MrMuz

There's also a large number of treaties signed around enemies. A MDP comes with a really solid CB. And sometimes, sitting together with someone telling them how much you hate this other alliance is a bonding moment. So when an alliance's goals are to roll a certain alliance, they'll be angry with people who get in the way of that. Treaties are like marriages - when you treaty someone, you treaty their whole family, regardless of whether it's non-chaining.

Lol, I feel like I've gone over this a few times. CBs matter a LOT. Nearly all alliances are chained to both sides of any conflict. A CB determines where they chain onto. Nobody wants to be on the unpopular side of a war. There are plenty of strong CBs, like defense of an ally, defense of a member (who was raided/rogued). You can simply not defend an ally, citing coalition warfare like so many others do. Coalition warfare is a decent CB, and so are pre-emptive strikes. A good reason of most of the pre-war treaty movements is determining where these CBs fall when a weak CB triggers a global war. Nobody ever questions a CB if it's strong enough; it's why Legion-Tetris didn't expand, why the 6 Million Dollar war didn't, why Nordreich has a clean hit on LSF now. This war and the TOP-NpO war were both equally hopeless, but it expanded because it was a poor CB and people felt the need to defend their pride over that. LSF is salvageable, but the CB on them is too strong to be worth helping. I'd say that the real difference between MADPs and MDPs are how strong a CB has to be before they'd defend the treatied ally. A weak enough CB will automatically be considered an "aggressive war". The only reason why you wouldn't want to argue about CBs is if you've already lost the argument.

Agreed on most of it, disagree on some points, but I don't really disagree enough to write an essay on it Just wanted to say that you left out the strong "underdog" factor in this game. A lot of people prefer to be on the losing side because there's much more to accomplish; you get a few people who will play any game the hard way once they feel they've won. There's a tendency to self-destroy your alliance once you're at the top because you get bored and want to start over.. I think GOD/SF have gone through that a few years ago, and I'd be surprised if alliances like MK/NG can stand not having any serious competition. A lot of alliances also hate whoever it is at the top - XX has gone through it, despite never really doing anything bad. Of course people are going to justify how much they hated XX for meatshielding SF, but you don't see Chestnut getting the same attention just because they have less NS. Achieving hegemony is really bad for security. Just imagine what would happen if all neutrals suddenly signed a MDP with each other (or even an ODP!). They'd be rolled almost instantly from the underdog factor. Another major factor is I guess what Roq refers to as the 'low fruit'. Alliances pick out goals, just as a way of playing the game. An easy goal is whoever is most unpopular at any moment - exHeg, XX, SF, etc. It's easy for people to gang up on these low fruits, they end up building ties with 'enemies of enemies' and cutting all ties linking to them. This produces sort of a 'superHegemony' illusion. You get a real feel for success, justify it to your membership, despite not really accomplishing anything difficult. It's never going to be a real multipolar world, the world will naturally start to surround and swarm anyone who sticks their neck out.

Why did it even change to MB?

not so much bad ass, just common sense

Pfft, I've been doing the zero $%&@s thing since I started playing. I don't know how you can play a game and still give a $%&@ about how it turns out. It doesn't mean you have to be an idiot though.

Never realized that the NG war was isolated from the others. Thanks for the updates.

CN follows a much more militant culture compared to the real world. In CN, nuke a non nuclear nation and it is not dishonorable, because the rules of war state that nuclear weapons are the standard weapons of war. Every nation in modern CN is expected to stand its own ground, buy their own nukes. It's not the same as killing a non-combatant - if you were to nuke a neutral, that would be seen as very dishonorable. At one time IRL, air warfare, gunpowder, bows were all considered dishonorable weapons. In CN, nukes are the standard. People do get angry over the things that they feel are dishonorable, and most people do call out their allies if they're committing dishonorable acts. It's just that your notions of honor and class just might not meet that of others. You'd have to make a list of what acts you believe are dishonorable before I can understand what you're getting at.

So if this was a war movie, honor would suddenly not exist because it's a movie? Why shouldn't it exist in a game? Honor doesn't exist in chess on hockey, in those games the term 'sportsmanship' applies. But it definitely exists in any game that tries to mirror politics, whether single player or multiplayer. If you fail to follow up a treaty in Europa Universalis to kill people for your allies, you're automatically considered dishonorable. Why should it be any different in CN? Throughout history, killing people and sacrificing yourself for a just cause has always been an honorable act.

Got some more work cut out for you now

Basically this. It's not like we've been quiet on the issue. People do it because there's a percieved in-game advantage to it, similar to why politicians like to point out affairs, personality flaws, wasteful personal spending, etc on opposition politicians. Logically, it shouldn't have anything to do with how things work, but psychologically it can be powerful. That incident did cause significant in-game damage to Ragnarok, far more than it should have. On the other side, OOC can be used 'positively', like an alliance leader may buy a game for another alliance leader, and this OOC friendship affects IC friendship. We can't really say no to that either.

It might not even be a global war.

I thought it was generally accepted that ODPs are worthless because of this? People often sign them as the equivalent of PIATs.. to symbolize a greater agreement. Some alliances instead insist that a MDP is actually an ODP and only sign ODPs but treat them like alliances treat MDPs. In reality, if you have two conflicting MDPs, you should actually defend BOTH alliances instead of defending neither (even though the results are probably the same). But CN chooses to take "ODP = small treaty, MDP = big treaty, MDoAP = really big treaty, MADP = stupid" Easier said than done. People will just hammer you with social pressure. You can't ignore them, because then they start talking to your other friends, bringing it up on the OWF, and it's just so much easier to lose NS. Which is why you see a lot of people honoring treaties, then unfriending them almost immediately after wars. Plus, MD treaties are mandatory defense, regardless of what your moral and personal views are on the situation, you'd still have to defend someone you don't believe in. And while non-chained treaties are meant to be optional, they don't actually work that way because it's really hard to legally tell the difference between a direct attack and a 'chained conflict'. Like the Umbrella-Fark war right now is most likely coalition warfare, and thus chained... but there's nothing in the DoW that says so.

IMO, it's all a big chess game. The best players will play it as so, because it is well... advanced strategy. In the end, it is a game, it's all about seeing who gets rolled, rather than 'defending friends'. But many alliances choose to have an agenda, and when war hits, they get pissed because they've been trying to use everyone else, yet are the ones who get used. Most alliances choose to take the role/image of the loyal ally so they usually go along with this. It's just an easier way to play the game, rather than sitting around the whole day on IRC trying to plan out and force the war into a certain angle.