Belisaurus

If you're going to solo, save up for the Manhattan Project at least. Otherwise you're just a tech raid (OOC: that also posts OWF topics).

Thanks for the updates folks. I'll try to get to this ASAP post holidays. Having a family and all that is kind of a drag on my ability to play with teh pixels.

Well some people have fond memories of The Citadel since it allowed them to act like a *insert pejorative of your choice here* and not end up paying millions to various alliances. So this all makes sense, fond memories of the security blanket and all.

[quote name='Iceknave' timestamp='1324413157' post='2882753'] -snip- [/quote] I agree with everything you wrote, the only issue I see though is that if you're on a such short war cycle and your source income are tech deals, you don't get to spend much time on the wonder clock. As you said you have brief periods to buy wonders before the next war takes you to ZI/ZT/null warchest. Meanwhile if you're fighting Umbrella, TOP, or someone of that nature they're not missing wonder purchases. So you as an alliance are falling behind your enemies. You're at ZI/ZT/null warchest while they're still importing tech or purchasing the high end wonders. Post war you get a slight breather to jump up and grab a few more wonders, but you're never going to achieve parity or anything close to parity. You get to hit the wonder button a few times before someone comes and kicks your door in again. Worse it will be difficult for you to reach a stage where you can stop them from kicking your door in. If you're Pacifica and a lot of people are looking to settle grudges, so what you do makes sense but unless you can find a way to break the cycle it will prove problematic to expand your upper tier any further. So you're pretty much stuck in a world where Doomhouse can raze Francograd at will in a 1 v 1 fight. I think it is intelligent policy to get wonders early like you did, since Doomhouse can't nuke though away, but you need to break the cycle to get the good toys. Regarding the SDI, it can be very useful or useless for individual nations. Sometimes it shoots down 18 in a row, some times it lets through 7 in a row. What matters more is having them on an alliance wide scale. As your expand your sample size you start to see the benefit size of them. If a 200 person alliance all have SDIs and they stop a quarter of the missiles fired at them, it suddenly takes 267 missiles a day to nuke them instead of 200. If the SDIs are really stopping 6 out of 10 nukes, that means it should take 500 missils a day to nuke them. So suddenly in the later rounds of war your enemies were forced to shot themselves dry to break through your SDIs, which does help. Same with the WRC. If everyone has a WRC your alliance can purchase 400 nukes a day instead of 200. That does make a difference on a macro scale

[quote name='jerdge' timestamp='1324394829' post='2882564'] Hiding? Quietly? Spending? You can't hide stats in CN. The only effective way to save your upper tier is to align alongside those that are top heavy. [/quote] Build your top tier entirely off AA. Or at least a fraction of it. You have many options in that area. You can for example send them off to neutral alliances. One of the reasons for the Woodstock Massacre, members of Pacifica sphere governments felt a lot of LUE nations ran off and hide with the neutrals, rebuild, and surfaced later to cause trouble (either in GWIII or later on in things like Atlantis). I don't claim that reason is correct/true, but it was one of the reasons the GPA was considered for a strike. They were seen more as a place people ran off to rearm than to actually be neutral. You also have options of a Doomhouse like arrangement. Where everyone is together in a bloc, but the "alliance" your upper tier is in, isn't politically actively. Let your lower or mid tier be politically active and if they get hit, the upper tier can simply not chain in to the conflict. Basically imagine a Doomhouse where Umbrella is really small and doesn't ever fight. Of course this could be problematic with preempts. You could also drop your elite guys into protectorates. Somethings like the older protectorate bloc TPF had or Ragnablock. Only what happens is ever so often ten or twenty of your nations splinter off and sign a protectorate with their homeland. It's considered bad form to hit protectorates or preempt them, so your elite nations could sit there. If you want them to fight you could chain them in via the protectorate treaty (write it for ODOAP style). If you want them to sit tight, avoid the curb stomp, and be there for rebuilding, have them act like good little protectorates and keep their heads down. Then once you have the upper tier you want, call everyone home and merge them back in. Any of these options of course have risks of the nations you build failing to come home. I mean even in the end the Ordinance of the Orders failed, but assuming you aren't attached to the idea of all your nations on one AA you can hide your upper tier as you build it out. It is of course based on the assumption that you lose less NS to defection/failure to return than you'd lose to having your upper tier stomped on every 6 months or so.

