To Loot a Country

Day 1,512, 15:07 • Published in Brazil Croatia • by Arrlo

Government finances are one of those interesting aspects of the game which have evolved over time to an accepted, hybrid system of ingame mechanics and player-created initiatives. Typically, “national orgs” function as a country’s treasury, to which a nation’s congress votes to allocate funds. Using an org makes the distribution of a country’s tax revenue much more simple, and access to these orgs is a sign of utmost trust in an individual. The country president and a chosen Minister of Finance are usually the people who can move these funds around, and for most people this access is a privilege earned by months of diligent work. Some people in the game have handled tens of thousands of gold, and millions of currency without incident. Others are less scrupulous.

At this point we've seen several countries looted of their assets. You may even have thought it was funny when a thieving scumbag stole from an enemy community, but we all know how angry we would be if the same situation happened to us. In these days of restricted donations a small country’s treasury has perhaps less impact on the battlefield, but using the treasury to buy and distribute weapons and foods can still change the result of battles. Smaller countries can spend months, even years preparing a war chest to defend their territories with against much bigger foes.

This has recently happened to Germany. A country of medium size which has spent much of the past few months totally wiped, it will have taken years for each and every taxpaying German player to contribute to the approximately 2000 gold and 1.7 million DEM which the shameless piece of sh*t former president has taken. When I first heard about it, I thought there would be no trouble in recovering these funds since the mindless cretin has released an article bragging about his treachery. Not the case. Presidents are apparently totally protected from any negative repercussions from the actions they take with the country’s assets. To a point, I understand this logic. They have a popular mandate to lead the country, which includes disposing of the country’s funds. However, in clear cases of theft, when a lowlife abuses the trust his electorate has put in him and, in a despicable act of thieving (yes, even in a game), takes the country's entire treasury, I think it's lazy and weak on the part of the admins/mods to choose not to interfere.

This was an obvious example of abuse of your system, with a confession from the worthless criminal himself. BAN players who steal from their country’s treasury. At the very least, restore every last penny to the country’s accounts until the national org is secured again, and make it clear that this action will be enforced in each and every incident of this nature.

Without inviting rants against the admin and mod team who generally do a good job, I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this topic in the comments.

Thanks for reading,
-Thatcher