Tevron

Sakoku has ended. Come join us for booze or whatever. Thrash has been lonely

Now this is something I can get behind.

I'm not referring to the separate Oculus CB and declare. You are incorrect. You're definitely right about Legion and FTW pulling most of the weight in Snake Eyes. Their commanders, Windmark and Kaznawim did really well at organizing internally.

@lilweirdward, my suggested solutions will be the final entry in this series. But I welcome others to tackle these questions here and/or there.

I mean to say that I'm still questioning if it's a real set of beliefs or if it's just made up in post to justify their behavior.

Overall, I agree with you in your responses, but I'm a bit lukewarm on the first point. I think they do have a vague ideology (Moralism) but that it suffers several contradictions that their leadership have not yet successfully digested. The biggest of these is how they are willing to do anything for their friends, but how they also limit themselves with constraints based on the supposed moralism. For them it's clear that moralism > friends. Unfortunately, it doesn't jive to me very much as an ideology because it is very inconsistent.

Then where do we disagree in your post except over the next point? You guys don't defend your allies no matter the cost though, if you did you'd learn a bit of strategy and try to make situations into ones where you actually could win or that would benefit your allies in the long term. If it was at the cost of the pride of an alliance in this sphere, they would never take the hit. These days, that false bravado about friends > infra is irksome, since it's not even the ex-moralist sphere's catchphrase. The short term LEROY JENKINS at the biggest scariest alliance in any global is not honor, it is pride along with moralism. This strain of moralism is one that claims friendship as a justification for diplomacy without making even minimal efforts to make any friends or maintain friendships. I'm sure that you've made huge efforts though in the last five years to change your foreign affairs position though and can also provide evidence of the other members' of the sphere actually doing anything other than seethe about their past grievances. Can you name a few things you've done on the FA side of things in the last five years? Are you referring to the years when I was in Polaris and we were repeatedly rolled together (2010-2012)? I don't see how those people could've been shooting down your chances. Maybe you're mistaking them for the inept machinations of Liz or Xiph after SF's fall from grace. Polaris was looking at diversifying its foreign affairs which is how it (for a time) rose to the top and rolled NSO. Sure, you had political instability, what alliance hasn't? That doesn't make my statements less true. That is my indictment against this sphere. You can't even talk about the existing ex-moralists in the present tense -- that's how removed these broken alliances are from the game, and they are the ones who were responsible: You're right. The majority of the #beer-o-sphere was only on Polaris' side for a little while. The "Pacifica bad, DH bad" dilemma was much more significant than the decision to latch the sphere to Polaris. It's ridiculous to attempt to steer the blame onto them for your own sovereign alliances decisions though -- If you don't get what you give, that is the failing of alliance leadership and sphere politics. I know for a fact of times when Ex-AFM (as an example) had the opportunities to sign with three different spheres and reshuffle their politics. Instead, they stayed exactly where they were.

Surely if your activity level is sufficient, then we too will notice Banned's words. Oh, this is the part where you say "I don't care and I'm just here to wait for the lights to go out."

