How Not To Get Raided / Rolled

[omgitshim]

well done Lamuella, i dont quite like (nor hate) you but this is a good guide.

[ChairmanHal]

9.5/10 only because I almost never give perfect scores. Well done, Lamuella.

Edited December 22, 2009 by ChairmanHal

[RandomInterrupt]

How Not To Get Raided Ever Again, An Alternative

A helpful guide to in-game politics and survival from the grouchy old man of The New Polar Order.

This is a document written to expand upon the OP of this thread. It is intended for anyone who may be bored and/or tired of tech raiding. This applies to those who are subject to the threat of tech raiding, those who aren't but wish to "do something about it", or those with too much time on their hands and aren't sure of how to productively use it.

I should note that the guide in the OP is fairly accurate and I do not actually disagree with anything in it. However I feel it does not present all of the options available to the modern day crusader, and so this post should be considered an addendum to the OP, not a rejection of it.

1. Public Opinion

Public opinion is what decides which alliances stick around and which ones get bailed on by their allies and left in a ditch somewhere. In terms of tech raiding, public opinion has changed drastically over the years. Currently it is fairly unpopular but an accepted minority. There was a period of time in which tech raiding was considerably more popular than it is today. It was an activity that people boasted about partaking in it. Simply put, it was accepted. Many victims of tech raiding often found themselves hounded well beyond simply harvesting tech. As all things are a cycle, eventually the glory days of tech raiding came to a close. Public opinion changed and suddenly the biggest and loudest tech raiders found themselves fighting in real wars. Said alliances either disbanded or scaled back their public embracing of tech raiding. This change in opinion came from repeated exposure to the problem. No problem is solved without the populace knowing a problem exists. Do not allow supporters of tech raiding to use straw man arguments and diversion tactics to change the issue. The issue is, these alliances believe it is okay to attack innocent players, steal their tech/land/income, and force them to grovel for peace. They will try and change the argument to be one of alliance sovereignty. They will claim that they are the arbiter of who is an alliance and who isn't, and therefore classify an alliance as invalid. Attacking people for no reason and forcing them to follow arbitrary rules is bullying plain and simple. Stick to the core argument, as it is far more difficult to defend against.

Only join alliances that disallow tech raiding. Advise your FA leadership that you do not want to ally with those who practice tech raiding. Work your way up the chain of command in your alliance and set policies that are unfriendly to tech raiders. Combined with section 2 below, eventually public opinion can change and tech raiding will become reduced once more.

2. "Do something about it"/Might Makes Right

The most common justification of tech raiding is, if a party doesn't want to be attacked they should have been in a position where it would be too costly to attack them. When this is challenged, oftentimes pro-tech raiders will invite any external parties to attempt to aid the raiding victim. This is an exercise in sarcasm as usually no one will step forward. This is just one facet of the concept of Might Makes Right, the idea that he who has the power is inherently enabled to do whatever he wants. Another issue encountered when resisting tech raiding is the "Do something about it" defense. Which is simply a reminder that actions speak louder than words. While the advise in section 1 above is sound, doing something about it is even more successful. If tech raiding is a cause you feel strongly about opposing, the best option is to work your way into a leadership position in your alliance. Once you have influence you can spend such influence to change events within the game. Influence is the currency with which wars are purchased. Enough influence and enough power and you too can enjoy Might Makes Right. One could even go so far as to pressure their allies into dropping support for aggressive tech raiders in order to weaken their support base. Aggressive alliances without a support base will quickly find themselves biting off more than they can chew. In short, when dealing with individuals who only understand power, gaining more power than them and using it to tear their alliance into shreds is a powerful tool. Personal note: It's also a lot of fun.

This was most notably seen during the Unjust War. A collection of alliances, known as the Unjust path, took great pride in their ability to harass, bully, and generally do whatever they want under the concept of Might Makes Right. They challenged others to "do something about it". Eventually folks did do something about it leading several of them to disband and others to give up their more outrageous bullying.

3. Thermonuclear Warfare

Make it hurt. Many tech raiders will target unaligned/small alliances because they know they can jump in, steal tech, and get out with minimal damage to themselves. It is to the raiders advantage to not do undue amounts of damage to their targets as that impacts their ability to harvest tech. If raiders believe there is little risk to raiding, they will raid. To combat this, set a personal and alliance wide policy that raids will be met with full scale retaliation. If you hold nukes and are tech raided, let them rip. Especially if your attacker is foolish enough to not have them. Many tech raiders will use their position of power to punish those who would dare resist their attacks. However sometimes short term sacrifices need to be made in order to set a larger precedent. Once raiding is unprofitable, it will lessen. As long as nations are attacked and follow their attackers advise of not retaliating, tech raiding will prosper.

I hope these additional points are of help to someone. It would be great to see this section merged with the guide in the OP especially if this were to be stickied. I would be glad to help with the markup as well. Thanks for reading.

