Natural Enemy - Stop, and Think

Day 1,828, 13:40 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Blue And Evil


Yesterday, we came quite close to the eUK’s first ‘real’ war for quite a few months. For those that missed it, the chain of events is described in this MoFA article, but the spark was Russia starting a vote to declare the eUK as it’s Natural Enemy.

The thing about Natural Enemy votes is that they happen all the time. As a congressman, I get an in-game alert whenever a country starts a vote to declare the eUK as it’s Natural Enemy, which is something that happens once or twice a week. I’ve seen Germark, France, Russia, Canada, the USA and Ireland all propose us as Natural Enemy at some point, and 9 times out of 10, the vote fails. This is usually because the vote is started by a minority who want war, whereas the majority don’t - usually because they’re looking at the bigger picture.

The problem is, in 8 of those 9 times, the eUK proposes the other nation as Natural Enemy as well - like we did after Russia proposed, and if their vote fails but ours passes - if we end up attacking another nation because a minority of their citizens wanted a fight, it makes us out to be the bad guys of the piece.



Before I go any further, I need to point out - this isn’t an attack article. If I was in Count Drakula/Madacaion’s shoes, confronted with a Russian CP saying he wants to invade our country, I would have started the counter proposal and started gearing the country up for a war footing, and the only reason I didn’t vote yes on our proposal is because I wasn’t online until much later in the day, when the full scale of the plot became apparent, and a good job to all involved in halting this runaway train.

However, if it had gone wrong, it would have gone spectacularly wrong. We’d have attacked a much stronger country than our own, we’d have lost our MPPs and annoyed our allies. And it makes me think: Is having a counter-proposal up immediately the best idea?

The main point of setting a country as Natural Enemy when they’ve already declared war on you is to get a 10% influence bonus in battles. Which when you’re actually in a war is a great bonus, but when you’re in the will-they-won’t-they grey zone of having a vote in progress, it might just end up causing more damage than it’s worth.



So, in the future, when foolish nationalist congressman XYZ from NeightbouringCountryistan proposes us as their Natural Enemy, we shouldn’t race in to get our counter-proposal up, we should take our time and see how srs their bsns is, because if we play our cards right, at worst we only lose a few hours of 10% bonus - which, nevermind the war, we might not even lose the first battle without - and more importantly, we make sure we’re not perceived internationally as a nation who elected a congress full of hothead nubs.

Like Canada once did.

~Blue And Evil