Case Study: Ex-Moralists And so we’re in what may be the final alliance sphere topic: Ex-moralists. Sometimes called Ex-AFM, or the old-beer-o-sphere minus XX. Ex-SF, etc. As you can see, the first and easiest criticism of the sphere is that they are not known as anything in particular, but rather are referred to as what they once were. In recent years, no one has referred to the “Chestnut” sphere or anything similar to that. How could this smattering of alliances be responsible for the political stagnation of Planet Bob? Well, the first is the most obvious. Inactivity. No sphere has suffered from inactivity more than the ex-moralist one. The alliances of Invicta, NADC, Sparta, RIA – just to name a few – are shells of what they once were. Their talent has either left the game or fled to other AAs; their remaining cores are stagnant and unwilling to look to alternatives (save part of NADCs membership, who merged into TTK earlier this year). Simply existing as institutions, these alliances do not contribute to politics in any meaningful way or at least have not in the last five years or more – and there is little indication that this can or will ever change. Inactivity is a more general problem that plagues the planet, but it is especially prominent in this sphere when it comes to their (lack of) politics. The next issue with the Ex-Moralist sphere is their relatively inflexible position when it comes to moralist politics. The remaining leadership in these alliances are only interested in political narratives that make them the good guys and everyone else the bad ones. While Cobrasphere was criticized by me for their inability to build a coalition based on behavior – the Ex-Moralist sphere tends to reduce alliances into two categories, those who are with them and those who are Oculus. This very reduction tends to inhibit the alliance from dynamic possibilities and it is assured that their FA will only have a single, but non-pursued direction. Because they have not become the active villains capable of challenging the political status quo, which from their perspective is led by an evil Hegemon, they perpetuate the system they supposedly loathe. It doesn’t help them that their overall ideologies are inherently even more defensive than those of Oculus or RFI. I would be curious as to the last war (with more than two alliances) that this sphere actually started as a belligerent. Since the ideology of the Ex-Moralist is so much focused on their own inferiority and underdog story, they also frequently fail to analyze the political, military and economic realities of their situation. I can recall various times where I was privy to the goings on of this sphere over the years, and the most consistent theme is the belief that their alliances are ideologically required to defend their allies by attacking the biggest threat. The complete lack of strategic thinking is a result of their ideological constriction: Better strategists would not spend their time in the leadership of an alliance that inhibits their ability to make moves. The end result is clear. They are predictable in politics to the point where it is generally less valuable to hold a mutual level treaty with them than an optional one, since the alliances of this sphere are more likely to bring risk with little to no upside into the equation. If we think about why these alliances are the way they are, we just need to look at history. When the CnG - SF hegemony fell apart, these alliances were cast into a sort of free agent status, racking up treaties with a variety of spheres but never committing to any of them. Aftermath, among the worst blocs I’ve been able to witness, formed and the sphere found itself frequently at odds with whoever was in power at any given time. When Oculus red carpet rolled out, their sphere had already fractured. Its leadership maintained the status quo. Half of them were anti-Oculus and the other half wanted things to go on as they had. These alliances have been shaped almost entirely by the history of hegemony rather than their own individual actions. It never mattered who was in charge ultimately – this collection of defensive oriented alliances without firm ambitions and who could not even agree amongst themselves were always going to be pushed to the periphery. It comes as little surprise then that the wheat separated from the chaff as time went on, and in many cases, that meant the draining and disbandment of the majority of the sphere. How can they be blamed today? Leadership. They can be blamed for what they didn’t do, for what they continue to not do and their continued ambitions to be great without putting in a modicum of effort to be more than what they are. For some of these alliances, they are resigned to a position of contentedness – not one that is born of security but founded on the belief that the alliances simply do not matter enough to do anything anymore. They are “waiting for the lights to go out” and their leadership cares so little for their members that they aren’t even willing to try to improve their precarious situations. These are alliances with failed leaders who care more about the prestige of their titles than their membership’s security or alliance cultures, which they have both allowed to erode. The very boredom that paralyzes their membership and plagues their leadership is sourced at least in part by their lack of internal cultures and utter inability to churn out rustlings of excitement from within their memberships. The diamond in the rough for these alliances has historically been TTK, the only alliance militarily capable and active. And while CCC & Sparta are appearing to wake up after their long slumbers, I’m not convinced that this sphere is really reigniting. Unlike the other spheres covered in the case studies, I have no belief that these problems can be rectified or can be addressed from the outside. From my perspective, the majority of this sphere might as well disband or declare neutrality if they aren’t playing the political game anymore. After this, the next post in the series will be focused on the commonalities and standout points in the case studies. I want to discuss some of the issues raised in General Kanabis’ insightful comment ( https://forums.cybernations.net/blogs/entry/4365-case-study-cobrasphere/?tab=comments#comment-40044) about some of the issues identified in this series of case studies, as well some others that I will bring in. Hopefully that sort of “wrap up” assessment of problems will point us toward some solutions or at least open a discussion about them.

Congratulations to my friends in Fark and my frie-ene-I-don't-know-what-we-are-anymore in COBRA

