Derantol

[quote name='kriekfreak' timestamp='1325933521' post='2894709'] Fark - 2 Not what I expected [/quote] In Fark's defense, they got dogpiled before they had any significant number in peacemode. IRON's had a bad reputation as fighters in the past for the same reason, when it was really just a numbers game that we lost. Fark just finds themself in that position this war. As far as my own ratings go, these are heavily weighted towards performance in this war, and not necessarily "enough" weight given to the histories of war in each alliance. Green Protection Agency - No opinion. It's been too long since war for a decent rating on these guys. World Task Force - Again, no opinion. Not aware of any wars they've been in. Independent Republic Of Orange Nations - Not voting, alliance bias. Umbrella - 8, but some of that is simply through having played politics and nation-building very efficiently so that there is no longer any top tier that can stand against them alone. Without that, I'm not sure there's an appropriate measure since they haven't had any real testing this war (so far as I know) Orange Defense Network - 6. The fight against MHA seemed a little lopsided, but not to the degree most wars are. I don't have a good measure otherwise to judge this. New Pacific Order - 7. This number is given largely for the nation retention held in this war. Mostly Harmless Alliance - 1. Sorry guys, but this war hit you hard, and your fall shows that. Non Grata - 8. You guys jumped in on Fark standing to take the most damage of anyone fighting them with the possible exception of NPO. Fark, though outnumbered, has taken impressive amounts of hurt. Sparta - 5. Agreeing with Kriek, in that there's a few too many hippies here. That said, it's a legitimate strategy, and every losing side in the history of everything has used this (except for Fark this war). If I were to reconsider this later, I might change it if (for instance) Sparta's top tier were instructed to come out for a round or two of war. Global Alliance And Treaty Organization - 6. The only good judge I have presently is the fight with MHA, and given size, you appear to have done comparable damage with ODN. Viridian Entente - 5. No good judge, since the winds of war sent you against much smaller alliances. The Order Of The Paradox - 9. This is probably biased, given that they're allies, but every single nation that comes out of PM in Polar that is in TOP range is taken and knocked so far down so quickly that I don't get a chance to declare, even if they were initially above my nation strength. Mushroom Kingdom - 6. Same reasons as with ODN and GATO. The Last Remnants - 7. Stood to lose a lot going in against Fark, though the eventual total of numbers proved otherwise. New Polar Order - 2. Not as bad as MHA, I don't think, but you guys got locked down really quickly in the upper ranges. Nordreich - 7. It may not have been at huge risk, but you guys did declare on more than one alliance of relatively large size, which quite a few alliances did not do this war. The Democratic Order - Can't say, there's been no war. In the past, I might have ranked them absolute bottom because of the influx of war refugees, but that didn't appear to happen this time. The Legion - Based on the NSO war, perhaps a 4? I'm not really sure. Nothing for this war. FOK - 7. It seemed pretty clear to me that there was a very clear goal going into war, and the speed at which you accomplished that goal is worth commending. RnR - 4. Going by general SF losses, not too well. Going by RnR's wars, a little better. The Phoenix Federation - 6. No real opinion, but we generally hear about bad fighters and I haven't heard anything this war. Fark - 4, despite my reasoning above. I wouldn't rate so low as a 2 as I imagine that against an evenly matched opponent statistically, Fark would do fairly well, but this war turned against them. NATO - 6? Fighting against FAN, I guess. As with TPF, no real opinion. Nusantara Elite Warriors - 8. Jumped right in the thick of things and is still fighting. The Templar Knights - Not going to rate this one, as their war almost didn't happen at all. Ragnarok - 6. Led a successful campaign against CSN. Valhalla - 8, same reason as with NEW. Goon Order Of Oppression Negligence And Sadism - 7. Willing to declare across multiple alliances to help out always helps. Deinos - Kudos for growth, but no rating from me in this thread for that. Legacy - 6, with RoK. Argent - 8. As the third alliance (in strength) on this list to declare on Sparta, the effort was there, and Sparta hasn't exactly prospered this war. Multicolored Cross-X Alliance - 3 for not losing too many members this war. The Foreign Division - Didn't fight, no number. Green Old Party - N/A The Grand Lodge Of Freemasons - 6. Helpful against the STA. LoSS - 5. Lost a fair amount in the SF front, but seemed to deal out lots of damage, too. Fellowship Of Elite Allied Republics - 7. Deliberate bloc versus bloc warfare seems like a cool idea. The International - 5. Declared up in strength, though with lots of allies. The Imperial Order - 6. Props here for wedging between Sparta and Fark, even though both are occupied. Coalition Of Royal Allied Powers - Didn't fight.

