The Economist ~ How EDEN lost the War

Day 820, 08:56 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313
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Dear Friends,

Today I want to address you on a rather pertinent issue- that of war. As we know, war is an acceptable means of extending ones influence in the new world. Aside from a few role-players, most accept that digital regions and e-warfare is simply an aspect of the game in the same way as buying food and training is. Few players die in a war, unless the occupier is particularly malicious or the citizens particularly lazy.

Imperialism is one function of this game which allows a poorly endowed nation or alliance to gain the resources of others by military means. This is an accepted mode of conduct, and can be seen in the great Romanian war against PEACE, the Hungarian intervention in China, the Indonesian ownership of Indian provinces, the Polish attempt to grab North Brazil and so on. The purpose of such conflict is to achieve greater national efficiency and income, at the cost of enemy efficiency and income.

Let me say that again:

The purpose of such conflict is to achieve greater national efficiency and income, at the cost of enemy efficiency and income.

So why are the USA and their EDEN allies still trying so hard to squash the UK?


obligatory demotivational picture

Purpose of Imperialism

Economic Motivation

To develop a national economy you need high resources and high consumption. If war can simultaneously provide high consumption and acquire useful resources it is a good thing. Thus there is an economic motivation for imperialism.

Nationalism

Nationalism in eRepublik, though repulsive to me personally, is an excellent tool for recruiting members and thus improving your productivity: consumption ratios.

Balance of Power

Expanding spheres of influence strengthens national and alliance balance of power and weakens opposition power.

Economic Development

It’s arguable that occupying a national resource which belonged originally to another country leads to economic development of that resource, for the betterment of all.


obligatory Star Trek reference

So what is the purpose exactly of this current war? The USA has so far cut the UK’s national income by about 40 gold a day. I estimate that the USA has spent at least 400 gold a day on average on this war. They made a big meme out of killing Brits, but to be honest they’re probably pretty bored of it by now and it doesn’t seem to be helping either their recruitment or their economy that much. Since the UK is completely surrounded by EDEN friendly nations anyway (saving Netherlands) there is no ‘balance of power’ argument, and there isn’t much potential for development in our cruddy, now abandoned regions, hence why the USA isn’t insisting on hanging onto them.

EDEN sacrificed the strategically important region of Liaoning for the sake of an attempted Polish high Iron in Brazil. They sacrificed the potential for huge gains in Europe for a bunch of nearly worthless regions in the UK.

Economically there are a number of better regions for EDEN to pursue. In terms of nationalism, we’re a soft target. Yes there are a lot of ingame reasons to hate an island of mad scheming Brits who despite the USA’s pathetic insults have one of the highest concentrations of talent in the world. However few people can get themselves in a rage about the UK. Yes we’ve probably screwed over their ancestors at some point but really we’re just not the kind of people countries want to destroy in real life. They’d be much better playing on the casual inter-state hatreds like they have done in the past and get themselves a baby boom invading one of their neighbours.

Balance of power, they were doing pretty well. EDEN are represented in every theatre now, even South America and South-East Asia, traditionally PEACE strongholds. However instead of solidifying those regions they have given up and went back to anti-UK rhetoric. They’ve sacrificed their unity as well- when Poland lost North of Brazil it was a blow not just to their economy but also to inter-nation support. They should probably concentrate on sorting out Romania and Croatia as well, as they’re strategically crucial to tying up Hungary and Serbia and are generally feeling like a couple of misused tools at the minute. Really EDEN aren’t very good at this game.

Economic Development is another big one. Ten thousand gold? I’m not saying they could corner the world raw materials market with that, but if someone gave me ten thousand gold to play with I would cane every single world market. But no, instead of developing their RM they’ve chosen to waste gold destroying their own markets, region swapping (causing embargoes) and so on.



So without the analysis, what’s the tl;dr of all this? In short, EDEN was given the upper hand. They had more income, better regions, better placed nations and a three month organisational lead on Phoenix. They had just expelled PEACE from the USA and Canada, and were riding on the back of several HUGE babybooms in the USA, Spain and Poland. And what have they done with it?

They have conquered the least valuable regions of the UK and Germany

Thousands of citizens, endless gold, and they removed about fifty to sixty gold a day from Phoenix’s coffers at the cost of most of their income.

Guess what guys?

Whilst you were wasting time, resources and citizens doing all that, we’ve been rebuilding. And you can be damn sure we’ve learned from your stupid mistake: no revenge wars for us. See you on the battlefield.