[I ask for a pardon from NPO]

NPO will continue to attack alliances until every person playing Cybernations has joined Pacifica.

Then why don't you do something inventive and either disband your alliances or join the NPO. Or if both of those two ideas are too radical, then at least for the time being stop doing stupid stuff that will provide them the excuse to turn you into a target.

If you collect together in an alliance with the objective of growth, power, and prestige, then like it or not, that makes you a potential threat to Pacifica and no hegemon can maintain power by leaving potential threats unchecked. As such there is no room for large independent alliances in the game right now, in the current game you are either the NPO, a subservient friend of the NPO or a threat and a future target of the NPO and their friends.

If you don't want to be one of those three types but want to retain your independence as an alliance then follow option #1 by disbanding and turning away from the old alliance objectives by creating small alliances of friends, leave your inactive dead weight to the tech raiders and don't get involved in the power grabs, politicking, espionage and other idiocy that only serves to get your alliance a beatdown. Play sim city in the company of friends and trust the tech raiders to help you to stave off boredom.

That solution may work for some, but my guess is that most of you on the forum are here because you are inherently power hungry and can't stay out of trouble for very long because you only hate the NPO because they have attained the position that you secretly crave. If this is the case, then I suggest option #2- join the NPO. I guarantee you that membership in the NPO is far better than your pitiful existence here at the moment. You will enjoy a stable government, quality leadership and will be able to stop looking over your shoulder all the time. Membership in Pacifica will expose you to a winning culture and teach you the essential skills required to one day realize your own dreams of world domination.

If you do this en masse you will also serve to usher in a new era of boredom. In the absence of better and more obvious targets the need to maintain an active membership will force the NPO leadership to look amongst their allies for entertainment and you will get to be a part of the great Pacifican military machine that takes down all those low-end sycophantic toadies that plague this game at the moment.

Follow this trend through reductio ad absurdum and we end up with a world were everybody is in the NPO. And as I stated above, maintaining a large and active membership requires war. Peace leads to members leaving the game or moving elsewhere for entertainment. Even our Pacifican masters are slaves to the fact that you have to feed the membership a steady stream of victims to keep their interest and loyalty. So the end result of a true one power world in this game is infighting, revolution and civil war.

If you truly want to end the NPO's dominance in the game, then hit them where it hurts most, deprive of targets and the means to maintain their membership.

Edit for grammar

[The Sacrifice of Fighting in a Lie]

...All of them?

Hailers are too busy working to keep the Empire safe. Bandwagoners are too busy jockeying for favor from the Empire. The other three are possibilities.

[The Sacrifice of Fighting in a Lie]

So, fact is, we, the community of CN, are deserving nothing better. What we currently have is what we have supported over the last 2 years. The bandwagoners, the neutrals, the hailers, the silent, the cowards: all those have struggled for the crap under the table, while the few people in power laugh their asses off at the top from watching the crowd going crazy. If you want to know who is responsible: do not look at the NPO, The Orders, The Continuum. Look into a mirror.

CN will only change, if YOU change.

This from a person with 189 defending casualties. What have you ever fought for in your nations 17 months in the game?

You list five types of people in this game; bandwagoners, the neutrals, the hailers, the silent, the cowards. Which type of people are the ones that can grow a top 10 nation?

[Perma-ZI's]

I don't see why a Perma-ZI would be necessary in a game were alliances and players actually respected an IC/OOC divide. I also don't see why an alliance would ever need to pass down such a sentence. It really is a sign that an alliance of 1000 players is afraid of a single person with a destroyed nation. Such fear is unhealthy and not conducive to maintaining good leadership in your own alliance or good relations with the rest of the community.

That said, I can't see how a poll or a bunch of us claiming that it is wrong will change anything. If you don't like perma-ZI's, then don't allow your alliance to hand them out. And if you can't stop your alliance government, then vote with your feet and go someplace else. Even emperors are accountable to their members in that they lose power as their members leave.

My gut feeling is that most of us don't care enough for it to matter. We accept the perma-ZI's so that we can remain members of powerful alliances and safe from the rest of the community.

[Parting thoughts]

Heh, sad to see what has become of this thread. Obviously people couldn't just let him quit in peace.

I genuinely liked Doitzel and considered him a friend but I am not blind to the fact that he practiced demagoguery here on a regular basis, the fact that he used his good bye post in the same way inevitably has to lessen the amount of good will that it receives. I have always felt that the best departures were the ones that made no final post and gave no hint of a backward glance.

As for who is right or wrong in the matter of Zha'dum and Doitzel's versions of this story, it really doesn't matter. The NPO has the ability to ZI him for moving against them and they have done so regardless of the veracity of his comments. That said, alot of what was posted in response to his OP undermines the inherent independence and sovereignty of the individual players. We all have choices and opportunities. To claim that the NPO has completely removed Doitzel's right to play the game is false. He could have remained in the game, fallen to ZI and used his two years of battle experience to harrass NPO noobs endlessly. Or if that task was too tedious and too demeaning, then he could always have faked contrition, get off the list and then back to playing the game in the manner and style that he prefers. Instead he chose to leave the game on his own terms, head held high and with a long series of parting shots at the game that he helped in his small way to create.

I wish him well, but I also find it ironic that he falls victim to the system that he worked to put in place. In the end we are all responsible for our decisions and must be aware of environment within the game and through it, the repercussions of our actions. Fan the fire too long and you end up getting burnt.

[Announcement from the BDC]

Spying it would seem, now makes all treaties null and void.

