The Question of Alliances- Staying or going

Day 2,114, 11:31 • Published in Japan Japan • by William of Edenbury


Welcome once more to the Sword and the Sakura News!

It has been a while since I last said that 😛


Today's article is to clear up the issue surrounding a very particular debate. That debate being whether or not we should remain in the Circle of Trust Alliance.
The problem so far is that it has happening primarily between the people that use the irc and Forums systems. That means that the regular player base has not really gotten an idea of what is going on, and in fact believe that the debate is solely being brought up by the Serbian players to try to ally with their homeland. This is not the case.

I shall now try to give you a more or less unbiased view of what the debate entails. Though of course, take everything you read with a grain of salt.
Alliance Overview



There are many different types of alliances. Economic, Political, and Military for example. In eRepublik, the major alliances combine aspects of all the previous types, but focus primarily on the Military support. After all, you need a lot of damage to win battles and capture all those nice resources, while keeping your own resources safe.

So now that we know that, what do we look for in an alliance? Well that depends on the nation and its people. Some seek power, some seek influence, and others just seek friendship. I'll leave it up to you to decide what it is you want us to seek.

So have you decided what you want in an alliance? Good. And if you haven't don't worry, read on and you might get a clearer idea. Now then, lets move on to our current alliance situation.
Circle of Trust



As you all (hopefully) know, our current alliance is called the Circle of Trust. CoT is one of the two major alliances in the current game, and is considered to be the weaker one from a damage point of view. However, the recent victories against the Hungarian and Serbian Empires prove that damage isn't necessarily the end all be all.

Now then, I'm sure you want me to get to the argument already so lets go ahead and see why people want to stay and why people want to leave.

Reasons to Stay
The reasons to stay are pretty clear to most citizens.

1. We have some good friends in CoT and decent relations with many others.

2. CoT is one of the two major powers in the game. Everybody likes having a lot of strong allies.

3. Proximity. One might not think of this consciously as a reason to be in an alliance but countries do tend to side with their neighbors.


Reasons to leave
Here is where things get a little murky for many citizens. Please note I will use a little more description here then on the reasons to stay, because of this murkiness.

1. Lack of assistance. It has been quite a long time now that we were invaded by Portugal and we have received no official assistance from the alliance. We were assisted by multiple South American MUs, but they were mostly private and functioning without their government's orders. We actually did receive a priority placement once for a couple of hours but that was removed pretty quickly.


2. Diplomacy and Historical Friendships. While I did point out earlier that we have friends in CoT, we also have friends outside of CoT. Some of these friends have even helped us more than our own alliance. At the same time, we have less than warm ties with a few of the members of our alliance. People tend to want to stick with their good friends rather than a group of strangers.

3. Friction within the Alliance. Unfortunately I cannot describe this one too much because of the sensitivity of some information, but our government has had some issues with other Alliance members within the Headquarters. I myself have have more than a few issues with certain countries...



Ok so now you know the very basics of the arguments to stay and to leave. But if we do leave then what are our choices? Well we have many but for the sake of brevity let me point out some that have been largely dismissed and others that are at the forefront.

Dismissed options
What I mean when I say "dismissed" is that these options are not playing a big role in the argument for a non-CoT future. They are not off the table, but simply being considered as less than ideal by many.

1. Joining TWO- This is everyone's biggest fear but I can assure you that few people, if any, want to go down this road. TWO has many of our historical enemies and right now their HQ is largely collapsing anyways.

2. Going it alone- This option isnt really being considered because lets face it, everybody would immediately want some new colonies on our islands....


Options at the forefront

1. Joining the ex-EDEN alliance - This is the most discussed option right now. This would also put is in a neutral group that is not very involved with the two alliance, world domination system that always ends up happening in eRepublik.

2. Joining one of the smaller alliances - while not as discussed as much as joining ex-EDEN, these options are many and debates are heated in their own right.
So what do we do?

Most of you know that I have a tendency to make long articles and this one was shorter than it could have been. That is because the choices are up to you. I am not here to present the pieces of the argument that I want and then convince you to lean towards one side or the other, but simply here to get the conversation started somewhere that all our citizens can see it.

So you tell me. What should we do?

The comments section is below. Add in your own thoughts and debate with everyone else. The only thing I ask you to keep in mind is that our priority should be the future of Japan itself.