Jump to content

[RON Exclusive] Politics are dead!


Director Nyus
 Share

Recommended Posts

My time as a micro leader was some of the most fun I had in the game besides being a pirate. We actually fought wars. One of my favorites was a war of opportunity on TO’s prot while they were stuck in a global. Also maybe bullying Alan and Greene bc why Not?. Things like that are way more fun for everyone. Also helps to let people with grudges actually fight them out instead of them just festering till the end of time

Your fav goth

RIE 6.5 Flag mini.png

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Emperor Adam said:

I mentioned this in RON, but to restate it here t$ had actually reached out to ASM with a treaty idea.

That said - I'm not expecting overnight changes and it wouldn't be fair to do so. I am, with as much capacity as I can as a well-known player that's nothing more than a raider currently, reaching out a hand and encouraging everyone else to do the same. I've openly done the same for both UPN and Camelot as well. The game needs more active alliances in the political scheme. The game needs it's older alliances to get involved again. 

Take the time you need, but I anxiously await ASM's return.

It's okay, I'm awake now, and that means I'll keep having barely-tethered-to-reality delusions of grandeur again.

 

That's how my micro days I were, I see people talking about it down there, it was fun down there. You can ask aiya, she's the only one whose really around publicly that'll remember, it was kinda a monster of the week sort of thing? Except, we were the monsters! And everyone else was wondering whose village we were going to sack!

No really though, we ended up militarizing and blitzing some micro on an average of probably once every 10 days or so. I had this weird idea in my head that by "proving my superiority" I could get them to merge? I had alot of trouble recruiting for a while on account of not having a bot, made sense to me. Didn't work. Not even once. What it did do was kill approximately 18 micros up until we entered NPOLT (after being couped and robbed, and funded WC by rose lol), blitzing Order of the Fallen Angels that was bloated to like 4x our score and 5x the member count, and.... Did what we did to micros, slaughtered them.

 

After kill 19, just like that, basically every random micro, merge of micros, and new ones I'd not even had the opportunity to fight but had a gov or two who had fought me and heard about the past from their allies formed their own little horde coalition to join IQs side! Just to attack me, they had no horse in the race with anyone else. 

And.... Bless their hearts, but even nearly 200 vs 25 they still didn't succeed. They hadn't quite figured out war mechanics yet so I played defensive and used down declares to break up the blitzes until BK showed up. Own little micro version of Karma going on, except unlike the CN karma they weren't winning, lol.

 

But see all of that, was great fun, it was just constant chaos and changing landscape. Mind you NPOLT began in like what, June? And I started trying to be Queen of the Micros on my birthday, December 17, 2018. 

Was barely 6-7 months, of nothing but me and for some god forsaken reason 25 or so idiots, most of whom I actually recruited and had to train, that still followed me for reasons we'll never know, just parading around the countryside razing villages like angry vikings for a totally ridiculous quest that was never going to happen. 

Anyone reading this is ever bored and wants to quit, delete your nation and reroll into a micro. It'll be total chaos, but thats the fun part. 

 

With a different world and a different timeline, it really could've been a micro karma war. Someone bored in a macro who hated me or just wanted to see chaos could've helped them build a coalition and draw up their CB with the excessive evidence they had, and handle the eventual leak that would result in a fully militarized confrontation. I could see an alternate reality mhearl or a this reality Abbas going "weeelllllll you kinda made your bed here". 

And then if it made its way to the forums? Dinner and a show for everyone! Be too busy laughing to tell everyone to disband.

  • Thanks 1
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im a relatively new player who got into this game approximately a year and a half ago and I see this forum thread so interesting that I decided to have my first forum post other than Counting with others.

But base on what @Emperor Adam and others have said, it seems to me that Orbis politics, over the course of the last 3-4 years, has grown so mature (if thats the correct wording) that individual nations, espeically those who just picked up this game, has nearly no say in the course of any worthmentioning events. 

The death of roleplay does not come from anywhere but formalisation of politics. This formalisation is exlusive, that means theres no way a new player could strive without sticking to a major alliance, and before their passion to this game cooled into daily farming and chatting with friends on alliance discord servers. 

