A tough Decision.

[Nicholas Lorencio]

Now no offence to you Guesseppe, but this is what I have a problem with. If members can do this much, even if it would require really good applications, I feel it will just feel kind of "cheap". For one application that you could be working on for a week, typing only 300 words a day but eventually creating a good application due to lenght you would get a huge empire, instead of smaller countries who would start off normally and have to fight for new land. Also storyline wise, doesn't this site start off right after the whole leader get nuked thing? Where would Italy get the land from and when?

[Giovanni Facilli]

I believe the world leaders got nuked in, what, 2015? Then the russians invaded and got pushed back by 2018. Back on the old site i started with Austria because they were a key supporter of the italian progressive party, and After that I had to invade the rest of the nations.

In addition, if we aren't going to do the empire thing, What about the nations like the Kalmar Union, or Persia, or the American Free State? They all started with upwards of Three Nations+. Would they be able to start with more than one nation and not European nations? I don't think thats fair then... =/

[Nicholas Lorencio]

One, I never knew they started like that. And two, we are starting over again, (most likely). I think this is one thing that should be change. Sure if your some country like Sudan and you want Dijibouti, alright, its not that important. But lets say in your case claiming France, France is a big nation and a small world power and I just feel we shouldn't be able to claim such big nations without some sort of struggle to get it. A nation like that would greatly increase your Empires power, and it shouldn't come free.

[Frederik Karl Christian XI]

I think, nations should all start, with borders associated with their modern counter parts. No exceptions. If we're restarting it may as well be a clean slate.

Also, while I like a balancing idea of claiming nations at a time, I think a better mechanic would be to enforce huge penalties for overextention, remember, Israel illegally occupied Palestine and the palestinians havn't stopped giving them hell since, I expect all occupied territories to be so impassioned, if not more so. I would say a culture system should also be enforced, for example, Österreich probably considered Deutschland a far better occupier then say, Italy, due to them speaking a Deutsch dialect and having a shared history. While as, Corsica returning to Italy, probably wouldn't annoy them as much as it would if it was annexed by Spain. The exceptions I would give would be, small states like Kosovo, if Albania managed to annex them, they'd probably not mind, they're mostly Albanian anyway, if anything Serbia would be the one annoyed. Also for example, Süd Tyrol, they've been trying to be returned to Österreich for decades, I don't think they'd see it as such a bad thing to change hands to Österreich. If one can make a claim to a former empire, I'd think that to help, but not entirely nullify a cultural penalty, for example, if Hungary decided to annex Croatia, I'm sure Croatia would kick up a shitstorm but knowing they were part of the same empire in the past might quell some of their resistance. Same goes for a reunification of Yugoslavia, none of those nations wanted it at the time but they might be inclined to band together again.

Not to mention the impracticality of blobbing should be emphasised, no empire has managed to avoid crumbling, even the British Empire saw its member states gain autonomy under a commonwealth (no longer called the British commonwealth now is it?). Even ancient empires like the Timurid Empire or Yaun who were vast and great managed to collapse on themselves from the public order, maintenance and ethnic diversity, Rome collapsed for similar reasons. Modern empires have faired even worse then ancient ones, the last few, I mean, the middle east has yet to recover from the Ottoman Empire collapse, and Eastern Europe will never be the same after the Soviet Union and Austro-Hungary fell apart. The larger a nation gets, the more events it should have, and the more debt it should have accumulated as it annexed nations who no doubt, blew large sums of their budget and put their governments into defecit before surrendering. That would theoretically mean, that for every nation a big power took, their gdp would have a larger percent of deficit.

[Nicholas Lorencio]

Actually ignore what I said, Knives has a good idea here.

