More alliances is a good or a bad thing?

[D34th]

Always after global wars we see the creation of a bunch of new alliances and in my humble opinion I think this is prejudicial to the cyberverse, because I believe that we need fewer alliances with more active members in them, not the opposite.

 

What normally happens with this new alliances is that they have just one active member who runs everything and when he/she eventually become inactive due some RL issue, the alliance enter into a coma or just cease to exist. 

 

At the same time, established alliances suffer with the exodus of of active members and have a hard time to fill the government spots.

 

Do you think that we could have a more interesting and active cyberverse if we had a small number of alliances?

Discuss.

 

Ps: I'm not sure if this thread belongs to Open World RP or World Affairs. Mods?

[Rayan Thomas]

.

Edited June 19, 2019 by Rayan Thomas

[Schattenmann]

Your arguments against new/small AAs are contradictory:

 

What normally happens with this new alliances is that they have just one active member who runs everything and when he/she eventually become inactive due some RL issue, the alliance enter into a coma or just cease to exist. 

 

At the same time, established alliances suffer with the exodus of of active members and have a hard time to fill the government spots.

 

If news AAs are run by one charismatic person and his exit is the death knell because no one else is active, then it can't also be the case that these same small AAs are a braindrain on established AAs, stealing all their active members.

 

You are correct in that a large number of small AAs, one person is doing almost all the work.  United Earth Directorate grew to over 100 members in 3 weeks becoming 5x larger than any other AA on Red except NPO under the leadership of KingDeathII.  Within a few more weeks, KDII was in over his head, bored, and UED crumbled into oblivion.  Big Biz, founded by famous crackpot Capelli King, followed a similar trajectory, becoming the second-largest AA on Pink behind Spart, only to merge with Illuminati.  We see the same story play out over and over.  MasterDebater must have founded and buried 30 alliance by now.

 

But in each case of the charismatic model, who are those dozens or hundreds of nations who join--and fade--so fast?  Not "all the active members" from other alliances.  They're newbs who join for raid protection and easy joining cash.

 

 

Some alliances, however, are the result of an exodus of active members.  The Sweet Oblivion comes to mind.  When this happens, it is usually due to two circumstances: either a political fallout, or a visionary dream.  We're in a political world, and sometimes it happens that there are irreconcilable differences within an alliance's factions.  One faction must either set their politics aside, or move on.  I do no think there is any obligation incumbent upon people to stay in an alliance which does not represent their interests.  Sometimes, people nurture and idea for a long time, build up relationships with like-minded people who they've socialized with inside their current home, and they go off to chase their dreams.  I don't see that as a problem, either.  In both cases, like in the charismatic example, large parts of the brain trust of one alliance might leave, but the bulk of membership (if the new AA recruits) will be coming from that herd of new/unaligned nations (because advertising your new AA to your old one is an act of war).

 

 

So, I think there are a lot of alliances that should never exist, simply because they're a bad idea, but I don't think that their formation is "bad."

[Owned-You]

Whether it's a good or bad thing depends on your perspective on the issue. If you're a talented person and want to be involved in politics but cannot do so due to having too many above you or a bad stigma associated with your native alliance then creating a new alliance is a solid avenue towards filling that need. On the other hand if you're a die hard member of an alliance and you see a couple of your best and brightest leaving in the aftermath of a hard war then you'll be damaged by it and view it negatively.

 

What it boils down to is personal ambition and sense of ownership...everyone fancies themselves a King and better yet, a King of something they crafted. As evident by the number of alliances that crop up annually it doesn't matter if that throne sits on a major alliance or micro. Although from the perspective of someone whose had his fill on creating alliances I can say that most of them don't survive for the sheer fact that they don't reach the critical numbers of active membership needed... most take shape with a handful of people to drive things but 15 or more are needed to create a stable long term grouping.

 

Still it is nice to see new themes crop up and faces in positions to break the monogamy that older power players have on politics. So I don't mind it.

[D34th]

Your arguments against new/small AAs are contradictory:

 

 

If news AAs are run by one charismatic person and his exit is the death knell because no one else is active, then it can't also be the case that these same small AAs are a braindrain on established AAs, stealing all their active members.

 

True, normally new alliances have just 1 or 2 members who are active and the rest is inactive or noobies, but if you think in the numbers of new alliances that are created each year, you'll see that those active members will be missed in the big alliances. What I mean is: nowadays lose just one really active member is already a big hit for any alliance. 

 

 

I do no think there is any obligation incumbent upon people to stay in an alliance which does not represent their interests.  

 

Neither do I, but in my opinion those people should join an already established alliance instead of creating a new one that hardly have something original other than the theme, theme that is basically irrelevant to alliance directions most of the times. 

Edited April 11, 2013 by D34th

[katashimon13]

thy can exist so the active pplz merge/defect to bigger alliances xP

 

rawr

[Chimaera]

What would REALLY be productive is to have old, politically inactive and intransigent alliances die off and be replaced and their memberships recycled into new alliances, unbound by the old ways.

 

Most alliances in CN aren't worth a damn as it is, so every time someone forms it's good to at least give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove they're worthless, too.

