True Strength of Alliances

[Superhero08]

Global stability? Tywin ftw?

[Neo Uruk]

I wouldn't call it "true" strength, given that about 20 one man AA's sit ahead of alliances like NSO, and Nordreich is lower than Imperium of Pony.

LPH is (or was before we gained members) above Kaskus, which doesn't quite seem factual.

[Icewolf]

I wouldn't call it "true" strength, given that about 20 one man AA's sit ahead of alliances like NSO, and Nordreich is lower than Imperium of Pony.

As a measure of how much damage an alliance will give out and receive I think it works.

The part that is missing however is the size of the alliance and the capacity to absorb damage. Large alliances vs a small alliance even if fighting ineffeiciently could lose 200K for every 100K inflicted on a sub 1 million alliance and still walk away the definite victors in a political sense.

The other element that might be missing is the measure of the number of slots an alliance have-DBDC may have awesome fighting potential but only posses 60 attacking slots. IRON on the other hand has over 10000 attacking slots. DBDC can weild hellish damage, but on a limited part of the battlefield, whereas IRON can deliever merely fairly hefty damage to a wide part of the field.

[Starfox101]

As a measure of how much damage an alliance will give out and receive I think it works.

The part that is missing however is the size of the alliance and the capacity to absorb damage. Large alliances vs a small alliance even if fighting ineffeiciently could lose 200K for every 100K inflicted on a sub 1 million alliance and still walk away the definite victors in a political sense.

The other element that might be missing is the measure of the number of slots an alliance have-DBDC may have awesome fighting potential but only posses 60 attacking slots. IRON on the other hand has over 10000 attacking slots. DBDC can weild hellish damage, but on a limited part of the battlefield, whereas IRON can deliever merely fairly hefty damage to a wide part of the field.

There's no way in hell Imperium of Pony will ever deal more damage than Nordreich, who are actually a pretty good fighting alliance all things considered. It's kind of a fluky formula in that sense that seems to take too much stock in average NS.

[ChairmanHal]

 

It'd probably result in global stability.

I think you mean stagnation, especially in light of 4 of the top 5 now having relatively close ties.

 

 

There's no way in hell Imperium of Pony will ever deal more damage than Nordreich, who are actually a pretty good fighting alliance all things considered. It's kind of a fluky formula in that sense that seems to take too much stock in average NS.

Are you implying that a simple formula can't capture the whole picture?  If so you are correct.

Edited July 22, 2014 by ChairmanHal

[Icewolf]

There's no way in hell Imperium of Pony will ever deal more damage than Nordreich, who are actually a pretty good fighting alliance all things considered. It's kind of a fluky formula in that sense that seems to take too much stock in average NS.

It measures capacity not fighting ability. They are two different things. If the commanders of Imperium of Pony were as effective as Nordreich then maybe they would do more damage.

Or alternatively some of the glorious alliances of old have fallen on less able times. Time will tell.

[Jackie Moon]

It measures capacity not fighting ability. They are two different things. If the commanders of Imperium of Pony were as effective as Nordreich then maybe they would do more damage.

Or alternatively some of the glorious alliances of old have fallen on less able times. Time will tell.

 

N- ... no?

 

Ok that's fine then. When the next war rolls around, you can take "RIA Trade Partner", Imperium of Pony, Antisocial Classmates, and Conservative Politically Allied Countries, and I'll take, oh, I dunno, FARK? 

 

With those metrics, you'd wipe the freakin' floor with me.

[Prodigal Moon]

I have created a formula for judging the true strength of alliances, basically effective hitting power (or 'projection') minus non-tech NS (or 'exposure').  Projection means damage-dealing effective NS, and Exposure means NS exposure to said damage, so a 100k nation with no nukes or tech or WRC would be completely exposed to damage, while a 100k nation with no land or infra has 0 exposure, since all its remaining NS is damage inflicting NS.

 

I think projection alone would be better indicator of strength. Exposure doesn't negate your projection ability at all, and it actually does aid it a bit in terms of allowing you to win GA's and spy ops. As it is, it sounds like an impossibly huge alliance (let's say 100 mil NS) that's equal parts hitting power and infra/land would be weaker than an alliance with 1 tech and no infra/land. Is that right?

[Starfox101]

It measures capacity not fighting ability. They are two different things. If the commanders of Imperium of Pony were as effective as Nordreich then maybe they would do more damage.

Or alternatively some of the glorious alliances of old have fallen on less able times. Time will tell.

I'm sorry but there's utterly no chance Imperium of Pony would ever do as much damage as Nordreich. Even if all Nordreich did was launch nukes they would out damage them by an insane number. You are aware Nordreich is one of the most heavily armed nuclear alliances, performed well last war, and has a much, much larger alliance than Imperium of Pony? They are a 3 man AA with 85k total NS. It doesn't matter who is commanding. CN is a numbers based game, and according to this formula, numbers don't matter all that much. So...that's a problem. How you manage to defend that is quite confusing to me.

