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Modeling Value of a Treaty Partner


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[font="Impact"]The Policy Corner[/font]

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[size="5"]The Importance of Models[/size]

No one in CN can possibly know every aspect of planet bob. There are too many players, too many alliances for us to know every detail that could help us predict events inside or outside an alliance. For this reason we have to conceptualize and generalize how the various actors in CN relate to one another. This many times must take the form of some kind of model. A model cannot take in to account every intricacy, but it helps us think of complex issues in terms that we can handle according to the limits of our knowledge, time, expertise and ability to analyze the circumstances we are trying to interpret.

[size="5"]The Value Of A Treaty Partner[/size]

Today I am going to attemptto model the military value that an alliance gives to its treaty partners. Now the first thing that many people take into account is Nation Strength. If you've spent much time in CN you've probably experienced a newer player suggest that your alliance treaty the #1 or #2 alliances according to their NS. While that's not a good way for alliances to go about treatying others, the nation strength of an alliance does increase in ability to help its treaty partners. This is of course assuming that NS = fighting ability, which we all know isn't always true, but this is a model, and not exact.

The next biggest factor is the number of treaties said alliance has. The more treaties an alliance has, the less valuable it is to its allies. Why is this? Well lets look at an alliance of 1 million NS and with 10 treaty partners. A major war breaks out and all 10 treaty partners go to war. If this alliance defends just one of those alliances, each alliance has a on in ten chance of being defended by this first alliance. Therefore this alliance is worth 100K ns to each of its partners. (1,000,000NS/1 alliance * 1/10 = 100,000 NS per alliance) Now if this first alliance defends all its partners. The ten treaty partners will all get help that will average out to 100K NS per alliance. Now if the first alliance defends 5 alliances, they have have a one in two chance of being defended by 200K NS, and so 1/5 * 1,000,000NS/5 alliances = 100K NS per alliance.

So for kicks and giggles lets rank the top forty alliances by their nation strength divided by their number of MDP and stronger treaties. I won't use PIAT and or ODP treaties because defense is not required in these treaties and so MDP is the simplest cut off. Again this is a model. So what would it look like if I ranked the top forty alliances by their NS per MDP+ treaties? Well here are the top forty, excluding independents, and FAN, for obvious reasons.


If you would like to see the data I collected, which was collected from the all alliances section last night, you can see the spread sheet here http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiYHnPS7C9-9dHYzUjFaazFLX2h3TjNwNm9sa0pCUXc&hl=en&authkey=CKyXkuEL
If you notice any treaty counts wrong, please let me know.

Now there are a few weaknesses in this model. Here are a few I came up with.

1. As I noted earlier, NS can sometimes be very disconnected from military ability. For example Umbrella outperformed what their NS would leave you to believe they were capable of. They generated a great many offensive wars in the Bi-Polar war, and so really helped their allies out. NS is a very rough way to predict fighting ability, but for now its about the best we have. One day I would love to see better quantifiable way to measure the military preparedness of an alliance.

2. IF an alliance has its treaties all over the treaty web it can easily find itself in a position where it can't take a side and ignores all its treaties. ADI in the TPF war would be a good example of this. Their treaties were all over the place, and therefore they found themselves unable to participate and defend any of their treaty partners.

3. If two treaty partners have an exceptionally good relationship their treaty is more likely to be activated than others. The activation of the NpO STA treaty in the Karma war would be a good example of this.

Edited by supercoolyellow
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Hey, this is a pretty interesting idea with some equally interesting results. Of course, this can't be taken as a perfect measure of how reliable an alliance is when called upon by allies. You can see this from NEW's high ranking and the fact that they abandoned several MADP allies in the beginning of the NpO-\m/ war.

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How exactly did you count the treaties for each alliance? I'm fairly certain we have more than 11 MDP+ treaties, unless you're counting a bloc treaty as only one, in which case, we'd have less than 11.

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[quote name='Big Z' date='12 July 2010 - 12:23 AM' timestamp='1278912187' post='2367784']
How exactly did you count the treaties for each alliance? I'm fairly certain we have more than 11 MDP+ treaties, unless you're counting a bloc treaty as only one, in which case, we'd have less than 11.
[/quote]

Lets see...

6 for SF

3 more for the chestnut accords

MK
SPARTA
GOONS
The Corporation
Kronos
Ares

!@#%!@# that's 15, I'll fix that real quick.

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RIA has a lot of treaties but they are mostly with the same people.

We have 14 MDP level treaties, 6 through SuperFriends, 3 through the Chestnut Accords (overlap of 2 with SF) and 5 individual treaties.

Edited by James Dahl
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The problem with this is that in reality, a treaty partner's value will often [i]increase[/i] because of other treaties they hold.

Let's take a MDP with CSN for example. If we had no other treaties, a MDP with us would be fairly valuable because it guarantees 4.4M strength will defend you if you're attacked. However, the fact that we have other treaties means that if we go to war, there is a very high probability that our other allies will as well. So although it also means that CSN might have to defend its other allies instead of the theoretical treaty partner I'm using, said theoretical alliance would benefit from having a 40M+ of second-hand allies backing them up.