But this shouldnt mean that this game is dead (it is anyway) without roleplaying as I do see this game potentially having so much more to it. With the incorporation of discord servers and most alliances' communities nowadays, it provides so much better convenience for any players to just visit each other aliances' server; but the reality is the opposite: not much players other than FA visits each other out but merely stay in their own alliance's community. This is a sad phenomenon as I believe such citizen diplomacy is what enables a livelier political environment, new alliances and more hardship for FA to form (@Empiur please work). This deterioration of globalisation into regionalism and bloc diplomacy might, fortunately and hopefully, be redone with communties extending out to each other as the first small step ig. 

Edited by San

IMG_6563_1.jpg.ec112847bd4348f8642fff77b57fab81.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Mayor said:

That Orbis is long gone friend.

Syndicate has also been a major force protecting a lot of these alliances which go against what you say here. I agree more alliances need to be interesting and fight wars, but look at the reality, every time someone wants to start their own independent war the enemy teams up with another bloc. Pretty much every single war even has the exact same rhetoric. And also about CBs, personally I liked Keegozs CB about Oasis+Mys, and the immediate peace and then war against Rose was awesome. Also Hollywood forming and then also immediately attacking Rose was good. I can't remember a Syndicate CB that didn't make me regret reading it though. Maybe that will change in the future.

Your "dig" against us is blatantly false. Since I took over as FA for the Syndicate, my allies have always had broad latitude to set their own FA path. There were plenty of moves my allies have made in the past several months that I could have taken issue with. When CTO decided to sign DPE, I gave that my blessing. When SV wanted to sign GATO, I not only gave it my blessing, but encouraged it. My allies do plenty of their own FA, and are always free to pursue whatever path they think makes sense. As for the only two CB's I have used since I became FA, you're going to criticize mine and not Rose's or Clock's? You are the Syndicate's biggest fan.

1 hour ago, Jgoods45 said:

Everyone seems to be too scared of being seen as a hegemon in this game. Let the inner desire to dominate come through. It'll be more fun. 😁

The issue with this is the current norms of the community. The meta will have to shift in order for any real change to happen. I think nation sims are better when people are willing to take risks, though.

14 hours ago, Azazel said:

Decent WoT, I actually agree that politics have tanked and become almost non-existent over the last few years. However I do believe there are a few main reasons that address this issue.

 

1. The forums have become essentially a announcement board. Until recently nothing political was being discussed. I actually love the forums, it provides a well documented account of activities and peoples PoV at the time. In the current era of news servers discussions are easily lost, this kills any accountability for actors with flaky stances. 

 

2. Shifts in peoples perspectives regarding war being short and ending in WP. I point to this as the main cause. This shift has killed the ability of people to actually be political long term because you are expected to drop grievances immediately. While I do believe no grudge should last forever, I believe some do certainty add to the political game and should run their coarse. In the same aspect I dont think wars should last to long but wars that are to short just dont add to the game either. 

 

2.5 More related to #2 is CBs, Adam covered this really well, it appears having a CB is almost pointless at this point, I really wish we could back track and go back to actually caring about getting a valid CB. 

 

3. There is a general lack in peoples willingness to be "political" publicly. Everything is back door and does not really hit the same way. While it was certainly a shit show, I think having political leaders arguing their positions on radio shows (and forums) in front of members of every sphere really helped shape things. These events may have been minor in the grand scheme of things but these are the only avenues members have to get a glimpse of politics. It got members involved in the overall field, X is mad at X, my alliance doesn't like Y because of Z. 

 

As of late when it comes to wars I find myself and my government, allies ect looking at charts and sphere sizes more than anything. Threats are not because of political events, threats come from what spheres are close in size, because we are also close in size. I believe in the effort to make the game less toxic, we went to far and took away the political part of politics and war

 

Peace Terms: Jesus, yes, these need to come back and ASAP, they added a huge political resource to add to the overall political field. While i still dislike and will never support reps, I do think some (within reason) peace terms should certainly be added. The point of the war is to make your opponent take more losses than your own, so the idea of just letting people off makes no sense to me (on wars with actual CBs). With that said id support terms on wars that are within reason... 

