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The Quiet Revolution, or How I Learned Just How Loaded a Term That Is


HM Solomon I

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With all the (frankly inane) talk of revolution on Planet Bob, it almost seems no one has no noticed the "Quiet Revolution" that started last summer. This revolution has fundamentally changed the very concept of alliance sovereignty.

In the past, alliance sovereignty had merely two components: recognition by other sovereign alliances, which occurs implicitly through such actions as signing treaties and exchanging ambassadors, and de facto control over a territory (i.e., an AA). With the introduction of the AA management system, a third component has been added: de jure control over a territory. This is an important addition for two main reasons: it makes alliance sovereignty fully analogous to real life state sovereignty, and it changes dynamics.

Real life states are generally considered sovereign when they are recognized by other sovereign states and have de facto and de jure control over a territory. Sound familiar? Well it should.

The addition of de jure sovereignty has also changed dynamics, both in practice and in theory. For the in practice changes, in the past the only way for alliances to maintain internal control over their AA's was through the marshaling of force, an exercise in de facto sovereignty, in the pursuing of ghosts and rogues and the like that invaded their space. This was largely the same, except in scale, as marshaling force to maintain external control, such as attacks by other organized forces (read: alliances). Thus both policing their interiors and defending from external attack required the exact same kind of sovereignty to be exercised because that was all there was. Now, de jure sovereignty can be used to police their interiors. Granted, they may still have to marshal force to defend against actual attacks by disorganized forces (such as rogues operating individually), but they still have de jure control over their AA's and can directly govern, rather than indirectly through coercion, who may reside there.

As for the theoretical changes, unlike de facto control which cannot easily be separated from that which exercises it, de jure control can. This means that de jure control over a territory can be transferred and manipulated in ways that de facto control simply cannot be. Many of these ways have already been discussed elsewhere, but a major topic of discussion is that the transference of de jure control as a condition of a peace agreement, analogous to the viceroy arrangements of old, would not be a violation of game rules as it is not property outside the game. Now this may never happen, in fact I doubt it will, but the mere possibility of its use is further evidence of just how major the Quiet Revolution induced by the introduction of the AA management system has been.

I welcome rational discussion about this and alliance sovereignty in general in the comments below.

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I would like to add this to my new player forum of you would allow me to. I would of course just quote the whole thing and give you full credit for your work.

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Your comment is the entire reason for the second part of the title: "... How I Learned Just How Loaded a Term That Is". Everyone has their own definition of the word "revolution". I consider it to be a revolution, in so far as it has revolutionized some part of this world.

More importantly, I specifically use the term "quiet revolution" because I recognize it isn't as noticeable or on the same scale as some other events that are properly labelled as revolutions (particularly from RL). However, I do believe that, for CN, it is a revolution, albeit a quiet one.

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Well done. I like.

One of these days we're going to see an internal alliance fight spill into the public, between powers within the alliance over WHO gets control of the in game alliance ownership.

Then it will no longer be so quiet :D

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