[PotUS] MMike Message #3

Day 3,902, 00:46 • Published in USA USA • by The Mike


Dear Americans,
Dear members of the eRepublik community,

It has been a week filled with events:
- USA was rewarded by the Plato Foundation;
- Croatia waging war;
- Pacifica surprising OP;
- the proposed embargo laws;
- Plato latest updates.

Last week we were awarded with a grant by the Plato Foundation for the Charles B. Debellevue initiative. I believe this was the first piece of good news since the wipe a few months ago. Special thanks go to Carlos and Feynmann who organised this initiative and are now managing it. If you have missed it, don't hesitate to check Carlos' article and to sign up. All participants receive food and q1+q2 houses to fight in air, as well as special rewards for unlocking a new air rank! The only requirement is that you use Discord. If you would rather focus on the ground and are going to be USA's next Legend, you have to check Carlos' newest initiative. For each new military rank you will receive a reward.

Additionally, I would also like to praise Feynmann for his Fighting Strategies Guide which was also recognised by Plato for being in service of the eRepublik community. I think it stayed in the top5 of the US news for as many minutes as many characters there were in that article... And rightly so! Thank you, Fey! Looking forward your next piece 😉

Later last week Croatia wreaked havoc into the eWorld. Proposing an air strike against Peru was seen as a direct confrontation against Asteria. Given that their primary target until then had been Pacifica countries, this was the first meaningful attack with a potential to disrupt the status quo. The response from Asteria followed with a NE from Serbia and later from Romania who had just landed in Sydney. In the US we remained neutral in this conflict. In reality it was less exciting than one might have expected - Croatia managed to land in Peru's Australian regions after some resistance from the former, while Serbia attacked only Croatia's core regions. In the meantime Romania had landed safely and on the next day attacked Croatia without facing too much opposition. As a result they removed Croatia from Australia.

During this time Croatia already showed its next move by NEing China. Noone knows what would have happened next, because maybe the most surprising thing happened - Pacifica sent 5 air strikes to Croatia at the same time and very much straight afterwards received 4 against. As a result Croatia decided to postpone their invasion of mainland China.


This is what is called Croatian Xmas

Everybody in the game will acknowledge Croatia for their military tactics, strength and organisation. But even for them this must have been a challenge (I wouldn't know). An example of what I mean is how they released a few of their regions in RoC so that only one of the Pacifica airstrikes could land there (RoC has 4 regions, during the AS laws Croatia released two of them and started the RW in a third which made it impossible for more than one air strike on a RoC region to take place). Therefore all other airstrikes were rerouted towards original American territories. It was quite impressive that all battles in the Poland-Croatia campaign went EPIC - this gave the opportunity for other Pacifica nations to push elsewhere, but to no avail. USA was helping the most Colombia who were the only airstrike routed towards a RoC region.

I believe this exactly was the main objective of the op - to liberate RoC, but alass


Colombia won the most points than all other Pacifica airstrikes combined

Today we know that Pacifica failed to land in any of the attempted airstrikes. One might be tempted to say that we managed to RW one region, but in all honesty it was more Croatia's decision to let the RW go - they NE'ed us minutes afterwards and will now be retaking the regions they've lost.


We even saw the headless chicken - a throwback to old times when it used to visit the battlefield every other day.

One key observation for the US military was that we didn't participate in this war to the extent that one might have expected from a Pacifica founding member. The reason for that is quite clear. First, and foremost it is up to the players to fight (and here I mean to spend hundreds of EBs). Second, our affiliation in foreign affairs is yet not clear to anybody (and this is a fair statement of criticism to make). Third, we are currently being occupied by full Asteria members, the strongest pro-Asteria countries, the strongest anti-Asteria countries and a few more anti-Asteria countries. At the same time Pacifica collaborates most prominently with Asteria, carries on TWs with our occupiers Therefore, the argument that USA is sitting on two chairs can be skewed into the two chairs are sitting on top of the USA.

To finish this section on a high note, I'd like to reiterate that this Pacifica OP came as a surprise to everyone. Even I wasn't sure it was actually going to happen until I saw the laws being proposed in-game. The situation in the HQ has been very grim ever since I walked in a few months ago (USA wiped, Colombia under attack by Bulgaria, Venezuela's air strike a month or so ago, etc). This was the first time we saw any form of excitement in the room, so despite the defeats I will mark the op as a partial success just if the players fighting can say that they have had fun. Because, let us not forget, we play this game to have fun. And regions are merely pixels. Having crazy weeks like the last one is one of the things that makes this game so attractive for so many people!


Well, not all play for fun

Earlier last night we had one of our scheduled mass strikes (Thursdays @ 12 erep time). The chosen battle was for Colombia because the score was 73-76 and whoever won the air battle was to win the campaign. US fighters hadn't fought in the late stages of any campaign before, so having the feeling that you can decide who will win was a new one for us. What was better, was that hitting for Colombia meant points for the League of Allies competition! As the two countries hadn’t yet agreed on a TW format (as confirmed by their CP), fighting for Colombia against Bulgaria was a fair game.

It didn’t look like a big deal at the beginning. But then things quickly escalated. As we had helped Colombia get to 1400+ points, Bulgaria set a big CO and called on an air tank who took the wall. Apparently they really wanted to win this, although there were no fighters from BG or MKD fighting there (surely you'll call on your closest ally to help you when you want to win a certain battle...). So, naturally in the heat of the fighting we put some CO as well to help Colombia close the campaign; we were so close after all! Long story short, putting a CO for our ally Colombia and fighting one of our most hostile occupiers leads to them to proposing an embargo against us. But we stood for our ally when they needed help, even though we knew our relations with Bulgaria were shaky.

Colombia is a true friend and we won't hesitate to help them if called upon, despite the harsh measures taken by Bulgaria to prevent us to do so.

So now we find ourselves in a peculiar situation. Plato has just announced new changes to the game mechanics. The new way to calculate determination gives us hope that we can use it to our advantage to bring back our country to the map. However, the other change is about officially renting regions to other countries. It also gives company owners the free option to move their companies to another residency location. It is fair to expect that many current American holdings will move to another country. However, it is hard to predict which countries will be the best ones to host one. As far as USA is concerned, we appreciate that making a deal to rent a region ultimately is a protectorate agreement because the renting country will have the incentive to ensure that we will have the region we rent within our borders. But we need to make a change in how we conduct ourselves, if we want to aspire to such deals.

The Mike
US President July 2018