[EN] Final Destination

Day 828, 12:24 • Published in Poland Poland • by vingaer
Hello and forgive me for spamming Polish press 😛.

As many of you asked for an English version of my latest article, here it comes -- as a separate article, since putting it in the original one would extend the eR limits 😉.Thanks to Wisniowiecki, you can also read it in Hungarian. Bulgarian readers can enjoy a translation made by Netso and chukcha. Here you can find it in Russian.
The original version contains approx. 6 A4 pages and is available only in Polish.

If you by any chance become sick while reading longer texts, please push the button “back”.

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Diplomacy in eRepublik usually requires actions hidden in secret IRC channels and rarely happens on eR press.

Keeping most of actions taken by governments secret, leads to possible manipulations of the facts in order to present them in the favorable (or not) light, depending on the intentions. For example, the president of country XYZ crowned himself in public as the King of the Backyard, but ‘forgot’ to mention to his citizens that he owes someone 1300 g for several months. There was a rule in our alliance: we settle all arguments and misunderstandings on IRC. Similar guidelines work in Phoenix.

How is it possible, that internal flame wars in PHX stay on IRC (i.e. whining against country H for not providing suitable help in the battle erasing country S from the map), yet everyone can admire our internal problems in the media? Well, something seems to be wrong 🙂.

Usually (and often rightly) the leadership is blamed for such problems. But what to do, when the leadership 2.0 not only failed to stop the waves of ‘EDEN FAIL’ articles, written by EDEN citizens, but even increased their number?

It seems that the roots of our EDEN tree are being bitten by pests other than just the 'bad leaders'.

What did EDEN try to achieve?

The purpose of the state in international relations is primarily to meet its own needs. Foreign policy, therefore, reflects the interests of the nation. This permanent war is won by those who are able to persuade others to adopt certain behaviors. It is not a problem at the level of the alliance, if the allies share a common goal.

Such a goal for EDEN was to remove PEACE’s presence from North America. We all played like a clockwork then – the need for a common defense made EDEN really speak as one voice. The alliance had a certain right to call itself a true ‘Brotherhood’.

However the moment came, when Alaska, Manitoba and Nunavut returned to their rightful owners. We had to set a new goal – and that was to take back the PHX/PEACE high iron regions in Asia in December of 2009.

Grinch – I will beat all of you before Christmas

I am still amazed by the truly marvelous preparations for the Asian operation taken primarily by the American diplomacy. They began in the days when the Hungarians were fortifying their American regions.

The US in Asia played an amazing diplomatic game, which led to cooperation with India and China and the K.O. of diplomacy of countries such as Hungary, Iran and Indonesia. Nevertheless, the first attempt to pass through Japan failed in Kyushu. Something in EDEN stopped working properly at that moment. Romania and Greece claimed, that they had found a much better way to Asia in Turkey. Since the operation was just impossible to perform, several stronger EDEN countries took the long-awaited opportunity and attacked their neighbors.

Every single operation other than USA-in-Asia was not supported by EDEN HQ. The HQ however couldn’t have ordered the respective president to hold their fire, as the presidents, not HQ, enjoy the privileges such as having the necessary buttons and legitimacy of the population – so they decide.

As a result, 5 countries: Spain, Romania, Greece, Poland and Croatia activated powerful Phoenix MPPs. From this lovely menu, only Poland had a serious, achievable plan (leaving Syddanmark as a last region, that was changed during the invasion), only Spain didn’t activate a Hungarian MPP, only Croatia managed to finish Slovenia quickly, only Greece had not move too far and only Romania lost some significant core regions.

This is the period I consider to be crucial for the dissolution of the 'Brotherhood' part in 'Brotherhood of EDEN'.

'Brotherhood' is solidarity and comradeship presented the other side regardless of the circumstances. It should be natural and authentic. Was this so-called Brotherhood presented in December? On one hand, the official justifications for the small invasions were goo😛 PHX damage had been split, we all had our baby booms etc.

But what happens when we look at those things from a different perspective?

From the diplomatic side, everyone failed, more or less, as it was really rare when a MoFA managed to bring some allied help for an open battle. The coordination was tragic at some moments (‘Hey, we have just tanked down an 800k wall, see that!’, ‘…Yea, but why no one cared to mention you were going to do that..?’). The cooperation was just fatal (I remember a visit paid on #af by one of ZDRUG commanders and his bitter disappointment at the lack of support to invade Slovenia; the attack itself, by the way, was completely spontaneous). The propaganda was, of course, ‘excellent’ 🙂 (‘Hey, Poland and Croatia burned Germany and Slovenia alive, oh and Romanian MPPs slaughtered Bulgaria, PHX should just crawl somewhere and die!’).