[quote name='Bassbob' timestamp='1324400095' post='2882603'] The war is real. The terms will be real. [/quote] Your nation is oddly casualty free for having partaken in a 'real' war.

[i]20 December Update[/i] [b]IRON/TOP/etc Side[/b] Slain of Bracharia joins Avenger POW (this happened 4 days ago but I missed it) erikjsch of Winona joins AZTEC POW jediknight8 of Hamburgerania flees CNG POW and returns to the MHA. adhu84 of Kin Land joins CnG POW p2die of p2die joins Doomhouse POW Evan Taylor of Republic of kids joins Doomhouse POW Amar Slovack flees Doomhouse POW. Current flying "World Task Force Applicant" Blue Water of Blue Water joins BFF POW A little more research on Kyn Tucin (who fled NAC POW) shows that he aided tylerdurden1 of Baldfatastan on 18 December. tylerdurde1 is a member of the NADC, an alliance currently involved in the war. Skobama of Weedland surrenders to TPE, but manages to end up in the wrong AA (TPE instead of TPE POW). Tewopia of Tewopia is actually in "Avengers POW" not "Avenger POW". I'll keep tracking him though. Andrew Eacorn of Atomo is in "cngpow" not "CnG POW". I'll keep tracking him though. [b]Polari/SF/XX/etc Side[/b] Kaiser Der von Buns of The Empire of Buns joins Superfriends PoW green muffins of grunge couches joins MHA PoW gopherbashi of MCXA informs me that Alex Thompson was returned to LSF under a gentleman's agreement. I updated the opening post in an attempt to improve formatting. The biggest change is the "Wrong AA" list. Fix your POWS people. I'm also now included NS and ranking POWS by NS. I won't be updating NS regularly but I'll try to catch what it is when they enter the camp. We'll have to give the highest NS surrender some kind of "OMG NOT MAH PIXELS" award.

I do admire any leader whose motto is "Choosing friends is easy". That's why the web is the wonderful object that it is today.

Jerdge states it very well. People would act whatever fiscal costs are needed to stay in peace mode simply to avoid losing tech. At the end of the day you have: War Mode = money, tech, and land lost due to battle Peace Mode = money lost due to bills exceeding tax collections Short of making the econ penalty for peace mode really punitive, I see no way to deal with this. As it stands I think the peace mode game mechanic can be dealt with via human mechanics. Pre-emptive attacks, tighter OPSEC, better stagger management, etc. There are a lot of things a human can do to prevent peace mode on the other side. Also the community as a whole can become more accepting of punitive terms or demands for "direct" tech from alliances who hide in peace mode the majority of the war. On the losing side of course people need to evolve better strategies for hiding their upper tier. Quietly building them up and getting them ready for the main show. Learning when to spend those nations (ie in a war the size of Karma) as opposed to exposing them to damage in smaller wars. Basically I agree there isn't much of a penalty for hiding in peace mode, but I think we should force the community to adapt around this instead of getting admin to crank the numbers up.

[quote name='Gopherbashi' timestamp='1324324121' post='2881995'] We've got a gentleman's agreement with LSF due to some RL circumstances for this one; I don't believe we're that concerned with which AA he's on, so long that he doesn't leap back into war. [/quote] Thanks for the info. I'll change is up when I get a chance. My main post is getting ugly and needs some formatting anyways.

