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Dear Friends and readers

Today I wish to examine the highly topical issue of War.



Wars are one of the two main parts of erepublik that keep us involved and determined to play, the other is politics which is why most nations will fight wars on a fairly regular basis.

Fighting in wars provides you with several things: more territory, True Patriot medals, improving relations with another nation and resource bonuses as well as satisfaction for crushing an opponent. Wars also come in two main forms; Real Wars and Training Wars.



When looking for a war, one has to consider whether or not it will be a real war or merely a Training War. Training Wars are fought by agreement with another nation, voted on by both Congresses. Real wars require no such agreement. This is merely the first step when considering embarking on a war.

The next step is to examine the political repercussions around the globe of not only for declaring war but for a successful conclusion to the war as well as a failure. This is complicated further by the Alliances that stride across the world, such as the one we are part of: TWO. These alliances have their own diplomacy to consider, a bigger picture than one nation if you will. It would be foolish, for example, to attack a Nation that your own Alliance HQ had just opened negotiations with or had just signed a peace treaty with.

There are further repercussions to consider, such as do we share MPP's with the said nation, and if so, how many and which are important, if you are the aggressor, you lose those MPP's until the war ends. You also must consider the friends of the enemy nation and whether or not they can be dealt with and if the enemy nation is in their own alliance.

This is merely the effect of declaring war. Then there is the problem of a failure to win. What happens if we lose the war? Well, usually what happens is we get wiped, ie: lose all our regions. But when you are in an alliance this gets even more interesting with the negative propaganda that follows.



Now, having weighed all this up and considering that the foreign situation is not too bad we look at the next reason to go to war: economics.

Merely capturing random regions is kind of pointless unless they serve a couple of reasons: 1) True Patriot medals which provide gold, or 2) gaining a new bonus. It is no good attacking a region for a resource you already have, unless it is on the way to a resource you do not have. For example, the UK controls in her border the following resources: Oil, Iron, Aluminium, Fish and Cattle. Therefore, us attacking a region that provides Oil would provide us with no bonus whatsoever, but attacking a region that provides wheat would.

Now, this is not to argue attacking nations without extra resources is pointless, in no way is this true as we get these shiny things called True Patriot Medals. They are great for providing cash to our citizens, and in fact is the main reason for fighting for our nation as we are pretty much incapable of controlling all ten resources due to our size and power as well as having to compete with Poland for them. This is the reasoning behind controlling Sorlandet, the Revolt Wars here will continue to help provide True Patriot medals.



Most of these considerations need only be taken in a real war where we aim to take and hold onto the land we capture. A Training War provides only 2 things to the nation: True Patriot Medals and fun. However, we must always bear in mind the wider, diplomatic and geo-political scene. If we neglect our own allies wars, we will suffer from their neglect in time when we come to desperately need it. Or a potential enemy may take advantage of our distractions, or perhaps the TW itself will evolve into something more.

The final thing to consider is the relative strength of your nation to the proposed opponents, this is not merely the number of citizens by the average weekly damage laid down.

Now, this is not meant to be a discouragement to war as I will admit that they are a fun element of the game but losing allies and/or the war itself is not so much fun. At the end of the day, these issues need to be weighed up, discussed and thought about before we can embark on an actual war.



tl;dr? War is, and should be, welcome to the nation as long as it is thought about and we don't launch it half-baked due to various issues we need to think about.

Obligatory Waynekerr comment.


Thank you for reading
Bohemond4
Congressman
The Unity Party
Editor-in-Chief
The Daily Knight