What makes you say this? I won't argue that these values are normally important, but I know that I can cite at least one clear example to the contrary (Vox Populi) and several you could argue have set aside these goals, at least as they are presented here, for the sake of doing something else. And there are examples of alliances that more or less aim for these goals and yet still suffer - I'll offer up TDO as an example. TDO, at one point, had several hundred members. They have hovered between 100 and 200 for some time, while other alliances, such as IRON, MHA, and NPO have maintained much higher numbers. IRON and NPO both managed to keep higher amounts of members even during devastating war on more than one occasion, and even though MHA has lost a significant number of people in the last couple months, they're only just now sitting at the 400 mark.

What is your personal opinion on each of the sanctioned alliances? In what ways might each of those alliances improve?

[quote name='Great Lord Moth' timestamp='1325060143' post='2887874'] What GOP is doing with the Sanction Race. If I made that dream alliance of mine, my goal would be to do it with ten or fewer members. @.@ [/quote] Well, with the current score at the bottom, each nation would need to be worth 1.13 score or so. I'm not sure of how much NS that is, but it's a lot.

I appreciate the discussion, and I find it interesting, but would it be possible to start another topic for it? It's just treading that line between statistics and politics and I'd rather come here for the stats and posts like the ones we're getting from Deinos.

[quote name='Denial' timestamp='1323740887' post='2875893'] Yeah, in percentage terms, my guess would be that the First Great War far surpassed any other conflict in terms of alliances and nation strength involved (albeit some alliances' involvement was short-lived). There were very few alliances untouched by that war. [/quote] As I recall, it was essentially IRON and GPA, and I know that IRON always had members leaving to fight in the Great Wars. It's not a direct source of damage, but it still puts a little more NS on the fighting table.

[quote name='Melancholy Culkin' timestamp='1323481031' post='2871512'] Once Fark drops past VE that Add/Drop line is going to start free-falling unless gopher locks it again. [/quote] I think Gopher sets a hard limit of 36 in the sanction race; I seem to remember him saying that he was setting the precedent for the next time there were too many alliances in the sanction race.

[quote name='EgoFreaky' timestamp='1323359615' post='2869230'] Why man? Get them warhardened from the start. Not like it will cost more then a dime to fix them up afterwards [/quote] To be honest, I don't know why, and I'm not even sure if that's what we're actually doing... I just seem to remember seeing something to that effect somewhere, even if it was just a suggestion.

I may be wrong, but I think that we're putting new recruits on a different AA until the war is over.

I really like the look of this now! Good job.

My suggestion is to move to the same color scheme as the other chart - one color for each side in war - because team color isn't overly important. Also, if you made little red triangles to substitute the arrows, it'd make it easier to see who declared on who at a glance.

It was coalition warfare in our eyes, thus we saw a strategic benefit in taking out CnG for everyone on our side. Sure, there's self-interest, and nobody will deny that, but the amount of political capital it would have taken (and ended up taking) to simply attack them out of the blue. We earnestly thought that what we were doing would make it easier to win that war. We could have attacked where treaty lines put us, and simply let the treaties dictate an eventual loss; we decided to take a chance and hope for something better. Of course, as we knew, the risk was huge, which meant we put trust in Polar. And it's dumb to put that much trust in someone who doesn't stand to benefit from the state of affairs. As you say, Polar didn't stand to benefit, but... well, we made a lot of errors of judgment there, and we paid for it. We saw a situation that looked like the best case scenario for the coalition. What would it have taken from Polar? A strong statement about how attacking CnG wasn't a good idea. Did that happen? I see a lot of people here saying no. I guess what I'm saying is that while self-interest played a part, the trust we put in Polar was what allowed it to happen. And that trust is what was betrayed. EDIT: Forgot the quote I was going to include. [quote]We do not blame you for those actions we took. They were our actions and our choice to make, and the consequences our burden to bear.[/quote] We were gunning for CnG then because we were paranoid about being the next big target. There's your self-interest.

I will counter with another sentence from the same paragraph: [quote]All of which could have been prevented with simply a few words.[/quote] If Polar had made a big deal about it not making sense, I think that plan would have been scrapped and some other plan would have taken its place. I can't get specific, not having been in those conversations, but several have said that Polar remained largely silent on the issue. Shouldn't they have made a bigger deal about it?

