Ok ok lets address the fact that the moment I post this, people are going to start shouting at me saying I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m only saying this because I like them personally, etc, etc. Hear me out:
A lot of the comments on their posts were about their democratic system of government. People we’re saying all things like “it can’t work with an Orbis alliance”, “people can multi elections”, “you don’t need a constitution backed by a court to govern your alliance”, and all that good stuff. Let’s run down the roster.
Democratic Systems Don’t Work in Orbis
Is that because no one has seriously attempted it with the intent to grow like these guys? I think yes. I am personally an active member in their server and have even had personal correspondences with some of their members. I have to say, out of every alliance I have seen period, these guys have a fire to them. A passion, to make their little experiment become something more. There is two things you need to make an alliance succeed: guts and a system. These are not exclusive, but complementary. Obviously as Aequitas continues to grow, they’ll have to make adjustments, but for an alliance that is growing as they are, this is living proof for me that a democratic alliance can function.
Their Leadership
I mentioned correspondences with some of their members. Specifically, I’ve had a lot of convos with Vulcanities and Luna. And may I just say, what the hell do y’all have against Luna??? I was in their server and I saw about 3 DoWs against her. Seriously, y’all need to get more of a life than raiding for shits and giggles. But I digress. What I’ll say is these two are people who mean business when it comes to this alliance. They deserve more credit for it.
Constitutions and Courts
All I’m gonna say to this is: to each their own. If they want to have a constitutional government and court, SO LET THEM. Is it actively hurting anyone? No. Is it something they can pitch as a part of their alliance? Yes. I see this as something that could actually help them out.
What does all of this mean?
It means that I think we are beginning to see a glimpse of the next generation of alliances. Considering that Aequitas has already achieved around Rank 85 from two members, let’s not count them out yet. Who knows? Maybe the old man alliances are about to see a new world stage player.
To my friends in Aequitas, y’all have been a joy to interact with and I hope that your alliance becomes something to challenge the present alliances, both power-wise and ideology-wise. I hope to see you all on the Top 50 soon. Godspeed!
Replies
Ok look as always I won't say aqueitas sucks, but the reason I personally said such things was for what I had experienced. If anyone of you guys have lived in February 2022 in this game, you guys would have known about the alliance of NATO which had almost collapsed after a bad election.
The reason I told them those things are because I wish better for them. If they want to, let them. But what they do is risky and if they can compensate the risk, I won't mind.
On a completely different context tho, I personally have nothing against Luna, like I feel sad for her sometimes ngl. Just because somebody acted 'cringe' a hundred days ago doesn't allow one to keep that anger. Luna is just a kid like me, and she isn't mature enough to take very strong sensible decisions by herself, that had led to her falling into trouble many times. But that doesn't mean we go ape shit against her. There is a thing called understanding, and if we don't manage to do that, we might end up with more people leaving this roleplay community. Toxicity is destroying this game.
So, I think I should take care to respond as to exactly why I don’t consider Aequitas to be worth anything and would never consider advising anyone to join them ever if it keeps on existing as it exists now, and this response should detail all of that. If after this you see just a link, it means that my response was too long for PnW bulletins, if you see a link and a wall of text, it means that it fit but I also included the google docs version for accessibility, enshrined with my personal coat of arms I use on my PFP everywhere.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AXNvm0eAW1HUzmacQwEYn9RMDjcm_1fbLP36N34Y7d0/edit?usp=sharing
Edit: Yes, I've noticed I made a lot of spelling mistakes but I put this together very quickly before it got swept away by other posts. These have all been corrected and the google doc version is the better read as I can't be bothered to reformat this reply.
Democratic Systems
First of I must start this with saying, I don’t know where all the hate towards democratic systems is coming from, though personally I don’t see too much of it. Democratic systems have been around in Orbis for basically as long as it has existed with alliances such as FSO (Federated States of Orbis), Minutemen (Formerly the Soldiers of Liberty, though I’m not 100% sure they’re still democratic), United Purple Nations, and the oldest democracy that’s still around today, being GATO (The Global Alliance & Treaty Organization), even alliances like Camelot have elections for some positions, such ass the recently leaked Prince elections, all of these exist and most if not all have existed for years. The difference is that they’re larger alliances with tons of experienced people who can properly pitch their reasons for candidacy and function even after a bad election, the difference with Aequitas being that most of the members have little to no experience in the grand scheme of things, the oldest member being Rimskaya who doesn’t have Discord and has spent most of his time wasting away in Castle Camelot or other alliances with no gov experience. You simply cannot compare Aequitas to these solid democracies, a closer comparison would be as many others mentions NATO, which I have not interacted with but heard of, or one example I have interacted with, Western Republic, in which the democracy made some of the gov bitter and resulted in the split that was the Grand Union of Nations, I don’t think I need to reiterate how that alliance is viewed.
