Join the new world

After reading and re-reading the proposed changes to the MPP system, it still has not become clear to me whether the MPPs activate on the aggressors side as well as the defending side when the aggressor attacks a non-national province where a resistance war is not possible to start. If so, will the MPP activation status be rechecked in every battle thereafter, so basicly you could not get your allies to help you if the requirements (=RW is not possible in the region) are not met in the future battles?

Wouldn't that mean that retaking your lost national provinces does not activate the new alliances you have made, but you would indeed have to be attacked or you yourself have to attack the national province of the enemy in order to activate the alliances you have signed (what a terrible sentence)? If so, this would be a slight hinderance to the defender if the attacker manages to take all border regions before the defender has had time to make sufficient amount of MPPs to stop them.

Why is it that non-national provinces are considered non-provinces when looking at the requirements of MPP triggering? Is it because wars are wanted to be made stalemates and imperialism impossible? Imperialism and wars are what this game is largely about. I am willing to go as far as to say that wars are the only things truly activating the community in decline. Wars should be encouraged instead of nerfed. It should not be made needlessly difficult to wage wars of conquest.

Every country has its limit. No country can takeover the world without causing internal turmoil which will eventually lead to the destruction of the empire the nation has built. It is not necessary to try to enforce the normal evolution and eventual devolution of countries by making unrealistic rules that forbid their allies from helping them if their non-core provinces are attacked.

In addition to making the non-national provinces to trigger alliances on both sides to create those massive conflicts we would all love (and which will probably make the eRe servers explode in a great ball of fire), I'd suggest few other subtle changes to the MPP system:

Blocking
It would be adviceable to remove the ability to block a nation from attacking by starting a diversionary attack in one of the nations provinces. It's unrealistic and will only be abused ad nauseam. Two nations can in cooperation stop another nation from ever making an attack just by starting fake battles. During the World War 1 Germany fought against Russia and France and UK at the same time by dividing their forces. The Russians did not simply start a fake battle and yell at the Krauts:

"u can't attack France now xiit lol u sux".

I do not see why this kind of behaviour should be allowed in eRepublik. This is a game mirroring the real world, is it not? The rules should reflect it instead of trying to force the players obey frigid rules with no actual meaning other than to annoy.

Wars for Freedom
If alliances activate on both sides the moment the battle starts, it makes the fights for freedom by means of normal war very difficult. This is not necessarily a problem as wars in general are not fair. This would simply mean that the players wanting to free their nation from foreign powers have to start recruiting players to the game in order to make the remains of their nation strong enough to throw back the oppressors. Or in the case they have been completely annexed, they have to start recruiting players in order to coup the occupier.

Naturally, they may form alliances of their own to accomplish this, as happened in Germany a few days ago. As such, it is not necessary to make alliances only work in national provinces as it is A) unrealistic, and 😎 breaks the game balance and leads to analytic abuse of the system.

In order to ease the situation the smaller countries face when trying to liberate their own lands (if it can be called a problem for the sake of realism) I suggest that some bonuses are given to the countries trying to reclaim their own provinces. This could be done by increasing the amount of damage they deal (increased morale, patriotism etc. (needs citizenship implemented in order to work)) and/or by making the starting of battles cheaper for the country owning the occupied region. Call it popular support, if you wish.

Also, to bring more interesting political aspect into the game, I suggest that the MPPs do not trigger automatically, but always need the congress’s approval. This could lead into situations where allied nations actually decide not to take part in wars that they do not see justified. These cases will be rare, but quite possible to happen in situations where a country tries to annex a smaller country without justification.