MrMuz
-
Posts
898 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Blog Comments posted by MrMuz
-
-
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.
-
MB changed to BM againWhy 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
-
I can say no all day long, and it does nothing.
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 truly wish that people would operate on the premise that ODPs are essentially held with everyone, by everyone. Any alliance has the right to defend anyone they want. You think the CB is BS? Get in there and do something about it.
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"
It's just a shame that many alliances will go against their morals or personal views just to chain in and please whoever may be leading the coalition.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.
-
You can ignore bullying all you want. But other people won't, especially with slander. That's my point. The more you 'toughen up' and ignore it, the more damage it causes.
I've seen people who were ostracized IRL just because someone accused of being child molesters. There's absolutely no chance for such people to get a job working with children if they pop up on even a prank 'sex offender registration' app. If you have a reputation as a rapist, and a dozen trolls who would attest to it, you're going to have a hard time trying to get engaged to someone or trying to get a job when the first google search for your name turns up a blog criticizing your sexual preferences.
Things like the Biodad controversy crosses the line when it starts becoming real. Trolling and teasing is within someone's rights, but when people actually start believing the accusations put forward - especially with character-based accusations like being bad parents - it starts to have very real results. They lose credibility, people won't trust them, it strains relationships with family and friends.
Words can have a very real physical effect.
-
I've seen such trolling ruin lives of a few people I know. It's really sad. There's a line between pranks and throwing insults for fun, and bullying/slandering someone to the point that it starts affecting their career and relationships.
Freedom of speech is a completely stupid argument here. Freedom of speech is meant to allow people to tell the truth without being punished or speak up against injustice. When it's obviously used for bullying, it's just abusing rights.
And, if you don't want any information used against you, don't be posting pictures of your kid and !@#$ on public profiles.
This doesn't apply in this day and age. Heck, Google alone stalks the hell out of your very private personal information and their privacy policy is basically "if you don't like it, don't use it".
I remember 15 years back as a kid, when we were told to never use personal details in emails ever for safety reasons. These days, you'd be severely crippling your career and social options if you were to keep personal details out of email. Gmail itself reads a lot of company emails. I'd like to download an app that tells me when the next movie at the local cinema is showing, but in exchange, I'd have to give them my location and phone conversation logs.
Probably within 5 years, all this info will become increasingly public, and it's already way too fricking easy to stalk people. I mean, these days, I've been able to find very personal info about people who are interviewing on the radio or random 'anonymous' chatters on IRC, just with a quick 10 min search. Even if it's not posted by the person directly, it's through their family members or things like voting/tax databases online. I've pinned down the house numbers and family members of people in CN just by knowing their first name, minor job details, city, and/or mutual friends/interests.
Not so much a matter of don't give people information to abuse, but adopting to the fact that information to abuse will be freely available.
-
1) It's not really that demanding, in fact it's actually the least demanding. Logging on once in 25 days, 3 mins a day. But agreed that it can be improved.
2) Agreed. Also helps if people would stop being dicks and not use deletions as a mark of how well they're doing in war.
3) Quad attack is not really a major thing. FOK works around it, very well too.
4) Flags. Last I checked, winning TE also earned you a few free donations as well. As a major TE player and someone who was senior gov for one of TE's bigger alliances, I find that TE is very well suited for politics. But people usually use it to troll or blow up random stuff. It's actually a very interesting part of the game, but quite tiring. And the general culture is that it's the anti-politics of CN, which doesn't help make it interesting for everyone else.
two nations) You can already make a second nation in TE and join a second alliance. (and spy too if that's your thing; you can do actual spying within TE and not get permanently punished, or watch for SE stuff that does seep into TE)
-
I used to see some kind of ad for a "School of Diplomacy." By the time I decided to check it out, though, the ads weren't showing anymore.
Maybe there are secret dictator schools hidden in various cities. What better place to recruit dictators than an online nation game full of kooky internet people.
If anyone does sign up to show off that they have a certificate from a School of Diplomacy, they would probably be the kind of people who play CN.
-
I hated raiding in TE. Really, it sucked, they almost always fight back, and you lose more growth in the military build up than you get just by growing silently. It's so uneconomical and annoying that I'd assume a lot of 'raids' are just weak CBs.
In SE, it's also too much effort for too little gain. Maybe if you're bored or something, but recently wasted way too much money on not decomming all my soldiers in time before collection. And not worth the 15% odds of losing that hard earned $1M in a failed GA.
-
"C. arabica contains less caffeine than any other commercially cultivated species of coffee." - Wikipedia
So another coffee might be better if you're not just drinking it for taste, but want a stronger boost from it.
It's more bitter and cheaper too. Not everyone wants the softer taste of arabica.
-
I personally don't drink. But if everyone followed these rules, there'd be nothing wrong with alcohol. Enjoy it, but don't let it mess up your life.
I think 6 is quite an important rule; similar to smoking, it's the thing that pushes you into addiction, and it's one of those things that keep your from stopping. You can drink to loosen up. But don't fool yourself into thinking that people won't like you/you won't get laid without alcohol.
-
Yeah, I see it's subjective, but robusta wouldn't even be in market if there wasn't a reason to use it. A lot of people use different blends of both.
-
"Use 100% Arabica coffee only."
Why?
-
I like using analogies for legal purposes. Sometimes you just don't have a specific law to address a situation, you just have to go with the closest laws and similar decisions, and make some kind of analogy. But it doesn't work if you have some kind of personal agenda to those laws and try to stretch an analogy to have it say what you want.
They're also good for explaining concepts to someone.
They suck for arguing, though. And anything with any kind of bias, since you can just pull them in so many directions. I mean, if you want to argue why you believe something, sure. Not if you want to argue why you're right.
-
Nothing wrong with calling in allies to deal with a rogue. Especially for microalliances, where there's sometimes no other help in that nation's range. IMHO, calling in help from allies is less of a coward's act than sanctions.
On the other hand, there's no harm in calling for help from allies when outnumbered. That's the point, to spread out the force of the attack with numbers.
But eh, it's CN. People usually cast aside their own arguments when it's convenient.
Treaties with the "other" side: bad?
in A Neutral's Blog
A blog by jerdge in General
Posted
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.