 

I think you mean stagnation, especially in light of 4 of the top 5 now having relatively close ties.

I thought the same thing. I've never seen an interesting period in CN history where all the top alliances allied.

 

Allying everyone in your strength range and occassionally raiding less equipped nations is their definition of interesting, I guess.

 

 

 

N- ... no?

 

Ok that's fine then. When the next war rolls around, you can take "RIA Trade Partner", Imperium of Pony, Antisocial Classmates, and Conservative Politically Allied Countries, and I'll take, oh, I dunno, FARK? 

 

With those metrics, you'd wipe the freakin' floor with me.

Or he can take GDA over Polar, FEAR over NPO, or how about Wirral over NADC?

 

I think I like our chances.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Starfox101

[Ogaden]

 

I think projection alone would be better indicator of strength. Exposure doesn't negate your projection ability at all, and it actually does aid it a bit in terms of allowing you to win GA's and spy ops. As it is, it sounds like an impossibly huge alliance (let's say 100 mil NS) that's equal parts hitting power and infra/land would be weaker than an alliance with 1 tech and no infra/land. Is that right?

 

Well that's the thing, a highly exposed alliance that is very large going up against a minimally exposed alliance that is much smaller than it would still "win", probably, but the minimally exposed alliance would be "stronger" than the much larger alliance, at least at first.  Once the smaller alliance ran out of nukes and had some erosion of their tech levels this would be mitigated somewhat, but the smaller alliance would mitigate this by growing "stronger" as their exposure is blown off and they are no longer exposed to your heavy hitters, and rather your "soft underbelly" is exposed to them, making staggering them a matter of feeding lambs to the slaughter.

 

The truly missing indicators are actually warchest and military organization or ability to coordinate, which are factors that a purely numeric comparison such as this has difficulty quantifying.

 

Land and Infra is only militarily useful as far as purchase requirements for soldiers, nukes and tanks, and land has some small application in land battles, but ultimately it is "soft NS", which exposes you to higher NS ranges and to much less exposed nations with much higher tech levels.  Ultimately at the end of the day tech, warchest and strategy/coordination wins wars.

 

A big nation that has been completely de-exposed (ZI'd) but still has nukes and tech is a very strong nation.  It has almost no exposed NS to destroy, and its NS exposure is completely minimized with only damage-dealing NS left.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Ogaden

[Icewolf]

I'm sorry but there's utterly no chance Imperium of Pony would ever do as much damage as Nordreich. Even if all Nordreich did was launch nukes they would out damage them by an insane number. You are aware Nordreich is one of the most heavily armed nuclear alliances, performed well last war, and has a much, much larger alliance than Imperium of Pony? They are a 3 man AA with 85k total NS. It doesn't matter who is commanding. CN is a numbers based game, and according to this formula, numbers don't matter all that much. So...that's a problem. How you manage to defend that is quite confusing to me.

The measure is of Net capacity to inflict damage, not gross capacity to inflict damage. If you take off the damage Imperium of Pony can recieve and compare it to the damage they would inflict, then they may well end up better off than other alliances.

So in a war between the two, Imperium of Pony could well inflict more than 85K of damage on Nordreich, in which case in terms of net damage they would be ahead.

[Starfox101]

Then this should be referred to as "Possible output of damage as compared to possible loss rankings", rather than "true" strength rankings.

 

Pony wouldn't even last a week.

[Saxplayer]

This should really be called, "Alliances Ranked Average Nation Development" Because that's what it is.

[Saxplayer]

I also think that LoSS, KoN, and CCC shouldn't be at the bottom, I would MUCH rather face Imperium of Pony in a war than any of those alliances. I think your formula weighs Nukes and WRC's a bit too heavily, sure they help a lot in a war, but the fact that LoSS has 269,288 Tech should really make them a more formidable alliance than Imperium of Pony. Also, by your standards, COMECON, who has 866 tech across 8 nations (108.25 Tech per Nation) Is much more formidable than LoSS, who has 269,288 Tech, spread across 109 nations (2470.53 Tech per Nation). The problem is that this formula penalizes (indirectly) an alliance for having a lot of undevleoped nations, for example, I calculated what my nation's P-E, and it is 8,005.5205 (I Included all the figures that I could detect that you used) Basically, my nation is more developed than the average nation of any alliance with an amount less than that. I would be very interested in seeing a chart sorted by just Projection NS, I think that would be more true to an alliance's true strength. Either that or make Exposure a smaller number.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Saxplayer

[JoshuaR]

"Pshh, our exposure will be next to nil when we PM all of our high-NS nations!" -certain "exposed" alliances from past war history

[Saxplayer]

Also, If I did the calculations right, (Infra*3 + Land Purchased*1.5) = Exposure {(Tech*5)*(Percent of nations with WRC+100%)*(Percent of nukes that are owned vs. could be owned + 100%)} = Projection

 

Cuba's P-E would be 928,146.9565, which would put his lone nation ahead of entire alliances like NpO.

