[Exploitation] Whose Puppet are You?
DMV3
Would you prefer to be a puppet or a real boy?
If you’ve ever been involved in a wiped nation you realize the futility of the struggle to free yourself even for a single day. The fact is real life money or a NAP are usually the only ways for a small nation to free themselves from a stronger oppressor. That’s not to say that other friendly nations aren’t willing to help, but the reality of the situation is smaller nations tend to only get help from other small nations. The big guys are too focused on acquiring resource bonuses and holding them to help their “friends” unless the help provides them with some kind of tactical advantage. There are exceptions to this rule, but as many small nations can tell you the rules tend to apply more often than not.
The current two-tier alliance structure isn’t the reason these problems exist, but the two-tier alliance structure is a logical next step in this exploitation. Leto and Aurora are the result of a system where the haves use and exploit the have-nots. Why require a separate alliance for other friendly nations? The answer is simple, it is to show smaller nations their place in the world. If they invite you into their alliance you would expect to be treated as an equal with equal say, but by forcing you into their sub-alliance you are forced to recognize that you’re interests are subservient to their own. That’s not to say they will never fight for a small nation, they will once you complain enough and fight for them every day for months, but don’t expect them to stand by you unless it is convenient to their agenda.
I know what you’re thinking, I’m complaining because Leto is tired of being Asteria’s puppet, but the truth is all small nations are treated as pawns by the big boys. For an example take a look at the recent omnibus NAP by China, Poland, Spain, Romania, and the Ukraine or at the Asia Defensive Pact released earlier today. The Nap between Ukraine and company trades Ukraine’s territory for a little cash, and guarantees that none of the nations involved will attack any of the other nations regardless of how this might affect their “allies.” It’s this kind of trading that leaves small nations without support because it helps ensure none of the big nations challenge each other’s supremacy. Yesterday Leto members were subjected to another form of exploitation by having our leadership pass down our daily orders from Asteria. Those orders were to fight for Hungary, who is neither a member of Asteria or Leto, despite the fact we have four members of Leto who will mostly likely be without a Congress again this month.
”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”
There was once a time in this game when alliances were a collection of friends fighting together to beat their foes, but the fact is so many nations have changed sides that alliances have become nothing more than a collection of damage that each nation in the alliance is competing to get for their own purposes, whether it be for defense or for acquiring new territories, friends are now forced to compete against each other for support. This more often than not leaves small nations stranded while the large nations get their way, but this doesn’t need to remain the way things are done.
Members of the secondary alliances are expected to fight for nations who have no desire to work with us and treat us as friends, we’ve become nothing more than additional damage to help them acquire resources and hold them. They accomplish this by pointing out we’re weaker than they are and we need them, but this is only true because we only look at our own small nation. This is how they keep us all under their collective foot, they divide us and then conquer us. “You don’t like Macedonia, come fight for us against them. You don’t like Republic of China, come fight for us against them.” This is no longer the answer, we have to forge a New Order. Together the nations outside of Asteria and Sirius have more damage than the nations in Asteria and Sirius, but we have to stop acting as their pawns and fight for each other. It’s time for small nations to stop accepting their second class status and work together to defend ourselves from the exploitation of the big nations. We need to stop accepting admission into second class alliances and either they will treat us as equal partners or we will be forced to use our damage elsewhere. It's time for the nations outside of the major alliances to stand up and work together because as long as we're divided we will remain pawns in their game.
Finding a Solution
In the first part of this series we explored the exploitation of small nations by the major alliances. In this installment we will be looking at a likely solution to that exploitation.
Let’s first look at the breakdown of damage based on region to give us a starting point for discussions.
Americas:
Asteria: 14,673,553,204
Sirius: 12,961,528,352
Other Nations: 16,238,082,515
Europe
Asteria: 58,402,090,190
Sirius: 45,983,201,554
Other Nations: 58,938,649,035
Asia/Africa/Oceania
Asteria: 9,337,340,588
Sirius:8,408,943,413
Other Nations: 14,844,643,062
As you can see the nations outside of the two major alliances have more combined damage than the nations in Asteria and Sirius in every region.
Coming Together
There are two effective ways in which smaller nations can come together for mutual defense, while technically different these options are more or less the same. The first is to create regional based alliances that would cooperate with each other for mutual defense against Sirius and Asteria. The second option is to create a single alliance that brings all the small nations together but still focuses regionally. With either option the costs of carry every MPP in a region could prove cost prohibitive, so in order to be effect an extremely high degree of coordination would be necessary. This could be accomplish through requiring a certain percentage MPPs in your region in addition to a large mobile force funded by the alliance and through the use of Combat Orders in addition to the mobile force.