Edited December 22, 2009 by RandomInterrupt

[lamuella]

RandomInterrupt, I mean absolutely no offense by this and I respect your opinions, but I feel like your contribution here would be best served by a thread of their own. This thread was meant to discuss the immediate ways for an alliance or individual that finds itself targeted by tech raiders to get out of the situation, rather than a way to end tech raiding. As I mentioned in the OP, the article is very deliberately neutral on tech raiding as an issue, and while your contribution is well written and well researched it is decidedly not neutral.

[RandomInterrupt]

RandomInterrupt, I mean absolutely no offense by this and I respect your opinions, but I feel like your contribution here would be best served by a thread of their own. This thread was meant to discuss the immediate ways for an alliance or individual that finds itself targeted by tech raiders to get out of the situation, rather than a way to end tech raiding. As I mentioned in the OP, the article is very deliberately neutral on tech raiding as an issue, and while your contribution is well written and well researched it is decidedly not neutral.

I believed it to be fitting to post here as it is factually accurate. However I will respect your wishes and will not discuss it here.

[ChairmanHal]

I believed it to be fitting to post here as it is factually accurate. However I will respect your wishes and will not discuss it here.

I look forward to responding to your opinions when you start a thread to discuss them. Suffice to say for now that I disagree with several of your points.

[Merrie Melodies]

Lam, you listed the four general alliance types in regards to raiding, do you have a list of which ones fall into these categories?

[Little Fame Monster]

Good guide, but are the people that need this guide actually going to read it? )):

Edit: Fail smiley is fail.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Sentinal

[White Chocolate]

Not bad. I'm not going to nominate GOONS for any sort of CN peace prize as a result ... and I'm sure that is fine by them. However I believe this is sincere, so I'll make my comments with that in mind.

There are places where your bias comes through clearly. If this is okay as far as you are concerned...well, you're the author. My bias will come through in my answer (especially at the end). However, you may want to say a bit at the beginning about who you are, the fact that you're writing from the perspective of a member of an alliance that raids, etc. Being that tech raiding raises people's passions I think it's important for readers who may not know to understand that from the beginning.

Anyway, beyond that, if you care, here's where I think there are problems

- the area that stood out for me the most was the section in the first part (#3) where you say something to the effect that a tech raider "will" hit you back and do so hard if you return fire,etc. This is not always true. For instance, some people try to tech raid only inactive people. However, you fail to mention how to deal with those situations, i.e. write "active" or "always active" on your nation bio. It cuts down on the raids.

- Although there is some talk about alliances having different raiding rules and it being a good idea to look into those, this should be emphasized. I was involved (as our alliances representative) in EVERY raid we've ever had. Out of every single raid, after I looked into the alliances posted policy on raids, all but one raider was violating his/her own alliance rules! A number of people were raiding when their alliance doesn't allow raids at all! Check the rules. (OCC: the wiki is a good place to start) I got VERY good at getting reps for members by pointing out, in a professional way, that the raider was going against alliance rules. Raiding alliances love to talk about their "right" to have their own rules about this. So, hold them accountable to their own rules.

- In my opinion, the piece assumes that 1) one can't win by fighting back when this is a matter of size of your alliance vs. the raiders (non-aligned and micro alliances sometimes raid. Fighting back may work just fine. Do check treaties, however) and 2) there is no value in fighting back when the end result is that you will lose. While that is a reasonable belief, it's not THE absolute correct answer. National leaders have the right to decide for themselves what is and is not worth losing a war (or "tech raid") including the possible loss of their nation and/or alliance.

Finally, my advice. If you start out as non-aligned or in a small alliance, hate being raided and later decide to join an alliance instead. Pick one that does not allow raiding. That's not only the right thing to do, it's your best revenge.

Edited December 22, 2009 by White Chocolate

[Arcades057]

How Not To Get Raided Ever Again, An Alternative

A helpful guide to in-game politics and survival from the grouchy old man of The New Polar Order.

This is a document written to expand upon the OP of this thread. It is intended for anyone who may be bored and/or tired of tech raiding. This applies to those who are subject to the threat of tech raiding, those who aren't but wish to "do something about it", or those with too much time on their hands and aren't sure of how to productively use it.

I should note that the guide in the OP is fairly accurate and I do not actually disagree with anything in it. However I feel it does not present all of the options available to the modern day crusader, and so this post should be considered an addendum to the OP, not a rejection of it.