[Ogaden]

"Pshh, our exposure will be next to nil when we PM all of our high-NS nations!" -certain "exposed" alliances from past war history

 

That is an effective means of mitigating exposure, though the top tier of an alliance is usually the least exposed, so this often just exacerbates the problem

[Crownguard]

Umbrella arrogance once again requited.

 

Well done Ogaden.

[CubaQuerida]

Cuba's P-E would be 928,146.9565, which would put his lone nation ahead of entire alliances like NpO.

I'm failing to see the inaccuracy here.

[Icewolf]

Also, If I did the calculations right, (Infra*3 + Land Purchased*1.5) = Exposure {(Tech*5)*(Percent of nations with WRC+100%)*(Percent of nukes that are owned vs. could be owned + 100%)} = Projection
 
Cuba's P-E would be 928,146.9565, which would put his lone nation ahead of entire alliances like NpO.

If he went to war with NpO who would do more damage? In fact, it probably understates his power because it doesn't take into account the lack of comparable nation factor.

What might be needed for this thing to be more accurate is a measure of how much damage can be absorbed. Rather than just looking at how much damage an alliance can take, there needs to be an element of how much damage it can take before it loses effective fighting power. How to calculate that I am not sure.

[Ogaden]

If he went to war with NpO who would do more damage? In fact, it probably understates his power because it doesn't take into account the lack of comparable nation factor.

What might be needed for this thing to be more accurate is a measure of how much damage can be absorbed. Rather than just looking at how much damage an alliance can take, there needs to be an element of how much damage it can take before it loses effective fighting power. How to calculate that I am not sure.

 

That can't really be calculated since those two things are warchest and resolve, one of which cannot be known without significant espionage, and the other isn't really quantifiable.

 

Alliances continue fighting until they either run out of money or resolve.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Ogaden

[Saladjoe]

Maybe you could quantify the resolve/coordination aspect with a tier system based on past performance, positive damage output and wars per nation. Then again that's likely to be more subjective than anything and a lot of alliances have greatly diminished capabilities compared to their past. Warchests are more important than anything and like you said there's not a realistic way to gauge that from the outside.

[Icewolf]

That can't really be calculated since those two things are warchest and resolve, one of which cannot be known without significant espionage, and the other isn't really quantifiable.
 
Alliances continue fighting until they either run out of money or resolve.

Well it also depends on how much NS the alliance has to lose in the first place. So if you take on an alliance with 1 million NS vs 10 million NS, even if there is an overwhelming net damage advantage to the smaller alliance and they deal out 2 million vs 800 000 NS damage, the 10 million alliance will still be stronger at the end of it, and could be considered to have won the war.

[Ogaden]

Well it also depends on how much NS the alliance has to lose in the first place. So if you take on an alliance with 1 million NS vs 10 million NS, even if there is an overwhelming net damage advantage to the smaller alliance and they deal out 2 million vs 800 000 NS damage, the 10 million alliance will still be stronger at the end of it, and could be considered to have won the war.

 

In the above scenario the 1 million NS alliance kicked the crap out of the 10 million NS alliance.  2 million in damage versus 800k?  Presumably the remaining 200k are fully wondered nations who are ripping the 10 mil alliance's bottom tier to shreds.  If they did surrender it would be because they have some other reason to stop fighting (other allies want peace, bored of the war, etc), but essentially what you have there is an unwinnable situation on both sides.  The now-8 million NS alliance is incapable of defeating what's left of the 1 million NS alliance, but the formerly 1 million NS alliance is now too small to bring down the now-8 million NS alliance.  White peace would be the only viable solution.

 

A stalemate does imply that the 1 mil alliance and the 10 mil alliance were about the same strength.

 

If the 1 mil alliance was much stronger than the 10 mil alliance though, it would not be 2 mil damage to 800k damage, it would be a DBDC type situation where they blow their enemies out of their range, and the stalemate occurs because the 1 mil alliance is significantly stronger than the 10 mil alliance.  If you have an alliance of say 3 nations at 330k, almost all of that being tech, fighting a 10 mil alliance that has a very exposed, tech-weak top tier, it is not even a fair fight, the 1 mil alliance will destroy the 10 mil alliance.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Ogaden

[The Zigur]

One thing to remember is that this calculation does not factor morale. On paper, certain alliances may be superior, but there are many upper tier nations who are upper tier because they run from a fight. The hitting power of an alliance or nation means little if they are hiding in peace mode or rage quit after receiving casualties for the first time or after an ally bails out. Leadership, propaganda, strategic deployments, unit cohesion, and warchests are all factors that heavily influence the outcome of wars, often to a greater extent than hitting power or exposure.

 

Nation Strength has never won wars alone, even if adjusted.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Tywin Lannister