alliance, but later merged into ally Advanced Syndicalist Mechanics.

April also featured two large cheating events. The first was rather comical and featured a micro named Hizu Alliance, which after a rolling by several allliances, a disastrous forums rampage, and pure micro stupidity, ended up getting banned for being a giant multi ring. Although they claimed to be a multinational organizations and iirc threatened to take legal action, nothing more was heard from there. The second was more serious, and involved the sale of P&W money for rl cash. NPO was implicated in this scandal, although they denied involvement and produced logs that partially exonerate them. Moderation action against the primary perpetrator, Elijah Mikaelson, was not taken despite his lack of cooperation during the investigation due to an immunity agreement.

Edited by Changeup
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At the start of May, Politics and War was relatively stagnant. The amount of active nations in the game was rising but still below what it had been a year prior. That changed dramatically when YouTuber Drew Durnil made a video centering on P&W. The video gained nearly 350000 views and roughly 8000 nations were created as a result of it. Although many people immediately went inactive, some were here to stay and gave the game a long lasting and much needed activity boost.

Tensions began to rise during May, as expected during the third month of a 6 month long global NAP. Early in the month, escalating counters and disastrous FA almost caused a war between The Federation and Terminus Est/The Wei. A leak on the forums detailed a dispute between Odin (who was represented by The Commonwealth) and Children of the Light regarding Odin's investment into CotL predecessor North Point and CotL's refusal to repay Odin due to several reasons. Spy slot filling (his third time breaking game rules) led to well-known whale Elijah Mikaelson being banned, even though he avoided a ban during a previous scandal in April.

In addition to the dispute between Odin/TCW and CotL, the new Hedge bloc (particularly CotL) was very active during May. Hedge bloc gained two new members. Former KETOGG alliance Knights Templar ended their time as a paperless raiding alliance when leader Horsecock was replaced by Dension, and joined Hedge. Fast-growing Children of the Light protectorate Error 404 joined the bloc as well. Those bloc members have remained the same to this day. Children of the Light and The Immortals signed an ODP, linking Hedge and Swamp. Finally, former Enlightenment and CotL leader Kevanovia stepped back and was replaced by Keegoz.

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June:

June was easily the slowest month this year, with only few relatively major events taking place.

On June 8th, The Knights Radiant's longtime leader Adrienne resigned, with high gov member Benfro taking over a king of TKR.

A week later, Children of the Light signed Acadia to a protectorate treaty. This turned out to be in advance of Acadia merging into CotL.

Towards the end of the month, some controversial game changes took place. Following an incident with slotfilling, the game admin Alex almost completely removed beige, with the only time players could get beige being when their nations are created. This change was later reversed.

As we headed towards July, a minor war thanks to counter escalation between Swamp bloc and The Coal Mines kicked off, although this later turned into a consistent guerilla warfare effort by TCM that lasted for several weeks.'

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July: (written by Krampus)

As time left on the global NAP got lower and lower, tensions began to rise on Orbis. Swamp's conflict with TCM continued, and TKR and allies attacked Arrgh at the start of the month. Without beige, the victorious sides on both conflicts had no issue sitting on their enemies and preventing them from rebuilding. A skirmish broke out between Children of the Light and The Wei. Error 404 had a tense situation with the Syndicate when t$ attacked a micro alliance suspected by t$ to have ex-GotG government members. It later turned out, that these were ex-VE gov members.

Over in Quacksphere, Leopold von Habsburg stepped down from his executive position as t$ Chief Operations Officer on July 24. 4 days later, on July 28th, Carthago, House Stark and OWR officially formed Nexus Bloc. With this change came a big shift for Carthago when they downgraded their treaty with tCW from an MDoAP to an ODP. This treaty was later cut, a month later.

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August:

War! After 6 months of relative quiet across Orbis, war in all its glory has returned to Orbis. On August 21 just before the daily update, Hedge Money bloc and Swamp Bloc declared war on The Commonwealth and its allies. This was the first major war since the infamous NPO's Last Time, and the general hope across Orbis was that this would be a relatively brief and salt-free war compared to the 9 month slugfest. Thanks to a large numbers advantage, the war was an easy win for Swamp and Hedge. But more importantly, it was free of the toxicity and scandal that had engulfed the previous war. The hope for a brief war also came true, with The Commonwealth and their allies (minus Morningstar) surrendering to the SwampHedge forces after only 10 days.

The infamous meme alliance Terminal Jest, helmed by Partisan, also made a return during August. It attacked Pantheon and United Purple Nations in a chaotic fashion, featuring some of the best forum announcements ever made. In yet another war that occurred during August, The Imperium and Chocolate Castle attacked The Wei in a small but fun war dubbed the "Birthwei Party". The Wei had recently gone paperless and thus had no treaties.

Finally (I seem to be going in reverse) the month began with Acadia merging into Children of the Light. This merge brought former Soup Kitchen gov member and current CotL leader Leftbehind back into CotL, along with another high gov member JD Keller.

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September:

Following a brief war that rocked Orbis but did relatively little damage compared to the previous three global wars, September was another month of peace. The Birthwei Party war also came to a close. The month did bring some important developments, both in alliance affairs and stat-tracking.

The two largest spheres in the game, Quack-sphere (composed of T$, TKR, and allies) and Swamp Bloc (TFP, TI, TLE, T&, Fark, and tFed) both gained new members during September. In Quack, Syndicate protectorates Eclipse and Black Knights (both top 20 alliances) signed MDoAP's with The Syndicate. The Knights Radiant upgraded their treaty with The Imperium, a fast-growing Top 30 alliance, to an MDoAP. Over in Swamp, the bloc added United Socialist Nations (a top 40 alliance) on September 19.

The predecessor to the CTOwned War Stat website was released to the public in early September. This was designed and made by EvilPiggyFooFoo, who sadly left the game that month, and although not a full website, it was a big upgrade over the limited stats mainly from the Locotus bot that we had until that point.

Although September was mostly a peaceful month, it wouldn't be P&W without a little skirmish here or there. Micro Pockyclypse fought Rose in a supposed 110 day war that wound up ending after a short time period, Mythic fought Yarr and was counted by Rose-sphere, and Arrgh had a minor war with The Ampersand. At the end of the day, these were pretty irrelevant wars, especially compared to the surprise conflict coming at the end of next month...

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