1. Public Opinion

Public opinion is what decides which alliances stick around and which ones get bailed on by their allies and left in a ditch somewhere. In terms of tech raiding, public opinion has changed drastically over the years. Currently it is fairly unpopular but an accepted minority. There was a period of time in which tech raiding was considerably more popular than it is today. It was an activity that people boasted about partaking in it. Simply put, it was accepted. Many victims of tech raiding often found themselves hounded well beyond simply harvesting tech. As all things are a cycle, eventually the glory days of tech raiding came to a close. Public opinion changed and suddenly the biggest and loudest tech raiders found themselves fighting in real wars. Said alliances either disbanded or scaled back their public embracing of tech raiding. This change in opinion came from repeated exposure to the problem. No problem is solved without the populace knowing a problem exists. Do not allow supporters of tech raiding to use straw man arguments and diversion tactics to change the issue. The issue is, these alliances believe it is okay to attack innocent players, steal their tech/land/income, and force them to grovel for peace. They will try and change the argument to be one of alliance sovereignty. They will claim that they are the arbiter of who is an alliance and who isn't, and therefore classify an alliance as invalid. Attacking people for no reason and forcing them to follow arbitrary rules is bullying plain and simple. Stick to the core argument, as it is far more difficult to defend against.

Only join alliances that disallow tech raiding. Advise your FA leadership that you do not want to ally with those who practice tech raiding. Work your way up the chain of command in your alliance and set policies that are unfriendly to tech raiders. Combined with section 2 below, eventually public opinion can change and tech raiding will become reduced once more.

2. "Do something about it"/Might Makes Right

The most common justification of tech raiding is, if a party doesn't want to be attacked they should have been in a position where it would be too costly to attack them. When this is challenged, oftentimes pro-tech raiders will invite any external parties to attempt to aid the raiding victim. This is an exercise in sarcasm as usually no one will step forward. This is just one facet of the concept of Might Makes Right, the idea that he who has the power is inherently enabled to do whatever he wants. Another issue encountered when resisting tech raiding is the "Do something about it" defense. Which is simply a reminder that actions speak louder than words. While the advise in section 1 above is sound, doing something about it is even more successful. If tech raiding is a cause you feel strongly about opposing, the best option is to work your way into a leadership position in your alliance. Once you have influence you can spend such influence to change events within the game. Influence is the currency with which wars are purchased. Enough influence and enough power and you too can enjoy Might Makes Right. One could even go so far as to pressure their allies into dropping support for aggressive tech raiders in order to weaken their support base. Aggressive alliances without a support base will quickly find themselves biting off more than they can chew. In short, when dealing with individuals who only understand power, gaining more power than them and using it to tear their alliance into shreds is a powerful tool. Personal note: It's also a lot of fun.

This was most notably seen during the Unjust War. A collection of alliances, known as the Unjust path, took great pride in their ability to harass, bully, and generally do whatever they want under the concept of Might Makes Right. They challenged others to "do something about it". Eventually folks did do something about it leading several of them to disband and others to give up their more outrageous bullying.

3. Thermonuclear Warfare

Make it hurt. Many tech raiders will target unaligned/small alliances because they know they can jump in, steal tech, and get out with minimal damage to themselves. It is to the raiders advantage to not do undue amounts of damage to their targets as that impacts their ability to harvest tech. If raiders believe there is little risk to raiding, they will raid. To combat this, set a personal and alliance wide policy that raids will be met with full scale retaliation. If you hold nukes and are tech raided, let them rip. Especially if your attacker is foolish enough to not have them. Many tech raiders will use their position of power to punish those who would dare resist their attacks. However sometimes short term sacrifices need to be made in order to set a larger precedent. Once raiding is unprofitable, it will lessen. As long as nations are attacked and follow their attackers advise of not retaliating, tech raiding will prosper.

I hope these additional points are of help to someone. It would be great to see this section merged with the guide in the OP especially if this were to be stickied. I would be glad to help with the markup as well. Thanks for reading.

1. Public Opinion

Basically advocating making threads about them being raided. This sort of thing is known to work for one guy, that PPF guy for some reason; in the main the individual is a 1-post-wonder who gets ridiculed by most, defended by one or two people, and then gets messed up even more. This is bad advice.

2. "Do something about it"/Might Makes Right

I was there for the UjW, too. I remember that one side used tactics leading up to the war which to even speak about here is now a bannable offense. Yeah, emulate that side. And to think, we of the opposition labeled ourselves Unjust.

As to the rest of this part, what you suggest does not a lick of good for the short-term, to the person who is now being raided.

3. Thermonuclear Warfare

This is far and away THE worst bit of advice that any vehement anti-raider could possibly spout. This advices regurgitated in every thread about raiding that is posted and it invariably leads some poor nation into ZI; because that is precisely where a raided party goes once he uses nuclear weapons. This advice usually, for some reason, comes from people in Polaris... a rather large alliance with members who, were I to hazard a guess, did not regularly deal with raiding in any form (besides their vehement denunciations of the act every so often). Try this, Random, if you would:

Next time Polar goes to war and it's 3v1 not in your favor, and purely conventional, you light off a nuclear weapon on your attackers and see what happens to you. Feel free to change your mind on your advice after that.