If something does nothing when observed from the outside, does it actually exist? Thank you for the compliment! Overall I agree with you again GK . I think that you may have mistaken what I deemed as toxicity as being forum drama itself though. I think arguments, heated passion and so on are the lifeblood of the OWF! Watching people get owned, including my own side, in arguments over the Snake Eyes War (for example) are a positive form of activity that gives alliance leaders something to discuss and weigh in on. The toxicity that I meant is more the automatic disdain and undercutting that has become more and more frequent. Sure, we're all familiar to some extent, but it's simply boring when threads are always Us vs Them and there is little to no agreement or discussion. We have seen a huge decrease in people who are willing to argue about the issues -- just take a look at the lame riffs about not knowing the name of RFI from some of the active forum posters -- these unsubstantial contributions are meaningless and simply say "we don't like you" again and again. I view the people who constantly whine about the death of the game (in both OOC and IC areas) as nonsensical. The "waste of time" that is our simulated entertainment should probably matter more to these people, but they've become obsessed with a circlejerk that has been around for as long as I've been here. Unfortunately, the people who consistently cry in every breath about the "dead game" or "who cares" are clinging to their ivory towers and/or the sunken cost fallacy that keeps them around. They tend to be the same people who obsessively reference 2007 CN politics for whatever reason. Of course, this series is about the Death of Politics in our world, so I may be just as guilty of poo-pooing the state of the status quo, but this series obviously sets out to identify problems rather than to give in to the existing world and resign ourselves to simply waiting for the heat death of Bob. " Yeah, of course activity is better than inactivity, but that's not really the point of what I'm writing about. If I was evaluating the qualities of each sphere, Cobrasphere would get a lot of points for being active, having interesting character, etc. but that's not why I'm here! I would argue that Cobrasphere (and COBRA in particular) have only recently embraced the production of politics outside of micropolitics. One thing that makes your sphere interesting is that it appears to be changing at a rate much faster than the others. Treaty hoarding is something that is a valid critique, and I think i brought it up in the Oculus Case Study. I personally don't think treaties harm nor help politics. People will always be willing to throw allies under the bus, as history has shown. Hell, ODN didn't defend FTW in that NG-FTW conflict. Not everyone likes to argue on internet forums. While I am one of the people who gets off on the heat of a debate and will chime in, many of my core membership have very explicitly told me at one point or another that they don't use the OWF anymore because they don't see how any good can come of it and that it's just angry !@#$posting. From the perspective of my own alliance, we use the OWF quite a bit more than other alliances. I remember at one point when I was AC, a third of all first page OWF posts were from my alliance. I will admit that I've recently opened less topics, but that was actually because of the Snake Eyes War and the overall feeling that we didn't want to post certain threads (like our individual treaty with Argent) simply because we knew it would turn into an anti-RFI circlejerk since that's what every single other thread was at the time. It was easier to celebrate with our wine glasses in private. I don't disagree with you though, that the best way to change a negative situation is to change your relationship to it. I intend to post more often once again for this reason. I think every alliance that isn't an ally to RFI or Oculus has a reason to distrust one if not the other. I don't see how that relates to the discussion though.. Clarify? Not what I was referring to, and I dismissed it myself as a minor complaint that impacts image but isn't a big deal. I don't think Cobrapshere is destroying micros all the time either. I just was highlighting how curbstomping, which is considered to be an alliance killer and bad practice by most everyone (on the public level at least) is something that Cobrasphere is also guilty of. Their hands are not the most clean on that, since obviously the ex-moralists aren't rolling anyone at all.

Apologies for the delay in response. I wrote one up on my laptop, but it turns out the cache didn't save the response so I didn't get around to posting it. Here's my rewritten responses: Thank you for your thoughtful responses GK. I appreciate that you read this and had something to say! Overall, I think we largely in agreement! I cut out the parts that I just agree with and don't have any additional comments on! Protection status and protectorates + mergers don't really seem to do anything unless the protected alliance is going inactive.... The same can be said for the splinters themselves, they can be seen as positive except when they rob their host alliance of significant activity. I wish there were more new alliances that weren't either re-rolls or splinters, but I think we're basically down for the count with regards to that at this time, barring some sudden youtuber invasion. I would suggest that certain spheres do have cultural thrusts, but I think the individual leaders are probably more important than that overall sphere culture. An alliance leader can easily decide whether or not to break with the ideas of the past and head into new directions, but usually they have to do it more gradually or as a series of compromises. I think that COBRA, for example, is already a lot different than they were two years ago. Doubly so for alliances like CCC or Sparta that were literally dead until recently. As this relates to the culture of merge or violence, I do think in COBRA's case it is a genuine culture of aggression and military superiority over the micro-tier. From that perspective, it's kind of hard to deny that the reverse could be true. Maybe alliances in RFI, Oculus, Ex-Moralists are all simply more culturally driven to merge for a variety of reasons. What aspects of their cultures seem to individually support that? I've noticed merges of inactive alliances tend to be halted almost entirely by pride, so now instead of mostly inactive protectorates, there are simply only inactive ones. I agree with you that antagonizing forces are essential to the survival of the political game. I think the problem is that the bad guys are non-existent right now from a narrative perspective. One of the tragedies of the last five years has been that there has been no truly villainous sphere to rise up. There were times when people expected Polaris to bring about a kind of anti-oculus, Karma 2.0 but that narrative was made impossible by the very same people who acted like it could have been a possibility to begin with. Alliances like Non Grata who have certainly been the 'bad guy', ultimately joined the 'good guys' and became the neither good nor bad guys in Oculus. I wonder if part of the reason there are not strong villainous alliances right now is because moralist politics are near completely dead. More on that in the next blog post... Thanks for the response Lucius, but I believe GK and I didn't really disagree on many points. Could you tell me which of my claims you resent? If you want people to see that I have a biased or incorrect assessment, I think you should just reply here so that I can understand some of the insights that you have. Your vantage point is certainly a lot better than mine of your own sphere. Thanks Kapleo, I appreciate your comment!