What happened to the common goals? Well, take a look at the Serbian bridge to Asia and HK still shining in the Hungarian crown and just answer.

What is the problem of EDEN?

If I had to name it, I would say that EDEN proved to be unable to carry out offensives. After the first lost battle in Kyushu, the unity of minds simply disappeared. All major countries ate their neighbors for breakfast instead of focusing on a long-term goal: to strip Phoenix out of its sources of gold and rush to the offensives after that happens.

Why were we unable to be an offensive alliance? Well, that can be explained by a long and exhaustive defensive war somewhere overseas. We can also bring the obvious fatigue caused by being in defense for so long. In my opinion, however, the cause lies elsewhere: we have different definitions of ‘fun’ and different national interests. Surely, everyone wanted to strip the Hungarians out of HelloKitty. Additionally, everyone wanted to have a war for fun and a baby boom.

I do not know whether it’s possible to fulfill the wishes of such a large group of countries, in which each one, regardless of the size, has an equal voice. For a sense of 'brotherhood' in EDEN, December was, despite the stunning victories in Paris, Saarland, Lionking, Marmara or Prekmurje, a bitter pill to swallow. The departure of obviously hurt Romania and nearly blackmailing EDEN HQ by Canada (a withdrawal of all representatives until the invasion on UK is performed), were severe beatings. The concept of the transformation of EDEN to EDElaNtis by creating a presidential council, not only would bring the good, old ATLANTIS problems back on board, but also paralyze the decision-making process in times, when the situation in eRepublik changes several times a day. Organizing the HQ elections twice in one week is a big question mark for the current solidarity inside the alliance.

We can add an unsuccessful invasion on the UK, which in theory could not have been lost and was meant to last only 3 days. The actions of countries however showed that the ambitions of countries can spoil even the best military plan (Canadian president conquered Scotland, which effectively deleted Norway and her MPPs from the ongoing invasion; The US leaders were reluctant towards Poland gaining a high iron region for the sake of iron prizes and thus rescheduled a planned attack on London).

The bad leadership was finally changed and, surprise, the problems, such as opposite interests and bad communication, were not eliminated. We have all seen it yesterday, when Croatia did not receive sufficient help and as a result lost her ticket to the Western Europe (edit: yes, WE -> Asia). Who is to blame this time? Ugly HQ, lazy western part of the alliance, sleeping Americans, eastern lobby seeing Turkey as the only right way to Asia or perhaps Croatia itself, for feeling secure with over 400k points of wall? I guess all mentioned parties carry a little bit of fault.

All of this has happened before

History shows that empires are formed and eventually fall. It is also true when we think in terms of alliances instead of states. Looking at EDEN, the alliance is slowly dying, collapsing under its own weight. Phoenix, which was originally supposed to be a small alliance of the strongest PEACE countries (only that everyone invited a friend, which lead to PEACE 2.0), has similar problems.

The question is whether we, considering the approaching changes in version 2.0 and the common disheartenment towards the current eWorld order, are going to repeat the history once again and build another alliance on the ruins of EDEN, which will start as a mini-EDEnlaNtis and after half a year grow into a power inviting half of the world in.

I do not know, if a better solution wouldn’t be simply… to mix the EDEN-PHX teams and create bunch of smaller alliances, members of which would be connected by some realistic goals.

In smaller alliances, at least the problem of the direction of expansion would be limited. Taking Greece as an example – what’s the main goal of Greece? To destroy Turkey. That does not particularly correspond to the national interests of Sweden, which, because of the geographical location, is much more interested in Germany or the United Kingdom. Who then would make a better partner for Greece? For example, Bulgaria, which doesn’t share a warm relationship with Turkey and right now can forget about any expansion to the north.

At the moment it seems that the EDEN and Phoenix are held together simply because no one can afford to withdraw from an alliance and loose MPPs while the opposite superpower still exists.

An obvious obstacle in this rather utopian vision is clearly the eRepublik history. Would Hungary leave Serbia for an alliance with Poland? I do not think so. There would be a mass of voices: ‘Hey, Hungarians, we invaded Croatia together so many times and now what, you just leave us?’. Would it be possible for Serbia and Croatia to become allies? Probably not so much.

Despite it all, it’s always nice to dream that the diplomatic efforts one day will be able to change the somewhat worn formula of the game. What would happen if Poland, Spain, Croatia, Hungary and Serbia broke free of the burden of the history and formed an alliance together?

For me, that’s the sound of the REAL FUN in eRepublik.



Special thanks to Clemens for correcting my language mistakes o7

The real subject is whether the transformation from bipolarity to multipolarity in er is needed atm, so please stick to the topic in your comments 😉