Why Diplomacy Is Our Only Option
Lee Deity
As surprising as it may be to older citizens of Australia, there are a lot of citizens who still seem to believe that we should "stick it" to the Indonesians, that we can take our country back through military means, and that our attempts at Diplomacy with our giant neighbor are fruitless and will inevitably fail unless we show the Indonesians that "we mean business".
Today, I'd like to show you the numbers about why such an approach is simply not a workable one.
Australia has, at the time of writing, 1955 citizens, with an average strength of 2.38 and an average level of 8. Today we have 66 new citizens, and we have about 11 people online right now.
Indonesia has, at the time of writing, 8429 citizens, with an average strength of 3.71, and an average level of 14. Today they have 265 new citizens, and they have about 120 people online right now.
So, looking just at these figures, Indonesia has over four times the population, who are on average 1 1/2 times the strength of us, and who are almost twice the level we are, growing at about a similar rate per capita (which means many more citizens per day), and they generally have about 10 times the number of people online. They also share our timezone, for the most part, so we have no advantage of "surprise".
Further, Indonesia is in a near-constant state of war, and their economy is well-built to pump out weapons to support their conflicts. We'd need to radically increase the number of weapons-makers in our economy to catch up with Indonesia's production. And of course, weapons are still expensive - we'd need to supercharge the rest of the economy so that our soldiers could all afford those guns. Such a change in the configuration of our economy would be very easy to notice, especially since the Government would have to be involved.
But wait, you may say, couldn't we wait until they're involved elsewhere and pull their pants down then? This might seem like a good idea in theory, but in our case, it's not so useful. In the event that Indonesia fights two fronts, and divides their forces evenly, we're still outmanned and outgunned 2:1. If Indonesia fights four fronts, it's a bit more even, but they'll still have more people than we do in the war, and more strength to throw at us. If their attention is divided six ways, there's probably a chance we'd succeed, but Indonesia'll still have the advantage, since they have a wartime economy running right now, while we don't.
But wait, you say, surely we could convince allies to fight in the war with us? This is an option, but not a good one. In terms of total experience in the country, Indonesia is number two at the time of writing, so the only country that could single-handedly take out Indonesia is Romania, who are currently already in a war with Indonesia that's not completely going their way.
Of course, no sane commander would ask just one country to participate, they'd ask everyone, right? So let's assume that the top 5 non-Indonesian countries came to our aid, liberated Australia. So, umm, what happens next? Indonesia is still right next to us, and once the allies leave, what's stopping Indonesia from just taking us over all over again? You'd pretty much have to totally conquer Indonesia to nullify the threat, and even then, Indonesia would just start a resistance war until they had most of their original country back, and then we'd be in exactly the same place we were before. Except now we have a very pissed Indonesia with no reason not to attack us and take our resources.
Now, people ask why Indonesia would bother with Diplomacy, considering how large they are, and this is a good point. We have no reason to assume that a diplomatic solution would succeed in liberating all of Australia. But we do at least have a chance with Diplomacy, while a Military solution is pretty much guaranteed to fail very quickly and take Free Australia down with it.
Thank you very much for listening, I hope we've learned something from this presentation.
Comments
Pertamax blocker
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Awesome Article.
EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS ARTICLE
This is the clearest and best-ststed explanation of eAustralia's current policy regarding relations with eIndonesia. Any ecitizens with lingering doubts that diplomacy is our best (possibly only) solution needs to read and understand these stats - thanks for a great article!
Fantastic article mate!
Keep up with the good work and hope to hear more from you.
Great article.
"people ask why Indonesia would bother with Diplomacy"
If they undertake a hostile takeover of eAustralia, they end up with a country which will have continuous resistance wars. Australians will not take being under Indonesian rule lightly, and will resist.
eIndonesia's could consider their best solution to be a free and friendly eAustralia, forfeiting our resource base for the ability to trade with us and be able to concentrate their military elsewhere.
GREAT ARTICLE 😁
at last some sense
by the way read this: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/a-nation-s-response-on-western-australia-rw--752218/1/20
Juan Tamad
Senator, NSW
Calizard, I must advise that resistance wars during Indonesian rule was practically worthless and actually used by Indonesian as training ground for Indonesian soldiers, despite helps from many Atlantis's soldiers to that RW.
Only after Australian sever their relation with Atlantis, Indonesia was willing to begin the talk, despite outcry by many of its citizens (and some parliament members) to not give any independence, especially due "treachery" to diplomacy in that resistance war.
I still remember clearly that many Indonesian citizens actually wanted to give back independence before that resistance wars. However, the number fell sharply due that treachery and almost causing no independence for you if there was no public figure in Indonesia urged giving Australia, independence.
Don't destroy our good relationship....
look eIndia as example..!
good article m8, not to mention the fact that even if we could muster allies, they wouldnt be on the same timezone as eAustralia and eIndonesia and at the primetime we would be annihalated 😉.
Every Romanian should read this. Voted.
Inspiring mon frer. Great research, clear presentation and persuasive writing. Great job.
Most up-to-date Worldmap
Please vote this article up:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/world-map-478-up-to-date-752679/1/all
Voted, Excellent!
still no comments from AW? 😃 i really like to hear him criticize this
Well I get tired of reminding people of the mechanics of this game. You all seem to ignore this & as a result produce flawed material.
