Buffalo Niagara's Blog

I've never been much of a fan of reparations, although you won't see me crying for those now tasting what they've happily dished out in the past. Even though I won't be defending them, NPO's terms exceed what I'd have written for them. It seems to me that requiring nations to come out and fight and making the top nations pay reparations both serve the same purpose - delaying their recovery and eliminating them as a threat in the short term - and their redundancy is excessive. The scale of the reparations is reasonable given history; although I would have preferred to see their precedants scaled back I can see where people are coming from.

I'm not really comfortable with targeting peace mode nations; my general opinion is that if you're able to dicatate how your opponent fights the war then you've already won and you should accept their surrender. Given the NPO's history and rhetoric of bitter vengeance, vicious surrender terms, and pounding on opponents long after they're pulped, I don't see good options available for Karma here that I wouldn't object to with any other opponent.

If I were writing their terms I would probably run with the 2-3 weeks of war for all nations (individual clocks for each nation and total for the whole conflict, not from the point of signing terms), treaty cancellations, nuclear and navy decoms for the duration of terms, and enough reparations to keep their slots busy for a few months (but no restrictions on which NPO nations can send the aid). The NPO should be removed as an immediate threat, should feel a taste of what they've put others through, and have a period of isolation in order to straighten themselves out and digest the lessons of this war. It may be light to the point of being foolish, but at the same time I don't agree with making the game miserable for 700 other players for a protracted period. At the end of the day they're still fellow players - the goal is only to protect others from the NPO making them miserable again for long periods of time. Some of their posters who have come out seem like decent blokes. Others of them are terrible posters of course, but that's true anywhere.

Considering that their terms do not include wonder decoms or dictations of who can or cannot be in their alliance, and taking into account the terms they have handed out in the past, I don't feel much in the way of sympathy, even if the terms are a fair bit harder than what I would have written. I am exceedingly uncomfortable, however, of the recent trend of people saying "do something about it," "the winners set the terms so nyah nyah," and "bawwww." It's one thing to use it to point out to the enemy that this is what they've been doing to others for years, and quite another to actually use it as a response to attempts at reasoned discourse. Opponents should be treated with courtesy even when they're getting their just desserts and even when they're hopelessly wrong. If you can't be civil with someone, don't engage them in conversation.

... I think I may have rambled way off the topic of this blog post so I'll stop now.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with bzelger, except maybe with a bit more sympathy for the guys in Pacifica. But on the essential points I agree.

It also seems to me likely that the NPO is more concerned with the tech reparations than they are with the cash reps. The tech reps are the ones which are restricted as to who pays them, and they appear to be aimed at basically disabling NPO's military, possibly to the extent of rendering the NPO unable to protect itself against basically ordinary people with grudges. That's what bothers me.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with bzelger, except maybe with a bit more sympathy for the guys in Pacifica. But on the essential points I agree.

It also seems to me likely that the NPO is more concerned with the tech reparations than they are with the cash reps. The tech reps are the ones which are restricted as to who pays them, and they appear to be aimed at basically disabling NPO's military, possibly to the extent of rendering the NPO unable to protect itself against basically ordinary people with grudges. That's what bothers me.

Haf, who do you consider "ordinary people?" Very few alliances short of the top 20 could single handidly beat NPO, or any non-neutral sanctioned alliance, even in a severely weakened state due to one simple fact. They still have a ton of MP's and WRC's. Even when those nukes are disarmed, they could easily buy those nukes back once the terms are over.

You are really getting paranoid about this.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with bzelger, except maybe with a bit more sympathy for the guys in Pacifica. But on the essential points I agree.

It also seems to me likely that the NPO is more concerned with the tech reparations than they are with the cash reps. The tech reps are the ones which are restricted as to who pays them, and they appear to be aimed at basically disabling NPO's military, possibly to the extent of rendering the NPO unable to protect itself against basically ordinary people with grudges. That's what bothers me.

Haf, who do you consider "ordinary people?" Very few alliances short of the top 20 could single handidly beat NPO, or any non-neutral sanctioned alliance, even in a severely weakened state due to one simple fact. They still have a ton of MP's and WRC's. Even when those nukes are disarmed, they could easily buy those nukes back once the terms are over.

You are really getting paranoid about this.

I'm not going to name names as to who the NPO's enemies I know of are, but the 300K tech extraction if it goes through in the manner Karma proposed will leave the NPO as a sanctioned alliance with a lower total tech than most midrange alliances, including my own alliance. It should be immediately apparent that that would leave them at the mercy of an awful lot of alliance leaders.

And, heck, if their overall supplies drop low enough, a few rogues in the 3K-5K tech range could quite conceivably win wars against them, straight up.

The fact that they can still overwhelm a mid-tier alliance with more nukes doesn't play into that? Yes, they will be economically and militarily weakened. Does that mean we are trying to open them up for "coordinated" rogue attacks or another rolling a month after terms? If we wanted that, we'd probably demand the decommission of military wonders. Those are obviously not in the terms. The numerical advantage of nukes and WRC's has proven to be one of the most important factors of warfare since it's induction. Anyone short of 1500 doesn't have a likely chance of beating the NPO. Once they get out of terms, I imagine they'll still hover around 130+ MP's. That's potential for 2600+ assuming the average MP holder has 20 nukes. In reality, they'll probably have nukes in the 1500-2000 range, probably some more. That's still a huge stockpile of nukes.

They have 159 MPs right now. I'd agree with you that they could wind up in the 130 range, but doing so is conditional on keeping their members happy. If Karma is successful in breaking NPO morale, that won't happen. Those MPs will go somewhere else; either they will leave the game entirely or they will go to other alliances.

They only have 58 WRCs, and will not be getting any significant number more in the next year or so. For comparison, Valhalla, an alliance that still has a goodly number of allies, has 27, and the MK has 36.

Yes, MK and Val combine for more WRCs than the NPO.

WRCs advantage becomes limited with little tech.

WRCs advantage becomes limited with little tech.

This....