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100 years to the day that the First World War began

Warning: If you don’t live in the UK most of this will probably be meaningless

Today at a gathering of European leaders in Liege, Belgium, to commerorate the start of the First World War, Prince William sai😛 "We were enemies more than once in the last century and today were are friends and allies...We salute those who died to give us our freedom. We will remember them."

Freedom? Freedom from what exactly?

The empty propaganda that underwrites a lot of modern wars, suggesting they’re about democracy, fighting “terror” etc. is notable by its absence when speaking about the First World War -- at least it is in the UK. Instead the RL media rolls out some curious nationalism to the effect we should be “proud” of our ancestors who “sacrificed” their lives – never bothering to mention that this “sacrifice” was in defence of House Windsor’s empire against the imperial ambitions of Houses Hohenzollern and Habsburg.

I think when someone like William Windsor makes a statement like “We salute those who died to give us our freedom. We will remember them...” he’s using “we” to refer to his class – not his nationality. Because I’m really at a loss to fathom out what the working class were sacrificing their lives for or what kind of concessions they were winning by fighting in that conflict. Certainly not representative democracy, health care or social housing. None of which existed in any real sense at the time.



In media outlets like the BBC there is complete – and obviously intentional – disengagement with the ideology then prevailing that fostered the First World War and press-ganged over a million of its inhabitants into a genocide which claimed over a million British lives -- which is in stark contrast to coverage of the Second World War. There things are black-and-white: the Nazis are Evil and here's why, and the Allieds are Good an here's why.



The tack when covering the First World War is to eschew what/who we were fighting for – in the UK’s case that was on behalf of the interests of a bloodthirsty colonial empire, an empire which committed more acts of genocide than Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia – and concentrate on the ‘human story’, i.e. the people who were conscripted to fight in the actual thing. It’s a by-product of the absolute dearth of class politics in the UK in general and its media in particular, outside of fringe publications or the odd pundit. Strange when intellectual postcolonialism and cultural marxism informs most other strands of our existence in the UK: gender politics, immigration, etc.


Watching the BBC on a day like today I get to wondering what century I’m in.

A War Loan rally in London designed to convince the public to invest in dodgy “war bonds” supplied by equally dodgy international financial interests.

Interesting fact: the British ta😜ayer still pays in excess of £136m a year interest on debt totalling £1.94bn, 99% of which belongs to a group of secret financial institutions. These same kind of financial instruments were available in Germany during the First World War and were an important tool when the Nazis framed “International Jewry” for all Germany’s woes.


/rant over, NFM climbs off soapbox

p.s. sorry if I sounded like a communist above, I'm actually not in RL 😛




The Irish National War Memorial Gardens is an Irish war memorial in Islandbridge, Dublin, dedicated to the memory of the Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War.


300,000 Irishmen fought against the 'Central Powers', over 49,000 were killed in battle or perished through injuries sustained in the conflict.


“The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 37 million. There were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.

The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.

About two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle, unlike the conflicts that took place in the 19th century when the majority of deaths were due to disease. Nevertheless, disease, including the Spanish flu and deaths while held as prisoners of war, still caused about one third of total military deaths for all belligerents.”

[Source: Wiki]


“We salute those who died to give us our freedom. We will remember them."







Meanwhile in 2014...















Hello Mekkies o/

I’m your new party president for the month ahead.

I have two objectives this term:

- Lay the foundations for a coalition with another eIsraeli party;


- Seek a kosher babyboom for eIsrael;





Developing an affiliation with another eIsrael party, one that shares Mobile Elite Kosher’s outlook is going to be a priority this month.

Our party already has a powerful mandate as the third largest eIsaeli party, however a coalition with one of the established eIsraeli parties would allow us to become the dominant political power in all of eIsrael. As well as lending stability to eIsraeli politics.

This however is not a power grab for the sake of it. We would only consider a coalition with a party which shares our political beliefs and military objectives. Which are:

- Regular Air Strikes against enemy nations, both for fun, to help beleaguered allies and for the small boost it can give our economy;

- An open border policy in order to encourage more players throughout the New World to seek eIsraeli citizenship and make a contribution to our society, both in politics and on the battlefield;

- Continuation of the eIsrael-eCyprus Peace Treaty;

A coalition will mean we’ll be allied in congress, will take turns putting forth a candidate for presidency, which the other party would in turn support. Should this project come to fruition it would mean two of eIsrael’s most powerful parties working together for the benefit of all eIsrael, building governments of like-minded individuals instead of competing against each other for electorate’s vote.

If you’re a party president and share our outlook for eIsrael and would like to be part of this coalition, then please PM me and we can discuss things.





This is self-explanatory. Like most countries, eIsrael is crying out for a babyboom. Our population currently stands at 559, placing us 56th in the New World. I'd like to increase that.



I already have some strategies thought up that might spark a babyboom, but I’m looking for more people who can contribute, specifically we need some graphics designed, nothing too complex, and payment can be arranged for any work produced.

We also need speakers fluent in both English and Hebrew and who would like to help with the project, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.





Congress elections are in 5 days. Anyone without a congress medal and those MEK who were the first to move to eIsrael will be given preference.

If your interested don’t forget to candidate yourself asap




NFM





Iron Dome Activated!



Shalom citizens of eIsrael o/







This is a genuine act of aggression by Pakistan against our e-nation so please be aware we are 100% commiited to winning the engagement! Our alliance LETO will be committing troops and resources to the fight, so we won’t be fighting alone.














NFM
eIsrael Minister of Defence

















State of Play





I thought I’d write something about the current state of play in the New World.