This is a very good and well thought out post, and I agree with many of the points you made, so I am going to piggy back off yours.

#1: The forums weren't always in this bad a state. Before NPOLT, I remember Roquentin whining constantly on the OWF. I think part of the reason people retreated in the first place is because of the bad memories associated with forum posting during NPOLT. However, part of the problem is that we just don't train or expect our members to post on the OWF anymore. Communities have become insular, and with the loss of personal forums, many in this game don't actually know how to make a worthwhile forum post. For that reason specifically, I'd love alliances to make posting on the forums an emphasis again.

#2: Grudges have always created interesting politics across the years and across games. I think it's important that a singular grudge doesn't become the meta game, (Read: tS-Grumpy), but competition is healthy. Shorter wars are something that Grumpy has been a proponent of for a long time, and I do not begrudge them for being so gung ho about the idea, because it is insanely beneficial to the winning party of the war. Speaking on the current war, had both sides opted for the two-week special, it would have essentially left all of Blackwater burned with HW taking minimal damage. I think that if people are willing to wade through the discomfort that comes with war, there is benefit to be had from wars that are around the same length as they were back in 2015-2016. That being said, I think wars longer than a month are basically a thing of the past. No one needs the misery of a ten month slog again.

#3: The interesting thing about CB's, is in both this game and the old game, as time went on, CB's became irrelevant. In this game, you have most people go to war either because they want to roll someone, or see the other group as a threat to the initial party. Back in the heydays of Sphinx, CB's were actually reasonably good. The last CB I think the community could come to a census on validity for was The Last Ride. On the same hand, not every alliance is going to leak their internal government chats, so I do wonder how often a clearly viable CB would come around. That being said, I think there would be some benefit from people taking offense to acts like spying and poaching. I personally wanted to roll the !@#$ out of Space Invaders when Spanky was boasting openly about having spies in eS.

#3: You hit the nail on the head, imo. Nowadays, FA is about six people DM'ing each other separately in order to make politics go. I think Morf's radio show is the best thing to happen to politics in a long time, however. The concept of having decision makers all in a public setting openly talking about the issues of our day in the open has been an incredibly welcome change. It also helps give your average player a basic FA education. Many newer players don't grasp the intricacies of FA, and unlike in-game systems, there's not really a tutorial for newer players to come to grips with the game of FA. I've always been a fan of the idea that one of the better ways to learn is to do, rather than show, but giving players a peek behind the curtain of secrecy is highly beneficial.

#4: There was once a professional football coach who said something along the lines of "statistics are for losers." I don't agree 100% with that notion, but I do think there's some truth to it. Much of the time, we're hiding behind spreadsheets and charts, trying to make decisions off of data. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but we've lost some of the heart in this game too. There's not many alliances in this game who are willing to overlook the numbers and just do what they want to do. It's actually the thing I think that HoF and formerly KT adds to this game.

#5: Peace terms was another casualty of NPOLT. Speaking honestly, I wanted to include joke terms in our peace deal with HW in Brawly, but the idea was rejected by my sphere/coalition-mates. They thought that even joke terms were a step too far. When peace gets done between HW-BW, it is my hope that they offer a similar deal to what was offered to them in Brawly, but that's ultimately up to them. Moving forward, I think people have to be willing to re-think the community norm that says peace has to always be AoD or White Peace.

  • Upvote 4

Former Imperial Officer of Internal Affairs and Emperor of the New Pacific Order, Founder of the Syndicate, Current Chief Global Strategist of the Syndicate.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/11/2022 at 12:51 AM, Emperor Adam said:

In the current era, we have a set of major groups (Blackwater, Mile High Club, Hollywood, and Clock), all "led" by a single person/alliance publicly. These small groups of people take the brunt of the responsibility in pushing politics, as in many of the spheres, the other alliances partake almost exclusively intrasphere. The benefits are fairly obvious: We have multi-polarity. It's wonderful and a great breath of air. But there's significant downsides: The roleplay is... almost non-existent. CBs are weak, or not even CBs at all. Many wars recently are fought with the CB being military meta (tiering, consolidation, etc) with there being no lasting negative effects post-war (will expand later). Wars feel empty, and the OWF is a ghost-town outside of the aforementioned leads.

