Sarkin

Congratulations!

Congrats on the merger, glad that this has come together!

Legitimately good teams: Avakael: More thought went into this squad than can be justified. All the key elements are covered here and there's a lot of governing experience, not to mention two talented people in key functions: Roq on finance and kata on recruitment. A number of solid folks and major propaganda potential with both Schatt and Mogar. Value pick with Warrior. Actually decent teams: Myth: TBR, Dajobo, Pansy, Josh and oya are a strong grouping, although the IA element isn't great. Kahlan: Looked to have the best squad four picks in, then fell apart. Still, can't count out an alliance with hartfw, Garion, mpol and Letum, especially since they'd kick Tywin before day two. Not entirely awful: Chimarea: Absurd amount of governing experience on this team. Not sure if the personality conflicts between these folks result in success or disbandment. Bob and the middle-round picks made this team. Carter: Having two good picks (Goldie and TiTaN) and someone with "lots of rl money probably" rescues this otherwise horrendous team from the bottom-tier. Awful: Gopher: Nailed his first and his last pick and whiffed everywhere else. Baltus was a decent value. Stagger: Painfully terrible, ESPECIALLY the Auctor pick.

Obvious attempt to use comic to make bad treaty look better is obvious.

Expert commentary: [21:16:27] <Sarkin> ahahahahahahahahahahaha [21:16:37] <Sarkin> The Salajol + Bob dream team! [21:16:55] <Bob> godddddddammmmit

hartfw, dumbass. Seriously, he's in charge of two AZTEC alliances and a renowned comic book artist. What more could you want?

A suitably boring ending to a dumb war. May we all forget that it ever happened at all.

Darn, now AZTEC has to bring in a fifth member to keep ahead of the Joneses. Send in your applications to Auctor, everyone. Also, congrats to Atlas. It's difficult for a newer alliance to establish itself, especially without some sort of gimmick. Keep on the straight and narrow and you'll do well (in other words, do what WM said).

[i]That Brutus team though[/i] Generally good write-up. lol at me lacking at the WR position. I agree that my RB's beyond Lacy suck, but Julio Jones, Vincent Jackson and Michael Floyd makes for a great starting trio. I'd say that only Dylan and monty have a clear edge on me in terms of WR starters, with Niota and Feanor being comparable. My depth there isn't amazing, but it's decent, and it's also why I have three starting TEs.

Honestly, if I were Polar or another ally of SNX, I'd rather see them have 6 million NS worth of active and capable members than 12 million NS worth of inactive bloat. Trimming the deadweight makes an alliance more agile in peace and more responsive and reliable in war. Mega-alliances built through a group merger have a rough history, good luck. Making Tywin a part of the government is tempting fate, though.

Congratulations on the treaty to our friends in Umbrella!

finally Congrats to our allies in GLoF and Umbrella! I hereby motion to remove Sengoku from AZTEC to free up a slot for Umbrella.

Congrats to Cent and Ginger.

This is a Very Bad Idea.

Man, I don't get the opportunity to hail Sparta announcements very often. Who knew that Rota would bring people together? Incidentally, Aurora Borealis hasn't historically favored PZI, but man, is it justified in this case. Some people contribute absolutely nothing to a community. Rotavele is one of those people. [OOC: What a sad way to go, too. Invoking the actual death of a well-respected member of the community in an argument over the politics of a nation simulator game. Mocking everyone who criticized you because their feelings "don't matter." Making a clearly insincere apology. Alienating your last few supporters. Declaring yourself a Christ-like figure. Insisting that it's all a ploy to drive up game activity. This spectacle is ridiculous.]

I entirely agree, at this very moment AZTEC, IRON, Umbrella and FEAR are all considering dropping our treaties with DBDC so that we can be true members of the stable global community and help everyone to reach that consensus you're talking about. Incidentally, of all the raids DBDC has performed, I have no idea why people would complain about this one in particular beyond the natural tendency to do some pearl-clutching about the "poor helpless neutrals." All said and done, the neutral alliances are actually some of the hardest targets for DBDC to crack, because their upper-tiers haven't suffered through multiple global wars' worth of rolling. Yes, theoretically non-neutral alliances with smaller upper-tiers could have called on their allies to bolster their numbers, but (1) that hasn't happened and (2) they would have still generally struggled to come up with as many upper-tier nations as a neutral alliance, given that most of the upper-tier-heavy alliances are tied directly or indirectly to DBDC. Hitting one or more also does bring the risk of them all trying to eliminate the DBDC threat, and there's no concentration of upper-tier power like the one in the major neutral alliances. This isn't like them raiding some 20-member alliance with 1-2 upper-tier dudes. These guys have the power, if not the inclination, to be legitimate threats to DBDC.

Who the hell made that cake? Was it Bob? It was Bob, wasn't it?

I think that this is the right balance to strike. Instead of nerfing warchests, make people use them more often. It's also worth noting that the early stages of war are more damaging than later stages of war, because the value of what's being destroyed is dramatically different. My suggestion here would be two weeks before being forced out, and after being forced there's a cool-down period of 1-2 months before you can go back into peace mode.

Congratulations! Not on the formatting, though. That's still a little bit off.

Congratulations to Roq and the rest of the cabinet, and kudos to Josh for an excellent term in office.

Nah, I've got that market cornered. In terms of increasing (1) ease of use and (2) number of players, this is by far the most important suggestion made so far. I don't think you quite understand how expensive war is when you've got 20k+ tech and a WRC.

It's listed on the wiki as The Great Riot Raid, which I rather like.

I remember serving as GGA's minister of finance during VietFAN and the Unjust War, and we used bank nations and aid chains to handle war/reconstruction aid. There was definitely the sentiment around at that time that we could fight pretty much indefinitely with that system, since many fights were non-nuclear and nations were smaller + cheaper to rebuild. I think that massive warchests are part of the reason why alliances are comfortable dragging wars out, but I agree with Hal that it's primarily a player issue. Yes, people are willing to be stubborn about the peace process because they can fall back on their warchests to get them through it, but they still have to make that decision to be stubborn in the first place. Agreed, I think that this is how to do it. If that is is a no-go, though, I'd be fine with "must maintain a military" as a reasonable alternative. I also really like these ideas, although I think I would increase that incentive to $10 million. $6 million is sort of a random number to use beyond the fact that it's the non-FAC aid cap.

Looking at the alliance guide part of it, couldn't that be done pretty easily with a Google Form survey?