_____________________________________________________Cookiegate_____________________________________________________

Firstly, a few words about what happened recently within TWO HQ from my point of view. As we all know Cookies Crisp has been relieved of his duties as TWO SG. I’ll clarify here [unless I’m gravely mistake [I’m pretty sure I’m not]] that this was because he had the temerity to propose a vote on eSpain’s ejection from the alliance – and NOT due to the trolling that followed. What I find strange is getting impeached over exercising his right as SG, and puts a serious question mark next to the point of TWO having an SG in the first place. Its on record that once certain protagonists saw the vote wasn't going to pass they changed from endorsing Cookie to Spain's "side", so its not as if the proposal wasn’t with some justification. Cookie has been set up as the fallguy in order to hastily paper over the cracks it would seem.

As such, it seems the impeachment was punitive, a means to oust an SG who took the leadership role seriously. What happened afterwards regarding the name-changes was funny and probably not very productive I agree, but no real harm was done. What it told us though is this:

a) opposition to Spain in the alliance exists;

b) and certain elements within the HQ will do anything to ensure its not given voice;

Evidently this includes, if need be, toppling a democratically elected SG. Cookies is a very experienced politician going back years, no one’s about to tell me he walked into that meeting armed with just a hope and a prayer. Shame others, who’d evidently promised their support, didn’t have the courage of their convictions.


However Cookiegate is not really what I wish to address with this article. We had some genuine excitement in the game with what Cookie did, most of this was based on the possibility TWO might collapse and we were about to get a level playing field again, alas it wasn’t to be unfortunately! However a lot of the divisions within TWO came to the surface, and its become clear the old EDEN mantra that SPoland are all about SPoland [rea😛 self-interest] is what’s irked Spain’s opponents within the alliance to show their hand. Funny that. We all witnessed how tenuous TWO’s inner structure actually is, and I think its safe to assume it could easily have gone the other way.


________________________________________________The Resident Superpowers________________________________________________

The only active agents capable of changing the face of the New World are SerbHun and Spoland, the only two remaining ‘brotherhoods’ in this game, brotherhoods that have existed since V1, and which operate to all intents and purposes as a single entity in the global political sphere. Of the two, you would assume Spoland the more important in terms of catalyst for change. Spoland are in the enviable position of straddling the two “sides” of Erepublik: the SerbHun and the CroUS. Spoland can comfortably ally with either, and have done in the past. This is their ace-in-the-hole. The prospect of losing Spoland to CroUS and thus have the global Damage tally turn against them, is what has (up until quite recently) stayed the SerbHun hand against acting to rectify many of the problems of their alliance.

Should Spoland-SerbHun go there separate ways, Spoland could expect to immediately sign MPPs with Croatia and the eUS, probably China too and a host of other smaller nations. SerbHun on the other hand have pretty much already plateaued in this regard, barring a few mid-sized and smaller countries. The heavyweights like Greece, Romania and Argentina that would (in all likelihood) make up the nucleus of any new SerbHun-led alliance are already in the SerbHun sphere of influence, so there would be no noticeable increase over TWO, indeed anything SerbHun were to lead would, in all likelihood, be a much smaller affair than TWO.


_________________________________________The Redundancy of the SerbHun-SPolish NAP__________________________________________

To quote verbatim a recent Serbian government article: “Serbia has no further intention to act the first line of defense and be under threat of wiping in every month or two, while others enjoy a break in their 10 resources.” Side-stepping any and all credible military opposition and ensuring its directed instead at Serbia [its "ally"] has pretty much been SPolish strategy since Terra folded and CTRL reared its head. Its assured them almost constant 10/10s, even whilst their close allies economies floundered.

At the core of the TWO alliance is a Non-Aggression Pact securing the peace between the heavyweights SPoland-SerbHun, this allows them to prosecute wars against nonTWO states safe in the knowledge they won’t have to contend with Damage coming from eachother. Because Serbia don’t need Polish Damage and Poland don’t need Serbian damage in their MPP-supported campaigns – due to the fact both are overwhelmingly stronger than their traditional enemies, and because of the advent of xDeterminers in Resistance Wars ensuring whatever help Poland or Serbia could give eachother is meaningless anyway as whatever they could contribute to eachother would be bested (and then some) in a RW with a high xDeterminer factor, means that the instances when Serbia and Polish soldiers will fight side-by-side are even less likely to occur than before.

In other words, Serbia and Poland being allies in the positive sense is almost entirely redundant.

Prior to the introduction of Determiners what Damage they could share in pre-congress elections as they each tried to hold down wipes was hugely important. But no longer. Ofcourse the argument they still pose a threat to eachother if they were in opposed alliance carries some [well, quite a lot of] weight, but flounders because it doesn’t take into account the traditional strategic interests of both countries: the Polish objectives of a strong colonial empire and the Serbian of conquering its near-neighbours and traditional enemies [and only then pursue economic bonuses], neither of these aims conflict with eachother, therefore are unlikely to lead to open war. Poland chose that path long ago, and are unlikely to diverge from it now. In other words, a gungho all-for-one-and-one-for-all so-called EDENtype approach to the game is unlikely to emerge in them now, not when its something they pointedly rejected years ago.

That’s significant for any new alliance featuring Spoland, gone would be the days of sitting atop easy 10/10s, able to invoke Serb damage at will. Neither Poland nor Spain have met any kind of competition on the battlefield for – literally – years. Can anyone really see them reject the life of luxury they’ve come accustomed to and sacrifice resources and the potential for resources in order to help smaller allies out? Seems a bit of a leap. And its not as if anyone in their new alliance would have the means to twist their arm to do the HQ's bidding.