We're trying to build something a little different with the new HM.

We don't want any single alliance in the sphere to be seen as the leader or to call the shots. Naturally you are going to have alliances be stronger in certain areas than others (IE one can have a really strong FA dept, while another can be really strong in milcom - I'd call these "Anchors", but that's very different from being a leader). Moving away from having de-facto bloc leaders and having more close cooperation vs instruction can be helpful.
Having a single "leader" can cause frustration within a bloc. If you have alliances that don't feel they're being listened to or don't feel empowered to speak up within a bloc you're not going to work as effectively as a team as you should be able to.

Yes we are the smallest bloc, and we have a long way to go to be a sizable force in the game, but we're working on it.

On 2/11/2022 at 12:51 AM, Emperor Adam said:

Let's get a little more in depth about CBs. In the past, roleplay (and scheming) were a lot more prevalent. This lead to wars based on FA actions, with more political intrigue. CBs currently are just... weak. Indicting myself in this as well, war viability seems to be more based on the numbers rather than the offense. There's a big focus on only going into wars that are numerically favorable, which stalls and hurts the overall politics of the game.

I'd agree creative CBs need to come back. If everyone treats the game as a spreadsheet and war reasons don't add anything other than "Big alliance bad" the life is going to be sucked out of the game. Roleplay and IC character posts too. I'd love to see individual AAs to post more often rather than what seems to be the usual whole-bloc press release (half of which are completely dry and read like something out of a newspaper). Alliances have their own brands and own characters - their own legacies, and as a community we should be putting these to good use.

In terms of Minispheres vs bipolar relations, I'd say we absolutely need to avoid going back to two sides. The game needs as an absolute minimum three spheres (not blocs, we should make the distinction here), and we should really be at 4+ for most of the time. IMO 1v1 hits between blocs is boring. There should be some degree of unpredictability on who will work with who, but these should be temporary agreements that become null and void at the end of the wars. I don't view consolidation itself as this terrible thing never to be repeated - the number of standalone blocs should grow and shrink with time as long as it is kept within reason.

I'm against no peace terms and no naps at all costs being a thing. These should be there, but there needs to be a consensus of what is deemed sensible, and what is deemed toxic. Meme terms should also be a thing. The same goes with NAPs, I don't think they should be de-facto banned, but should have a consensus on what is an absolute maximum length (Six month naps cannot be a thing again, but a short NAP period can provide a degree of stability)

  • Upvote 3

Untitled.png.a5280e76db3e7bedecea0a5e4d7b7daf.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/11/2022 at 8:51 AM, Emperor Adam said:

In the alliance unit era, politics were very fluid and at times, unpredictable. In this era, CBs and roleplay were king. Justification for every action had to be there and ready to be defended lest you bring unwanted attention to hostile actions. In this era, we had relatively common shifts in relations, as alliances were expected to have relations with other alliances on a more personal level. This lead to leaders being proactive in politics - making their intentions clear, making themselves known, and above all, being ready to defend any actions they felt like taking. This added a level of intrigue to the game with FA leaders being public faces of their own alliances, being known by the community, and being held responsible for their actions. The main downside to this that I can see is the skill gap. Some people with proper experience, be it PnW, IRL, or other games, could run circles around newer blood. Another potential downside is that alliances were less likely to see off-the-cusp events happen, such as betrayals, as leaders were held individually responsible for their actions and many didn't care to play the villain, which oft lead to a more bipolar political landscape.

I wouldn't call it unpredictable. The bipolar era was predictable, that's why we moved away from it.

The game has always had a handful of alliances do most of the FA in the game. It hasn't ever changed. The only difference now is that instead of being on 2 sides they are now split between multiple spheres. I'd actually argue we somewhat have more political players now than before but the competency has decreased.

