The Economist ~ Artificial alliances - a rebuttal

Day 2,011, 10:02 • Published in Romania United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,


I’m writing a very short note today in rebuttal to an article by Strumjanin, an old player and CoT supporter. In this article he makes a number of large mistakes about the nature of TWO and the relationships TWO have with former EDEN countries, including Romania, which are MPP’d with them.


Now I’d like to first of all say that nobody thinks that there are no problems within TWO, or that the road to any sort of union between TWO and former EDEN countries will not be rocky, fraught with problems and could potentially still end in failure. It was by far the most difficult path available to both sides, and the only thing that I could say acted in its favour was that it was the most audacious, ballsy and therefore attractive option to all sides. Ask me a year ago if I expected to see Romanian soldiers fighting hard for Slovenia and I’d have laughed, but today it not only happened, they helped carry an important battle for TWO.


Firstly in his article Strumjanin claims “there is no Greece without Turkey”. This is a flawed idea. Greece and Turkey get on well, and will no doubt continue to do so in future. This isn’t because of RL (quite the opposite) but because of relationships forged in the game. It supports my theory that old enemies are often 90% of the way towards being friends. The way he portrays it, if Greece joins the TWO side they’re abandoning Turkey (who would struggle to get TWO membership). This is flawed reasoning, since TWO has absolutely no reason to come into conflict with Turkey, who operate in a different sphere to all our members and whose ambitions are hemmed by CoT not TWO.





Secondly he makes an argument that Hungary is forced to ally with Romania against their will. That’s simply not going to happen, but what makes it even more hilarious is that this argument immediately follows the “Greece is Turkey’s BFF” argument. Surely if two enemies with so much RL history as Greece and Turkey can make up, there’s a good chance for Romania and Hungary to settle some of their differences round the table in future? But since it’s poor quality propaganda, he obviously didn’t think it was a problem that the second half of his article was directly undone by the argument he made in the first half. Btw Strumjanin, Poland and Romania- not such great friends right now. Working on that, but still I doubt Poland will be trying forcing the Huns to MPP Romania.


Now finally the title of the article was “artificial alliance”, which actually is a topic not really touched on throughout the few hundred words of near-gibberish he managed to produce. The truth is that... eRepublik is a game on a website. How can anything be more artificial than that? When I was young people used to talk about “natural” allies, and what they mean were “RL allies”. That’s stupid. Later people talked about ONE as an “artificial alliance” because Serbia/Poland had fought as rival monsters for so long. That argument is pretty much dead now, since both countries are closer than ever.


The idea that countries can’t fix RL problems or ingame problems is also undone by the largest artificial alliance of all - CoT. Bulgaria left EDEN but wasn’t welcome in ONE, so what did they do? Tried to form a new alliance. At the time the only major power not on somebodies score sheet was the newly emerging Chile, who signed up to CoT when it was basically just what ACT is now- a satellite alliance to TWO. Most of their MPPs were ONE, and Bulgaria asked them to join what was essentially a little two man pact. Later on MKD fought with PL and the result was that MKD clearly wasn’t welcome at the top table when TWO formed- and instead were encouraged into CoT. “Send them to CoT” was basically the argument for what to do with countries with an interest in supporting ONE but were too small to be members. So yeh- sit on that artificiality and smoke it.


Finally, when MKD joined the game they were close to the Serbs and wanted into Phoenix (as it was at the time). Bulgaria left PHX over this issue, and as a game mod at the time I can tell you that the storm of racist abuse between BG and MKD players has never been matched since. It was utterly horrible- I won’t repeat the things said but a lot of the players currently cosying up together in CoT said them. And it wasn’t stuff like “TWO SUXOR” or whatever we get thrown at us, it was deeply personal, racist and insulting. So if you want to talk about unlikely friendships, look closer to home.


Also USA


Take care,


Iain