*

For the rest of the article, I’m going to discuss what would happen in the [unlikely] event that TWO folded. I’m going to assume a clean Spolish-SerbHun break, i.e. SerbHun going one way and Spoland the other, and no fragmentation of either brotherhood. Due to the long list of antipathies amongst countries I’m going to select only what I perceive to be a set of stable founder members, meaning a handful of heavyweights won’t get much of a mention, namely FYROM/MKD, Bulgaria and Turkey, all three of whom are in the position of sharing bad-blood with countries that would naturally make the line-up of SerbHun- and Spolish-led alliances.




__________________________________________________A SerbHun-led Alliance__________________________________________________

A lot has been written about the successor alliance to TWO that would feature SPoland and, in all likelihood, CroUS, much less what the opposition would look like.

We pretty much already know the nucleus of this alliance, as most are already committed to Serbia and to a lesser extent, TWO: Argentina, Romania, Portugal, Colombia and ofcourse official TWO member-states Greece and Slovenia. Suggesting Greece would enter a new SerbHun-led alliance is just that, a suggestion. But there’s plenty of reason to assume they would.

The question then is, What other countries might be tempted to join a new SerbHun-led alliance?

If I was tasked with developing a new SerbHun-led alliance, these are the countries I’d approach [Note: list is not exhaustive]:

Serbia
Hungary
Greece
Slovenia
Romania
Montenegro
Argentina
Colombia
Portugal
Uruguay
Russia
Germany
France
Sweden
Finland
Norway
Netherlands

Discounting the usual suspects that are already aligned with Serbia via TWO, the rest are primarily longtime victims of Poland or their ABC puppet-states and would be natural allies against an alliance that featured the Poles.


_______________________________________________Military and Strategic Expediency_______________________________________________

Serbia, the de facto leader of any alliance its part of, has had a problem for a long while with its inability to bring military pressure to bear against the eUS. Whilst it could quickly and ruthlessly suppress Cro/Alb/Bos after the latter had relative success in RWs, the eUS and its mobile Damage has been something Serbia has been unable to effectively counter. Recently the Polish ‘Atlantic wall’ effected a stopgap shield against an eUS attack against Aquitaine, but with the recent game changes the wall crumbled, re-opening the channel of attack.

The solution is Serbia aligning itself with countries able to relieve it when its targeted en masse. If we go back to the PEACE days, Serbia had the support of France, Germany, the UK, Brazil and Russia – of these countries, four shared a border with the eUS, and indeed two of them (countries that later became the eUS’s strongest allies), eRussia and eBrazil, were the main protagonists during Operation PIG MAC™, the invasion of continental North America, one of the main contested areas in World War III.

Since World War III the game has changed drastically ofcourse, both in terms of mechanics and the fluctuation in population sizes, and with the emergence of ONE we saw a lot of the old Phoenix powers, namely France, Germany and even Russia to a degree, lose out bigtime. People often complain about the Balkan-centric nature of this game, well a lot of that has to do with the alliance carve up post-Phoenix not just the overwhelming strength of the Balkan nations as a whole. With SPoland switching sides and aligning with SerbHun, the writing was on the wall for France, Germany and Russia. It has always just been a matter of when they would get wiped/near-wiped by ePoland or eHungary (specifically in the case of France and Germany) and not “if”.

Currently both France and Germany have regained much of their core territories, for the first time in a long while. But that is unlikely to last indefinitely. And as the eUS and ePoland sign an NAP that is going to ensure France minimal military assistance when Polish armies once more strike for Rubber in Poitou-Charentes, you have to question the logic behind France continuing on its CroUS trajectory. All this strategy has done has contributed to an almost perma-wipe for nearly two years. Under Phoenix (with military support coming from Serbia and co.) both Germany and France were viable opponents to Spoland. Ofcourse, like I say, it’s a different game now in terms of mechanics, but Franco-Germania boosted by Serbia-Hungary-Greece-Romania-Argentina-Portugal damage would nullify the ease with which either Poland or the eUS could prosecute their wars. And Franco-Germania plus Portugal would all share a border with the eUS, allowing the considerable Damage backing these countries to be channelled against the eUS, Spain or possibly even Brazil.

To this, most people would say: replacing Spoland with Franco-Germania on the Serbian MPP stack is just idiocy. Yeah, but look below!

On paper Serbia presently has superior allied damage [theoretically] at its disposal than at anytime in its history – and yet, has been pretty much neutered since the break between TWO and CoT. What happened then was a swapping of allies, Bulgaria and FYROM/MKD moved into alignment with CroUS, and Greece and Romania came over to Serbia’s side. On paper this appeared win-win, in practice however, not so. Why? Because Serbia’s nemesis are CroUS and Turkey, and its against the damage of these three nations the majority of its offensive operations will inevitably butt head. Recently this has meant its stood alone against this foe, facing economic woe and seeing a long-planned Air Strike against Albanian-held regions in eIndia fail due to lack of support from the rest of the alliance. Compare this with its achievements during CoTWO: the greatest success Serbia experienced in the era of TWO was when it worked alongside FYROM/MKD and Bulgaria as part of a CoT allied with TWO. Since then Serbia has struggled to execute any kind of offensive strategy other than, by their standards, the small feat of gaining a 10/10 economy, and even that is looking impossible to maintain from hereon.

