Howdy There

[Ceres]

Hello all, my name is Ceres! I got introduced to P&W earlier this week by my friends over in Rose.

I'm hoping to enter the world of politics on their behalf so I simply just wanted to stop in and say hi to everybody!

Currently, I've been reading over the wiki and major threads here on the OWF, and if anybody could link me to some high-key public information, I'd be most grateful. I just want to read over as much as possible!

 

Thanks everyone, a pleasure to be here!

[Dio Brando]

Hi @Ceres. Glad to see another player wishing to enter into the (as discussed ad infinitum) stale politics of the current game. New minds breed new ideas, new ideas bring change, change is the antithesis of stagnation; something as terrible to most of us as anything else. In regards to politics, it is wise if you contact a few people to learn history for them -- most of which you wish to understand can be given as an account from Abbas, but the consultation of multiple people from differing backgrounds, and thus the learning of different view points, is how creativity is born. 

There are a few things I will go over in this post. First, I will discuss the two broad classifications of alliances, which I will then further break down, and then shed light on their political standing. For this part of the post, I'll discuss only the currently 'active' alliances. After, we will look at examples from the past.

Let's start with the classifications. The simplest way of categorizing alliances is to look towards their public stance at treaties. Alliances are either "paperless", or "with paper." In a broad sense, these two terms refer to the (lack of) presence of publicly seen treaties an alliance may have. These two things, how they interlink, how the lines can become fairly blurred, what can be classified as paperless, have been discussed ad nauseam, across several threads, platforms, and even realms. Relevant to the questions that arise as an eventuality of digging deeper, we may consult a few quickly-found sources of discourse. First, we have a TEst* (more on them later) declaration, which was continued on the basis of them allegedly breaking the paperless philosophy they, and a handful of others chose to follow. That can be viewed here. We have "debate" upon why treaties are bad. Perhaps reading a few blog entries is also not a bad idea. Some of them may not be coherent, or things I agree with, though. Perhaps it is also a good idea to revisit old threads about combating "the paperless menace".

We may break these classifications down into "neutral", and non-neutral. The collective deemed neutrality as a health hazard, and have attempted to stomp it out of the game since quite some time. Neutrality claims freedom from participating in politics, which again has been debated upon - sides claim that by virtue of existence in a politics simulator, you are by default a player. Inactive politics is still, at the end of the day, politics. You may gain further insight if you chose to click upon the wikia links and follow relevant threads given at the bottom of the pages. Neutral alliances included GPA, The Fighting Pacifists, and some others I'm probably missing.

Now, let's look at examples of paperless. Arrgh!, The Syndicate, The Coalition, Terminal Jest, Grumpy (Old Bastards), Church of Spaceology are all examples of paperless alliances. You will find the list on the wikia. 

Political leanings of different alliances have changed quite a bit since years past, as would be expected. In the summer of 2016, the game was dominated by two major power holders - the same continued, with the sphere-leaders changing as time passed. The dominant bloc at that point in time was Syndisphere, named after The Syndicate. Fastforward a couple of months and you had chants of "Hegemony!" being thrown around. It would remain so till the recent past, and for some would only get worse. The main opposition for Syndicate were New Pacific Order, Rose, UPN, VE, etc. The summer of 2016 saw changes in political leanings - Pantheon shifted towards Syndisphere, Roz Wei was rolled by The Knights Radiant, and the opposition had lost a war at the hands of Syndisphere. The months that came after saw another war, this time waged by what I will call NPOSphere. You may find a summary of that war by searching "Silent War". Some alliances (including yours, Rose) reconsidered their FA; they signed Mensa HQ, a community that had migrated from another game. Due to the odd rivalry (never attacked each other directly, yet hated each other's guts) between the two, it was quite the move. 

The "Paperless Bloc" (indeed, an odd phrase considering the definition of paperless) had by December garnered heat - this heat ultimately culminated in Papers, Please. The rest is recent history -- the slight shift of the center of "Syndisphere" towards TKR, the disbandment of OO, formation of Inquisition, and then Git Gud Friday (or Trail of Tiers, as the yet-to-git-gud players like to refer to it as) occurred. From then it's been a slow rumble, with little of significance that has occurred.

I hope this sheds some light on what happened. Why it happened can be found in the threads I linked, and others that can be found using the search-bar. Happy reading! 

[Mad Hatter]

Welcome to Politics & War!

[Ceres]

16 hours ago, Dio Brando said:

 

I want to commend you for taking the time to sit down and write this article for me, it is greatly appreciated. I would have to say, this general census upon the feelings of treaties and neutrality is quite an interesting one, and honestly, one I am not accustomed to in the eight years I have played nation sims. But I am one to praise this pragmatic zeal, it leads to eventful traction & drama. A game like this should not be latent, or standstill. Politics are the engine!

Onwards, to continue the reading!

2 hours ago, Negan said:

Welcome to Politics & War!

Thank you for your generosity!