 

On 2/11/2022 at 8:51 AM, Emperor Adam said:

In the current era, we have a set of major groups (Blackwater, Mile High Club, Hollywood, and Clock), all "led" by a single person/alliance publicly. These small groups of people take the brunt of the responsibility in pushing politics, as in many of the spheres, the other alliances partake almost exclusively intrasphere. The benefits are fairly obvious: We have multi-polarity. It's wonderful and a great breath of air. But there's significant downsides: The roleplay is... almost non-existent. CBs are weak, or not even CBs at all. Many wars recently are fought with the CB being military meta (tiering, consolidation, etc) with there being no lasting negative effects post-war (will expand later). Wars feel empty, and the OWF is a ghost-town outside of the aforementioned leads. 

The bipolar era we were in before NPOLT was controlled by a few alliances. t$ controlled their side for a bit with the aid of Mensa/TKR. IQ controlled their side through NPO and BK. Sure there were more faces but these spheres easily had 10+ alliances in them so if anything it was actually MORE sphere based. Before the bi-polar era we were more or less like we were now just with less alliances in the game overall.

 

On 2/11/2022 at 8:51 AM, Emperor Adam said:

But there's significant downsides: The roleplay is... almost non-existent. CBs are weak, or not even CBs at all. Many wars recently are fought with the CB being military meta (tiering, consolidation, etc) with there being no lasting negative effects post-war (will expand later). Wars feel empty, and the OWF is a ghost-town outside of the aforementioned leads. 

Let's get a little more in depth about CBs. In the past, roleplay (and scheming) were a lot more prevalent. This lead to wars based on FA actions, with more political intrigue. CBs currently are just... weak. Indicting myself in this as well, war viability seems to be more based on the numbers rather than the offense. There's a big focus on only going into wars that are numerically favorable, which stalls and hurts the overall politics of the game. 

CBs have been weak for some time because people figured them out...

So here we go, CBs are 80% of the time complete bs. Most people would want to hit others to strategically weaken them in-game whether that be stunt their growth or create disent etc. To do this they would then try to find the most inane reason to go to war and pretend like the strategic reasons had nothing to do with it.

Some people were more convincing but over time people got frustrated with the lies. Creating fake CBs actually became more politically harmful than just being honest.

I know for some (odd) reason we're looking back at the past with some rose tinted glasses but the old game was terribly boring. There were less political moves and lot more political bs. There weren't more players in the FA game, just more faces pushing in the same direction.

The forums have been dying imo because the game is recruiting a younger audience now who prefer to use discord over the forums. This has led to a lack of new people filling in on the forums when one of us older players hang up the gloves. Which means characters who do want to RP etc. are decreasing over time. Whether that can be turned around, I guess we'll see.

  • Like 3

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is this magical rose colored glasses world that used to exist that you speak of?  I am trying to remember it, and as seeing I am a day one nation, I don't really remember a time when what the OP described ever existed.

 

Edit: damnit, keegoz beat me to my point.  Sounds like a CB!

 

You guys are nuts if you dont think we are having significantly more, and varied wars than what has ever occurred in the last what is it?  7-8 years the game has been going?

Edited by Sweeeeet Ronny D
  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of things. I'm not entirely sure when you entered this game Adam but as articulated by Keegoz above, the bi-polar era was extremely predictable and stale. Sydnisphere, succeeded by EMC fought NPO on repeat. Essentially we fought, we NAPed and at the end of the NAP we built up and fought again. Rinse and repeat. Eventually we attempted to move away from that stale politics, and a shift started to occur pre-NPOLT but really never came into full fruition until afterwards. 

Politics right now are extremely lively, the game in my opinion was on a very troubling decline just a couple years ago. However, with this new era of multi-polarity, combined with a influx of new, (younger players:/) the game seems to have gotten a second life. With the various spheres in the game right now, no one truly knows what the next war will be and who will be involved. Pre-NPOLT, everyone knew and on what date the next war would break out, it was like clock work. 

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1

Chief Financial Officer of The Syndicate

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

I wouldn't call it unpredictable. The bipolar era was predictable, that's why we moved away from it.

 

 

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

You guys are nuts if you dont think we are having significantly more, and varied wars than what has ever occurred in the last what is it?  7-8 years the game has been going?

 

11 minutes ago, Justin076 said:

 

I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of things.