Therefore damage-for-damage’s-sake has proven the wrong turn for Serbia. FYROM/MKD and Bulgaria although numerically weaker, shared Serbia’s enemies. This was the magic formula, allowing Serbia to get all the way to China in the CoT/Fellowship days – but when TWO and CoT parted ways, we saw Serbia rendered toothless, culminating in its recent lackluster showing in the invasion of the eUS, contrast that with Poland who eventually ended up with [nearly] the entire North American continent! Whereas Serbia were sucked into local dogfights, scuppering any chance they held to go on a ONE-era world tour and still imagine they could hold onto their Balkan assets. Consequently, having ‘buffers’ against what the previous Serbian government likened to Serbia acting as a “first line of defense” against CroUS/Turkey “while others [for ‘others’ read SPoland] enjoy[ed] a break in their 10 resources” should be of prime military expediency. Irrespective that the Damage output of Franco-Germania pails into insignificance next to Spoland, we’ve seen the evidence that this isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. A properly supported Franco-Germania would supply a fresh point of attack, one that could assault either Poland, Spain or the eUS.

Lest we forget: the eUS-SPolish NAP effects Franco-Germania and Serbia in much the same manner: it renders the former easy pickings to Polish advances, and returns the latter as the eUS’s favourite bulls-eye. In other words allowing both the eUS-SPolish to thoroughly shaft longtime allies out of pure self-interest.

Unfortunately I have grave reservations whether e-nations like France, Germany or Russia could wrest themselves from the political influence of the eUS. Germany specifically often looks more and more just a client state of the eUS and I have doubts whether it could muster the kind of resolve required to transplant itself from the CroUS side to the SerbHun.

Unfortunately a lot of players from Northern and Western European states have bought into “SerbHun-is-the-font-of-all-evil” spiel, despite the fact their own states have been overrun by ePolish troops going on years. That’s a side-effect and spill-over of the poor political sway states like Germany, France and Netherlands had during the TEDEN days. Everything was channeled into the idea Serbia was the true enemy that had to be countered, and this grew and grew over the years, getting an almighty shot-in-the-arm when CTRL emerged, so that we have this strange picture were the almost constant Polish colonization of countries near and far is somehow of less significance than the – by comparison - infrequent SerbHun forays into France, Russia or wherever. But anyway.

Much of this article was always going to be wild speculation, and unfortunately I think of all that I’ve wrote the prospect of Franco-Germania re-aligning with SerbHun is probably the wildest of all. Despite the eUS-SPolish NAP.

In all honesty I think this game is now stuck were it is. RL issues have been imported ingame ensuring a setup like the Phoenix alliance next to impossible, so we operate with CroUS on one side and SerbHun in the middle and SPoland deciding which one to back and render the most powerful.

I’ve gone into a lot of things which state clearly that damage-for-damage-sake isn’t always the best option, especially not for Serbia. Unfortunately I believe some parties would rather just settle for the status quo than try something new that could potentially prove more effective on the battlefield than SerbHun-SPoland.

NFM





















Greetings soldiers of eIndia o/


::: BATTLE ORDERS FOR DAY 2,163 :::



> > > PRIORITY 1:



As you may be aware, Montenegro have issued an Air Strike law against Albania in order to help us evict the hostile presence of Albania from our nation.

Please try and ensure you have full energy for when it kicks off!








JAI HIND!!


If anyone has any queries regarding MoD policy or strategy, don't hesitate to PM a member of the MoD team.

New Faustian Man
Isengard13
eIndian Ministry of Defence






















Greetings citizens of eIndia o/


::: This is a public announcement by the Ministry of Defence :::


There has been some concern shown regarding my Ministry’s support of the resistance war in Tamil Nadu. This mainly centers on the suspicion that should India successfully expel the Croats from Tamil Nadu, we’ll immediately face a Natural Enemy proposal by Thailand. Its correct that the plan for eIndia's liberation revolved around TWO offering huge support to some smaller TWO/ACT states (like Thailand) that would engage Albania and Croatia and drive them out of India. The unfortunate part in this, however, is the desire some in the Thai government have to effectively replace Albania and Croatia on Indian soil.

Specifically, they seek Saltpeter in Gujarat and one of our cattle regions presently under Croat-control.

To quote a member of the Thailand cabinet: “we supported this RW in Tamil Nadu so we can take cows and salt and delete Albania we dont care much for india or albania they r on opponent side for thailand and in game our enemies."



So we can conclude Thailand’s intentions toward India aren’t completely benign. However this isn’t exactly a revelation.

Unfortunately for Thailand the success of this operation hinged on India regaining Tamil Nadu. A campaign which has since failed. Which leads me to the second concern voiced by some senior Indian citizens, namely the potential that Croatia and Thailand had done a deal, that would effectively replace Albania in India with Thailand, with an unofficial NAP securing the peace between Croatia and Thailand. Sounds far-fetched if you ask me. What I do know however is that a senior member of the Croat government approached an Indian cabinet member to discuss the potential of Croatia and Albania releasing some regions to India. Interestingly these included Tamil Nadu. The only stipulation involved the timing of renewing some of our MPPs. Like I said above, the whole thing sounds highly unlikely. And Croatia did just repel the Thai attack on Tamil Nadu after all.


At this juncture, I would like to remind our citizenry that whatever Thailand might have planned beyond aiding us in ridding our land of Albania and Croatia is, at this point, pretty inconsequential.



Even with strong TWO support today they failed in their bid to recover Tamil Nadu. Pretty much foiling all their plans. Our enemy isn’t Thailand, its Croatia and Albania. So all supposition regarding what might happen should we get a border with Thailand is, frankly, pretty ridiculous. I’m pretty sure the “Devil you know...” doesn’t apply in this case. It's Croatia and Albania that have us wiped, it's Croatia and Albania that have broken treaties with us – not Thailand. So let's not get distracted. Let's face it, the argument we shouldn’t fight against Croatia, a country that have stolen our lands and currently have us wiped --- because it might give Thailand the opportunity to steal our lands somewhere down the track is absurd.