Constitutions
Constitutions are a touchy thing, especially since the alliance is one of those not centred around Discord, which I will get into in The Leadership, but anyhow, it’s hard to generally get all of everything in one place, especially for a politics game where you know, most people don’t have experience writing constitutions and will miss things and probably won’t have them scrutinised but will receive blank approval from apathetic members before instating it.
That being said, I don’t actually know the constitution or what not of Aequitas so I won’t comment too much about it as I don’t want to be spouting nonsense about things I have no knowledge about.
The Leadership
Here’s another big thing I think contribute to Aequitas never being a big player in Orbis, the leadership. As it stands, and as you’ve mentioned, the 2 main leaders are Rimskaya and Luna, both people who do not use Discord, and do not have any sort of gov experience within Politics and war. I think the wars against Luna are just 1 person being salty and everyone else still seing it as a joke and/or wanting to get on the good side of that person who will go unnamed, but that’s besides the point. I don’t know how you think they “mean business” when, frankly, the alliance is int he shitter in terms of everything except maybe activity. Compared to leaders of other alliances who give their souls to this game to try and get their alliance to succeed, they don’t mean business. We have leaders of the macros planning ROI (Return on Investment) for years ahead of today, leaders of micros trying to manipulate other alliances through their FA in just the right way to get the right merges with the right people to get into the top 50 and be considered worth a shit by 90% of the game’s community and then we have nano leaders like Rimskaya and/or Luna who think they’re hot shots for being in top #100 (they’re not) and think they can take on these bigger, multiple year old alliances that have been dominant for actual real life years, most essentially for as long as the game has lasted. No, they don’t “mean business” in anything except spending time thinking they’re already doing good instead of learning.
Rank #85 is meaningless
I feel this may be taken for pointless salt, but, rank #85 is meaningless. Most genuine players don’t even realise alliances out of the #50 exist, let alone a worthless nano on #85 that has some democratic system led by a schizo commie. There have been alliances far bigger, that still meant nothing and some people don’t know existed. I mean, hell, look at my original alliance, #26 and most people still considered it irrelevant and have forgotten it existed after its death, a bloated micro, meaningless to most in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t want this to be taken as toxicity as much as a wake up call that top 100 doesn’t mean a lot, a fucking 2 player extension of Terminus is in the top 100, it really isn’t that impressive. Top 50 is impressive, top 100 is not.
Growth problems
A big part as to why I think Aequitas won’t be a big player is the current growth systems, which are not centralised around Discord, therefor automatically already have inferior communication compared to Discord alliances which have check ins by IA to see how members are doing and with real time responses instead of waiting an hour for a PnW message, also the fact that Aequitas seems to rely on a low tax rate to allow people to grow themselves, which would be fine, if they fucking taught their members how to grow and be experienced like other alliances that use low tax rates. Low tax rates and allowing people to grow themselves only works if they know how to.
Bigger players
I think I need to reinstate how much bigger the other alliances are and how Aequitas being viewed as a “potential big player” is frankly a joke. You’d have to compare with:
Rose
The current most powerful alliance with 222 members who are competent or are being trained to be competent, probably the largest gathering of competent players and a daily revenue of 5,207,104,695.57 or 168x Aequitas’ with a metric fuck ton of cities at 5,431 across the alliance bringing their total maximum militarisation up to 79,305,000 Soldiers, 6,608,750 Tanks, 396,525 Aircraft, 79,305 Ships, as well as war tactics perfected over many years, their own website with PnW API links, also developed over multiple years probably, tried and true IA, MA, FA & EA that has brought them to #1.
Syndicate
The Syndicate, who I won’t flaunt their raw numbers, but the fact that they are commonly recognised as one of, if not, the single most influential alliance in Orbis’ history since their foundation 9 years ago and still having so, so much of that influence today even after staggering defeats from other alliances, home to the 2nd largest gathering of whales and my personal favourite Macro that I would be in by now if I wasn’t tied up being nano/micro governor.