Simple fact. There are not 4 times the Indonesians here to eAustralians. Game mechanics inflate eIndonesia's population by including non-Indonesians residing on occupied territories (which include Australians in QLD, SA,WA, Sth Africans, etc. It's also massively inflated by the number of people who's travelled to eIndonesia specifically to fight eRomania.
All of these things makes you analysis flawed. The fact that so many in charge don't understand game mechanics is not something that's in eAustralia's favor.
You haven't done all the counting, have you AW?
Okay, let's take your argument that only the Indonesian home regions count in terms of firepower. I can argue against this, but let's assume it, just for the moment. That means we're counting the regions of Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku Islands, Papua, and the Lesser Sunda Islands. At the time of writing, the combined population of all those regions is still 2837 citizens, which is still 1 1/2 times our population. And if you filter out those citizens, I'm willing to bet that the Indonesian Strength and Experience advantage actually increases, and you've still got the Indonesian weapons industry, which is still much larger than our own, and we can't increase such a major industry in secret.
And of course, there are Indonesians from the Home regions that live in the colonial regions, so just focusing on the Home regions doesn't actually give us a perfect picture. Further, there are people in the Colonies who will happily wage war, regardless of who's in charge. So, let's assume that 5-10% of the colonial population is also going to fight for Indonesia, and that's a 280-560 citizen bonus right there, and I'm sure that I'm being stingy.
In short, the numbers still don't work out for us, even if you restrict the amount of force that the Indonesians could theoretically bear.
Hmm. May have to write a more indepth follow-up article about this...
I look forward to reading it Lee 😉
btw, Nice rebuttal.
good job Lee, to be honest you're being conservative still 😛
-Juan
While I'm not happy with the state of affairs at the moment in eAustralia, particularly the bickering amongst our own citizens, the facts are there and I'm happy to support a diplomatic response to the situation. Nice article and keep up the good work.
I'd guarantee that a large number of the 1600 players currently in Java ain't Indonesian. You're still forgetting that many of those in eIndonesia are only there to fight eRomania (just as many in eRomania (such as myself) are only there to fight eIndonesia). A large percentage of these players wouldn't be there if it was a different opponent (such as eAustralia). As such the numbers would be lower.
Simple fact is that people are either being deliberately deceptive or ignorant to overly support their puppet-like status to eIndonesia. And it is puppetlike status. Not only is most of eAustralia occupied but the eAustralian administration are subservient to eIndonesia. The eAustralian administration supports attacking Australian citizens (and anybody wishing to help eAustralia) for eIndonesia's will.
- -
It's not saying that we neccessarily behave recklessly, however the current arguments about needing to pander to eIndonesia's will because of some supposed 4+ times population advantage isn't correct.
Finally unless we can stand up on our own two feet & have a actual will of our own (& not be eIndonesia's puppets) then we can never be free.
Then we still come back to the position that this is a game. And as a relatively new user that has only been playing for about 30 days, I have to wonder what the point of all this is if there is no war for me to fight.
"Today we have 66 new citizens" and I bet most of them joined because they wanted to play a game of interest, rather than replicate the monotony of daily real-world politics.
For these new people, as with myself, the best they can look forward to for the next 30 days is clicking "Work", then clicking "Train" and then ... nothing. Repeat the process tomorrow.
Without a war there really is nothing to look forward to.
War, and the sense of tension of conflict, is the only real differentiator between this game and real-life. Unless you aspire to be a politician.
And in the first 30-days of playing, you cannot afford to do anything other than click Work and (occasionally) Train.
Australia needs a conflict to give people a sense of purpose. Otherwise what's the point of playing eRepublik?
-Tangram.
I don't like Indo personally but I don't think military means is an option, however we must remember to keep contacts with countries other than Indonesia.
Tangram: I know what you mean, join the EAus forums and find your niche there.
http://forums.aussierepublik.com/index.php
there is always something to do 🙂
if you really want war -> you can always move and get some exp 😛 that career path is very much exciting
-Juan Tamad
Tangram : I think you're missing the point. It's the buying of food at the best price that makes it exciting. The satisfaction of a 95c food purchase would make it worth paying for the game.
Although seriously, I'm newer than you at a mere 8 days, but I can see where the game is leading. There are dozens of better war games around, this one is meant to be social and so far I think it does a good job.
More on topic...in two days we get our treaty renegotiated, and our president (?) seems confident we will regain more region(s). No doubt it won't be Western Australia, that one is a bit too useful. Once that decision is made and acted upon, then maybe it is time for people to start uniting as a country and working together to make eAustralia great, in whatever way possible.
see im really happy! 🙂 people of different levels are commenting 😃
Juan Tamad sai😛 "if you really want war -> you can always move and get some exp 😛 that career path is very much exciting"
You are right being Level 11 now, with some excess cash, I can now by a Moving Ticket for AU$15.
However for a newcomer to the game, they cannot do this until they have spent the first couple of weeks of being enrolled and clicking "Work" every day. And do pretty much nothing else.
My point is that without a conflict to engage new players, this game will continue to have a high rate of new player loss.
-T.
Eloquent, clear and beautifully written. The best piece on Australia's current situation out there from the man that really knows what he's talking about. Good job!
~Tabi