*

eIndia are looking to strengthen relations with TWO and proTWO countries, this includes Thailand. The fact is that due to the Air Strike facility eIndia is always going to be an easy target. Something that we all must acknowledge and plan for. As such we are looking to countries, especially near-neighbors like Thailand, as potential friends, countries that can help us and we them.

JAI HIND!!!


Thanks for your time,
New Faustian Man
eIndian Minister of Defense














Greetings citizens of eIndia o/


::: BATTLE ORDERS FOR DAY 2,151:







The objective of tonight's war is to undermine the Albanian shield as much as possible!



Above, the Albanian shield

As you can see from the graphic above the Albanian Shield still stands at over 315M. Over the next fortnight we're going to be concentrating on destroying it completely, ensuring its gone before congress elections at the end of the month.

So citizens of eIndia, friends and allies please show some love for eIndia tonight and help us in our battle for liberation!

JAI HIND!!





New Faustian Man
eIndia Minister of Defence






















































Good evening ladies and gentlemen o/

Obligatory theme music >>> Please click here


Now as we all know, Bulgaria have been making real pests of themselves lately, (even more than usual...)






This culminated, as we can see in the graphic above, in Bulgur fleeing to Lithuanian-held Norwegian cores in an Air Strike in what had been talked up as a “rescue mission” to help their new allies in Asgard, (although it would also provide Bulgaria a means to escape the prison they’d been held in for the past couple months and allow them to regain congress and access their treasury)




However, Bulgaria hadn't foresaw Romania following them to Scandinavia....


So this:



Soon turned into this:



...in just a matter of days : /


In case you missed Bulgaria on the map, I’ve used a handy white arrow to illustrate precisely where it is:






However the fun didn't stop there, as the above pic illustrates, now Bulgaria have launched an NE against former "staunch" allies the eUnited Kingdom....



Bulgur Country President Tablov above,
moments before signing the NE proposal
against the United Kingdom

With this NE Bulgaria hope to FINALLY regain congress, even if it is at the cost of upsetting old allies. Only time will tell if it was worth it or not...



Above, a traditional Bulgarian wardance performed by the Bulgarian MoD
and vMoD intended to scare the eUKers into submission...



Above, an eUK soldier practices for that moment when Bulgur ships land on eUK shores...


STOP BEING SILLY AND COME HOME BULGARIA!!
THE BALKAN'S JUST ISN'T THE SAME WITHOUT ITS DOORMAT!!

[IMG]http://starttroll.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/half-troll-face.png%3Fw%3D593[/IMG]


o/ to my Bulgarian friends
and I hope everyone takes this in the spirit it was meant,
NFM



















Good evening ladies and gentleman of the IMPERIUM,

This is a new bi-monthly report breaking down the political and military situation of our beloved alliance, the IMPERIUM. So please don’t forget to sub the paper to ensure you don’t miss any IMPERIUM news or updates! Thank you for your co-operation. \o/


First business on the agenda is letting our citizenry know what we’ve been up to this last month!

Over the last month the IMPERIUM’s HQ had two major objectives:

1. Get Croatia back into Europe, in order to establish another front against TWO and aid allies elsewhere

and

2. Improve eUS Damage output by moving 15 of the top USAF commune holders to eSpain



I’ll do a quick run through of where we are with each of these objectives:


1. Get Croatia back into Europe, in order to establish another front against TWO and aid allies elsewhere

This was only accomplishable by re-taking a Serb-held eCroat region, which meant relying on Spain/Poland NOT hitting on the Serbian side. No small ask as to all outward appearances Spain/Poland are still “official” TWO members – but, our great friends in Spain and Poland kept their word and gave Serbia almost ZERO assistance, thus allowing Croatia to regain one of her core regions!



Congratulations Croatia! \o/
And to Spain/Poland = a massive thanks from the HQ! Croatia couldn’t have done it without you!! o7
[For any Doubting Thomas's please check [url=http://battle-watcher.com/campaigns/campaign/43996]here[/url] if you still think it's TWO SPoland serve and not the IMPERIUM]



2. Improve eUS Damage output by moving 15 of the top USAF commune holders to eSpain

The second objective was improve eUS damage output, something that has been in decline for months now, most notably since the occupation of the eUS by TWO forces. Whilst the RWs targeting Hungarian-held regions have been an outstanding success, they haven’t contributed enough to eUS bonuses to impact rolling stock. So, a deal was thrashed out between the eUS and eSpanish governments to allow some of the top USAF [the official eUS military] commune holders to move to Spain and enjoy Spanish 10/10s.

This even saw the eUS and eSpain fight side-by-side in Guayana to defend Spain’s Rubber region! The eUS president even claimed a BH on the eSpanish side!



Congrats Mr. President! eUS and Spanish soldiers fighting side-by-side is something we’re hoping to see a lot more of in the future! 😉

The 15 commune holders should have eSpanish cs within the fortnight!


As you can see all goals have either been accomplished or are in the process of being completed, with just a few i’s to dot and t’s to cross. Please bear with us! 🙂


With that out of the way we can now get to the fun stuff!



^IMPERIUM on the map \o/

As illustrated above, IMPERIUM has excellent 24hr coverage, probably the most balanced of any alliance this game has ever seen. In the coming months this is going to be of immense help when we go to war with TWO.





As you can see we currently number over 20,000 citizens with 8k+ active fighters!





