The Economist ~ An update on CTRL
Spite313
Dear friends,
Some weeks ago when I first moved back to ePoland I wrote an article which had a mixed but mostly negative reaction from the Polish people reading it. I got a lot of abuse, some people questioning my friendship, loyalty and even my intelligence. In the article I pointed out that the CTRL alliance had serious structural and inherent flaws which not only made it unlikely to succeed long term, but also risked the diplomatic position of Poland in the world.
Now I’m not going to repeat myself, and you can read my thoughts there on the problems CTRL faced as a fledgeling alliance, but since that article CTRL has been officially announced, ran for a good month and has fallen flat on its face. The tensions between the two biggest countries has exploded, countries are maintaining the old alliances they had over the new and the large non-native populations in both countries have allied against the new alliance. It’s obvious that Poland wants to maintain an alliance with Serbia and Hungary, and that the USA is not willing to abandon it’s TEDEN friends to throw in its lot with the tiny amount of CTRL and ALT countries to the exclusion of everything else.
From the first day of the alliance countries were fighting for opposite sides. The battles with Serbia in the middle-east and Asia saw the two halves of the alliance fighting on opposite sides directly against one another. No amount of cajoling by a succession of weak alliance leaders has managed to force the countries to dump their former allies and fight together. Even a direct attack on a member (MKD on USA) saw lukewarm responses from the other CTRL nations, with many actually fighting for MKD despite Poland and MKD having historically poor relations.
After my last article a lot of people said stuff like “It’s funny how the biggest critics of CTRL are people from ex-ONE and EDEN who just want it to fail blah blah”. I’d just like to point out that the UK is a candidate for ALT and has been since day 1 more or less, because the UK is best friends with Poland. If we did jump into ALT the UK would be surrounded on all sides by allies and would have a really easy six months. On the other hand if CTRL fails the UK will be surrounded by hostile countries in the form of the USA, Canada, France and potentially Ireland too. So we’d be in a much worse situation, but you have to be realistic. Abandoning proven allies for an alliance which is falling apart already would be stupid. For now my own personal position, and also happily that of the UK President Talon, is to maintain our excellent relationship with big brother Poland (hi Junior here!) and our polite relations with the rest of CTRL.
The problems with CTRL will only get worse with time. The ultimatum issued by the USA that Poland drops its balkan MPPs has not been met with a similar action from them (a Croat MPP was signed just a few days ago) and the founder of CTRL aVie has publicly denounced the ultimatum. The sad thing is that an ultimatum to drop MPPs and forge a new, mutually agreed set is the ONLY way to save CTRL, but that ultimatum must come from a CTRL HQ not from one country to another. The USA making demands stinks of every other alliance they’ve ever been in, and despite it often not being true they are always accused of using their allies as puppets or meatshields.
The thing that I feel has gone least considered by Polish leaders about the Balkan involvement issue is that fighting wars abroad is to the benefit of Poland. Fighting via MPP against the EDEN nations provides them with the possibility to keep wars far from their borders. A simple NAP with the USA would provide both countries with a secure border and secure bonuses. The rest of the CTRL alliance is just fluff built on that. By being part of greater global alliances (or MPP networks as they are now) Poland and the USA can protect their own interests by keeping their enemies weak and their allies strong. Ditching the major balkan superpowers doesn’t make Poland stronger- in fact it makes them much more vulnerable by making more enemies and no new friends. This obvious political reality is directly responsible for the MPPs being maintained.
It’s time to acknowledge reality
Iain
Comments
first
subpole
mmm...... CTRL = Fake i remember ONE the best alliance :3
seems legit
good one. voted!!! \o/
brilliant!
and i see ctrl logo : D
True that, voted.
Nice but you are wrong on the main issue. You are trying to equalize the blame, but it is solely on Loland. I understand why you can't write it, being their junior xD
USA had no significant EDEN MPP since the day they attacked Canada. All this time Loland refused to distance itself from Balkans. USA offered a compromise - drop Serbian MPP (main pTO force in eUSA), keep Hungarian MPP and USA will resign Croatian MPP to balance it out. Loland refused even that.
So it is USA who was true to CTRL idea, they dropped main MPPs in Balkan, while Loland played their usual manipulative game and kept them all, including Bulgarian.
In short, telling Americans it is an alliance that is distancing itself from Balkans and insisting on keeping ALL powerful Balkan MPPs doesn't work well. Prophet got caught up in his own manipulations.
