HM Solomon I

Wouldn't work. The Supernatural Containment Bureau has killed him with fire many times, he just gets better.

Eww you guys got dreadlord all over the SOFA. :P o/ congrats everyone

o/ onwards and upwards

I know right, so rude.

Yay!

Having standards doesn't make you good or worthy of praise, nor does it make you better than anyone else. Someone can have standards and be downright evil if the standards are evil (for example, everyone must measure up to my standard of perfection or they die, I will not lift a finger to help someone being viciously slaughtered because those being viciously slaughtered should help themselves). Moreover, as evidenced by your post, that you can say whatever you want does not mean that you should. It has been claimed ITT that supporting those that commit wrong acts is itself wrong, so even if all your treaties are based on honesty and mutual goals it doesn't make you "good". The mutual goals themselves could be wrong or one could be honest about evil things. Honesty and shared goals with treaty partners have nothing to do with an alliance conducting "ethical" FA. I don't really care whether Polaris is good or evil, but several of your compatriots have made the claim that it is good and thus better than all other alliances, a claim which I view as entirely unsupported by either this argument or any of the others made ITT.

Now I'm curious. What about Polaris makes it "good"? I'm having a hard time buying this assertion.

P&W is a great alternative to CN, better war mechanics, better econ mechanics, and an admin team that actually gives a damn. I play both, but I mostly play CN still because of the community in my alliance and I've been playing long enough it sort of has its own inertia.

I agree, the mods are erring on the side of even a shred of suspicion = multi. And warning those who discuss moderation issues when all they're doing is asking legitimate questions about how rules are enforced, and maybe making the not unreasonable claim that they are being enforced too harshly and not fairly, is just plain dumb. And there's also this. Seriously warning someone for having a lowercase character rather than an uppercase one is Kafkaesque, we're talking actual insanity here.

Whatever the outward reason for wars in the "ancient" past, they have always been about the treaty web and about power. But I don't think these are fake reasons any more than doing something for more than one reason necessarily makes one of them "fake". A reason is a reason, whether people think it's a valid reason is another matter, but claiming it's fake is not the same as claiming it's invalid.

Certainly it is true that smaller alliances are unlikely to have the resources to send permanent representatives to every non-allied alliance but there are reasons other than signing treaties (as listed above) to send representatives to some of them.

Actually there are many reasons to send permanent representatives to non-allies: Non-allies might be connected to allies, thus keeping lines of communication open is essential. Non-allies can be potential future allies, which won't happen without regular communication. Even non-allies can appreciate having one point of contact with another alliance, someone they know will be around and can be used to reach others within their alliance. Non-allies are nonetheless major powers in the world and having an ambassador to them allows you to monitor them. Likewise, it eliminates the need to get someone up to speed on their eccentricities when an urgent matter arises. et cetera

10/10 would lol again.

Viceroys are not advisors.

I never said it was a zero-sum game, and I never said in order to get ahead you must screw another alliance. I said it is disingenuous to play yourself as an advisor while being both a representative and member of another alliance. You can certainly influence alliances, but influencing does not entail advising.

Well for one a good ambassador does not serve as an advisor to the receiving alliance, for how can one serve as an advisor while being loyal to another? I agree that micro-management is not likely to be an optimal path for FA, ambassadors must have some leeway. That said, I have no idea how you thought I or anybody else would have gotten than from "Quite a bit of implicit authority if you are good at being an ambassador B)".

wut

Recently, I've been thinking about the subject of this article. What implicit authority do ambassadors and representatives of alliances have when speaking to foreign alliances? This may seem at first trivial, but it's actually quite important. It matters when it comes to alliances' responsibility for what their representatives say. Here we will delve into this question and attempt to work out an answer. All authority is either explicit or implicit. Explicit authority is that which is granted directly by someone with the legitimate ability to do so. But explicit authority is easily revoked and in any event, it isn't the kind of authority that usually gets anyone into trouble because it is so clearly defined by its very nature. There isn't much room for error. Implicit authority on the other hand is much murkier. It isn't based on the decrees of another (organization or individual) but rather on the context of both the position a person holds and other factors such as a given situation. While it can vary depending on situation, what will be discussed here is the minimum level of implicit authority representatives can be assumed to have because without it their jobs would effectively be impossible or at least unreasonably difficult. So what is this minimum amount of implicit authority representatives are vested with? Well it is reasonable to figure all representatives are plenipotentiaries. A plenipotentiary is an individual who has the authority to speak on behalf of the sovereign (i.e., the State or, in the case of CN, the Alliance). Of course, this is not entirely true. For example, we rarely think of alliance members who serve as representatives as implicitly holding the power to negotiate or sign treaties, declare war, make peace, or do any of the more high level actions alliances are capable of performing. That said, while representatives may not ordinarily have the authority to do these things, they can certainly speak (but not act) on behalf of their alliances. Their alliance has sent them to represent it to another, and if the receiving alliance cannot take what this person says as representative of the alliance, why would it even bother to talk with said person in any official capacity. The sending alliance then may as well have not sent this person at all because without the authority to speak on behalf of their alliance, which is the whole point of sending representatives, the person cannot do her job. So onto why this matters. Because representatives are speaking for their alliances, their alliances can be held responsible for anything that they say to a foreign alliance. Of course, an alliance can revoke its representatives' authority to speak for it, but it is responsible for anything said before that point. Responsibility is a measure of how much praise or blame a person deserves for words or actions, and if alliances are not responsible for what their representatives say, then what their representatives say is trivial and pointless. They may be nominally speaking on behalf of their alliance but it isn't substantive speech. If representatives cannot engage in substantive speech, they cannot do their jobs as substantive speech is the only kind that matters to the receiving alliance. Niceties and basic polite conversation are fine, but in order to engage with an alliance through its representatives (which is the whole point of receiving and talking to representatives), representatives must be capable of saying things that genuinely mean something, and how can anything they say mean anything for relations between alliances if one alliance is wholly removed from anything that is said? The answer is that it can't. Representatives must be capable of speaking on behalf of their alliances to do their job, and speaking on an alliance's behalf necessarily entails that the alliance can be held responsible for what is said in its name, for good or for bad, for praise or for blame.

The biggest reason they are being raided is because NpO cancelled on them leaving them without any m-level treaties (and thus very vulnerable). Sure perhaps Tywin was part of the reason, but honestly does anyone think they would've been raided had Tywin joined and Polaris still held a treaty with them?

A wild Sir Humphrey appears!

1 happiness does equal $2, but that's base income. For events modifying citizen income, that is also base income. If you're choosing between +1 happiness and +$3 citizen income, choose +$3 because it's equivalent to getting +1.5 happiness.

I mean it sure would've been more fun if this was a real DoW. :D Won't someone think of the casualties!

Because we care so very deeply about your opinion, please tell us more oh wise one.

Or put in the context of another realm: "I lived in the U.S. in 1802, I served under Thomas Jefferson!"