I've included one of the unofficial RFI flags for this post.

The hwat? Congratulations to both parties.

Case Study: Cobrasphere Lo and behold, we have reached the third case study. This time featuring Cobrasphere. It’s key to note that in the case of Cobrasphere and RFI, they both did not exist when this supposed stagnation was cemented. However, they both bear considerable responsibilities with regard to the state of current foreign affairs. I covered RFI last time, so I’ll cover Cobrasphere now. They are primarily low tier nations and are the most dominating force in that area. They are more active on discord and in-game than many alliances that belong to other spheres. So, how could the state of politics be their fault, if at all? Activity is not politics. This is an age-old lesson in CN, perhaps best explained by MI6 and DK, two alliances with much different cultures, memberships and FA strategies, but who both ultimately succumbed to political pressures in one way or another, while other very active alliances (Umbrella, NPO) were able to dominate the game. Cobrasphere does not benefit politically from their activity, because the activity that they display is not conducive to working toward common goals or coalition building. This comes down to ideology primarily. I’m going to look at how their ideological positions relate to various areas of their approach to politics. Each of these plays a role in the political position of the Cobrasphere and their own ability to alter anything with regard to the overall landscape. The foundations of their ideology are mainly centered around militaristic actions and war. They would call this Laytonism most of the time. Since they are focused on aggressive actions rather than a more diverse portfolio of actions, it fundamentally affects how they interact with all other alliances. They typically view other alliances as inert, scared of war, and as sippers of the haterade. These are all somewhat justified views, as these case studies have and will show, but things are a bit more complicated than that. And being “right” in your analysis does not necessarily result in effective politics. Let’s talk about their public relations. As a whole, their PR strategy is centrally concerned with revenge, having the last word, and stern independence. The side effects are evident. Cobrasphere has always been willing to argue on the Open World Forum, but mostly they split their posts between three major strategies: First, they focus their efforts on general bickering and derision aimed at alliances that they hold responsible for the current state of affairs. Secondly, they harass alliances or individual members who engage with them. And third, they support one another. In these three endeavors, they often include blatantly false information. So why Tevron, why do you seem to think that Cobrasphere’s posting on the OWF has an actual political effect? Based on personal discussions with a variety of leadership across the spheres, OWF posts are the biggest view that most alliances have into how this sphere operates. And that is because these behaviors are predictive. Praise the sphere? You will be ignored at best. Engage with them critically? You will be harassed by at least four or five of their members. In a world where critique of your actions and debate have genuinely been a source of entertainment for those who use the OWF, Cobrasphere displaces that with their combativeness. Since they do not rely on an épistémè that allows for mutual understanding of what specific terms mean: (For example, not understanding the word “until” as inclusive of a given day, or not understanding two rounds as the time equivalent. You can read about it here: https://cybernations.fandom.com/wiki/Snake_Eyes_War ). This extends rather clearly into their OWF posting. Specific examples would highlight individuals in a negative light, so I will not provide them at this time, but I would suggest reading the three largest, most recent threads with large Cobrasphere presences and counting the number of misunderstandings that seem to occur between the people replying to one another. This kind of posting is not consistent across the sphere, but it is prevalent in an abundance of its members. Only a few examples (Johnny Apocalypse/TDT, Kapleo, Lyanna) are the exceptions to a rule that is largely a cloud of negativity and toxicity that often misrepresents and harasses both individuals and alliances. Incidentally, Cobrasphere understands criticism against them and their conduct as reflective of a desire to silence them. The truth is that their critics would like them to behave differently. This goes hand and hand with another tendency of Cobrasphere politics, namely the frequent victimization of their individual alliances and sphere. It is rare to find a situation that involves COBRA or their allies in one way or another that does not involve them being the victim of an unjust act, usually at the hands of CLAWS or FTW in recent years. These OWF practices color the political perception of COBRA as a combative alliance that is unwilling to cooperate and that will frequently make enemies out of anyone connected to their grievances in order to exploit the potential PR possibility. By repeating their combativeness with the same alliances, which other alliances do not have issues working with, it highlights that the source of these problems are tied to the sphere itself and prevents political maneuvers with the Cobrasphere. Who wants to work with someone who can’t even bury a hatchet? With regard to Discord, their behavior is slightly different. They do not have a consistent conduct policy and have frequently exposed the public to a variety of content, some of which would be characterized as ableist, sexual, or targeted harassment. Their individual members tend to follow conduct rules on other servers thought. It is not a huge cause for concern, individual members can only be as curbed from undue behavior as far as an alliance government allows, but it does affect their image as well. Personally, I think these matters are not integral to their image, but there are surely some who may object. Finally, their in-game activity is focused on war, raiding and forcing micros not aligned with them to disband, most notably in their recent extermination of JDA, who had been lied to over the course of the Snake Eyes War and thus did not choose to optionally enter upon the battlefield. These small acts are inconsistent with their opposition to curbstomping, but also drive non-like-minded micros from planet Bob, paralyzing micropolitics into a singular sphere outside of a pair of protectorates scattered across the world. Of course, this issue is, broadly speaking, an outcome of the concept of "fun" itself. Where are you to find "fair wars" at all? I am curious to see how LH's micro thrives or dies in its already clearly antagonistic relationship to the broader microsphere, which is highly aligned. To sum up, Cobrasphere has an active and thriving community that could potentially dish out some political action, but they do not have any ability to build a coalition, which is based on a combination of factors, the most significant of which are mainly their ideology, inability to agree to similar terms as other alliances, public relations strategy and their general negativity. There have been some recent mutterings of change in the Cobrasphere though, so perhaps there is hope in the areas that are most inhibiting to political development. Next up are the remnants of Aftermath and the non XX part of the beer-o-sphere. We typically call them the ex-moralist spheres in discussions I have had. Looking forward to your responses.