The relationship between spying and treaties is spurious. It is being targeted by the NPO that renders most treaties null and void.

Atlantis canceled their entire alliance rather than be attacked by the NPO. Why should canceling e-paper treaties be any different?

[Announcement from the Confederation of Organized Nations]

You have to view treaties through the lens of self interest. Why should any alliance keep a treaty with a power that can no longer help them and will most likely get them attacked soon? If the real friendship isn't there, then the piece of e-paper has no value. CON and others who have broken ties with the NpO in recent weeks have cited their reasons for canceling their treaties. It can argued that they are good reasons. The only dishonest part about it all is they tend to leave out the prime motivation in the matter- self-preservation.

All political power in the game is derived from your proximity to Pacifica. If you are distanced from Pacifica, your power decreases and the stock value of your treaties decrease. In this case treaties with the NpO have become a liability that few alliances will tolerate. Hence the cancellations and the slew of excuses as to why the cancellations are valid.

Incidentally, UPN's cancellation adopted a better tone by citing their long-suffering friendship with the abusive NpO, but I preferred Hebrin's more direct approach. I wonder who will be the next to break ranks?

[Top 5 Most Dangerous Unsanctioned Alliances]

<snip> all the wars have indeed been so one sided that in the winning alliances, most nations don't even see the front, and in the losers even a tactical genius would have no chance, so at the moment it is very hard to get war experience.

One day we will see, when some of the 'untested' alliances go to war, just how important experience is. I suspect it is over-rated and that activity and organization are the keys to success.

I find this to be the truth of the matter. Experience and training are great for alliance cohesion and morale, but what determines who wins in battle is the diplomatic maneuvering that goes on in the months leading up to the conflict.

Personal experience is overrated and any who claim to have a great measure of it need to be honest in assessing why they won the battles they have been in. In nearly all wars I have witnessed, you win because your side brings 200 active members to the fight and the other side brings 50 active members and 150 sim city players who only fly your AA because they don't want to be tech raided.

The close wars are only close for the first week. After that the side with the numbers and allies arriving late to the fight wins and wins decisively.

Diplomacy>Alliance Activity and Organization>Military Organization>Member Experience

If you collected 1000 of the most active and experienced warmongers from this community under one alliance banner and let them train together and organize until they are nearly perfect before you unleash them on community. They still wouldn't last past the first week against the NPO and friends.

So to get back on topic- the 5 most dangerous unsanctioned alliances in this game are five best diplomatically connected unsanctioned alliances. Having sanctioned friends is the only thing that really matters.

[Most OVERrated alliance on CN]

All of this talk of overrated or underrated, it is all subjective and dependent upon your point of view.

But if you care to look at the alliance statistics, you will find a quantitative measure that is far easier to interpret than these subjective perceptions. Anyone who argues that the NPO is overrated is avoiding the facts. Obtaining and then holding an alliance sanction for years is a difficult process. Even the most dedicated neutral will find themselves faced with the threat of war at one time or another. The successful alliances are the ones that prepare for that eventuality and then execute well when the time comes. I think that the history of this game shows that the NPO has been by far the best alliance when it comes to conflict. They approach the problem diplomatically, economically and militarily. And their alliance has over the long term been fortunate to have talented individuals in both upper and middle management positions.

As for the alliances that aren't around anymore, they must be gone for a reason. Either they were incompetent, or they placed themselves against an alliance or coalition that was larger or better. In the case of many of those listed in this topic, in most cases I suspect that they failed in diplomacy and in leadership and as a result found themselves in engaged in wars that were from the start lost causes. The FAN's or NAAC's in the game may very well have been the best alliances on purely military basis, but their deficiencies in other areas led to their demise.

Consider the following- AlmightyGrub commands the Polar military, before that he created the NAAC military and the reputation that seems to have continued to developed over the past year. Clearly he must be talented or the NpO would not have entrusted him with the command of their forces. Herein lies the brilliance of the NPO/NpO, they collect the talented individuals from other alliances and put them to good use.

Consider the reverse- would the NAAC, FAN, GATO or any of those other dead or diminished alliances have offered a Dilber, an Electron Sponge, a Philosopher or an Assington command of their alliance (Zhadum running the Legion doesn't count)? Would any of these or other noteworthy individuals have taken an offer? No and that is because most alliances are too short sighted to place the right people in positions of authority. As a result, most alliances export talent to the two alliances I mentioned in the paragraph above.

Which brings me to my final point (the tl;dr people gave up long ago, so most will miss out).

The talent and enthusiasm of the membership is often far more important than the stats you can find in game. The OBR is unusual as an alliance in that it does not recruit and maintains high standards for admittance. As a result they they import talent at a very slow rate. They are an alliance that possesses a membership that is filled with veterans of this game. As an alliance they may very well be overrated, but the experience and reputation of their membership is not. Does the OBR matter in the political balance of this game?- I doubt it. Do the members of the OBR bring an important element to this community?- I suspect that they do. Would their members be useful and welcome additions to the other alliances in this game?- I know that they would be.

[Official Dispatch from The Red Rose.]

This is a fascinating tale with a worthy message for all who read it. However, the moral of the story is lessened in its impact by the use of the word glutinous. Gluttony is most certainly a deadly sin, but it is generally accepted that it is no crime to be sticky.

Reference

I hope that the Saints of the Red Rose will forgive overcooked oatmeal and the other types of porridge. These have sustained many a monk in his days, despite their glutinous texture.