[Caladin]

It removes active members from the larger alliances that are in desperate need of them to be able to properly contribute, or even just maintain a stable population. As such, I see small alliances as a bad thing for cybernations. 

[MadScotII]

It removes active members from the larger alliances that are in desperate need of them to be able to properly contribute, or even just maintain a stable population. As such, I see small alliances as a bad thing for cybernations. 

 

Maybe those alliances that want to be big have to realise they're not really big, and well starting cutting those inactives away?  

 

People in this thread bemoaning smaller alliances are just as bad for this game, than new people wanting to do stuff themselves, their way.  Trying to make people join established alliances is a real cock and bull thing to do.  

[RevolutionaryRebel]

I'm bringing people into this game that have never played it before, therefore your argument re; weakening larger alliances is invalid.

 

If things go peach-shaped and things collapse, then so be it. If they want to keep playing, they'll join another alliance. If they don't stick around it's not the Alliance's fault per se, but the game for not being fun enough.

 

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Edited April 11, 2013 by revolutionary rebel

[Adrian LaCroix]

As someone who's always loved the small alliance feel, I wouldn't say they're bad for the game. Of course I'm biased. Protectorates are often just completely irrelevant hunks of newbies, but if the alliance is politically active it's just one more variable, which can be good or bad depending on what other alliances do based on the number of variables available to them. Some see opportunity and attempt to woo the new alliance, some see uncertainty and hem and haw about.

[Prodigal Moon]

We've discussed this before, and I'm still convinced that new AA's are almost always a bad thing. For starters, this:

 

Neither do I, but in my opinion those people should join an already established alliance instead of creating a new one that hardly have something original other than the theme, theme that is basically irrelevant to alliance directions most of the times. 

 

But beyond the lack of originality, they also almost never do anything independent or ambitious with regard to politics. Instead, they get a protector, and if they get to a significant size they upgrade to an MDP with the protector, and then maybe add in a few MDP's with other AA's that their protector is friendly/allied to. Almost none of which, by they way, they'll have the strength to honor in a global war.

 

So new AA's basically just slice a bit of strength off one of the existing players, and then add that slice of strength back into one of the existing blocs - most of the time the bloc it just came from :psyduck: So now instead of a power sphere consisting of alliances A, B, and C. It contains A, A', B, and C. Great.

 

It's also going to be nearly impossible to put together an alliance of any substantial size from scratch nowadays. The largest AA from the last year or two that I can think of is TOOTR, which is not really on the radar in terms of inependent AA's or political leaders (no offense intended).

 

I could go on about why that makes things actively worse, rather than just not adding anything... they make the treaty web thicker, make it harder to organize a coalition, make each alliance less active diplomatically and harder to keep in touch with people...

 

Edit: NG and Ai (even despite the current drama) are great examples of how the political impact of nations combined into a single alliance tends to be greater than those same nations divided into smaller entities.

Edited April 11, 2013 by Prodigal Moon

[Enamel32]

Big Biz, founded by famous crackpot Capelli King, followed a similar trajectory, becoming the second-largest AA on Pink behind Spart, only to merge with Illuminati.

ahahaha, I thought sparta was the only alliance that remembered good ole Capelli King. We should be nice to Capelli King, though. Rumor has it he still commands a sizable army....

[IYIyTh]

There are only so many positions in one alliance.

[Sephiroth]

I think it is a good, with more alliances, more leaders can make decisions triggering interesting worldly events.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Methrage

[Hereno]

90% of the established alliances in this game are terrible so you can't really blame people for wanting to try their hand at something new. That said, "trying something new" hardly ever works (see: the following quote from Prodigal Moon's post).

 

So new AA's basically just slice a bit of strength off one of the existing players, and then add that slice of strength back into one of the existing blocs - most of the time the bloc it just came from :psyduck: So now instead of a power sphere consisting of alliances A, B, and C. It contains A, A', B, and C. Great.

 

It's also going to be nearly impossible to put together an alliance of any substantial size from scratch nowadays. The largest AA from the last year or two that I can think of is TOOTR, which is not really on the radar in terms of inependent AA's or political leaders (no offense intended).

[chongjasmine]

I think it is good to have more alliances. With more alliances, members get to choose which alliance they want to join, instead of being forced to choose between a small number of alliances.

[potato]

While I tend to favour less alliances, I think the big problem is the lack of originality. Most AAs are just the same, save from the name. You only have a handful of interesting AAs in terms of gameplay. Like them or not, people like NPO or MK contribute to the game by actually playing it with their politics, scheming, treatying... thus making an impact on CN. As opposed to most of the others who are nothing but Generic Alliance #493.

Edited April 12, 2013 by potato

[D34th]

While I tend to favour less alliances, I think the big problem is the lack of originality. Most AAs are just the same, save from the name. You only have a handful of interesting AAs in terms of gameplay. Like them or not, people like NPO or MK contribute to the game by actually playing the game with their politics, scheming, treatying... thus making an impact on CN. As opposed to most of the others who are nothing but Generic Alliance #493.