@Romper
Why no keep Romanian in exchange for Hungarian one?
Logic behind that would be reasonable as rivaly is between eHungary and eRomania as it is between eSerbia and eCroatia....
Also eUSA had sagnificient EDEN MPP and that was eChina and eArgentina.... Both countries possible CTRL/ALT members but still EDEN members....
It was a fail from the start
My regards to aVie : )
Because Loland insists on keeping their "bros", which are Huns. So eUSA insists on the same, keeping their "bros". Also, Hungarians are not pTOing them, Serbs are.
China and Argentina are in Balkans? Since when? The issue for CTRL is countries that refuse to distance themselves from Balkans and looking at MPPs in last months, it was Loland, not USA.
USA attacking Canada had nothing to do with CTRL, it was incidental to the situation. The only relation was the NAP with Poland.
Iain, I'd like to add a simple precision. Before 2 days ago with the signing of the MPP with Croatia, we did in fact not renew our MPP with balkan area country for a month and a half. This include Turkey, Greece, Croatia and Romania.
I think it would be fair to say that the US did it's part.
I have hard time to understand why is it Romper who is usually among the firsts to comment on anything CTRL related, and that he has insight into the things far greater than we might exept from someone who is in fact from a "Balkan" (I really dislike this word) country.
Can sum1 plz tell me the names of true not ex- or sumthing like that former or watever. But the names of the real alliances that are functioning as an alliance no ex-ONe or ex-CTRL,etc.
Chucky you are right of course, I was using the language used by CTRL where they use ex-ONE/EDEN interchangeably with "Balkan".
Needless to say I mean "old allies" or "allies not shared by all members".
it isnt balkan its south east europe!!!!
A Poland-Hungary MPP isn't equal to a US-Croatian one, Ctrl is meant to be anti-Balkan and Hungary isn't in the Balkans. Since Cromania went on holiday, and Macedonia/Greece/Turkey/Bulgaria stopped fighting each other a while ago, the Balkans haven't actually had many long wars to justify Ctrl's contempt of them.
Iain, you should read http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-ctrl-charter-mandate-or-gtfo-2139387/1/20 more carefully.
"I tell you, with pleasure, that I had the notion of invading Canada for many months so that the United States could shed her MPP stack and start something new. I tested the waters on April Fool's Day and was amazed at how easy it was going to be to push the United Stated to NE Canada. I worked with Code-Y over the months for an opportune time."
and tbh it is irrelevant, I only used it to point the exact time when USA lost Balkan MPPs.
Danie Fox, Balkan is only used as proximity region for 4 "never ending" or rather eternal wars. Hungary - Romania war is included in this description.
~hyuu~
@Danie Fox: Exactly.
@Romper: God why people like you - who are supposed to have some average or even mayor knowlagde of eRep ignore the fact that THERE HAVE BEEN NO "undening" BALKAN WAR FOR 3-4 months.
I am not ignoring that fact, I actually point it out rather often, but it is the same manipulation that Loland was using to change sides when they left EDEN and it is the same fairy tale they used to get USA and Brazil interested in CTRL.
Soon enough it will be used again, I have no doubts about it. Loland is motivated purely by protecting their resources. They would NAP or MPP everyone if they could, even if it would mean no wars at all (in an online war game!).
guys, get a life...
haha staruszek, writing that here kind of implies that you are just the same : P
Hopefully, France still loves UK : )
< 3
@Romper sometimes its even better than watching a comedy show.
Isn't eRep supposed to be fun? It is comedy show.
Little off topic
Romper, because of you, some other MasterCard owners and Plato's greed this game become more and more boring. Now the game is only fight fight fight and nothing else. No media module, destroyed economy module, and nonstop pointless wars.
Z0mbayo, so you think that without any profit over last years, the game would not be what it is now? I agree. There would be no game.
Or do you believe servers and employees are free?
I remember the time when we used to complaint about having no war, lol.
No there's no free food , but most of the new changes serves only minority of the gamers , it's sad that these peoples pays the bills
sorry for the off topic 🙂
And who should pay the bills? Also, implementing divisions was a change that was good for newer players, was it not? Just saying, there were some good changes along the way. Workers doing the work and you allocating them as you like, was that not good as well?
What you really don't like is the fact that buyers are progressing faster than you can. But what game isn't favoring the paying customers?
