[ONE] This war will not be won by strategy

Day 1,316, 12:52 • Published in Finland Finland • by avec
Awakening from the slumber


I've been dormant for months, but now I decided to awaken and rise for the New World dawn. During my absence I followed the game events only from the side, but some things did catch my eye. I've always had keen interest in organizational structures and inter-organizational relations, in eRep's context this means foreign policy. A year ago when I stepped down from SC position in EDEN I remained as an advisor for some time, and I had a few projects which I began realizing. Back then there were also a lot of ideas to improve the alliance, or to at least consider alternatives and analyze how the opposing alliance (Phoenix) worked. Amusingly a lot of those thoughts and projects came to bear fruit this year, but not on EDEN's side – rather they were (unwittingly) deployed by ONE.

A year ago, in summer 2010, there were a lot of small countries willing to join EDEN, or at least fight alongside us. EDEN was unwilling to take new members for a variety of reasons, one being the decrease in cohesion between alliance members as a result of bringing in new members in quick pace, the second reason being lack of mutual interests between countries. Yet, all the countries that were on our side were undoubtedly useful, and cooperation would benefit both parties if harnessed properly. So, a thought was to create a satellite alliance for EDEN from all the non-member but still friendly countries. This never came to be, but this year the exact same concept was realized by the formation of ABC. ABC is nothing more than a satellite alliance for ONE, and it serves its purpose perfectly well in this field. Hard to say if EDEN could have done something similar – unlikely, but maybe in the future this becomes a possibility.


Cute little puppet!

The other thought that was thrown was to create similar structure in EDEN as exists in the United Nations – a core group of countries that act as a Security Council, while the rest not so contributing nations would have less say in alliance matters. The thought was not exactly to let big countries have all the say, the point was moreover to have the decisions be made by majority of countries who have the same interests so no one or two countries could hinder the alliance advance at the cost of majority's benefit. Then I saw the formation of ONE and what reads in their founding treaty? Something very similar.


Thoughts about ONE

The battle tactics uncanningly follow doctrines from late-V1 era also. The war module hasn't changed that much from V1, the biggest difference is that now the MPPs are at all time active, there are always a mass of battles going on and there are not that clear numbers to read from the battlefields. Still, the qualitative concepts of global superiority (minority) versus local superiority (minority) apply – global superiority in numbers can be won by concentrating force on a local point, achieving local superiority in numbers.

This should be the basis for EDEN battle tactics when facing an enemy that has global superiority in numbers – but the problem of course is that ONE has all its countries in the same time zone, which means they can also achieve local superiority with relative ease by simply using their sheer numbers. There's also the point that global superiority usually leads to damage being drained in multiple fronts, allowing the opponent to gain advantage in the battlefield because the enemy is being drained elsewhere. This has not been the case recently with ONE, as it's managed to push towards specific goals with their MPP stacks without much drains (this isn't exactly true, but I like to emphasize points by writing what I like).


So the ONE armies marched onwards.

This has so far been unconstructive pondering for EDEN, but in the above text there lies several points which should be taken into consideration. The one point most of you have probably realized already is that ONE has global superiority in numbers, so we cannot achieve military victory against them in a full frontal warfare. Trying this is foolhardy and leads nowhere, so a change of tactics is required.

Don't get me wrong. The above text might give a misconception that I somehow consider ONE to be ingenious or functional. By basis, ONE is by definition dysfunct. It functions exactly like Phoenix did, with only cosmetic changes. The only reason for its success is that it has the strongest countries in eRep in it, and as such a confederation of countries would win battles even without alliance structure around it. Also, just because ONE has by some odd coincidence realized all those thoughts from EDEN brainstorms doesn't mean they planned it. Without meaning to insult, rather simply to state a fact, from what I've read the leaders in ONE have IQ lower than my shoe size. There's very low chance that they could have envisioned that much from that many point of views and made it into a coherent plan of action. Yet people in EDEN are not much better either.


What is this EDEN?

So EDEN, you have an enemy alliance that has gained the upper hand in the battlefields and the only way you could beat it is by uniting and focusing all resources under centralized chain of command. Yet, even after several member countries were wiped out and the alliance suffered heavy losses on all sides, some countries pushed on with their own agendas alone.



Then, I see people trying to push for reorganising the alliance, renaming it, or creating suballiances out of the old member countries thinking this will change something. This is fundamentally wrong, idiots. In the old times when alliance fell and it made a name change, or organizational changes, it either already had the numbers in it to be still formidable opponent in the battlefield, or it gained new members or firepower through organizational changes. None of this would happen by renaming EDEN or by disbanding the alliance and creating subsets out of old member countries. The thing you want to achieve is an organisation that is capable of uniting both EDEN and Terra nations under one command structure so you can achieve local victories with superior organizational military structure. This can be achieved within the current system with little changes, already proposed by some sensible people.


This war cannot be won by strategy


The military module has little strategy left, and what little it has, it ain't on our side. This war cannot be won by strategy or by changing the name of the alliance. That's a simple fact. A lot of people have thought for a plan to turn the tide, myself included, but the fact that no one has figured it out tells something. As a matter of fact I tried for a very long time to figure out some batshit insane plan to win this war, but I made the mistake of thinking too narrowly. Only after having a discussion about the evolution of alliances and what has happened in the past and recently, a thought occurred to me.

The ultimate goal is not to start winning battles – the goal is to win. The ultimate objective behind winning battles is to conquer and destroy the enemy. The objective we should have is to destroy ONE. Above I already wrote down the principles of how to achieve this, and people who followed from the inside how EDEN nearly broke down, you know what I mean. Maybe it's time to do the same again, but this time to ONE.

So, why have I awakened and returned from R'lyeh? The answer is simple. I've read too much whining and witnessed too much incompetence. I hereby state my intent and reason for returning to be the oncoming destruction of ONE. I will destroy ONE, one way or another.


Resistance is futile.

__________
Avec, the now red-headed former ex-supreme fag.