The Future of the Superalliance

Day 765, 12:10 • Published in USA Austria • by Albert Neurath

As most, if not all, of you know, the world today is mostly aligned into either EDEN or Phoenix. These alliances are the offshoots of older alliances known as ATLANTIS and PEACE, which in turn were collections of smaller alliances that merged together around the end of the Beta days.

What some of you might not know is that in the world, there are three other alliances. These groups are known as ALA, Sol, and L'Entente. Existing on the fringes of society, their foreign policies so often relying on staying out of the sight of one of the two larger alliances. Many of their members are also members of one of the two larger groups, and, as such, have higher priorities than the smaller groups. With no real influence in the world, one may ask themself, why bother with a small gathering of nations?

I shall now say something that I doubt will be popular. The small alliance is the future of eRepublik. A large group on the scale of EDEN or Phoenix, even though it might appear monolithic to an outsider, in fact is fraught with small cracks and internal divisions that, given the right shove, will send the whole structure toppling down. While it is true that someone may pick up the ruins and cobble them back together, usually losing some bits in the process, it only causes the cycle to repeat again.

Rather than a future dominated by superpowers, I instead see a not-too-distant future in which it is the small alliance that plays the main role in international politics. Within each of the two major alliances, there exist a rank of first-tier nations (such as Poland and the USA in EDEN and Hungary and Serbia in Phoenix), and a rank of second-tier nations. One of the oddities of eRepublik is that the nations of the first tier in each alliance tend to be located far from each other (again, think of the USA and Poland). In a climate such as this, there exist many opportunities for localized groups to spring up.

Before you dismiss this idea as merely the ramblings of a country-bumpkin ex-President, I present you with some evidence in the form of the Entente. The Entente right now is composed of only three nations, France, Italy, and Ukraine. Of these, France by far has the largest population, and represents in the alliance a classic "first-tier" power. What makes this interesting is that the Entente is a direct creation of the dissolution of PEACE, as the alienated French and Italians left over various concerns.

Once the current war winds down, which it seems to be beginning to do, the outwardly broad fronts of the major superalliances will have nowhere to look. Bored warriors cause major tensions. Who knows what will happen then?

Albert Neurath