[Giovanni Facilli]

Though its a good idea, i do have to disagree. This site isn't supposed to be perfectly realistic. What you're suggesting makes it safer to have everyone be Buddy Buddy and not invade people because if they do they'll face ridiculous penalties that shouldn't be associated with a site that promotes expansion and urges you to try and expand and realize your dreams and goals. What you're suggesting would mean we all need to stay within our boarders and stay where we are instead of expanding because if we do we'll have quell protest after protest and pay back every sent that former nation spent. Hell, the Nazis, the Soviets, and most other 20th century nations didn't, And the soviet union managed to survive for almost 100 years.

In addition, if we're going to play the Former Empire game, I could pull out the Roman Empire card and lay claim to almost all of europe accept places like Germany and Northern Europe. This site, while it should be somewhat realistic, can't quell imagination or scare new members who don't have a complete understanding of how the world works away. I'll tell you what, when i joined a year+ ago i didn't know much at all. It should have a taste of realism, but it should also give you plenty of room to have your dreams and the possibility to become a Grand Empire realized..

[Frederik Karl Christian XI]

Dec 6, 2010 19:45:38 GMT -5 Giovanni Facilli said:

Though its a good idea, i do have to disagree. This site isn't supposed to be perfectly realistic. What you're suggesting makes it safer to have everyone be Buddy Buddy and not invade people because if they do they'll face ridiculous penalties that shouldn't be associated with a site that promotes expansion and urges you to try and expand and realize your dreams and goals. What you're suggesting would mean we all need to stay within our boarders and stay where we are instead of expanding because if we do we'll have quell protest after protest and pay back every sent that former nation spent. Hell, the Nazis, the Soviets, and most other 20th century nations didn't, And the soviet union managed to survive for almost 100 years.

In addition, if we're going to play the Former Empire game, I could pull out the Roman Empire card and lay claim to almost all of europe accept places like Germany and Northern Europe. This site, while it should be somewhat realistic, can't quell imagination or scare new members who don't have a complete understanding of how the world works away. I'll tell you what, when i joined a year+ ago i didn't know much at all. It should have a taste of realism, but it should also give you plenty of room to have your dreams and the possibility to become a Grand Empire realized..

Well said, though I think some of the criticisms are invalid, mainly because I have not expressed myself clearly enough so the criticisms are appropriate responses because I have failed to put my ideas fully into the flesh. The goal is to discourage rapid expansion, not expansion all together, I think most players will certainly be ambitious enough to expand regardless and this should be encouraged if done over a time period and with respect to established goals. I don't think the penalties are so rediculous, maybe just tie up a bit of the military.

I think the economic loss should relative to the country and how the invasion goes, if you go around blowing up every building you see, obviously business and infrastructure is going to take a bit of a hit.
I do not however believe the aggressor should be responsible for paying back every debt that they inherit, as you may know, the same can't be said for nation's own debts. I think the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are very poor examples, for starters they didn't conquer nations per se, they made a great deal of political puppets that they exploited, or they occupied towns with their army keeping them oppressed, until they managed to rise up, which they all inevitably did in enough time. For example, compare, Deutschland's annexation of Österreich, that was a full annexation, and since it was treated as Deutschland's state, they tried to adapt it to Deutschland, and invested in it, unlike say, Estonia. When the Nazis liberated Estonia from the Soviet Union, they conscripted its men, took a large sum of gold, then basically left them to their own devices, the Russians instead executed thousands when they retook it and other abusive habbits (not to say the nazi weren't abusive), though they left them to face a lot of angry Estonians in a few years. This reflects their policies. The nazis didn't press on Estonia too much and certainly didn't intergrate it into their reich. The war was brief, you can bet you their policies wouldn't have resulted in a proper addition to their reich, they'd provoked a lot of people in their total war policies, and they were going to have to face them sooner or later.