These blog posts aren't about whether or not merger alliances can be powerful though. If it were I would talk about some of the positives, such as expanding the influence of the individual constituent alliances into something much more real, creating better tierage, etc. But when it comes to politics, mergers tend to be a bad thing for the overall health of the world. It's a useful indicator when we consider political roles. There has never been a world leading or factional leading merger alliance, because almost all of them broke up due to infighting or were paper tigers since they had no standardized milcom. These historical realities are why they are indicators. Certainly history isn't predictive, but it's better than nothing. I do think there are some positives here, but I would suggest they are mainly tied to security. RFI alliances don't live in the seeming fear of a permanent dogpile that most alliances did since the formation of Oculus. All these treaties create a precarious balance which does prevent global wars to some degree, but only ones that are horrendously unbalanced. If we consider the last time NADC was rolled, we can see that RFI functioned as a bloc since the war wrapped up rather quickly, it did not explode into a rolling of the entire ex-moralist sphere, and that was entirely due to their tie to Argent. So yeah, I agree that there are areas that could be highlighted as positive or not, but talking about the positives from an insider perspective is also a lot more sensitive since I know a lot more about what the bloc is doing/thinking etc.

I'm happy that you've joined the discussion! I disagree with your point about mergers though. I think mergers have genuinely never been all too successful in the history of CN. CLAWS & FTW might be the exceptions, (And to some extent GATO) but if that's true, then they are the only exceptions in the history of Cyber Nations. Many many merger alliances have come and gone including AI, my own ally TLR, CoTM, Last Call, Non Grata, my former alliance Atlas, and the list goes on. In all cases, the initial peaks of activity were quickly eroded because there were not enough positions of activity for such active communities. Mergers always centralize power and reduce the number of people total that govern over its constituent bodies. So, you get less active players in key roles AND there are less active players in other alliances to do exciting things. Credit on the last point to James Spanier (Lowsten). I didn't feel like singing praises to a bloc that's so near to my heart. It would probably come off as a bit too biased but maybe I over-corrected a little.