Yes, you read it right: IMPERIUM’s monthly damage output is encroaching on 800BILLION!!! o_0
This is phenomenal! Congrats to ALL our citizens who contributed to this figure, hopefully in the not-to-distant future we’ll surpass 800Billion and one day soon eclipse 1 Trillion. With the new member-states lined up to join I’m sure we can make this a reality! 😉


Hail eUSA \o/
Hail ePoland \o/
Hail eSain \o/
Hail eHUEHUE \o/


Signed,
New Faustian Man,
Commissioner of Communications for the IMPERIUM

---

Notice: The alliance 'IMPERIUM' is a work of fiction and has no basis in e-reality, should any of the allusions to 'enemy' countries being in cahoots in fact be proved fact is pure coincidence


#politicalsatire



TROLLFACE included at the behest of Wayne Kerr













If Circle of Trust merged with the many neutral countries....


IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES....







^Visual metaphor




NFM



Hello eWorld

TWO has recently proved itself the undisputed power in the New World, whilst at the same time – both militarily and diplomatically – Circle of Trust has shown itself singularly incapable of putting up any sort of meaningful resistance – not simply my subjective take on events: just check the stats and TWO gains into CoT territory as proof.

The result of this is huge imbalance in the game, and as we all know: without competitive wars this game quickly loses much of its appeal.



The above graphic illustrates an important fact: There is enough damage outside of TWO to comfortably take it on and defeat it, indeed “neutral” countries currently put up more damage than Circle of Trust do. Much of this neutral damage however belongs to countries that harbour bad blood with some Circle of Trust states, this bad blood and the failure of the Circle of Trust diplomatic core to overcome it is why CoT are where they are today. Compare this with TWO's ability to attract Greece, Ukraine, Turkey, Argentina and Romania all to the fold in one way or another.


So it goes without saying, any new alliance – if it has designs on being successful against TWO – should be dynamic enough to combine the many nonTWO countries that have suffered in the past or are suffering now at TWO's hands, and to work to get past the antipathies and dislikes that TWO are using to divide and conquer the rest of the world. So an important facet of this poll is trying to gauge whether the citizens of nonTWO countries who have traditionally harboured bad-blood -- specifically Bulgaria-Turkey, Argentina-Chile, Romania-Brazil etc. -- could put that aside in order to create a new alliance capable of taking on TWO.

Note: To be eligible to partake you must be a nonTWO citizen, specifically NOT hold Serbian/Polish/Hungarian or Spanish e-citizenship. I appreciate some neutral countries have effectively ‘declared’ themselves proTWO, but as in-game they’re still neutral their contribution will still be counted.





NFM






This article is part 2 of interviews I did with former leaders of the alliance called ORDER of the NEW E-WORLD, popularly known as ONE.

Part 2 focuses on the emergence and death of CTRL and is here presented for your edification.

Enjoy!

The Interviewees

AThompson - Two time Secretary-General of ONE. Three time MoFA of Hungary, former MoD of Hungary, and former President of Hungary

coolinbun - Longtime contributor in ONE HQ and Serbian representative

Iain Keers - Former multiple-term treasurer and SG of Phoenix, former President of the UK and Secretary-General of ONE

k0stek - Former Polish President, multi-term Polish MoFA and a regular member of ONE HQ

mikel_ahone - Self-declared ‘founder of ONE’ and once considered part of the furniture in ONE HQ. Founder of Rompi stalker club (and secret EDENfanboi)

Rhual - AKA the The Masked DJ. Amongst the founders of ONE and regular HQ member, was also the last ever Military Commander of the alliance. Is also a four-time President of Hungary, and has served in countless Hungarian cabinets

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QUESTION: Why do you think CTRL failed?

AThompson - Because of the American dream. J They always trying to make the game into something what the game is not. They had Brolliance, they had PANAM/TERRA, now they had CTRL, but on long terms it is not possible not to fight wars on Balkans/in Europe because this is only acceptable for Brazil/America/China. In a European country like Poland population will tear apart the government after 2 weeks without direct wars. You cannot force people to act the other way even it would be logical according to some logics.


Coolinbun - CTRL was bad Idea from beginning. Countries that have formed CTRL was no have common goal, nor common interests. Those countries was on opposite sides to much time. Well, true is ONE was created on similar way, but that was different time.



Borrowed from Artela's article [ permission pending ]


K0stek - To be honest I think that two CPs failed in that case. I understand Pierre that it was hard to talk with Pfeiffer cause he is really hot-blooded but Pierre also gave him his word in few cases and didn't keep it.


Keers - There are too many differences between SPoland and BRusa. Not just IRL, but their goals and aims are completely different.


NFM - Can you qualify how you believe these goals and aims differ?


Keers - Well the USA’s goals are non-European really. Aside from minor region swaps with FR and SP, it’s goals are American (for bonuses) and Asian (for wars). The USA has never in all its history had any European regions as goals for permanent occupation. To win against its enemies USA needed a powerful ally in Europe, but not necessarily Poland. Similarly all CTRL was built on from the Polish side was a NAP- protecting Polish colonies from their main threat to the west. The rest was just fluff. They both tried to maintain friendships- the alliance never really broke their ties with former allies. And this was a good thing (from my perspective at least)


mikel_ahone - I have been a bit off during the CTRL process, but I guess it failed cause their member didn’t share a common goal. This slogan about forming an anti-Balkan alliance is quite stupid, considering that countries like mine (Spain) cannot even think about forget their bonds with Serbia or Hungary. It should be very stupid after the strong relationship we have made. The same applies for Poland. However, I think the countries that were involved in the alliance can be friends taking into account that some of them have old friends that can be enemies of other of them and respecting this issue.