I really struggle to see this as an accomplishment. If I recall correctly Pacifica's reign as number one was interrupted for brief periods when IRON or GOONS 1.0 eclipsed them (due to Pacifica taking damage in wars such as VietFAN). However Pacifica was the center of all political power on Bob from GWII through Karma, with some disputes like UJW and Sponge vs Moo-cows. It never really mattered if they were #1 or #5 on the stat chart, all they had to do was jerk the treaty web and you were dead. UJW was likely the closest thing to a fair fight and that was aborted when Virilius shut down the \m/ front. TOP ruled through its stats, its quality of membership and its ties to other elite alliances (ex: Citadel). No one wanted to fight them and when war finally came it took over 20 alliances to bring them down. They also didn't fall that far. With their own wartime capability and their treaty ties to IRON, MK, and PF no one wants to fight them. The MHA got where it is today via suspending treaties when needed (ties with TORN and NPO during Karma) and always managing to be on the winning side. We'll see how far MHA falls after the war and terms, but the legacy of MHA and XX, will be four sanctioned alliances with ties to another decent sized bloc (SF), that Bob was mostly ambivalent to. This goes down in history right next to GWIII era Legion having over a thousand members but only managing a 253 war blitz. We'll see how far MHA falls, but I think they'll fall further than Pacifica or Paradoxia. Hopefully the war will serve as a bit of a wakeup call. The MHA as a midsized alliances that is politically active and has the military will contribute more to Bob than the ghost ridden, largest alliance on Bob MHA ever did.

Big update today in terms of fleeing the camps. [i]19 December Update[/i] [b]IRON/TOP/etc Side[/b] Shakya of Farmville joins CnG POW Jadin of Nidaj joins Doomhouse POW Jackgusa of Blargatjia joins Doomhouse POW murtibing of Fluens joins Mjolnir POW Lord Razzia of Razzian Dominion joins BFF POW Kyn Tucin of Illirea flees NAC POW and joins "Independent Blue Nations". Illirea is the only nation on that AA. JohnHancock of JohnHancock joins TPE POW CommanderInChief J of Ravendale joins TPE POW Neckbeard POW added to tracking. [b]Polari/SF/XX/etc Side[/b] Blitzkrieg01 of United Jericho joins Superfriends POW kajkajete of Rheinlander joins Superfriends POW Evan Taylor of Republic of Kids leaves MCXA POW and starts flying the MCXA tag on 17 Dec. It engaged by a GOONS nation. On 19 December he is wearing the tag "Doomhouse MXCA" and still at war. Evan Taylor appears to be a MCXA nation that attempted to hide in their own POW Camp. Alex Thompson of Vonlenska flees MCXA POW and rejoins the LSF AA. This was the nation's prewar AA.

At least by this stage in the war, we're mostly into the second wave of surrenders. The first wave was the cowards. Now we're seeing people who just didn't have a proper warchest surrender. I guess that's better than cowardice as least.

[i]17 December Update[/i] [b]IRON/TOP/etc Side[/b] Midnight211983 of Island of Darkness joins CnG POW Vladimir Spencer of Ilium joins CnG POW johnap88 of Olivian joins BFF POW Tarimiun of Fluffistan joins BFF POW Luigi's Mansion added to tracking. [b]Polari/SF/XX/etc Side[/b] Evan Taylor of Republic of kids joins MCXA POW

[quote name='Alfred von Tirpitz' timestamp='1324009076' post='2879482'] Want to leave a fight before their mates is something i will never understand. well unless maybe if it were a RL issue that kept you from being effective in a war.. nah.. even absent you are a damage sink so its still useful. [/quote] About the only time I could justify it would be if: You're at or near ZI, can't escape to peace mode, and bill locked due to your wonder bills. So you surrender to preserve your nation that has 3 or 4 years worth of wonders on it. Of course you promptly rejoin the alliance post war and all that. Basically in the above scenario you've become a casualty and you'd simply removing yourself so they don't need need to keep feeding you aid. Post your surrender and get permission to get one or two aid packets to get out of bill lock and start rebuilding.