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Dear friends,

I am writing today in response to two articles (1),(2) , and also to a shout I saw this morning. I won’t comment on these articles at length, but I will summarise the key points from all of them:

1. The eUSA needs to unify to win not squabble amongst themselves
2. Everyone in the eUSA is partially responsible for the current situation
3. The Asteria attacks on Pacifica nation are pushing Pacifica into an ‘anti-Asteria’ position.

All of these articles/posts/shouts are about the importance of coming together to form a common front to resist common enemies. They are not wrong, this is exactly the strategy which is required to achieve both short and long term victory. However this is the one thing that they are incapable of doing.


Asteria’s stratagem

It is not a secret, so I will lay it out for you - in fact I already did so in the title. Asteria is on paper a very strong alliance. Together Romania and Serbia alone make up 15-20% of world damage, and with the other members this bumps it up to 25% or so. Bear in mind that probably a fifth of world damage is in the fifty or so minor countries, this means Asteria can bring enormous force to any battlefield. But is it as strong as EDEN? Or TWO? In raw numbers, it is probably about the same. But it has benefited enormously from a disunited and disorganised opposition, a situation it has managed to perpetuate through adept diplomatic and military efforts.

In the world there are several major power groups. To simplify, I will sum these up below:
Asteria
Pro Asteria
Andes
Croatia and friends
Pacifica (pro-Asteria wing)
Pacifica (anti-Asteria wing)

On paper the three groups which are broadly fighting Asteria above have more damage than the alliance itself. Even counting the pro-Asteria damage, including heavyweights Macedonia and Bulgaria, they have a very good chance of winning. But Asteria’s strategy of divide and conquer has managed to exacerbate the already fraught relations between these countries and make such cooperation impossible.


The breaking of the eUSA

When Pfeiffer attacked Croatia, he did it with the implicit support of Asteria. Nobody from Asteria went to Pfeiffer and asked him to do it, but they stood aside and allowed it to happen. This ‘hands off’ approach was typical of Asteria’s strategy towards Pacifica, and so nothing seemed out of sorts. However when the eUSA actually fought, they found themselves mostly doing it alone. It might have been expected that the eUSA could have counted on Asterian support in fighting one of their most dangerous foes, but it didn’t materialise.

Later when Croatia planned their retaliatory strike, the eUSA found itself alone and without friends. Not only did Asteria step back from helping them, pro-Asteria members (and eventually Lithuania) joined in the attacks and the occupation. Pacifica nations helped through MPP damage, but despite large portions of the eUS being occupied by Asterian forces and their allies, there is no major Pacifica action to root them out. This is because the remaining Pacifica forces value (and fear) their Asterian neighbours more than they value/fear the eUSA.

Was this a calculated move by Asteria? It certainly wasn’t planned by them, in that Croatia and friends made all the initial strikes, and Lithuania fought on their own terms. But the diplomatic situation was carefully managed, and the result is that Pacifica is split in two, and both sides are paralysed into inaction by their disunity.



The breaking of Hungary

Hungary’s relationship with Asteria is a long and complicated one, and I don’t need to go into it again here. Over the months before the Asteria-Hungary war, Hungary had made an effort to become closer to Croatia, with whom they share certain RL historical ties and friendships. Asteria could probably have swayed this and kept Hungary on side (or at least neutral) had they wanted to, but there was no interest in doing so apparently. The eventual Asteria-Hungary war resulted in a few days of fun and a wipe for Hungary, who eventually fled to the eUSA to secure regions.

What followed was militarily quite interesting I’m sure, and other more interested parties have written at length on those battles fought. However despite where damage was landing, and what happened there, the result was that two things broke on that battlefiel😛
Hungary’s short term military strength and spirit
The relationship between Hungary and the eUSA

The second one is more important. Consider this: the most important and powerful allies the eUSA has against Asteria are Croatia and Hungary. All three countries have a shared goal- to secure their regions against occupation by the world’s dominant alliance. Yet with this wipe, and the admittedly poor decisions that followed (out of Asteria’s hands) any chance of co-operation between the two blocs was ended, at least in the near future. As a result, everyone suffers except Asteria.


The breaking of South America

Andes is often the forgotten alliance in eRepublik, and that itself is a victory for Asteria. Once the core of a powerful anti-Asterian alliance and a safe haven for their companies, Chile and Argentina are shadows of their former selves. Asterian strategy with South America is best described as containment- any attempt to leave or even to involve themselves in military actions outside the continent is met with extreme force in the first instance, with the threat of punitive attacks.

The fact that Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria keep enclaves of territory alive around the world means that the threat of a border is ever present. Training wars are an effective cover for keeping an ever present risk of invasion on hand.

With this in mind, South America is not the powerhouse it once was, and the tanking power it retains is often spotty in application. The Croatians can often rely on a few key tanks, based on personal relationships and history, but few of the other countries under pressure from Asteria can claim the same.



Poland and Russia

Poland and Russia form the core of what you might call Pro-Asterian Pacifica. Both countries have supported the eUSA financially and militarily since the occupation began, but are very careful that their direct conflict with Asteria is as limited as possible. Partly that is because they benefit from MPPs and thus military protection from the likes of Croatia and Greece, who could easily be a problem otherwise. Partly it is because outside of the Asteria sphere they have few powerful friends, and thus they have no alternative that would keep them on the map. In a truly bipolar world, Russia and Poland would more naturally fit with the non-Asteria group, but the old disputes between Poland/Russia and members of that group makes that difficult.