Case Study: RFI The second blog post of case studies to discuss why the political game is/has been dead. This time I will spotlight my own bloc, Roll For Initiative (RFI). RFI consists of GATO, Legion, CLAWS, FTW & Argent. What makes this scattering of alliances at all responsible for the political scenario we find ourselves in? Well, I’m glad you read my rhetorical question and thus were forced to literally ask. First and foremost, the criticism against RFI that is most often levied is related to their propensity for treaties. If you count the individual nation treaties (before the bloc’s existence) GATO has eleven currently. If you compare that to some alliances, even those within Oculus, that might seem like a lot. But why is having a lot of treaties a bad thing? First we have to consider why treaties are signed. Typically, and most commonly, treaties are signed for two clear benefits: The military relationship and the political one. Sometimes these relationships are more political in nature (Argent-GATO) and sometimes they are more militaristic (GATO-Legion). Historically, these are often interconnected to some degree as well, and the majority of treaties that persist into these later stages of the game seem to not be related directly to either political or military benefits. (In our own case, arguably with MHA). These benefits are just one reason why an alliance signs a treaty though, more often than not, there’s also the element of friendship to consider (GATO-UCR). If we consider that an alliance may sign alliances for military benefits, for political benefits, or for reasons of friendship (because these alliances want to be on the same side in conflicts), then it automatically creates a lot of treaty ties. This generally does add to the security of a given alliance. If GATO were attacked tomorrow by UPN, there are quite a few allies who could come to the defense of GATO, and it would be easy to build a central coalition to defend the alliance. In the case of the majority of RFI alliances, one could argue that they have too many treaties – not because they do not work but rather because they do. It is probably very difficult to roll an alliance like GATO because of its eleven treaties: Even coalition building is difficult because of pesky intelligence clauses. This also has a compounding effect once a bloc is signed. Any single treaty to the bloc (Argent-PPO), (Legion-Invicta), (CLAWS-TTK) also directly impacts all of the potential that could be exerted in attacks toward those alliances, creating a further paralytic state when it comes to military politics. When one considers the various Oculus connections to RFI (NPO-GATO, IRON-GATO, IRON-FTW, NpO-Legion, NPO-CLAWS, NPO-Argent, IRON-Argent) it becomes apparent how the treaty web in its current state can also act as a way of even further defending periphery allies. If TLR is attacked, one is at risk of both war from Oculus (NPO-TLR) but also RFI (GATO-TLR). And that’s just one example. Treaty bloat and compounding issues that occur due to the nature of blocs are hardly the only applicable points of criticism though. Another problem (which is generally applicable abroad but very noticeable in RFI) is the perpetuation of the ‘old guard’. I don’t mean an old guard as in dating back to the origins of planet Bob, but rather to the same set of faces that have dominated these and similar alliances since at least 2014. Lowsten of Argent, Canik of FTW, Me, WANA and Kiloist in GATO, White Chocolate, Jazzy, Claude and Al in CLAWS. These are not new faces to governance. A lack of ‘fresh’ leadership and faces at the most top positions leads to a constriction on political dynamism. It is more difficult to change my mind about the value of, say, ODN after GATO & ODN drifted apart from my perspective because Osravan and I already know each other fairly well. We both know how the other person works and the other alliances, and for that very reason – Should those judgments lead to believing that a relationship is not fruitful, there will be no further development of it. In addition, the overall knowledge and relationships between various members results in a more cautious and pragmatic politics. When Argent was hit by the literal leader of GLoF just recently, Lowsten was diplomatic and arguably cautious in his approach to the scenario, which prevented a possible global war. One can levy complaints of a jaded leadership more broadly against a variety of alliances (Consider my friends in NpO, NPO or IRON as examples), but it is evident to me as I work within RFI most closely. The next issue stems primarily from a combination of the two. RFI does not exist as an independent sphere outside of its direct members. There are very few alliances that could be considered to be part of an RFI sphere at this time. Any attempt to make such a list would be comprising alliances that are already inhabiting one pre-existing sphere. Part of that can be blamed on the lack of alliances, especially dynamic ones, but an equal or even greater share of the blame can fall on the lack of start-up protectorates that build into real alliances. One obvious barrier to this is the health of the overall game, but that hasn’t stopped some alliances from rising and falling over the past few years nonetheless. Oh and speaking of the death of diverse alliances and how that creates one of the reasons that RFI helps perpetuate the current political system: They have too many merger AAs. It could be argued that the alliances that make-up FTW, CLAWS and even GATO (in its current active membership) should have stayed split apart. Bringing together active players only killed more diversity in the game and got rid of additional alliances that may have appealed to new or other players that already existed on the various AAs. It’s hard to say how much of a factor this is, but I recognize that it may also be a contributor to flattening politics, since it objectively decreases the amount of “active” political players. The last and perhaps most obvious criticism of RFI in the political landscape is that it is an entirely untested sphere. It’s only conflict was the Snake Eyes War (as of yet) and that was only a test to the lower tier of the alliance. Most nations in RFI are in the mid and upper tiers, so it’s impossible to speculate on the military capacities of the bloc. As such, their political power is also unclear. The solution for determining RFI’s strength or weakness falls on fighting in a large scale war, but the only large scale war that can exist at this stage are against the ex-moralist sphere, their own allies (either via Polarsphere or Oculus-sphere). As such, that is simply unlikely to happen. RFI is not an overly aggressive sphere, and generally seeks diplomatic outcomes to situations rather than allowing them to escalate. The ex-moralists behave primarily defensively and would not create such situations. Oculus (and by extension Polarsphere) have both been content with the state of the game as elaborated on in the first case study. RFI is fundamentally unable to be tested without a stark change to the system. As a result, they are another force of momentum that paralyzes external foreign politics. Next up, it's Cobrasphere.

