Aileron

I'd like to respond to your comments on Hezbollah. First off, for a very long time, Israel was doing absolutely nothing to Lebanon, and Hezbollah decided out of the blue to start rocketing Israel. More importantly, let's discuss those civilian casualties. To my knowledge, Hezbollah has approximately 1000 full-time soldiers and about 10000 persons "on-call". Those "on-call" people are volunteers who normally have regular jobs Point being 99% of Hezbollah members have day jobs. Secondly, you have to understand the tactics they use. These tactics are the same for Hamas, Hezbollah, and half the insurgents in Iraq, because Iran is training all of them. They like to set up fixed positions at which they store weapons and ammunition. They use the weapons at that direct location. If that location is about to be overrun, the terrorist leaves the weapons there, and will advance to the next position unarmed. This is done so that the terrorist can travel quickly without having to carry weapons and ammunition. Hezbollah's large scale strategy is similar. They have strongholds which they fight from, and when they lose a stronghold, they send their people to the next one using unarmed light vehicles. The side effect of this tactic is that it blurs the line between soldier and civilian. The same Hezbollah member could one minute be a soldier fighting at one cache, then drop his weapons and move to the fallback position, at which point he will pick up another weapon and continue fighting. The thing is, while he is travelling he is considered in the eyes of international law to be a civilian, because he is unarmed and fleeing the fighting. Similarly, there could be a Hezbollah stronghold that was about to fall to the Israelis, so the soldiers evacuate to a rally point by truck. Israeli intelligence tracks the trucks, which are bombed en route. The UN shows up and observes the damage to find civilian vehicles travelling north away from the fighting, with a bunch of unarmed men inside who are wearing civilian clothes. A background check reveals that 99% of them have day jobs and familys and all that. Thus, they come to the conclusion that Israel screwed up the intel and bombed a civilian target when in reality they were correct and bombed a military target. War isn't nice and clear-cut...its usually confusing, especially when one side wants to add to the confusion by pretending to be a civilian. Under Geneva a soldier dressed as a civilian is considered a spy and the opposing side is not bound to give a spy any mercy. Thus, I wouldn't blame Israel for that civilian death toll to be high....Hezbollah engineered it that way.

Yeah, but if you had kept at it, you would have had as much money as I had...which I can't say because I forgot what that number is...what is one thousand times a trillion called? Whatever it is, I had ten of them.

Hey, I knew it was a stretch...that's why in the end I decided to do it myself anyway.

I can tell you how the super savings account is going to work out right now. Right now, total points is bounded from above by the function p = 2550 t^2. Where p is the number of points and t is the number of hours. (s = 33 * t, dp/dt = 150 s where s is the number of troops) 33 is the max UP per hour. 150 is the max income per soldier. The hourly interest rate of a super saver account is .25/48 = .5% hourly interest. The value of a bank account follows a standard exponential growth rate and is: a = b e^(.005 * t) where a is the amount of money in the account, b is the amount of points the player invested the account to start with, and e is e. According to some trial and error done on my graphing calculator, the new super saver account requires a 100,000,000 investment in order to "explode" into a ridiculous amount of income. !@#$%^&*uming a player had maxed UP, didn't lose anything to attacks, and saved everything, it would take him 9 days of traditional income to reach that amount. Conclusion: The increase in the UP max and the decrease in the Super Saver account interest will slow down the problem. However, by week two, the same thing will happen as what happened in the last round. People will drop a large amount of points into the super saver account and live off the interest. Suggestion: As long as there is ANY UP cap in place, the explosion of the Super Saver account is inevitable. However, we aren't playing for all eternity, we are playing for a month. There are two possible solutions to this problem: 1) Further reduce or eliminate the interest of the super saver account. However, successfully doing so would make super saver interest trivial. Since income from a capped UP is quadratic and bank account interest is exponential, it is IMPOSSIBLE to balance the two out. 2) Make the UP have no limit. That would make income an exponential function, and then balancing it with the bank interest would be a simple matter.

