Newspaper of doom

The introduction of the war module in april of 2008 didn't only bring the most longed for feature of the new world – it also brought a battle strategy still used today. Now, 18 months later, tanking is still the, arguably, most important factor in any important battle.

Tanking has been a part of Erepublik warfare ever since the first days of the war module. It has gone from being seen as an ugly means of fighting, to a natural part of war. Icons have found fame through through tanking, instilling fear in the enemy ranks. This article aims to partly describe the tankings part in the new world's history.



Introduction of the war module and the first records of a tank

On april 7th, 2008, six months after the beta launch of Erepublik, the war module was launched after several delays. The first major military conflict was fought between Canada and the USA, starting April 11th. This is also where the possibly first tank of Erepublik made his entrance.

The US has believed its by far superior population would prove an unbeatable match for Canada. However, they did not count with the heavy foreign support their opponent would receive. In the first wave of attacks, USA captured nine Canadian regions. Seeing the destruction America brought to Canada, soldiers from all over the world rallied to fight for them, and in such numbers that the US could not win any more battles. Instead, Canada went on the offensive, eventually attacking the American region of Manitoba. In this battle one of the first tanks was created.

It was none other than the president of the United States, Nave Saikiliah, who dug into the country treasury to win the battle. In the beta, the war module worked differently from today. It was a player vs player module, where a soldier would get in line and fight soldiers in the line for the other country. When the time for the battle was up, the country with any men left in the line would win. According to Nave himself, 46 canadians were left when his own army was defeated. He bought a large number of weapons and began tanking.

In the end, Nave won the battle for the US, but suffered heavy critisism for irresponsible spending country funds. However, he claimed his tanking made the Canadian president agree to a peace treaty which many people thought was much too light on the USA.

Creating icons

The first one to reach the military rank of General was a player called Alucard Bloodlust. He was a mercenary and the most feared soldier in all of Erepublik for a long time. In a war between Indonesia and South Africa, current president of the USA, Emerick said:

“Indonesia is fighting against South Africa, Venezuala, Argentina, USA, and Alucard bloodlust” and that “he [Bloodlust] secured KwaZulu-Natal pretty much single-handedly”. In the early days a powerful tank was a rarity and the reputation the best carried were incredible.


The old avatar of Alucard Bloodlust

Alucard Bloodlust travelled all over the world and fought for those who paid him. In an interview he said he prefered to fight for the defenders and had charged anything from “between 5 and the low hundreds of gold“.

Another of the most well-known tanks is portuguese Euphonix. He famously “broke the game” by reaching a damage total so high the game could not function properly. For a short period of time Euphonix was weaker than a private, the lowest rank, until the bug was fixed.

Tanking creates bonds

On august 28th, in what is considered the first world war, Romania declared war on Hungary. This triggered the first major war between the newly founded alliances ATLANTIS and PEACE GC. At this time Sweden was a top three superpower in the world and had been the major power of Erepublik since a few months from the launch.

In a congress decision, Sweden decided not only to bring their whole military to Romania, but to bring 1000 gold to be used in the war effort. Part of this gold was used to buy Swedish troops wellness packs. In the article “Sweden brings GOLD to Romania.”, Swedish minister of defense Misho declared the news to the Romanian population. The article received what was at the time the most votes ever on a single article and the event as a whole laid the foundation to one of the strongest bonds between two nations the new world. To this day, Sweden and Romania consider each other to be more than just allies, even though Romania has grown to become considerably stronger then Sweden.

The first world war was labeled a success for ATLANTIS, much thanks to the tanking power of the

Counter tactics

The most common way to counter tanks has is also the simplest – more tanks! The fighting-fire-with-fire method is the general way of countering enemy tanks on the battlefield. When this situation arises, the side with the most tanks and gold is usually the winner.

Activating the average joe. While there are relatively few potential tanks, there is a huge number of low-strength, low-ranked citizens. If a nation manages to activate a large portion of their average joes they can negate tank damage by quantity over quality. This is more of a pre-emptive strategy, as the main goal is to create a wall so high it disencourages tanking due to the exceptional cost.

The last method I'm going to talk about is the by far most creative and interesting. This method can be called donation spamming. While it is still theoretically possible, today's large number of tanks makes it practically impossible to donation spam.



Here's how it works: back when there were only a small number of tanks on each side, it was possible to stop them from fighting efficiently by making it impossible for the tanks to receive weapons. By donating cheap items to a tank in action all the inventory slots would fill up, leaving no room for weapons. This could be done either by a script (illegally) or manually and left no option to the tank but to frenetically try and donate away or delete their full inventory, only to have it fill up again instantly by the enemy.

Tanking today

The art of tanking hasn't undergone a drastic change throughout the months, but is still different from what it once was. The major difference lies in who tanked and the quantity of tanks.

In the days of the beta, there were generally very few tanks around which received a good portion of the fundings. One of these were the previously mentioned Alucard Bloodlust, a mercenary, which was also typical of the time. While there are very few, if any, mercenaries today they were much more common in the early days. Today the country or alliance soldiers supply the tanking power.

The other major difference is the amount of tanks. Modern day armies employ very many tanks during a singe battle. This is because there are simply more soldiers with strength and rank that can provide efficient tanking around. While tanks were few and far between in the beginning of Erepublik, they have become more common.

Tanking has also grown to become a major attraction for many players. Special tank units have been created, which create reputations for themselves. Being in a tank unit carries a status to the player. Examples of famous tank units are the Hun Elit Unit of Hungary and the EMC, Eden Military Corps, of the alliance EDEN.

The power of tanking caught on tape,

The power of a tanks has on several occasions been captured during the final minutes of a battle. To conclude this in-depth story on tanking, I'd like to share two videos that show tanks battle it out in the last minutes and seconds of an important fight.

The first video depicts the ending of a resistance war in Central Greece, a very important iron region. This video shows the forces of the now disbanded alliance ATLANTIS versus PEACE GC going head to head in a battle that went into over time. It was finally won by the resistance by a margin as narrow as it can be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7WJtRptDk

The second video shows the power of tanks that are largely left alone. In this resistance war in Alberta, the forces of EDEN and Fortis don't encounter much resistance and beat down a wall of about 100 000 points in a matter of eight minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD-BP_x27v8

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned a thing or two about one of the most common tactics in Erepublik. This format might end up being a series, so click subscribe if you liked it.