Your model depends on alliances being in a vacuum and randomly declaring wars on each other, but that really isn't the case, at all.

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[quote name='Banksy' date='12 July 2010 - 07:27 AM' timestamp='1278916041' post='2367850']
That's a very cool statistic. Obviously it doesn't give the full picture, but it's still a rather different indicator of the state of the treaty web.
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Yea it's hard to tell whether you'd rather be on top of that one or on the very bottom. Interesting post SCY.

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[quote name='Omniscient1' date='12 July 2010 - 02:29 AM' timestamp='1278916160' post='2367854']
Yea it's hard to tell whether you'd rather be on top of that one or on the very bottom. Interesting post SCY.
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Well if MHA's on top you'd most likely want to be on the bottom :P

Very interesting SCY, i'm not too sure how to decipher this.

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[quote name='Joe Stupid' date='12 July 2010 - 07:32 AM' timestamp='1278916346' post='2367857']
Well if MHA's on top you'd most likely want to be on the bottom :P

Very interesting SCY, i'm not too sure how to decipher this.
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Well I think it's like that just because of how high MHA's NS is :P

LoSS for instance don't have that many treaties so that's why they are at the top.

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[quote name='James Dahl' date='12 July 2010 - 01:05 AM' timestamp='1278914693' post='2367825']
RIA has a lot of treaties but they are mostly with the same people.


[/quote]

Yeah, you all were a fun bunch to count <_<

[quote name='D34th' date='12 July 2010 - 01:23 AM' timestamp='1278915785' post='2367845']
I think that you should count blocs or at least MADP blocs and redundant treaties just as one treaty.
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If I understand you correctly, that is exactly what I did.

[quote name='Omniscient1' date='12 July 2010 - 01:29 AM' timestamp='1278916160' post='2367854']
Yea it's hard to tell whether you'd rather be on top of that one or on the very bottom. Interesting post SCY.
[/quote]



[quote name='Joe Stupid' date='12 July 2010 - 01:32 AM' timestamp='1278916346' post='2367857']
Well if MHA's on top you'd most likely want to be on the bottom :P

Very interesting SCY, i'm not too sure how to decipher this.
[/quote]

Honestly I think if you're at the bottom you must have a really good FA department, because this isn't so much a matter of who you want to be but rather who you would want to be treatied with... hey look MCXA is #10 ! ;)

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Interesting, but you arent taking into account the way alliances totally ignore some treaties during a war. If an alliance has conflicting treaties they tend to swing towards the side with the larger NS. Its not always the case but it happens quite regularly. Some allies also use their conflicting treaties to sit out a war. Case in point UPN. In the last war their allies split 0 NS between them. So their value to their allies was zero as was their negative value to the enemies of their allies.

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[quote name='supercoolyellow' date='12 July 2010 - 07:47 AM' timestamp='1278917222' post='2367870']

If I understand you correctly, that is exactly what I did. [/quote]

I think he meant count SF MDoAP as 1 instead of 6.

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Although this is interesting---The reliability of any treaty partner is difficult to calculate because of the 1000 variables involved; we see this from war to war.

For example:
[i]Hypothetically[/i]

1) The UPN stunt should cut their reliability score in half (Lets say this applies to any alliance with conflicting treaties in terms of the Web).

PS: No one give me the "We honor all treaties" speech, it's nearly impossible and most of the time you have to pick a side.

2) Tension between allies of allies. Ermm: the ODN - FOK incident a while back with The Resistance in the middle---right there the reliability of tR to honor both of those treaties should have gone down.

Lastly;

Instead of counting BLOCS for the # of alliances within it---count it as 1; however, for every treaty that links or reinforces to that BLOC should count for a greater value since they are "re-enforced".

Example: Pre-Karma

The reliability of many of the treaties to NPO should have gone through the roof---specifically Purple treaties.

The Legion Treaty to NPO---and for every other Purple Treaty tied to NPO the treaty reliability grows because of the POSEIDON/PEACE BLOC that most of Purple was part off.

How you would calculate this is beyond me, I'm just throwing out ideas.

Edited by KingEd
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Could you provide a similar set of statistics where you divide the total Nation Strength of an alliance by one more than the number of MDP-level treaties it holds, so that those of us not tied to that alliance can more accurately ascertain the value of being tied to that alliance?

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[quote name='Chief Savage Man' date='12 July 2010 - 08:57 PM' timestamp='1278986244' post='2368833']
I have a better system:

Are they awesome?

One point if yes.[/quote]

Usually awesome just means that they're on the same side of the treaty web and hang out in your channel.

[quote]Will they roll with you always unless they cannot?

One point if yes.


Two points means a valuable treaty partner.
[/quote]

Every alliance says they'll do this.

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