Whoa! 10 turns per hour?!? That's still WAAAY too much! Remember, that means 24 attacks per day. I'd say about 2 per hour, and even that's too much given the number of people playing. Is UP capped by 100 then?

They do. They bring in 500 points per hour. The only thing such an account can't do is rise in the rankings.

There was another problem we noticed today. There were a couple all-covert accounts, but spies and sentries for some reason do not count towards troop totals. Thus while in reality they had several thousand spies, in the matters of "can someone attack him" they had a ridiculously small number. While it is clear that a player cannot gain rank this way, it should be possible to deal with them. The technique Sama and I developed to combat this is for one person to give most of their troops to the other, carry out the attacks, and then the second person gives the troops back. If transfer services are limited, that would make an all-covert account invincible. If you do change the transfer services, you will have to make spies and sentries count towards the check of if that player is allowed to be attacked.

We need to come up with a prayer schedule so that the masses can worship the 1337ness of the SSCentralGods properly. I'd say there should be a morning prayer service where the masses prey Sama doesn't kill all their soldiers, an evening prayer servive so that I don't sab all their weapons in the middle of the night, a mid-day prayer so that Dav doesn't take all their points, and small hourly prayers that freakmonger doesn't sick the whole clan on their sorry !@#$%^&*es. Then we could just smite any players who don't follow the schedule.

Free advice Veg: When you sab someone, and you don't get caught, don't brag about it!! You are just lucky the attack limit is so low or you would have really lost some spies here. Would you consider rejoining the SSCentralGods next round? The MG Infidels will probably be back with avengance, so it should be a good even matchup. BTW, I'd also recommend any new players to consider joining our clan for the next round. Right now we have a lot of super-acounts but no common grunts, and the four of us would be more than happy to beat on those weaker than us in the name of protecting fellow clan members. However, most of enemies are so weak that they get newbie protection features, and we could use a few new players ourselves so as to take out the newbs. Its really up to freakmonger, but I'd bet he is willing to accept new members right now.

!@#$%^&* nevermind, I found a way to take him out anyway. Didn't help that much though...contest is still on, but he should be phased for the rest of the afternoon.

Alright! We've reached the homestretch and I am announcing what is likely to be the last contest. If you don't have an uber bank account but only have a handfull of troops, this contest is for you!!! NBVegita appears to be weak, but in reality he has a !@#$%^&*load of covert and nothing else! However, because covert doesn't "count" towards troop levels, few people can attack him. There is a reward of 100 thors and 100 temp shields + temp supers to anyone who executes a 10 turn attack and posts it here. Watch for reprisal sabs. Each 10 turn attack wil garner and addition 100 each...attack him 8 times in a row for 800 of each!! If you want some last minute funds to boost your rank at the last minute, this is the opportunity for you!! Contest ends upon when the reset happens. (BTW, for those of you who actually still care at this point, I'm withdrawing the bounty on Cigar.)

!@#$%^&*! That's the first time I actually lost something of worth this session. I can't surp!@#$%^&* Sama though. Right now this is all about the number of troops, and everyone has wanted to kill me for the past month. All those little idiotic raids actually mean something now. I have no qualms though. The SSCentral Gods have clearly smited 95% of our enemies. Sadly enough though, in order to become an uber-pro like myself, you need put up with losing a couple times. I got my !@#$%^&* kicked BAD in three seperate MMORPGs before becoming decent. It was the kind of instantaneous trip back to the stone age that isn't even possible in this version. What's more, if they started significantly earlier than you did, you are screwed. Not all of these things have monthly resets. If the person you are trying to face has a year-old headstart and is best friends with the guy running the RPG, you are screwed.