 

I'm glad to see that we can agree about something. 

[Instr]

In an ideal world new alliances are a good thing because they constitute new tradition, new wills, and new attitudes to the game; new alliances tend to be more innovative than existing alliances and are less likely to be stagnant fecal hunks circling down the toilet.

In practice, however, new alliances frequently fail too quickly because they don't have the manpower or talent to make them work; when it takes 5 years for an alliance to go from micro to Pillowfort member (cf: Basketball Ninjas) it is simply too hard and too lacking in rewards for new players to put in the work towards making a new alliance and making it work.

===

The only successful new alliance recently has been Anarchy Inc.; and that's not a true new alliance; it's the merger of BAPS, Valhalla, and Olympus. Every other new alliance I've seen, between the time I was a tech buyer to now, has been slowly circling around the toilet bowl.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Instr

[jerdge]

Do you think that we could have a more interesting and active cyberverse if we had a small number of alliances?

I am not sure that the number of alliances by itself makes any difference. In fact I don't see why it should.
With the exception of the neutrals, blocs - not alliances - are the fundamental political entity of CN: adding or removing alliances without affecting the blocs has no real political meaning (although of course it can be fun and/or annoying).

I think that a major cause of political stickiness is due to the intricate relationships we developed over the years: due to the game mechanics making a change requires a lot of weight, but to move a lot of weight you have to move too many strings. Basically, the community is "old" and very conservative, and it became hard to do anything new. Also factor in that the political learning curve of CN is quite steep and there's a lot of not-so-obvious stuff to be understood, before a newcomer can start to really understand the dynamics of our politics, and you'll have a better picture of why CN politics change very slowly (or not at all).

New and old alliances don't change the framework within which they operate (as others already said in the posts above) thus how many of them we have doesn't make that much of a political difference, IMHO.
I would actually have an idea for a different way to play this game, but my time and energy don't allow me to do anything more than lazily keeping my nation around and pointlessly posting here and there... Assuming that other old players are in the same situation (we grew up and we have other stuff to do - okay I was already grown up in 2007, actually) this might also explain why so many did so little for so much time. :)

[Altheus]

Alliances don't have to owe anything to the game, other than perhaps their members enjoyment. I think there is a tendency to judge the "worth" of an alliance solely down to political impact and/or political competence. But outside the OWF elites, a substantial numbers of players aren't involved with the politics of the game, often out of choice.

 

So they value the worth of an alliance based on different criteria from what you find here. Maybe they just like the people, maybe their real-world friends are already involved, heck, maybe they just like the name, theme or the alliance's flag. I don't think the reasons behind why actually matters, because the important thing is that they've already voted with their feet by joining the alliance in the first place.

 

So the alliance system is really self-policing. If no one wants to join then they won't and the alliance will fail. If people don't like the alliance they're in then they inevitably leave.

 

Of course apathy is a major factor at both alliance and nation level, I can think of a number of zombie alliances in which it's more serious than they're not doing anything politically (they're not doing anything at all!) That's a bit sad, because I can't imagine how you'd have much fun being a member of said zombie alliance other than just being a way to deter tech raiders.

 

[Master Hakai]

more alliances of course is a dreadful thing and that's why I've been pushing for a one-world system where all alliances are rolled up into one for population control.

[White Chocolate]

Always after global wars we see the creation of a bunch of new alliances and in my humble opinion I think this is prejudicial to the cyberverse,

Discuss.

 

Ps: I'm not sure if this thread belongs to Open World RP or World Affairs. Mods?

 

Far too many generalizations.  Alliance size and activity/inactivity have nothing to do with each other.  Only slight advantage a larger alliance might have is a larger pool in which to find people who are active.  Even so, I've seen both inactive large groups and active small ones. 

 

It does seem like wars often end and then a bunch of new alliances are formed.  Assuming this is correct and not just our perception, I think it has to do with the fact that all of us who join an alliance sacrifice our ability to decide for ourselves when and under what conditions to war in exchange for a sense of security. 

 

That's all well and good during peaceful times, but when a global war breaks out and the vast majority of nations are pulled into a conflict they have little or no understanding of against other nations in other alliances they have nothing against personally (if they even knew the other alliance existed) and it lasts for months and months, people come to the conclusion that the system is totally insane and imagine that the way out is to create their own alliance.

 

Hurrah, another alliance is created and it lasts exactly as long as it takes the creators to realize that the idea of creating an alliance equaling more freedom is a total and complete fallacy.

Edited April 13, 2013 by White Chocolate

[Icewolf]

I think they are a good thing from an OOC point of view. I don't think Brain Drain can be that significant when compared to general inactivity and deletions. In anycase, if the new alliance fails then the good people will merge back into mainstream alliances. Also, the more alliances there are the greater the potential for promotion and learning, therefore the greater the amount of "brain" available. 

I also think they add to the politics of the game. The more variety the more opportunity for drama. Between the global wars (so every 6 months or so) there is very little big-big alliance drama beyond treaty changes. Small newly formed alliances, with the prospect of new grudges, new upset, and inexperienced messing about creates lots of opportunities for events and drama.