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About this blog

Thoughts, analyses, and reminisces

Entries in this blog

In Character vs. Out of Character

Ladies and Gentlemen, Karl Marx, the famous philosopher who criticized classical economics and conceived of the notion of workers throwing off their chains to overthrow the bourgeois has not existed in the Cyberverse or Planet Bob. Yes, there was a player named KarlMarx, but that's not the same thing. There has been no Jesus Christ, no five books of Moses, no prophet of Muhammed, no Trotsky, no Adam Smith, no Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, no Germany, no Athens, Sparta, Ares, or any number of t

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The Optimal Number of MDP's

Introduction Some alliances think that the more Mutual Defense Pacts (MDPs), and their cousin, the MDoAP*, the more secure they are. However, when two alliances form an MDP, there is a certain amount of baggage** that each alliance brings along with them. This extra baggage can increase the chances of an alliance to be engaged in war. Additionally, depending on the size of the alliance, the MoFA can handle working with so many allies at once. So hence, there is a point where there is such a

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BLAME RIA!

(sung to the tune of "Blame Canada") Van Hoo III: Times have changed Our kids are getting worse They won't obey their parents They just want to fart and curse! Van Hoo III: Should we blame the NPO? Bigwoody: Or blame society? Despots: Or should we blame the images on TV? Van Hoo III: No, blame R-I-A Everyone: Blame R-I-A Van Hoo III: With all their beady little eyes And flapping heads so full of lies Everyone: Blame R-I-A Blame R-I-A Van Hoo III: We need to form a full assault Eve

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Voting systems

Three candidates are running for Minister of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). The end polling is that candidate A got 40% of the vote, while candidate B got 35% of the vote and candidate C got 25% of the vote. Candidate A should get the MoFA position, yes? Think again. The vast majority of voting in CN, whether with in-game senator elections, or alliance elections for a candidate run into this problem, whether players recognize it or not. Let us take the following situation, and use it to explain th

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Joined Zenith

Officially. They are awesome. I initially was going to travel to different alliances, stay with them for 2 weeks (don't worry, I wasn't going to scheme them out from their financial aid), learn how about the pros and cons of their systems, and move on. I was looking for a journalism experience. I had already stopped by the UPN, and had just registered on the Zenith forums with my proposal. I was accepted in...and blown away by their organization. Zenith is probably everything that I've w

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My Rant on Charters

The bad news: Some people don't know how to write a good charter. The good news: CN is virtually a free-market for alliances, so the incompetent leaders will get weeded out. Charters, at their core, are rulebooks. They should describe how the alliance is run. They don't need to be fancy. They don't need to as dry as a desert (few people take this extreme. I'm one of them). However, there is some very basic stuff that should be included in a charter. How the alliance is run. Leaders?

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Ramifications of the Small Alliance Boom

Although I'm still somewhat fresh on the scene from returning to CN, it's not particularly hard to notice all of the new alliances. Without going into detail why they came about (I wasn't around for that), I will instead speculate on what, if any, ramifications this boom will have on the Cyberverse. There are two kinds of incentives for an alliance to better themselves: formal, or in-game incentives, and informal ones, which are generally created by the players. The formal incentives are few

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In defense of democracies

I've been around CN for a while, though I have quit the game and come back now several times. Given the holes in my experience, I may simply be restating what someone else said, so if you are one of the select few who reads this blog, then pardon any redundancy that I may present. From a CN academic point of view, my primary interest has been the organization of alliances. In CN, we essentially have two distinct ideas, "Meritocracies" and "Democracies", and a whole bunch of hybrids. Many peo

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You know you play too much CN when....

So the other day I was playing Civilization IV. For those of you not familiar with the game, it's a computer game where you build an empire by building cities and taking over other empires. It's a turn-based game that *usually* has a globe for a map, so it's as if you are playing on a real planet. Your empire is based off of a real-world empire: Japanese, Mongolian, Roman, American, British, etc. Each one has a specific colour as well (Japan = Red, America = dark blue, Rome = Purple, etc.)

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A New Beginning

It's been a long week. Our war with the reddies finally came to an unfortunate end. After a whole three days of fighting, we were finally overrun by the !@#$%^&*. I was promoted to captain in the last hour of battle, and fought gloriously to save the nest. However, as soon as the queen's chambers were breached I knew it was over and made to save my exoskeleton. I managed to take out a few reddies on my way out, but I needed to survive. Since then, I've been wandering about the yard, fe

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First entry

First blog entry, after coming back into Cybernations. So, where shall I start? Well, first of all, I'm f'ing tired, so this entry won't be as long as I had hoped, and my blog might not be as fancy as some others. Oh well, I can fix it tomorrow. So I came back into Cybernations. Not many noticed my return, as expected, but I do still have some friends around, most notably Delta1212. I made the mistake of giving myself a bad nation name, and a bad ruler name, so I decided to restart....only

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