I don't dismiss that as a political reality. These things are a lot more dynamic and the flows between stagnation and symptomatic results can be pretty unclear. That's why I'm trying to focus on how stagnation today is facilitated by the various powers at be. Tomorrow, it's RFI's turn. I think you're very right that the culprits for stagnation can be easily traced back to the individual leadership of a variety of alliances 6-8 years ago. A lack of new blood being one of the biggest problems. The best thing that new blood has to offer for alliances is that they do not necessarily value ties that have exited for months/years and they have new goals. When alliance leadership is/was not replaced as time goes on, it can lead to a hyper-stable world.

I'd say economic, military and political superiority are all pretty heavily connected. Most alliances tend to be good at a few of these. Historically, we can look at Polaris circa 2010-2014 and say they had arguably one of the best and robust economic systems, but they were politically unable to get out of a position to be rolled repeatedly, due to the political failings of Polaris in Bipolar. On the other hand, an alliance that is only militarily competent (FAN or COBRA perhaps?) tend to consistently be pushed to the margins by their political decision-making. An alliance that thrives only on political power... It's harder to come up with an example, but I suppose an alliance like RIA or Sparta could fit in there. Alliances with decent political positions at one time or another in CN history who were unable to capitalize on it due to their military or economic failings. Since the economic system an alliance has is often predictive of their military power, those areas tend to be very important. Political domination gives you unique leverages to expand your military and economic power relative to others, since you can roll out tanks if you perceive someone as an economic/military threat. So usually, military and economic domination act as tools to entrench dominance. I don't see tech and military advantages as something likely to change as the planet develops at this time. As you'll see in the next case studies, each existing political sphere has their own reasons, intended or not, for maintaining status-quo.

