Cowards, Puppets and Farmville? Pacifica in early 2017

Day 3,526, 14:38 • Published in Finland Finland • by TheJuliusCaesar

Greetings,

Nowadays it is fairly common to hear that Pacifica member nations are cowards, alliance leadership a puppet of Asteria and the alliance itself just playing Farmville. I will not say we were not or are not playing Farmville, because we really did and, at the time when I stepped down from the position of Pacifica Secretary General in late June, still do. During my half-year tenure as a SG, we indeed took steps towards Asteria and what some players call Farmville, hoarding bonuses and you name it. Why? In this article, it is my intention to explain the rationale behind such movement and connect it to the wider context of the prevailing alliance framework during 2017.

During the last one-and-a-half years or so, I have written a few pieces about foreign politics. From those articles some faithful readers have possibly formed an opinion and an overview of my approaches and methods when it comes to foreign affairs, come to know how do I make my decisions.

For the scope of this article, it is in order to once more lengthen the theoretical framework considerations we have described so far. In the latest articles of the "series" I discussed what it means to have fun in the game and how should we approach and maintain it. The theme touched but did not elaborate further on the matter of what is the position where you can have fun most efficiently in the first place. Such is the theme that will be discussed along the way in this article, alongside with recounting the events and political considerations during the first six months of 2017. The theme intertwines tightly with the focus of the last article, and is more supplementary for it than a continuation of it.

When on 27th of December 2016 I stepped in on the large-sized boots of the Secretary General of Pacifica that my good friend Nalaja had recently left vacant, the overall situation of Pacifica was in a fairly good shape without any problems reaching to the tranquil surface. Pacifica members United States and Finland had, together in a joint operation with Ireland, an ongoing operation to invade and ultimately wipe the United Kingdom, a nation which had in recent months been warming up relations with Orion and the whole proAsteria bloc with it.

At a certain point during the campaign, UK managed to join the Orion alliance, effectively drawing the bloc into the conflict. This development was inside Pacigica thought plausible, but not too probable. A miscalculation from our and my part. As actions have consequences, we found ourselves in an accelerating conflict with the whole proAsteria bloc. At this point the above-mentioned consideration about how to be able to have fun becomes pertinent for the explanation to our decision.


We continue with the assumption, which was employed in last article too, that for the majority of the citizens left in the game garner their enjoyment from the military module, further and more precisely from tight and even-handed battles. While taking this into account, it is in order to compare the situations of blocs with differing "power" and assess their contribution for the game enjoyment and enabling the said game enjoyment in the first place.

If a bloc is weaker than the opponent, the opponent can with more ease allocate the necessary resources to keep the battles even-ish, albeit still winning them. For the weaker side, it demands relatively more resources than for the stronger side, which translates into more regular "emergencies" for the weaker side when it comes to battles. It becomes tiresome and not fun to be constantly under a threat of losing it all, at least comparatively to the stronger bloc. In other words, the stronger counterpart has more resources, possibilities and options to determine when these fun, even-handed battles happen, where they happen and why they happen.

From these two considerations, it follows logically that a nation or bloc wishing to have even-sided battles needs to diplomatically or with other means try to get into a position where it can most efficiently control the situation and affect the framework of the battles. And that is exactly what drove me as a Pacifica SG to embark onto a path of forging better relations with the proAsteria bloc: getting Pacifica into a better position diplomatically enhances Pacifica's chances and options to enjoy the game more.

The discussions and debates at this phase within the alliance were at times heated, as certain member nations would have wanted to go to an opposite direction when it comes to alliance affairs. Arguments ranged from it being "fair" to help those in worse position to that we could together with proSyndicate overcome the damage and coordination of proAsteria. In retrospect, I still do not think it would have been a viable choice: our combined damage would not have been enough even in raw numbers. Moreover, the coordination of two (three if you count Adriatica) different blocs would have inevitably been less efficient than that of proAsteria. After all, one of the only few common denominators or proSyndicate bloc was, honestly, to be against Asteria. Even more, in political maturity and capital the scale was definitely tipped towards Asteria, as I have discussed before. The choice was, as a consequence, rather clear.

Later in spring I have felt that the approach and decisions of Pacifica and me earlier in the spring have been somewhat vindicated. Pacifica embarked onto a joint operation in which Poland, Russia and Finland flew into the regions of a strong world power, Turkey. Those battles have not been too easy, as the galactical amounts of CO-money spent can probably testify. In other words: the battles have been rather tight. Fun. The whole operation plays neatly into the hypothesis of stronger blocs being able to greatly affect the framework of tight battles, as outlined above. The operation is still going and produces a steady flow of tight-ish battles. Some more so than the others.


Another effort was, around the same time with the launch of the Turkey operation, a Swedish airstrike to Ukraine. Guess what? It was a tight battle, a great battle, which Sweden ultimately and unfortunately lost. Were you not entertained?

I am painfully aware, as I alluded in a recent interview, that the enhancement of one bloc's position often means worsening some other bloc's, at least comparatively. That, however, is the beauty of the game. Either your approach is good enough to get the alliance into a better position or it is not enough and your alliance will have less fun. I have earlier outlined my own account on why proSyndicate's approach did not work.

As I left the position of the Secretary General, I felt happy and content with the accomplishments and progress our great alliance made during the first six months of 2017. At the same time, I could not help but to feel a bit plaintive. These six months were definitely the most fun (yes, some grumpy people get their fun from diplomacy and politics) of my time in erep, as well as the most challenging ones. Yet it was time to move on, one citizen cannot steer a ship for an eternity even in the small role what Pacifica SG has nowadays. Approaches become reactive, new challenges await. Such is life.

I would not trade a day away.
- Caesar