To pay for this the alliance would have to collect taxes from the member nations, this amount would have to be nominal to have a high degree of impact on the battlefield. All member nations that are not suffering from a wipe would have to pay taxes based on income on a weekly basis. Wiped nations would be exempt from taxation, without penalty and would not be require to make up taxes missed while wiped. I know you’re asking why shouldn’t wiped nations have to support the alliance and the answer is simple if a nation is wiped the alliance has failed to properly protect them.
This is not meant to be the exact solution that is used to solve the issues facing small nations, but is rather meant to be a starting point for a greater discussion between interested parties. Please feel free to discuss this in the comments and among your friends and members of your communities.
Comments
Of the two solutions you proposed I think a regional alliance would be the strongest, there have been plenty of alliance coalitions of small nations but those have never really panned out since they have tended to be far flung and disorganized. A regional focus on that would be difficult without trading one area for another, unless there was some airstrike coordinating, then things would get interesting.
Although I favor a regional alliance, we can all see the problems with that. Large parts of the world are already aligned with each other in the big mega alliances, or are sworn foes (Canada v USA) and changing the status quo will be difficult. There is also a problem that most of this game's population is based in Europe, especially the Balkans, where most of the superpowers are. If small nations unite then what will stop the big players from hunting the small coalitions down and occupying for resources. The world we live in is a flawed alliance system, and while I agree with the regional alliance idea in theory, it probably isn't practical.
The best practical alliance structure in my opinion would be where the powers in the Balkans are about evenly divided into two camps, and where Spain and Poland are on different sides of the equation with each alliance then taking members from around the globe with a focus on every member. Although undoubtedly this would leave some nations along the wayside, most countries would have a place and a relevant DO to follow every day.
Like the idea. No wiped country should pay a tax... I prefer the word donation as that is more what it would be. Taxes are an encumbrance by a governing authority to pay for infrastructure and benefits of its members. A donation is something willingly given to benefit others. By donating, those countries with the means (they are recovering taxes because they have regions) are helping pay for not only their own defense but to insure/recover the freedom of others. This will encourage the use of any funds collected to the best effort of freeing more regions of all members.
Dennis, you shall never be a real boy.
This article makes it seem as though Aurora is a subsidiary alliance of Sirius. Sirius has no subsidiary alliance, like LETO is to Asteria.
Aurora is it's own alliance, with its own large nations and it's own HQ that makes its own sovereign decisions. We just happen to be on the same side of the alliance spectrum. It is more similar to Terra than LETO. It is it's own sovereign entity that cooperates with a larger alliance.
I miss TEDEN ;__;
It's semantics, it's nations that weren't considered cool enough or important enough to make it into Sirius.
I can tell you we in Ireland would have gone into chaos if we'd joined Sirius, as the public opinion of the new alliances was torn perfectly between Sirius and a potential third option. There were a handful that wanted to, but joining Spoland just to also join Croatia, who's buried EDEN by joining some of their worst enemies who kept their smaller allies wiped for months. Nah, even Croatia's not important enough of an ally to justify joining Spoland and betraying a handful of our other allies. There are some that like Sirius, and some that hate it. But I promise you even if Sirius wanted us Ireland's referendum wouldn't have passed with a large enough percent to get us in. It would've happened with time given the charisma of some of our over zealous politicians, but thankfully it didn't. lol
Not true. One or more of those nations were pursued by Sirius, but they chose to stick together to form their own alliance.
And besides, if history repeats itself, CoT...erm... I mean Aurora will have the pleasure of a round 2 with TWO/Spoland. All in good time.
Round 2 is a totally inacceptable idea. Just IMHO. No use in stomping on past issues.
That's a nice sentiment but lets face it. The nations that lose in the current alliance war will not form a new alliance, "damage-dependent" nations will instead do what they've done before and simply join one of the two victors, which will turn and face each other as CoT and TWO did. If they were likely to take the more honorable road after being defeated, there'd be no point in this article really. And lets face it. Bulgaria and Turkey, Serbia and the US, holding onto past issues are a huge reason why the alliances look like they are today. For some players its even a source of motivation, however unhealthy it may be in RL to do so.
Do you happen to see any violent fighting between Bulgaria and Turkey? Bulgaria and Romania? Even between me and my neighbors who attacked Russia last summer?