Case Study: Oculus And so I’ve decided to return to blogging about the politics of Planet Bob because there’s something that’s been bothering me a lot lately, which is that people don’t seem to fundamentally understand the political situation from the perspectives of various alliances, especially not those they are aligned with. In general, that empathetic quality is something most foreign affairs ministers should have or have had, but these days many of our governments are staffed by what was once the second tier of government leadership. Some of them have grown up into being their own rulers, but for the most part, the political apparatus of 2016 is largely the same as that of today. Why is that? Why are politics dead in this game from the perspective of members across the game? Interspersed and connected to this analysis is my own narrative, since this is my damn blog post and I will relate it to what was going on from my vantage point at various times. Over the course of this series of blog posts, I will look at the various factors that affect political stagnation and I’ll also consider whether that criticism is levied accurately. Today, I’ll do a case study on Oculus to explain one reason politics are dead. I started with Oculus for the obvious reason that they are the biggest bloc in the game, and thus have the greatest political influence. One very simple reason that seems to be completely lost on others: Victory. Victory and the conditions which allow for continued victory in the context of Planet Bob. For those of you who haven’t ever opened a wiki-page, Oculus aka Novus Ordo Seclorum was signed on August 31st, 2015, not long after I had posted my first thoughts on how the game had been gyrating toward the uninteresting. I was then Vice President of Atlas, and found it increasingly difficult to make innovative foreign affairs decisions with the alliances I was most interested in, because so many of them had conservative governments and were unwilling to act swiftly on anything. And then, out of the blue, I was surprised to learn of Oculus’ existence. It had been kept from the majority of allied government and I was so dissatisfied with my allies at the time for not informing me that I promptly took a break from government. Why did I do that? I already viewed AZTEC as paralytic to the game. It seemed to me that there would be no way to decouple Umbrella’s sphere of influence from a total military and political victory of the game and allow the Pacifican sphere (which included Atlas) to hold total control. The Oculus treaty looked to me to be a complete blurring of the PB / NPO / DR remnant spheres, which functionally ended any and all future military conflict. The stats would simply never be there, even to adjust the hierarchy of the alliances within the new power dynamic. It would be necessarily the case that alliances on the periphery but allied to Oculus would function as a semi-independent web of their own but that ultimately any and all political and military actions would be tied to the assured destruction of an Oculus chain-in. Since I was aligned with them, I viewed it as alright, but also as an assuredly boring outcome. I don’t necessarily agree with my opinions in 2015, since I had an initially very negative view of the bloc. However, the truth is that global wars vanished. Is it just out of fear that this is the case? For some maybe, but truly, Oculus does not fear anyone -- and they certainly should be counted if we're talking about what holds back global wars. They know without a doubt that they could demolish the entirety of Bob outside of their own bloc if they wished it. So, why doesn’t Oculus go around demolishing the planet? Because they have won, and because they care about their community and winning. Global wars are the only things that appear to threaten this game by the grace of Admin, since they tend to drive the most players from the game. It wasn’t that many years ago that the NPO government (or Roquentin, who may know) posted statistics that showed how the decline of player membership most correlated to global conflicts. Although they always brought drama to CN, they also necessarily killed its communities on the losing and winning sides. For alliances with such power as those in Oculus to intentionally initiate a global war is to threaten to destroy some of their own memberships and their own allies. It follows then, that they would do whatever they can do to continue to cement and hold their position, rather than instigating acts of hegemonic terrorism. Most alliance leaders are okay with this scenario, because the duty of an alliance leader is to their alliance, and it is up to the alliance government and its members to provide entertainment while also attempting to navigate toward a more beneficial political, military and economic position. If we fast forward to today, the argument remains as true as ever. Kashmir is still recovering from the non-global Snake Eyes War, and probably will never reach their level of membership and nation strength again. The last global war put the nails in the coffins of a dozen AAs. Imagine if any one sphere was at war with Oculus for a regular war period of say six months. There would be mass deletions, and it could very well end the planet itself. In effect, Oculus is a contributor to political stagnation because they view global warfare as detrimental to the health of the game. However, it’s not only that, it’s also that bold word above. Oculus have won the political game, and their allies also support their overall base of power. It makes little to no sense for them to exercise political or military action against their friends and allies. Demanding that they do shows ignorance of their position and power. And it also ignores the consequences of global war. Next up we’ll be taking a look at Roll For Initiative! Stay Tuned! I welcome your discussion.

I don't believe they have. In this regard Cobra and their allies have a standard of behavior greatly above that of veracity.

Your welcome. I hope I answered it sufficiently; I think I misunderstood the question to some degree. Hope you and your birds are doing well! Nah, using the OWF is fine. I have made my point pretty clear on this matter and others with you before. I hope that our spheres can move on at some point, but I honestly don't know how that is possible. I feel like it is very difficult to communicate with you, even here, without your generally hateful demeanor spilling out.

If you mean in-game aid, I think that they should not have. Based on their decision-making process, they anticipated Veracity would accept the punishment they were working out for him and that is in line with my expectations for how these situations are usually handled, even though it may diverge from my personal opinion. I respect that pretty much every alliance will make choices differently than I would. I think that a few rounds is fair when it comes to punishment for the initial Lex related crime and whether or not aid should or shouldn't be sent there would be at the discretion of the involved parties. I don't know the full extent to the OOC harassment, so I can't say how that would affect my own opinion with regards to aid. But he already would have been unprotected by the raiding clause of my alliance to begin with and wouldn't have been given any aid by GATO in that case. One of my senators will be sanctioning veracity on brown when he's next online unless someone else beats us to it.

I don't and I condemn it. I wanted veracity ejected from CLAWS when this came out, and he would've been if it was GATO. However, I can make light of COBRA using OOC attacks as some kind of banner of righteousness as they seem to care about them for the very first time in their history. They have systematically promoted OOC and personal attacks outside of this scenario and never condemned anyone who have partaken in them.