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When I joined eRepublik, my first article said that “countries need less war”. Of course everyone jumped on me, saying that eRepublik is a strategy game revolving around war. War makes economy move around, war consumes weapons and tickets and gifts, which also consume iron oil and diamonds, so the companies don’t get stuck with high stocks and they sell with a profit. This adds on to the GDP and governments make tax money which fund their broader economy (they can build defense systems and hospitals etc).

Well, this might be right and not always. It is true that military conflicts make eRepublik work and admins happy (they get their salaries paid), but not all military campaigns are wars. Look at the training campaigns, they are more like drinking a beer with your friends rather than crawling thru the battlefield. The headless chicken who never studied diplomacy doesn’t make the difference though.

I read quite a lot of comments saying eRepublik is a game of numbers: you know your number of players, you know your opponents number of players, their strength, their weapons, etc. You calculate the damage- there goes the result of a battle. I think it is quite safe to say that eRepublik is a game of numbers as much as soccer is a game of numbers (you look at your players, the other team, how much your team spent for players, how much did the other team spend, few other calculations and you already know who will win a game).

But why would you need diplomacy? There is no module for diplomacy in eRepublik, therefore it is useless. Also, traditionally diplomacy tends to reduce military conflicts. Therefore diplomacy is an attempt to the very nature of eRepublik. Admins hate diplomacy. They don’t get their salaries paid if there is no war.

In eRepublik things get a bit more complicated even that soccer (who is not quite predictable on the result as many of us realised already).In eRepublik your team doesn’t necessarily have the same number of players, same for your opponents. You get fed up with your ally, slap him on the face with a nasty article- well your numbers go down. You are nice and easygoing, you give away cookies- then you have more allies.

Diplomacy is the mother of alliances in eRepublik. You have no diplomacy, you have no allies. You are alone against a PHOENIX or an EDEN. Scary thought, isn’t it?

Diplomacy is the God of eRepublik (not the admins). Before diplomacy, eRepublik was a chaos of countries fighting each other in remote points of the map (same as the Universe was in chaos before God started paying some attention to it). Diplomacy put order into eRepublik. Since diplomacy entered the building, there are two main alliances (more or less equal in power) who use complicated strategies all over the globe.

Diplomacy is a strange two-faced beast. Diplomacy brings eRepublik closer to a game of numbers. With a clear alliance you know your numbers. Same as the other alliance. eRepublik becomes a 1/1 confrontation which is a game of numbers and strategy. But on the other hand diplomacy can make your enemy clever enough to lure one of your allies into the different team (and viceversa). So diplomacy spoils the game of numbers.

Since the day MPPs were introduced, eRepublik needs diplomacy. Diplomacy means less war (even though it might mean same number of military campaigns). So eRepublik needs less war. The headless chicken can now commit suicide.