What are they going to do tonight?

the-same-thing-they-always-do-maintain-t

Listen to J Kell's new single: 

 

About The Author

 An early member of Roz Wei in 2015, J Kell went on to stay within the paperless world of Empyrea before signing with Soup Kitchen while scoring a record deal in 2019. J Kell went on to release multiple Orbis Top 40 hits. In 2020, J Kell took a break from Orbis. He's back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Matt2004 said:

We're trying to build something a little different with the new HM.

We don't want any single alliance in the sphere to be seen as the leader or to call the shots. Naturally you are going to have alliances be stronger in certain areas than others (IE one can have a really strong FA dept, while another can be really strong in milcom - I'd call these "Anchors", but that's very different from being a leader). Moving away from having de-facto bloc leaders and having more close cooperation vs instruction can be helpful.
Having a single "leader" can cause frustration within a bloc. If you have alliances that don't feel they're being listened to or don't feel empowered to speak up within a bloc you're not going to work as effectively as a team as you should be able to.

Yes we are the smallest bloc, and we have a long way to go to be a sizable force in the game, but we're working on it.

*reads text*

*passively sips tea*

*golf claps*

Off topic, but i must commend you on the decision to remain on your own path. I was convinced Mystery INC (Now Haunted Mansion) would split apart and spread across orbis. But look at you! sailing about the edge, small... yes, Outside the big 4 spheres... yes, but i'd say that has its own list of benefits and now that it seems you bottomed out and stabilized you can only really grow from here, internally and otherwise. I cheer you on in hopes that your success will show that equal partnership with 'anchors' as you say will serve as inspiration for other typically non-leader powers.      

6 hours ago, Keegoz said:

The forums have been dying imo because the game is recruiting a younger audience now who prefer to use discord over the forums. This has led to a lack of new people filling in on the forums when one of us older players hang up the gloves. Which means characters who do want to RP etc. are decreasing over time. Whether that can be turned around, I guess we'll see.

A sad truth, i myself have avoided the forums most my career and it something i intend to fix for the future and something i wanna encourage the younger players to do as well.

An issue with discord, particularly the public spats usually in Royal Orbis News gets lost in a sea of randomness unless you were there for it where as on the forums you can go to any topic and read through it without any side conversation within the thread.

A possible solution to the above if the forums truly become a graveyard would be to create a channel regarding most likely a war in say RON where only the diplomats of the spheres can talk in rapid quips or WoT discussion format, whatever fits them. 

of course that should be a last resort ^ the forums serve as a great sorter of events and topics and should remain the discussion place regarding wars, treaties & community health checks like this one.

i've always hated forums for most my career but i see there use and benefit, hope to become a vocal participant now and in the future.     

Hi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, J Kell said:

 

 

What are they going to do tonight?

the-same-thing-they-always-do-maintain-t

If you want to debate why going back to a bipolar world would be beneficial then by all means. Arguing not to go backwards is hardly maintaining the status quo, and quite frankly makes little sense.

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Keegoz said:

I wouldn't call it unpredictable. The bipolar era was predictable, that's why we moved away from it.

 

 

11 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

What is this magical rose colored glasses world that used to exist that you speak of?  I am trying to remember it, and as seeing I am a day one nation, I don't really remember a time when what the OP described ever existed.

 

 

10 hours ago, Justin076 said:

I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of things. I'm not entirely sure when you entered this game Adam but as articulated by Keegoz above, the bi-polar era was extremely predictable and stale.

 

I'll admit said rose-tinted glasses may stem from me having been almost exclusively in micros and KETOGG at the time, where things were very all over the place, at least from my perspective. That said, the takeaway y'all are getting isn't even near the main points I was making. 

 

11 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

You guys are nuts if you dont think we are having significantly more, and varied wars than what has ever occurred in the last what is it?  7-8 years the game has been going?

 

It's a merry-go-round of which major sphere is gonna get hit the next. Right now it's t$'s turn. My bets on Rose being next, though Clock's probably up to bat too providing they don't swing first. 