Camelot
Camelot, the micro lords, constantly seeking merges with other micros and trying to consolidate however they can even amidst pushacbk from other large alliances that want to put a stop to their scheming. Bouncing back from many-a previous failures.
Coven
In my eyes the gatekeepers of top #50, any alliance that does not meet standards is quickly vibe checked by Coven and eliminated from the gene pool if they are proven to be shit, which a lot are, with their members being sucked into the Coven via their “lifeboat policy” (poaching from their enemies, usually while at war).
And many more, these are just a few I’ve mentioned because they were on the top of my head, Aequias is a joke compared to these alliances with tons of C30+s and even C40+, with Rose having the current largest city count holder at I think it’s C56 right about now. They are not a big player and won’t be for many, many years, and maybe not ever with the way the alliance is being handled at this moment in time. Think these are unfair comparisons? Then don’t call them a “big player”.
Conclusion
I think this about sums up my honest thoughts on why Aequitas doesn’t function, and won’t function with its current trajectory unless serious change happens. I do see the current virtues it has, and about the only thing it seems to have worth is shit which is its activity, which despite being so small, is immense and could be used to greatness if the people in charge knew what to do with such activity and their skill(?) to promote such activity.
Maybe, Rimskaya, if you see this, you’ll see it as a wakeup call rather than an attack on you and your work. It’s not impossible.
(Also yes, the flag is a temporary thing for April Fools, I’d never genuinely go back to Communism.)
Aquetias bad no fek ril💯💯👍😱
To address the elections: we just held our first election, which placed me as the leader and RoManic and Commonwealth of Virginia sharing the VP position. It actually went quite smoothly, especially when taking into consideration that it was our first leadership election, ever. So I think that somewhat disproves the idea that democracy is bound to fail. Now, Fine, you mentioned using multis for elections. As a VP and a President, I've been quite stringent about multis: if someone were to clearly attempt messing with the election OR even just using multis, they'd likely be out of the alliance for it in an instant, because I've dealt with multi accusations (I have another nation on my network) but I've also seen an alliance led by a friend collapse due to multis, so I have no tolerance for cheaters in Aequitas.
Our leadership: again, we have new leadership as of just a couple of days ago, so it's impossible to judge how we are doing now in that sense. However, I will say that both of our Vice Presidents and all of our Secretaries, I believe, have Discord, even if I do not. Rimskaya and I built the foundations of this alliance, despite all the hate and negativity we recieved in that sense, and even if the both of us made some mistakes, I'll be working closely with the rest of the government to fix things and grow. We have plans we're working on already, such as improving militarily and fixing our tax system. So if anyone's issues with our leadership stem from not having Discord, well, I'm in constant communication with people who do. So it's not really all that difficult to run an alliance as a non-Discord nation. And regarding the constant wars against me — there are just some people out here who would prefer to hold grudges from around August 2022 despite me being willing to forgive them, and, of course, their best course of action is to hit me when I'm already weakened.
And I'd entirely agree about the Constitution & the court: they've both been very helpful and have just generally helped things run smoothly. We did approve our Constitution with the full alliance, and made sure to highlight specific elements that were particularly important or could be controversial.
Now, to address parts of Fine's wall of text: I already addressed the first three segments, but-
Just in response to the thing about how Rank 85 is meaningless, well- yes, we were excited about reaching top 100, because for an alliance predicted to be gone in two weeks, for one that had such a rocky start, and for one that had one person with no gov experience and one person with very slight gov experience (me, co-leading a micro a while back) as its founders since RoManic wasn't on P&W at that time, yes, that was a good milestone. People always said they gave us two weeks, or until Christmas or whatever, so we showed that we could survive. That wasn't to say it was the only milestone, though: just our first step. We're still trying to reach top 50 and higher, of course: we aren't saying top 100 makes us all that relevant, just that it's a good step
I think I should add what I was trying to convey by focusing on #85 being meaningless: It can still go downhill from here. Do not rest on your laurels. Your alliance can be put worse than how it started despite being #85.
Two alliances I've worked on, both being in a far better position than Aequitas (One being #26 and the other somewhere in the top 50) fell apart, one with a slow decline as the tightly knit community you participated in fell apart, and the other in the snap of a finger as people revealed the resentment they hid for each other.
@Fine That's essentially what I meant: that even if rank 85 doesn't mean we're all that strong just yet, it's also progress, and it's good for an alliance that started the way we did. It's not to say that we're not going to continue to grow...