Didn't USA get rid of their MPP stack because EDEN countries were interfering in their internal politics? It wasn't about anti-Balkan It was solely anti-EDEN. Nobody forced them to do it. They did it out of their own will.
Not to mention if every CTRL member maintains it's main MPP stack we could easily fight each other in some wars (China vs Serbia so nothing would change to what we had before), while helping each other in another wars. Nothing wrong about that I guess.
And at the time Loland left EDEN, there were no Balkan wars either, because every Balkan country was conquered : P
Multiple game changes allowed the war theatre to return form Asia and the Americas back to Europe, where the biggest revenue is. 😉
Kolorowy, nice try, but as it turns out it was Serbian pTO after all (oh, surprise!). They lost MPP when they attacked Canada and if you read AA article, he tells you the reason for it.
Ofc you can try and manipulate it but I doubt anyone still believes in Loland lies. But keep trying.
The issue is not fighting each other in some other wars, it is "distance yourself from Balkans" part that Loland failed horribly.
CTRL charter: As a side benefit of ensuring the prosperity of all CTRL members, the alliance also seeks to reduce the game’s current focus on Balkan-centric conflicts.
"And at the time Loland left EDEN, there were no Balkan wars either, because every Balkan country was conquered : P "
You lie on purpose or what? Loland left because they didn't want to fight in eternal Balkan wars, and then they kept fighting in those only for the other side! Classic junior move. Which also implies that wars kept going for a long time and were going on when Loland left. Ofc AFTER EDEN made it possible for Loland to get bonuses in USA. Regions you used to sneak attack them...
Actually nobody denied there is a Serbian pTO, but that didn't mean there wasn't EDEN players interfering with eUS politics. also leaking confidential congress stuff (some Greeks did it).
So this was also a factor of getting rid of EDEN MPPs. The tensions between Terra and EDEN were growing since Brazil wasn't too happy how EDEN reacted on Nemesis pTO in Brazil. (Wasn't a huge pTO, but Brazillians didn't feel comfortably with it either) and later EDEN started messing around in USA.
Also how can you distance yourself from Balkans if there are no wars over there for quite some time anyway. 😉 Also having an MPP does not force you to fight in those battles. There are plenty of other battles to fight in.
Want to provide me the information on polish CoTD being put on Balkan conflict in the last month?
Or you're just assuming having Balkan MPP means fighting in the Balkans? 😉
Distancing yourself from Balkans means exactly that. Distancing yourself. Nobody forced anybody to break MPPs. Brazil had Croatian MPP and nobody told them not to renew them They didn't sign a Romanian MPP, but I already answered why was that. Same could be attributed to USA. Nobody told them to break those MPPs.
And Loland left EDEN because our govt didn't like Romanian govt. That's basicly it.
And as we pacified the Balkans, we get into other regions of the world. Your memory must serve you really bad if you do not remember that.
Hungary controlled Romania, Serbia controlled BiH and Croatia, Macedonia controlled Greece, Turkey controlled Bulgaria. Albania wasn't even there.
That's what I meant there wasn't any conflict in the Balkans when we left. Your sense of irony isn't functioning well either 😉
The conflict zone came back to Balkans only because said game changes that benefited mostly EDEN and disorganized ONE.
Romper si lurking through all news just to put "I hate LOLand " everywhere he can. You dont have to read his comments really. They are always same.... Seems like he has some fobia or maybe its not good when not all can be conquered with his mastercard.
Well, the thing is, everything can be conquered with money here. It only depends how much you're willing to spend.
And Romper himself already conquered Loland in December last year. After that he got hibernated, just to unhibernate himself (unofficially) again to teach bad Bulgarians a lesson. 😉
You're too young for that 😉
The problem i see in that part of the charter Romper quotes: "CTRL charter: As a side benefit of ensuring the prosperity of all CTRL members, the alliance also seeks to reduce the game’s current focus on Balkan-centric conflicts. " is that i can not see anywhere there information that reducing focus = breaking MPP's. Im gonna tell one more time. From what i know (altho wasnt part of it)Polish representatives never said they will drop MPPs with mentioned countries.
For example IMO reducing focus means not sending troops by goverment to fight in battles if wars start inluding mentioned countries.
PS. Albania is also Balkan country just so you know.
On the sidenote, Brazil has 3 MPPs with Balkan countries Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Greece. USA has 2: Albania and Croatia, Spain 1: Serbia (best score from all CTRL members) and Poland 2: Bulgaria and Serbia. Just saying.