What I'm saying is that there's a difference between fighting and simply doing what you can to remain on opposite sides. There are always exceptions to the rule now. But as I said, past grudges typically work in the favor of charismatic leaders. They usually motivate a lot of players, and very few nations who have chosen their side have flipped a coin to decide. Many were given no choice due to their current wars, but those who weren't at war and were somewhat neutral, had no choice but to decide based on historical relations, both good and bad.
A Polak and a Croat leading Aurora, absolutely not a Sirius puppet
Actually a chilean is leading Aurora...
Previously, it was a paraguayan
Point of inquiry. Where did the numbers come from?
eRepublik leaderboard
Thanks
o/
Also, I can only imagine the amount of scrolling required 😛
kudos
If egov were still working properly I would have used that. It's much easier to use since you can just copypasta the info.
I have to admit, "That isn't where I thought you were going with this."
Wise words DMV, more regional alliances would indeed be nice.
You sure know how to do your math?
v
Solution:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/main/alliances/10
o/ ALL HAIL GREAT DIVINE RUSSIA \o
Very interesting and very well exposed
Voted
Now we are talking!
I have always wondered why Canada does not integrate itself better with the smaller countries of the American Continent, because the situation is pretty much the same.
Great article!
interesting ideas. Would've been nice if more nations spoke up months ago. When the first two alliances were formed it was all "Spoland this" and "Serbia" that. People braced themselves for siding with the lesser of two selfish evils.
I always wanted smaller nations to form together and get some real concentrated organization going militarily. It just never happened. I even wanted it to happen when CoT and TWO began fighting, but CUA went pro-TWO and Asgard was too slow to recruit solid allies.
I've been waiting for the same on good weather...
Too slow, or just reluctant to give up the idea of regionality maybe. As a matter of fact Canada join Asgard for about half a year or so. Anyway, the discussions about expanding further or not almost ripped us apart.
Aurora is not a sub alliance of Sirius.
ofcourse is not 😁))
Chile + Ireland in central europe + common MPP's between theese alliances
If Aurora/Sirius is using Ireland as a puppet (which I don't think) then I like it 😉
Excellent piece. However, I do not think that small alliances solve any problems per se, in the end a wiped country has three choises:
- wait for a change in the dynamics
- make a deal with the main enemies
Real stability comes only when mpp-fights become too expensive for the enemy to keep winning, and you need strong mpp's for that.
Make that two choises. Forgot the third, if there ever was one. : D
Here's another problem: We tried this with NaN (remember that?) You are correct. All the smaller nations, combined do MORE damage than those of the 2 larger alliances, however there is too much to protect.
What we ran into with NaN: Who is most important? Freeing Malaysia? Freeing Australia? South Africa?
There are a lot of wiped small nations. MPP stacks are useless in the required RW's, therefore, small countries don't have MPP's with other small countries. You end up witt 30 wiped countries, all looking to survive themselves as none of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for a long time.
Good article and great read
o7
nice
voted
Vote
aurora is a puppet of sirius? mate ratio of sirius : aurora damage is 2:1, and asteria : leto is 9:2.
with our damage is half of sirius', how can you say that we are puppet of sirius? our priorities always for aurora first, then sirius, we never put sirius' priorities above ours. Asia defensive pact and south america pact is a clear proof that aurora is independence, can you give me names countries from sirius took part on those pacts?
Poland and Spain
poland and spain are in ADP and SAP?
Sorry I misread that.
It is in his country's interest to make Sirius the bad guy, regardless of the facts.
Yay, the point of propaganda everywhere.
Good article and great read
o7
Awesome article, good to see nations started to speak out... These Naps are hurting smaller nations real bad... The extra damage saved by the big nations from the naps is used to focus in on attacking the smaller countries, also knowing that the bigger countries with the NAPs can't attack them head-on in order to stop their advancements. As a result it ensures the smaller nations stay wiped and without a congress... Look at Chile, they do whatever they want, no one is stopping them, look at their bonuses: http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/economy/Chile
Look at America's bonuses: http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/economy/USA
This is a joke...
No one is stopping these tyrants, they do whatever they want, they invade any country they want, they know that there is no one to stop them... They continue to run a muck, and no one is doing anything about it... Are we just going to stand there and watch countries like the USA and Chile continue to exploit any Leto country they want without repercussions? Time to end their reign of terror..
What about NO
😛
Good Read!