It's "varied" in the absolute loosest definition. It's like going to a cookout where the cook doesn't season his meat, but has steaks, chicken, lamb, etc laid out. Sure, there's a ton of different options - but none of them taste any good. I think that's an issue both with the CBs being based on a numbers meta and a "well you hit me so I'm hitting you" meta which just feels incredibly uninspired. The main reason for hitting someone right now isn't interesting. It boils down to either a cheap revenge uppercut or a numbers argument/to slow growth down, which are fine as secondary reasons, but not as main ones.

I do think the ever-growing younger playerbase is part of it, as well as burnout from a lot of older players. It's not something that can be fixed overnight, but it's something that can be worked on, whether it be by encouraging the forums, leaders leaning back into the roleplay, or holding people accountable for good CBs one way or another. 

12 hours ago, Matt2004 said:

-snip-

I mentioned this in RON but I'm excited to see where UPN and her allies go and what y'all end up doing. It'll be a nice change of pace seeing y'all back and active in the public eye.

  • Upvote 4
  • Downvote 2

thalmorcommie.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These types of discussions are good for the game and I hope they continue to get attention. Political participation is key to increasing player investment in the game and we should all be looking for ways to maximize that. Alliances should be the primary political unit, there is a reason people join them and not spheres. Economic diversity can be found in most alliances; members are choosing history, culture, and politics when they join.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/12/2022 at 10:04 AM, Emperor Adam said:

I do think the ever-growing younger playerbase is part of it, as well as burnout from a lot of older players. It's not something that can be fixed overnight, but it's something that can be worked on, whether it be by encouraging the forums, leaders leaning back into the roleplay, or holding people accountable for good CBs one way or another. 

There is no such thing as a good CB, it does not exist.  You could have the worlds greatest airtight CB, and the side you hit will still argue that your CB is garbage.  Also hitting people to slow down growth is basically 90% of the reason anyone goes to war, but is generally never mentioned, because game mechanic reasons for war don't make for fun politics. 

What is more interesting? Grumpy attacking tS for revenge, or Grumpy attacking tS because they are concerned about the growing glob on 32-35 city nations continuing to grow unchecked, and want to slow them down, so that Grumpy can retain its security in the upper tier?  (I look forward to this statement eventually being used against me)

Almost every major war is about game mechanics, and knocking someone down so you can jump ahead of them, we just paper over that with politics to keep it more interesting.  Most of the established alliances are smart enough nowadays not to go around giving people reasons to hit them. (except me for some reason)

If you want wacky shenanigans go join a micro and get involved down there where they get into wars for all kinds of weird or fun reasons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

There is no such thing as a good CB, it does not exist.  You could have the worlds greatest airtight CB, and the side you hit will still argue that your CB is garbage.  Also hitting people to slow down growth is basically 90% of the reason anyone goes to war, but is generally never mentioned, because game mechanic reasons for war don't make for fun politics. 

What is more interesting? Grumpy attacking tS for revenge, or Grumpy attacking tS because they are concerned about the growing glob on 32-35 city nations continuing to grow unchecked, and want to slow them down, so that Grumpy can retain its security in the upper tier?  (I look forward to this statement eventually being used against me)

Almost every major war is about game mechanics, and knocking someone down so you can jump ahead of them, we just paper over that with politics to keep it more interesting.  Most of the established alliances are smart enough nowadays not to go around giving people reasons to hit them. (except me for some reason)

If you want wacky shenanigans go join a micro and get involved down there where they get into wars for all kinds of weird or fun reasons.

See! Ronny is trying to strangle the game with his locked down top tier!

 

(Happy to oblige hehe)

  • Downvote 1

 

os9LcJK.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/11/2022 at 11:56 PM, J Kell said:

 

 

What are they going to do tonight?

the-same-thing-they-always-do-maintain-t

Yes you are damn right we are, a bunch of us put years of effort to get to where we are right now. (this was not a quick change to get to where we are, it took YEARS and a portion of the game quitting to do)  You want to mix up the meta, good luck, you can now spend years of effort getting into a leadership position, and lobbying the vast majority of leadership in the game to agree with you and adopt whatever changes you want to make.

  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the Guidelines of the game and community.