My experience with the Sphere meta

[Alastor]

I think I'm going crazy when I say this but maybe Partisan was right.

A little background, before NPOLT (about 4-5 years ago!), this game was mostly divided into 2-3 major spheres of influence. This is not to say these spheres were uniform in nature, it was a chaotic affair trying to organize dozens of alliances in one direction and typically it wasn't governed as spheres are now with a centralized leadership. You had competing interests in each sphere, just as the spheres competed with each other.

The idea of many different spheres was novel, it was even viewed by many as a fantasy. "Minispheres" as it used to be called. The idea had iterations upon iterations until it finally came into its current form: We now have a handful of medium-sized spheres, some bigger or smaller, and generally speaking they all revolve around a central figurehead alliance (or two). Many of us thought that formally dividing the major powers from each other and culturally dividing their interests would lead to dynamic and interesting politics as opposed to the sometimes-repetitive nature of bipolarity.

We, as a community, have harshly enforced this new status quo: Teaming up to attack spheres that showed signs of excessive collaboration or "paperless treaties." A lot of casus belli from the last few years have been regarding the size or tiering of various spheres, or whether someone has sat out of too many wars while the other spheres burned each other. In a way, it has created a more dynamic political environment. Something akin to musical chairs.

So how was Partisan potentially right? The sphere system seems to lend itself more to the uplifting and amplifying of any given "major power" than to the rest. Even in situations when a sphere or bloc truly are co-equal and make mutual decisions, the political scene is gridlocked unless your "shot caller" is directly involved. This is enforced both by the other sphere leaders, who will sometimes stonewall political discussions unless you're with a major power -- and by the sphere followers, many who will defer to their sphere leader as the only decision maker in the bloc.

I'm calling it the vassalization of alliances many of whom are chained to their "master" alliances for years at a time without ever having the chance to start their own machinations or pursue their own agenda, if they have an agenda at all. Vassals, lapdogs, servile alliances have always existed in any meta but the sphere meta seems particularly harsh in ensuring that you must follow the leader, no matter what. There is no option other than to choose another leader to follow.

I will also point out that the cultural enforcement of the sphere system has begun to blur over time. Lingering cross-sphere ties are seemingly present everywhere with unwritten rules governing the true state of these ties: Are they going to be honored? Are they going to be enforced? Maybe, is the answer. You'd have to ask and it depends on the day. There is also the issue of new spheres and their inability to form a competitive bloc despite they themselves being a strong central force that might otherwise exert a sphere of influence if the system was not so rigid.

This decay of a clean sphere system combined with the rigidity of the politics has caused me lately to question the efficacy of such a political meta. Thought I'd write up a short thing about it. Let me know your thoughts!

[Velyni Vas]

TLDR please. Thanks.

[Alastor]

10 minutes ago, Velyni Vas said:

TLDR please. Thanks.

Does the current sphere meta help to solve or worsen political stagnation

Edited May 8 by Alastor

[Nokia Rokia]

Hey just wanted to come out of the woodworks to comment.

A growing issue with alliances I feel is a general lack of willingness to put themselves into any line of sight and risk being a lesser power.

 

From my perspective a constant exists has existed long before Dail UP (GW14)[NPOLT]

Alliances by default have an extremely unforgiving nature they tend to hold groups accountable for situations that often occurred years beforehand and otherwise reinforce such things to newer alliances limiting the potential for older lesser alliances to become majors and tainting the public opinion of them long before they can ever get a chance to improve or grow to a more relevant stature.

 

The game by default is a endless juggle of old reputations with very little room for new faces and that is what likely leads to the dry political nature of the game.

People are broadly unwilling to allow new majors and are broadly unwilling to attempt pursuing to be one due to this old mindset that favors repetitive and consistent leadership.

 

It's early for me so apologies for any improper spelling 

 

[MinesomeMC]

Just bring back pre NPOLT politics back 

[Kurdanak]

I was about to quip "Looks like Roberts finally has some competition," then I clicked the profile. Should've known, got me again.

[Alastor]

1 hour ago, Nokia Rokia said:

A growing issue with alliances I feel is a general lack of willingness to put themselves into any line of sight and risk being a lesser power.

 

Ah yes I actually forgot to include this in the essay. It feels like there's even more pressure now for perfect-play or risk ridicule/ostracization. Perfect play meaning both mechanically and politically: Fall in line, do what's expected, or get replaced because a sphere only needs like 4-5 alliances.