The goal of moderators and admins will not necesarily to punish all expansionism with crushing negative reinforcement, but to discourage people from expanding too quickly, having large blobs of super powers doesn't contribute to the new players, all it does is reward players who don't show sensible restraint in their conquests. We should avoid any nation becoming too big because it imbalances the game and makes interaction between nations rather one sided. If overwhelming realism is offputting to new players then surely it is not a match for the infuriating feeling of an old and experienced player seeing their potential expansion halted because someone has ignored realistic counter balances. I earnestly believe a new player would be more so intimidated by having a hulking super power all over the map. Reaching a dream is a fine, but if one person gets too big, it makes it harder for others to realize their dreams, say someone playing Iran wants to reclaim persian territories, they find that Egypt has taken Iraq, Afghanistan and most of the Middle East, they'll naturally be disheartened.

Finally, the claims should be reasonable, while I'd reconise the pursuit of reforming the roman empire as a valid ambition of a megalomaniac, it is essentually an ancient empire, as opposed to the empires I gave as examples who had fallen in the 19th century. Feelings ebb. Not to say forming the Roman Empire isn't valid, it just has to be done proper, say, using it to justify taking peices of the core territories, depending on which Roman empire you're referring to, it might see Italy reclaiming parts of North Africa, Greece, or Iberia. Hell, Greece was the home of teh Roman Empire before its collapse, maybe Greece will want to form Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine, by reclaiming its Greek and Anatolian territories, thats a respectful way to go about it. Not say, taking every territory that was owned at any point in time by Rome in a few short years.

Its important to note, that although the Soviet Union survived for some time, it lost a large sum of its states gradually as they had not stopped fighting since conquest, not to mention when people bring up the Soviet Union and boundaries they tend to include its puppet states and spheres of influence, which also deserted it the moment they could but, say, Hungary, the Soviet Union killed their politicians and put their own, in but by all means Hungary was not truly a part of the Soviet Union, it was just unable to break out for a few years.

[Giovanni Facilli]

The more i think about it, the more i do realize that asking for a country such as France off the bad is a bit much to ask for.

I am somewhat against having all nations to have to start out, off the bad, without more than one nation. That eliminates nations like Persia, The Kalmar Union, the American Free State, and other nations from the site from having other nations in their group. I'm not going to ask for huge nations, and most people probably arent. We'll have to go through wars to get them, but we should be allowed to have up to three smaller nations(that is, if you are an empire, as previously stated.) I'm not going to ask for France, but i will ask for Austria, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland. The three are no-where near as strong as France, and aren't as large, and arent worth what France are worth. But im afraid I'll go down with my ship on the note that people should be able to have more than one nation in their "Empire" if they work hard enough for it and apply for it, as long as the nations they ask to be in their empire arent huge ones, like france.

If you guys don't accept that, then I'll have to side with Johann on the note of picking 5-7 Regions of a neighboring nation and adding them on.

In the event that we get deadlocked in the staff(which is what it will probably end up as) My last suggestion would be each nation gets a free neighboring nation(or two) to start out with(thats not powerful like France). Now don't act so Negatively this idea, because Knives said if we all vote to agree on it he'd support it.

[Karl Franz Fredrick Stahlwelt]

Imma gonna imput some ideas here. Now, bear with me, this is a short post.

I officially do not support Seppy's idea of gaining multiple nations from the onset. Nothing personal, just doesn't seem fair. While I do support my idea, I also support Knives's idea, at least in part. It's a good idea, there's structure, and it's reasonable. But what I don't like about it is that it allows people to assume there are limits on what they can do, say America. Person A has America, they want Canada. But they feel, with these rules, they can't take Canada without basically destroying everything America has, because Canada was part of Great Britian.

Now, onto the last idea Seppy suggested. I will also support that, but amended, so that people only get a few bordering regions.

[Giovanni Facilli]

Well knives and I both talked about it, and he stated that having each of us getting one free(small) neighboring nation would be a better idea than simply giving you regions of that nation, because giving you regions of a nation instead of the entire nation makes that nation smaller(the nation your taking the regions from) and would lead to trouble if a new person joined the site and wanted a country, but instead of finding out that said nation is taken and they simply have to go and find a new nation to do, certain regions of that nation have been taken away which dramatically reduces the size of that nation and now makes it virtually useless and simply a puppet state, bound to be invaded.