Rebuttal from a former raider in red.

I hope these additional points are of help to someone. It would be great to see this section merged with the guide in the OP especially if this were to be stickied. I would be glad to help with the markup as well. Thanks for reading.

Your "points" come from someone with experience in CN, but--from your points themselves I see this--very little experience with raiding. Merging your points with Lamuella's guide--written by a member of an alliance which allows tech raiding and by a member who may just have taken part in a raid or two--is like me adding my own missive to someone's guide about IC politics or some such nonsense which I haven't a clue of.

[LJ Scott]

You could have shortened this in to 1 sentance. The GOONS AA ceasing to exsist

Good call. I keep forgetting that GOONS are the only alliance in CN to raid.

[ChimpMasterFlash]

9.5/10 only because I almost never give perfect scores. Well done, Lamuella.

Scoregate!!! hand over that 0.5

[lamuella]

Good guide, but are the people that need this guide actually going to read it? )):

This is a document written to be posted in the Open World RP Forum, but the regular posters in the Open World Forum are not its target audience. They have, in the main, learned most of what this post seeks to teach. Rather, it is being posted here so that it can be linked to, at once introducing small nations to some of Planet Bob's more painful facts, and introducing them to the prime venue of discussion between alliances in the game, as well as introducing small alliances to CN diplomacy and how to make it work for them.

[kulomascovia]

1. Public Opinion

Basically advocating making threads about them being raided. This sort of thing is known to work for one guy, that PPF guy for some reason; in the main the individual is a 1-post-wonder who gets ridiculed by most, defended by one or two people, and then gets messed up even more. This is bad advice.

I disagree. Public opinion has actually worked welll for the Knights of Ni! when they got raided by Athens and it worked well for CG when IS raided them.

[Arcades057]

I disagree. Public opinion has actually worked welll for the Knights of Ni! when they got raided by Athens and it worked well for CG when IS raided them.

It worked well for alliances undergoing sanctioned raids against them by other, larger alliances. In the main it does not work for single nations trying to end their raids, which is what Random was advocating.

[Dr Roflcopter]

These tips are nice and all but I am going to stick with the original plan - WALTZ AROUND LIKE I OWN THE PLACE AND NO ONE WILL DARE MESS.

[Sephiroth]

Didn't read it myself, but I'm sure it will be very helpful for many. Seems like a useful guide for newer players from my skim through.

[Mergerberger II]

It worked well for alliances undergoing sanctioned raids against them by other, larger alliances. In the main it does not work for single nations trying to end their raids, which is what Random was advocating.

I'm fairly certain that he specifically mentioned 'alliances' in his paragraph several times, and then gave advice stating how you should 'work your way up the chain of command in your alliance'. Obviously the whole 'woe is me i'm the only guy that ever got raided' trip doesn't work here. However, what we find is two different guides herein. The OP is one for the individual nation trying to deal with an ongoing tech raid, and the other is an anti-tech-raiding & guide on how to not have an alliance tech raided, two very different things, each of which probably deserves its own topic (again?).

The guide in the OP is an excellent one and generally the advice that I would give to small alliances, though I would never join the things nowadays, it's just too much work for too little reward, in my humble opinion.

[magicninja]

Raid me please.

[Penkala]

Keep a standing airforce and 15 CMs. If you're 7,500 NS or below nobody will want to hit you if you're prepared.

Stay in defcon 1 and collect in defcon 5. Keep 40-50% soldiers rather than what nations in alliances do (25%).

Above 7,500 NS, nobody's worried about taking damage raiding; in fact, they want it that way.

Put yourself on a fake AA. It'll reduce the chances you'll be raided by 80%.

Once a tech raid is concluded, delete that war from your war screen. People do troll the 'wars across the globe' screen in search of a potential victim. Same with aid.

Try tech dealing with FOK; they'll protect you.

Edit: fight back and make the raid unprofitable against the nation, then peace. Don't turn it into a war. You'll be clobbered as your enemy rebuilds.

Edit: this advice is for 'nones'.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Penkala

[lamuella]

Didn't read it myself

and yet you commented

[lamuella]

Raid me please.

you deserve a medal for the greatest distance by which the point was missed.

[Dr Roflcopter]

you deserve a medal for the greatest distance by which the point was missed.

I also deserve a metal, by the way.

[RandomInterrupt]

Didn't read it myself, but I'm sure it will be very helpful for many. Seems like a useful guide for newer players from my skim through.

So you have no idea what it says, but you know it will be helpful. How would you know it would be useful if you haven't read it? It could be a recipe for pie with a different title.

[Dr Roflcopter]

So you have no idea what it says, but you know it will be helpful. How would you know it would be useful if you haven't read it? It could be a recipe for pie with a different title.

Oh now that's just completely preposterous, I can't even believe you said that! A recipe for pie... *scoff