[Victor Truchev]

I would hope the meta of sphere-centric politics natural degredation comes to a bit of a crux in the road. You have some traditional relationships that transcend the existance of sphere-treaty obligations. I can think of a few that have existed that have yet to be truly challenged in a way that is meaningful, as ordinarily chaining is not a factor or spheres have a superiority clause. But as time goes and relationships are built, you do develop lasting partnerships. They are reflected on paper in one fashion or another. The crux of the issue is how people want to play the game. 

Spheres, and spheres specifically with very limited or exclusive treaties which align with that particular sphere offer safety. Safety, in this case obviously, is both in intelligence and tiering if someone's bothered to put the appropriate level of planning into the sphere. This mitigates risk or at least attempts to. Whether we like it or not, when groups of players assemble the environment is a veritable sieve save for some rather exceptional circumstances. 

Treaty partners within these spaces who have external connections run the risk of being treated as a lesser partner or junior partner for simple sake of being some kind of risk. Now, whether that's right or wrong is neither here nor there but I do feel that particularly informs the current political meta. This forces a status quo of these entities getting blinders put on them and then the power dynamic is an uneven one. For smaller alliances, or alliances that are less politically known/powerful, this can be a rather unfortunate limiter as it demands them to put their own personal politics aside and play by their bloc's rules/politics. 

In my humble opinion, this robs the average alliance of exercising its sovereignty. To boot, the entire meta robs alliances of their general sense of sovereignty, so much so these powerbrokers in the Spheres are at a place of actively disregarding the sovereignty of their treaty partners. We see a rather recent and brilliant example of this with people being signed on to an NAP extension en mass without their permission. As time goes, this is just going to get more and more common of an occurrence, as these alliances that did this are actively getting away with it. There is set precedence for violating bloc-treaty and sphere member's sovereignty with impunity. 

Just expect it to happen more as time goes. I, personally, just hope those of whom do have their sovereignty disregarded make moves to hold their treaty partners accountable, otherwise we've moved into a rather dangerous age of the sphere meta.

 

*Edit for spelling

Edited May 8 by Victor Truchev

[Kevanovia]

Any alliance can put themselves out there to pursue their own interest, mini-sphere or not. I think the main issue is a lack of new voices/a drop in the quality of politics via the decrease of quality political leaders in the game.

Which comes back to the points you are making...is it due to the 'musical chairs' minispheres algorithm we find ourselves in? Maybe. But it seems to me that it's mostly the same beast with a different shirt on as 'sphere bipolarity'. The major AA's are going to gun for one another regardless. It's always 'alliance-first' mentality. Their treaty partners are going to be an accessory to that either way, whether it's in formal 'spheres' or individual ties. With mini-spheres, at least it added another way/a different flavor of accomplishing the powerhouse AA's goals. Ultimately it's up to the partner AA's to decide whether they are going to be pushed around or not.

 

2 hours ago, MinesomeMC said:

Just bring back pre NPOLT politics back 

Be the change you want to see.

[Jacob Knox]

In conclusion, @Adrienne send treaty and we can be the first domino that sends Orbis back into bipolarity.

 

For legal reasons, this is a joke. This comment was made with no intention of representing the views of Event Horizon or the leadership thereof.

[Mima]

New alliance "Probability Space Hypervessel" ? "HYACINTH"?

As far as I know I do not have any outstanding debts to my current alliance ... Unfortunately I am very busy with non-P&W commitments these days... though I guess I could act as such temporarily...

 

Let's make it happen! 

Edited May 9 by Mima

[Buorhann]

Partisan was not right because his methodology would inevitably go straight to two major sides like it did in the past.

Partisan enjoys the idea of working with individual AAs, but the issue with his movement was that it didn’t predict what those AAs would be doing in their own interests.

All you have to do is look in his history of handling politics.  Eventually it becomes far more of a cluster!@#$ than it is right now.

”Vassalization” isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the majority of AAs can’t even wipe their own ass.  If an AA really wanted to be a player in the grand scheme of politics, they’d put far more effort into performance, recruitment, and growth.

Seriously, go pull up the charts on every AA’s spending, growth, and war performance.  It’s VERY obvious what AAs actually put in effort.

If you like just having 2 major sides, then yeah, you’d think Partisan was right.

Edited May 11 by Buorhann

[Eumirbago]

The only thing that is right is what is good for the $yndicate and her allies. !@#$ the rest fr lmfao.