[quote name='Tygaland' timestamp='1322352075' post='2853003'] Yes, that is why I raised the question. On one hand there is the contrition and acceptance that your own arrogance and self-interest brought what came to you upon you and then in the same DoW you say that you only did it for Polar and the ungrateful !@#$%^&* betrayed you. You did nothing for Polar's cause, what you did was for your own self-interest and to further your own position in the Cyberverse at the time. You attempted to use the "coalition" to further ths goal and it backfired. This allowed Grub so use the situation to indulge his hatred of TOP. He succeeded in what he wanted to achieve at that time and you didn't. Neither of you gave a crap about the other alliances involved, allied or not. Many in the "coalition" warned against it but you'd have none of it so while Polar now pays for Grub's shenanigans you reaped what you sowed that day too. [/quote] Where did we say we only did it for Polar? Please point that out. And if an alliance doesn't have some sort of self-interest, that alliance can't survive. There are different kinds - whether it be preservation of pixels, reputation, or otherwise - but everything an alliance does should be to help it survive somehow. That's what we thought we were doing, not only for ourselves but for the coalition (as we saw it), which included Polar. And then not only did Polar end their part on our side of the war, but they even came in on the opposite side against us directly. They escaped that war; we were saddled with reps. Sure, maybe we would have lost, and ended up with reps anyway, but as you say, we reaped what we sowed. But Polar left behind animosity in TOP and IRON that has not yet been resolved. Sure, they tried here and there, but the last time I remember Polar coming to our boards, they sent us as a diplomat a former traitor - that doesn't seem to be in good faith to me.

[quote name='Tygaland' timestamp='1322312019' post='2852371'] No, because it was sold in the DoW as attacking C&G pre-emptively was solely done to assist Polar. This is untrue. It was done because TOP and IRON perceived C&G as a threat to their own position. C&G were not in the war and had made no noises about joining the war so there was nothing to assist Polar with. Polar held a treaty with MK at the time so I don't see how MK or C&G would have been an issue for the NpO. As I said earlier, TOP/IRON wanted to use the assembled alliances to knock their perceived rivals down a rung or two and Grub saw a chance to see TOP get rolled which he took. Both of you were motivated only by your own self-interest. [/quote] I won't deny that self-interest likely played a part in the decision, but take a look at this: "They were our actions and our choice to make, and the consequences our burden to bear." We acknowledge that. And I don't see anywhere in that post that we say that the only reason we did what we did was to assist Polar. If all you're concerned about is how that event is sold in the DoW, I think you and I are reading it very differently. Obviously we think that we were helping as part of a coalition effort, and you don't, but that is (unfortunately) a simple difference of opinion that we wouldn't be able to resolve unless we took it up in private and talked for a very long time. But even disregarding that, we still thought that doing what we did would help.

[quote name='Tygaland' timestamp='1322309008' post='2852346'] My only query here was about how you attacking C&G was doing Polar a service. As yet, no one has given any reasoning for that comment forming part of the DoW from IRON. [/quote] Here, it comes down to whether an individual viewed that war as a coalition effort or simple treaty obligations. As you have stated, STA had their treaty obligations and followed them, and what you did had a very direct benefit on Polar, I presume, being a treaty partner. Assuming that everyone held this particular viewpoint, you would be correct in saying that we did Polar no service with our actions. However, we viewed the war as a coalition effort, and as military forecasting had predicted CnG coming in on the other side of the war against us anyway, taking advantage of the first strike possibility would hopefully aid the coalition as a whole. Polar would indirectly benefit as well, being part of that coalition. Since we viewed it this we, I think there was an assumption on our part that everyone saw the war as a coalition effort. Evidently, we were wrong. Does that make any more sense?

[quote name='suryanto tan' timestamp='1322302111' post='2852255'] See here that they use the word [i]witness[/i], which implies that they see others (but not themselves) doing it, and despise it. But I could be wrong. [/quote] You gave the example of the Karma war. You know how most treaties have the "This treaty remains active for X hours after cancellation" clause? That came into effect here... and we followed through on our treaty obligations. No betrayal there. If there's another example you have, please give it. I'm not one that likes to dismiss an opponent's view if they have sufficient evidence; however, that is not yet the case here.

Given that this might affect some alliances, would it be possible to adjust the dates so that each set has ten days, with overlapping competitions for tribes? I don't want to make it too hard or anything, but it seems to make sense.

I think the term is pescaterian, though I probably have the spelling wrong. Let your friends know their true label!

In regards to Umbrella - didn't you guys have a merge recently, and might those members' aid slots show up as their previous alliance still? That would explain the stark difference between 72% and your regular 90%+, or whatever it is normally. Wouldn't it?