Rhual - For me, the CTRL wanted to be a ONE level alliance. Altogether, the problem was that, while every countries in ONE were able to start a new sheet (so I mean there were not tight friendly relations in the EDEN/Phoenix) and make compromises, but it was not possible in the CTRL. And if the members of an alliance are not able to accept the decisions of the others or wanting to force its own onto the other one, then the alliance does not have a future.





QUESTION: A lot of the justification – if you wanna call it that – for CTRL was that its creators wished to establish a multi-polar world populated by many alliances, and to terminate the Balkan-centric, Cold War-style bi-polar conflict of a two superpower stalemate. What’s your take on this?


AThompson: I think this logic is fucked up, because the creation of CTRL is paving the way to what they wanted to avoid. J If you create a power-house alliance for superpowers sitting on their resources, the rest of the countries don’t have any other option than to form another 1 or 2 big alliances and break the superpowers. That’s why I’m saying Americans or people in Brolliance/Terra/etc. have problems regarding the game itself where the most of the active population is not from highly developed Western countries but from countries like Macedonia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia etc. Check the case of TERRA, they formed it so they could remain out of Balkan wars, but when ONE formed they didn’t have any other option than joining forces with EDEN, the other Balkan alliance and they’ve ended up giving night damage to EDEN in Europe or fighting in RWs against ONE.



How CTRL began: Above is the Damage the founding members of CTRL were doing, the eUS contribution was skewed massively due to the number of pro-EDEN fighters in the eUS at the time


Coolinbun - Stories like "we are sick about Balkan wars" was just a propaganda. True is, this game play big number of people from Balkans and main reason of that is because we study college 15 years in average, and we have biggest number of unemployed in population. In other word, we have to much of free time 🙂. Seriously, I dont think that main reason of making CTRL was multi-polar word, or making distance from Balkan. ONE collapse, and Spain and Poland search for solutions. Bra and USA find chance to get Pol-Spa dmg on their side. We have now, although CTRL is not exist, multi-polar World. EDEN, COT, ABC, this "north" alliance... etc...

k0stek - For sure we were somehow bored of the e-world but imho all of those countries had also some other reasons to create this alliance. For example USA wanted to be a core member of some strong alliance to get some real influence in this game and stop being damage donor that just get orders. Yeah they were in TERRA but let's be honest TERRA was treated as damage donor for whole EDEN. The same was with Brasil. Spain wanted to secure their borders from USA and Brasil. Poland wanted to have some fun + get strong allies from different time zone.


Rhual - Many people mention our eWorld is centralized under the “Balkan” with the Hungarian-Romanian, Croatian-Serbian, Greek-Macedonian, Bulgarian-Turkish wars, garnish with Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Italian peninsula (I would notice here one important thing: Hungary and Romania are not Balkan countries - not just Italy - ). Wars lasting years were going there what bored not just the whole eWorld but the participant countries too. But now (before the current Greek war) no any kind of war happened for long months on the “Balkan”. For example Croatia and Romania flew away into Asia. I won’t forget the Chinese CP’s reaction at that time: “The “Balkan wars” are not desirable in Asia, get out.”. Or when Bulgaria flew away into South America: “Go back to the Balkan.”. What happened in the eWorld with the ceasing of the “Balkan wars”? Not so much. Chilean - Argentinean campaign and some wars in Indonesia were going on. The “Balkan countries” just conquered colonies, obtained bonuses.
I do not say that the “Balkan warring” is the only essence of the game but admit it, this is one of the major factor which keep the game going (and I suppose, this is one of the money resource for the admins) but the cessation of it, everyone (quasi) focused on their own welfare. The eWorld does not want “Balkan wars” but would not like to see the Balkan countries somewhere else. I ask then: everyone should sit on their ass where they are and create lasting things in the environment?
No. The problem here is already in the mechanics of the game. Since the game rules limit the motion opportunities, without bonuses that little economic development which left in the game is insignificant and the countries cannot move far from their capital region because the bonuses must be connected to the capital. Those strong countries who are far away from the war zones, ie their geopolitics is fine, even richer but the smaller countries may count on long-term wipe, mainly in Europe.
But I rambled from the original question a little bit, I just wanted to say it for a long time.





Keers - Well there hasn’t been a real balkan erep for a long time now- it’s a dream of elder days. These days conflicts become increasingly meaningless and focused on just fulfilling missions or temporary bonuses rather than strategic aims. The main purpose of alliances is to prevent countries being perma-wiped. The USA is the real enigma out there. It’s huge number of regions make it a truly indestructible country. It’s actually a gross imbalance in the military module. All countries should be reassigned with the same number of regions. There’s no justification for the way it’s designed now, where it takes months to conquer the USA and for little benefit. Anyway the result of their isolation and strategic strength is that there will always be a third alliance, though they will probably align themselves with EDEN out of inertia (and because the other option would be boring as hell).


Mikel_ahone - As said before, I think that that statement was wrong from the very beginning. It’s true that the eternal non-sense wars between Serbia&Croatia, Hungary&Romania or Bulgaria&Turkey were very boring, but we cannot hide the truth: Those countries are really important in the whole game structure and in fact, those wars were ended long time ago. So, personally, I don’t think it would be a good idea to isolate this countries.






QUESTION: Do you think CTRL laid a template how power-house countries will now form alliances from here on in: i.e. four or five super-powers combining and agreeing to defend each other’s self-interests? And doesn’t CoT mopping up many of the smaller and mid-sized ex-ONE countries lend credence to the notion?


Coolinbuns - ONE laid that template, not CTRL 🙂. CoT is Bulgarian solution for their problems in that moment. I like CoT very much, not just because they are proONE, but also because they have, like you say, mid-sized countries and that is functional.


