【MoFA】A roundup of recent happenings
Foreign Office
Today's update outlines some of the happenings that have gone on recently, with some explanations about the potential rammifications, as well as potential insights into what the future may hold. For everyone's comfort, there's a tl;dr at the bottom.
Arena 1: The Middle East
After a relative period of pro-Asteria stability in the region, Hungary launched a successful airstrike to try and mix things up a bit. With a huge amount of effort put in on both sides, ultimately this resulted in a huge campaign which culminated yesterday in some waddling fingers between Hungary and Poland, and a barrage of Resistance Wars, filled with Combat Orders against Hungary.
Although there was valiant fighting, ultimately Hungary succesfully defended all of these, and went on to continue their attack, by invading our ally Macedonia. This battle is currently active, and at the time of writing things arne't looking great, with Macedona already down two rounds.
The Middle East has long been a refuge for Macedonia and Bulgaria, and Hungary's invasion into the region will definitely make things a lot more complicated for our two allies, as well as Iran. This campaign was a fightback against the nations, after some losses for anti-Asteria in the European theatre.
The main fallout from this isn't, however, limited to our allies. Although successful, there was a break in the chink of Pacifica relations, with Polish damage split in the battle (some for, and some against, Hungary.) There were some incriminating images of Combat Orders (COs) being set against Hungary doing the rounds, culminating in a semi-standoff between the two. Despite this, Hungary won all of their battles, and will not doubt be mixing things up in the Middle East over the coming days.
There's a big potential war in the making too, with Hungary launching a Declaration of War, and Natural Enemy against our ally Spain. As things stand it looks like it could be a tense time for Spain, based on the success Hungary has had in its most recent wars, thanks to strong support from Pacifica, and other anti-Asteria countries.
Arena 2 - Europe
First and foremost, it's basically TWEurope, amirite? Some of our neighbours are engaged in similar enforced TWs like we currently have with the US, including Switzerland and Norway. There are current TWs, on more friendly terms, between Lithuania/Sweden, Lithuania/Latvia, France/Italy, Germany/Denmark and who could ever forget Ireland/Peru too.
In terms of real wars, Romania is re-wiping Greece, and the Bulgaria-Macedonia-Turkey war continues. This was was originally closed as Serbia got involved, but with our two allies returning to the map, it has become a three-way standoff, with Turkey making ground in both wars. This essentially means that our two allies are losing on two fronts: at home in Europe, and in their Middle-Eastern colonies (which they originally gained from Greece.)
Arena 3 - South America
After constant Asterian agression, things have somewhat calmed in the region recently. Serbia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia had been the main aggressors, but as things stand only Serbia and Slovenia remain. As things stand, Arengentina and Chile have been wiped off the map by Serbia, with the countries originally being split between Serbia and Romania. Slovenia has various regions in Nigeria, ensuring a border with Brazillian regions, and a suspiciously quiet war continues versus Brazil.
Although the region has been overrun by Asteria for some time, it is still an area of interest: the aforementioned finger wagging between Poland-Hungary was based on an accusation that the removal of Poland from South America had something to do with Hungary.
That's pretty much all I have time to go over: thanks for reading
~jw
Comments
Don't ask for pictures kthxbye
Good article, but you missed a TW in Europe, Ireland and Peru
Woops! Updating now, thanks for the reminder.
Slovenia-Brazil is a TW, not a real war. But good article, voted.
This is all faggotry.
Nice job.
Great article o7
Great MoFA article and team o7
I wonder if anyone in the eUK actually reads these articles?
"There's a big potential war in the making too, with Hungary launching a Declaration of War, and Natural Enemy against our ally Spain. As things stand it looks like it could be a tense time for Spain, based on the success Hungary has had in its most recent wars, thanks to strong support from Pacifica, and other anti-Asteria countries."
Spain has been arguably the eUK's strongest and most loyal supporter these past couple of years, yet not one person it appears decided to fight for Spain.
Round 1 of Hungary vs Spain in Ha'il and eUK participation for Spain = 0
TP killed the game end of story.
STR building again. The game mechanics make all of this a nightmare for Div 1 players. 🙁
The same few people read them.
eUK has always been terrible when it comes to helping allies, if it wasn't for guys like Keers, eUK would never have got a look in in some of the alliances we found ourselves in.
Even tempting eUKers with CO's only gets you so far. Especially when TP's are on offer.
Well I shall be interested to see how the dynamics change in the eUK now that British Patriots and its Congress slate for this month are under new management.
We can all identify problems and probably agree on what most of them are and some will likely stem from changes made in eRepublik itself over the years and how it has affected players gameplay. However, I also think the eUK has unfortunately shot itself in the foot by abandoning the forums. I have never understood what exactly the problems were and no doubt there were faults on all sides - I had a good few arguments with the moderators myself over how things were done and I didn’t see the point of trying to take it up directly with Kumnaa as it wasn’t worth it.
The things that have always stood out as the problem areas for me in the current setup are:-
Two Congress threads with neither able to see and contribute to what the other is discussing - the advantage of a forum system is everyone can contribute and discussion is topic orientated.
Apart from repeating newspaper articles there is no facility to record and make available to all citizens relevant long term information such as NHS, Gov’t programmes, Gov’t and Congress activity month on month. How can any new or returning players get a handle on anything if they have no idea what has been discussed the month before - this applies to both Congress and Government.
It is for me the complete lack of plumbing to underpin and support an eNation that is the reason for the continued failure of the eUK, with peoples aversion to what seems obviously an altogether more logical and beneficial way of doing things seems like collective suicide.
Fundamentally if no one in the eUK takes anything seriously then there’s no reason for anyone to take the eUK seriously.
So long as BP put their weight behind someone other then King Willy, I assume they'll have their party back next election and unless one of the other parties nominates someone decent, BP will win the next CP election.
I assume some issues are from changes made and it's safe to say a lack of changes has also played a part. It's been going for 10 years, that's an impressive feat for such a simple browser game.
As a player from the opposite side to you during the whole forums I'll try to explain my personal stance on it and the rationale behind the movement from my side (there was 2 sides in the anti-forums, we may have agreed on some things, we greatly disagreed on others).
I used the forums, I used em regularly and would probably still use em now if they were at all relevant. You get to better understand your fellow player, which is handy for many reasons, especially in a 'politics' simulator, you aren't limited to a word count, its fairly easy to pull up information that is required and you can become friends with your in game enemies. My issue and the issue from my side, UKPP was the fact that in game participation was dwindling and accounts were suffering because the forums held precedent. In order to be legitimate you had to be not only active but also accepted on the forums. It felt like the game was being played anywhere other then the website. We needed to drag people back in game and build accounts. With the way the game was going, daily log ins were paramount.
We got people back in the game and doing in game stuff, we tried to cater for every player rather then the few and due to the games awful design, splitting Mongress was the only option. The only negative I see is as you mentioned, no archives and 2 groups.
In my opinion, the forums decline goes hand in hand with the decline in eRep, every idea had already been thought of, every thread had copies from down the years, the game became stagnant and so the forums become redundant.
Great article o7