Pro-Asteria

Probably Asteria’s greatest diplomatic success was securing Bulgaria and Macedonia to the pro-Asterian side. Both of these countries are powerful top 10 countries with sprawling empires. What’s more, due to their non-membership status they can go places and do things that Asterian members couldn’t- such as the initial invasion of the eUSA.

Although both countries have very good relationships with some Asteria members, they’ve had their run ins in the past, some of them quite public. But again, the diplomatic and political pressure means they benefit too much from the status quo to ever change sides. Doing so would mean exposing them to the threat of Greece without Romanian protection.

In addition, there is no clear alternative path for pro-Asteria. Even including the other countries who roughly fall in the same boat- Spain, Indonesia, UK, France etc, there isn’t a solid foundation for a new alliance (or even formalising the pro-Asteria block into a pro-Asterian alliance).


The balance

Like a number of pillars leaning against one another to form a stable structure, the world political scene is interdependent and unshakeable. All of the actions taken to try and shake things up in the last six months have in fact made the situation even more intransigent and unshakeable. The prospect of a broad alliance between Andes, Pacifica, Croatia, Hungary and Greece looks even further from reality than it did before the eUSA war. The ongoing fight between Pacifica and Croatia & friends only serves to deepen the conflict between the two. The eUSA is too tarnished to be a diplomatic leader, and nobody else is stepping up.

I might sound critical of Asteria in this article, but in fact what they’ve achieved is admirable. Despite being incredibly strong by any standard, it is not their strength that has won the war. Unlike TWO and EDEN, they achieved world domination through subtlety and by planting and encouraging the seeds of disunity amongst their rivals - and even amongst their friends.

The mutual interdependence means that much of the world is dependent on the security that Asteria provides, and the remainder is fragmented and fighting over the scraps. United, the various ‘anti-asteria’ forces could clear the eUSA of hostile occupiers (keeping some friendly ones) in a matter of weeks- unless there was a full scale Asterian intervention from Serbia/Romania. We saw in the ROC/Taiwan invasion that responding to multiple airstrikes meant choosing who to resist, and it’s fair to assume that multiple coordinated attacks would result in defeat for the defender on at least one front.

But that won’t happen, and can’t happen. It is not even a possibility on the radar for most people- on the likelihood scale a peace deal with Asteria seems more likely than any sort of alliance amongst their disparate opposition.



Can the situation change?

There are two possible ways the situation can change. Countries currently on the fringes of Asteria power, and those directly suffering under it, could unite to form a common front. Whilst they still would not be directly comparable to Asteria, the presence of a unified opposition bloc would give options to countries that currently doesn’t have them. Secondly, Asteria itself could implode due to some currently unforseen internal conflict.

The fact that so many countries are not just hoping for, but relying on the second outcome says a lot. As vladb has said to me a number of times, the world cannot rely on Asteria to dig its own grave. However you feel about communities and game balance, a victory handed to the anti-Asteria countries is not a victory at all, and in a few weeks or months the core countries of Asteria would simply reform under another name and it would all begin again.

Any meaningful change has to come from within. Ideally that would take the form of a core group, which would then gradually admit members. That core group would take an atrocious beating at first, because Asteria knows full well the threat of its various enemies showing any sign of unity. What’s more, the group would have to reach outside the traditional allies of the founder(s), and even include old enemies. As Sirius showed, such a venture is risky in the extreme.

Croatia, Hungary, Greece and Turkey already form somewhat of a core group. Argentina and Chile also have their own small part of the world. Either of those two groups could be the seed of a new alliance, though the former probably has more chance of success than the latter.


Conclusions

To conclude (tl;dr) Asteria’s very successful strategy has been to effectively turn its opposition against one another and mop up the scraps. Those countries who are not directly in opposition to Asteria are usually brought into the pro-Asterian sphere in order to exert some level of control over their actions. This strategy has allowed Asteria to power-project extremely successfully with little need for brute force tactics. They deserve admiration for this.

The eUSA is currently occupied because it has excellent native bonuses and enough regions for many countries to find refuge there. The ongoing truce between the various rival factions (on eUSA soil at least) means that the US is fighting alone against multiple enemies who all have a vested interest in them not being on the map. Ergo the eUSA cannot defeat the occupation alone without external support, and even a diplomatic solution is likely to result in a future wipe as the remaining countries act to protect their new home.

Due to the divide and conquer strategy, gaining meaningful external support will be difficult for the eUSA to achieve. In fact, due to a tarnished reputation, the eUSA is in an exceptionally poor position to build an anti-Asteria coalition. For the eUSA then the correct strategy is to prepare to exploit future opportunities as best as possible, conserve strength, act with dignity and responsibility, and support those allies they have and those that they would like. Pacifica is a shell of an alliance and genuinely offers nothing to the eUSA at this point other than fairly token MPP damage.

It is likely that the situation as it stands now will continue- interfactional squabbling will prevent any unity against Asteria, and this is something that Asteria will encourage. Further wars between Pacifica and Croatia & friends only goes to deepen the divide between them and improve Asteria’s position. This has gotten to the point now that Asteria barely need to take any action to continue the trend as it has become largely self-perpetuating.

The alternative is unlikely, but still possible. A unified front of the various anti-Asterian countries under the auspices of a new alliance. Whether this alliance would last, or achieve its goals, is another question: I have my doubts. But let’s see what happens, shall we?

Iain



Apologies for any minor factual errors with the military side of things. It isn't my primary area of interest.