AThompson - I think the idea of CTRL can only work in a time when the most of the forming countries’s population is half-dead and only clicking. This was not the case for example in Poland. CoT is a great idea, because it is making the politics more fragmanted, even as an alliance CoT is absolutely not good. In the place of admins I would make little changes what would make the countries form smallers alliances, so we could have more of them. With current military system where you must have soldiers in one block and organized in one place to win rounds it is not possible. If they would adjust military modul (your damage worth more if you are fighting in a neighbour country, etc.) alliances would start to form, and it would be more interesting. J


k0stek - About CTRL case. It was all the time like that - EDEN priorities (Croatia Romania, Greece, maybe Turkey), ONE/TWO (combination of strong countries), CTRL (combination of strong countries in different timezones). Those alliances try to help their weaker allies but let's be honest most important for them are strong countries. CoT is kinda different. Probably it's because it's formed of weak countries mostly which knows what does sarcrifice mean and Bulgaria that is imho really different than other strong countries. They just like to sarcrifice to help their allies (also those guys do really crazy things in this game).


Keers - I do think that fewer countries usually means fewer arguments, and if you’re going to have a small alliance you want the more powerful countries in it. Ever since PEACE failed because of being bloated and bureaucratic, there has been a tendency in those countries to always think “less is more”. It’s not necessarily true- not all small countries are useless, but a lot of them are inactive.





Mikel_ahone - I have always had the opinion of that a strong alliance should be formed only by a few countries. When more countries enter the alliance things become more difficult (for example, the expansion of ONE). You have to deal with more interests, more regions to defend, more expansion plans to attend…and usually you don’t have enough firepower to fulfil all the goals, thus implying that you have to prioritize among countries. Therefore, it’s a matter of time that tensions between countries start to appear, jeopardizing the alliance structure.
In this way, creating small alliances with strong countries could be a good idea if you have a good diplomacy which ensures you that you have a set of countries/other alliances which share your side in the big war.


Rhual - One of the basic law in every alliance is to protect the other countries and the interests of the alliance and this is not just for the super powers but at the smaller alliances too (like ABC). Nothing new under the sun. But I suppose you mean, the members of CTRL is an alliance with strong countries which are managing stable bonuses, created an alliance with a basic law to protect each other’s bonuses. Maybe but as we know, not this was the main aim, but they wanted to create a 3-pole eWorld, which means: not about the “Balkan” wars. As we have seen it subsequently, this is already impossible to bring it off. This game is running too long time and formed too tight alliances that this can be created on that way.
I’m not a follower particularly for an alliance consisting of many members, because the chance is much bigger for the discord, the difficulty of the realisation “more members, more interests”, the smaller countries, if they are in the sphere of interest of a bigger hostile country, then the constant claim for the liberation may hinder more other plans or if they do not help to the smaller countries that may cause tensenesses or just the bigger countries dictate the alliance and the smaller ones are on the sideline, etc. Do not misunderstand me, I do not say the smaller countries are worthless because they may be such a good allies (there were many example for this) but I prefer the few but “equal in everything” membership in an alliance.





QUESTION: If CTRL had worked, do you think the “United Balkan” alliance would have become a reality – and how do you think CTRL would have fared against them on the battlefield?


Keers - No, in short. I don’t think there was any chance. Even when CTRL was on the cards, SerHun maintained their friendship with Poland. If anything if CTRL had founded it would have done so as CTRL+SerHun MPPs, making the situation in the balkans very one sided. I guess that’s why CRomania rocket-jumped out of there when it started looking bad 😛


AThompson - I think if CTRL had worked and if it would have been a real threat to Europe, after a point there would have been a cooperating between ex-ONE and EDEN countries, but against that cooperation CTRL would have been easy. They lack manpower, master cards, and willingness to fight against Balkans.





Coolinbuns - Blakanika or "United Balkan" like you call that "will never heppen" aliance was just idea of some players that wants to change things in this game from the root. BUt, Balkan aliance was and will stay uthopia. Croatia and Serbia wil never be alies. Simply .... that is impossible.
Of course, that aliance would be oposite to CTRL, no doubt.



Balkanika on the map


Mikel_ahone - Why not? We have seen many times that countries that were big enemies became allies with lots of diplomacy and willing to overcome former differences, although such a thing has had a different view depending on the countries involve😛 For example, it was a big success for Turkey to enter EDEN “cause every country deserves a second chance” but it was a big treason for Bulgaria to leave EDEN and create CoT “cause they’re a bunch of selfish players whose hate prevent them of keeping their former and maravelous allies (hello EDEN again).

So, the “United Balkan” could (and can) be an option in this game. We have seen more strange things.






QUESTION: In hindsight, considering how positions have hardened over the years in regards one country’s opinion of another and the premature demise of CTRL, do you believe this game really has it in it to produce an entirely fresh spate of alliances that bear little to minor resemblance to EDEN, ONE, etc.?


mikel_ahone - I don’t think so. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that it’s very difficult to create such a World structure. Anyways, let see what happen in the future.


K0stek - It will be really hard to achieve. Imho all alliances have to be rebuild to achieve that not only ONE. EDEN also has to collapse. Then we can really talk about mixing members of them. Imho people have to understand that friendship is above MPPs and fighting against some country in a GAME doesn't mean that you can't be friends. I know many guys from "other side" and for me it's not a problem that we fight for different countries.





Coolinbun - Every change about alliances is good for the game. Game start to be boring if we have again, and again and again same wars. But, in other hand, during the time, people make connections with eachother, and that friendships cannot be broken that easily. We will see what future will bring to us, but I dont expect, for example, USA and Serbia in same alliance, or Hungary and