One thing that I have been convinced of for quite some time is that Cybernations would benefit greatly from an introduction of some sort of scarcity in resources. At present, only two genuinely scarce resources exist - senate seats, which aren't exactly fought for tooth and nail, and members, which is fairly arguable as members that one alliance wants are vastly different than members another alliance wants. There's a reason that Starcraft games never last more than about an hour, and Empire Earth (for those who know the first EE game) can last for hours and hours, and it has to do with how the mechanics of those respective games force (or don't force) conflict. In Empire Earth, it is entirely feasible to take your corner of the map, fortify it, defend it, and simply build up until you have completely filled out the tech tree. On average, it takes me and my friends about three hours to go from the very beginning of time to where we stop teching up and start taking over the map. This is possibly because in your starting base, you get resources piles of 300,000, which would literally take several days of realtime at top speed in optimal conditions to completely mine out. Therefore, your only limits are how fast you can collect resources - which does *eventually* force you out, but only once you reach the last few ages where the stuff that you're buying is actually straining your income. Starcraft, on the other hand, gives you roughly twenty to twenty five minutes to completely collect all the resources in your main base. Each expansion base takes about the same or less time. Because of that, it is important to expand quickly, and it is important to expand more than your opponent, who you will likely end up fighting very quickly as you begin to expand. This strategy does work in EE as well, but not nearly as well, and it doesn't give you nearly the same kind of advantage that it does in Starcraft. EE is fairly similar to CN. Resources are really only limited by your ability to acquire them - in CN, aid slots are effectively the limit. In the standard setup these days, you can get on average 150-200 tech every ten days, depending on whether you are doing 3/50 or 3/100 deals. It doesn't matter how much money you're making - unless you want to pay exorbitant amounts, you aren't going to edge out your competitors in tech totals. The only advantage you can get has to do with your activity and your ability to choose reliable trading partners. Which - surprise! - is a feat that is more or less achieved by a large number of people. Unfortunately, there are a couple problems I haven't personally found a way to reconcile yet. Starcraft and EE are both different from CN in that they have a win condition - you do eventually win the game. CN doesn't have that, and that's the first problem. The other problem is that to create a balanced system, the scarce resource in question has to be desirable, but can't overbalance the game in that group's favor. Having sanctioned alliances was in some ways an answer to that, as having the alliance allows you a pip on the boards and a flag in the game, but most of CN has decided that being sanctioned isn't valuable. Senate seats are technically a scarce resource, but the tangible benefits of holding them aren't terribly potent in the first place, and the facets that are usable aren't being used in a way that makes the seats genuinely important to have - it doesn't matter who is an ally of who, rogues often get sanctioned either way, so what's the difference between, say, Fark or MHA holding a particular seat? Or TOP and RnR, for a non-allied comparison. I wanted to open a bit of a brainstorming session to see if anyone could come up with an idea worthy of the suggestion box. It'll get more traction (hopefully) if we get some of the discussion out of the way now and bring it forward with considerable support from the get-go. With that, ideas?

I like member amounts... could you put a (+1) or (-1) just in front of alliances that swap positions? [img]http://i52.tinypic.com/wb6q35.png[/img] 1 [color=green](+1)[/color] [219] [color=green](+1)[/color] [color=green][b]Green Protection Agency[/b][/color] : 52.02 --> 55.02 [color=green](+3.00)[/color] [img]http://i50.tinypic.com/2iik8it.png[/img] 2 [color=red](-1)[/color] [557] [color=green](+2)[/color] [color=#48D1CC][b]Mostly Harmless Alliance[/b][/color] : 63.23 --> 53.23 [color=red](-10.00)[/color] [img]http://i48.tinypic.com/t5gf4j.png[/img] 3 [270] [color=black](+0)[/color] [color=#48D1CC][b]Fark[/b][/color] : 50.28 --> 50.40 [color=green](+0.12)[/color]

An interesting thing to note in Shan's stats is that it indicates at the very least 2-3 years of decent nation creation and retention before the game threatens to get too sparsely populated. If we're trying to come up with a solution as a game community, we do have some time to fact check and do it right.

[quote name='Leet Guy' timestamp='1315495494' post='2796854'] Uh, by this logic DH certainly isn't a bloc, as MK does not hold a treaty with GOONS or Umbrella outside of DH. It's a three-way MDoAP with shared private social access, because after Everything. Must. Die.™ , we'll probably still be kicking it somewhere else [ooc]on the internet outside of this miserable !@#$@#$ game once it finally off's itself.[/ooc] But again, I have no idea why we're [i]still[/i] talking about the legitimacy of blocs and TOP's unified foreign agenda in a topic about Ordo Paradoxia's DoE/DoW/rogue actions on GOD. [/quote] I'll make no claims that DH is a bloc then. I was connecting that DR itself isn't a defensive treaty to my logic, though. Regardless, I think we can be non-blocs together. Just like Ordo Paradoxia!

Well, I was thinking the biggest gaining by everyone. If it's a pain in the butt, it isn't a big deal at all.