Hey, all I'm saying is that I've read the Communist Manifesto and that you agree with most of the points in there. I'd put the line that's between anti-zionism and anti-semitism at killing Jewish civilians for no other reason than that they are Jewish. By that standard I'd say they have crossed that line by funding Hamas and Hezbollah. Still that is trivial. I'm not worried about Israel. They've proven to be able to take care of themselves. I'm worried about the world. Iran is the type of country that would actually use nukes if some lunatic clerical leader said it was the will of Allah. If I'm not mistaken, those positions are heredetary, so all the world would be waiting for is for some equivolent to Phillip II (el re!@#$%^&*ito) to be born and *poof*, the world is covered with radioactive fallout. Some governments just can't be trusted to handle nuclear weapons responsibly. Ideally, no government can. That's why its difficult for new nations to join the "nuclear club". However, some really can't be trusted. That being, said, I know according to them they only want nuclear power. If they were to show an act of good faith, perhaps by cutting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, it would help their cause. Until that time they are a country that's engaging in hostilities with an ally of the US and not too long ago laid siege to the US emb!@#$%^&*y. Under said cir!@#$%^&*stances the US can't afford to believe them.

Usually that's because the indigenous cultures happen to be living in squalor and violence. I mean at first glance there's nothing wrong with tribalism. Look deeply however and the average lifespan for your typical indigenous tribe is somewhere around 30. They typically have no educational opportunities and few occupational freedoms. Anthropologists have a very cruel opinion on these matters, though by accident. They frankly don't like the work of missionaries because they want to study the tribes. Tribes aren't some sort of science experiment to be studied - they are human beings who should have a right to pursue the life they want to. However, because they are born in a tribe, their only choice is grow up, hunt for food their entire lives, and die a death that is premature by modern standards. If the tribal were born in a more civilized area, he might have pursued an education and could have decided to be a doctor, astronaut, or anthropologist for that matter and could easily haved lived twice as long. So, why preserve the tribal traditions? To save the tribe for observation by future generations? Human beings are not meant to live in a zoo! To preserve proud traditions? First off I wouldn't consider stabbing an animal with a wooden spear while wearing a loincloth inherently proud or noble. Nor would I want people to live that life just to preserve some traditions that have long outlived their usefullness anyway. Third of all, that which is worth preserving of these traditions, such as art and cermonies and such, usually survive anyway. Actually, after the tribe modernises and starts to spread around the world, the traditions seem to spread around the world as well, creating new types of celebrations. Cultures are machinery by which people live. Like all machinery though, they can sometimes break, and obsolesence is inevitable. After a tool becomes obsolete, it has no place outside of a museum. This applies to cultures as well. Most missionary work occurs in poor shanty towns however. Its the same thing except that there is no culture to speak of, just people living in poverty, beset by violence, plagued by disease. They lack food, water, shelter, health care, education, peace, and a future. They lack things that we take for granted, that we rightfully take for granted because human beings deserve such things provided they work for them. Most of all, they have no hope of ever getting themselves out of that mess. You would deny that hope in the name of cultural diversity? Yes, sometimes when you take a stand, you can be wrong. That is not a proper excuse to be nuetral in all things. You might fight for the wrong cause by mistake, or the right cause may be corrupted by the overzealous. However, the action of not taking an action has consequences, and more often than not the consequence of apathy is far worse than the consequence of misguided action.

He's not Middle Eastern. Given multiple comments SeVeR has said over the years in regards to his opinion on foreign policy, religion, economics, and the government role in things, he follows the pattern of a theorhetical Marxist. Whether or not he identifies himself as such I do not know. I'm basing my opinion on "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it most likely is a duck." As such he despises US foreign policy. He sees capitalism as the cause of war and views US actions as capitalistic endeavors. As such he is looking for champions of an anti-US policy. It seems Iran is "opposing" the US, though it really amounts to diplomatic arguing at this point, so SeVeR likes Iran. In reality SeVeR's political viewpoints are at extreme odds with the typical Middle Eastern governmental opinion. He can't recognize this, because every source other than the ones Iran controls he dismisses as capitalistic propaganda. Right now in his mind he uses the WMD arguement, that because we did not find WMDs in Iraq that all sources of western media are lying. It involves two faulty !@#$%^&*umptions, first off that the intelligence reports were not merely faulty but actual conspiracy and !@#$%^&*uming that, that the consipiracy is widespread enough to include all private media except that from the Middle East. Without the WMD debacle he would have a similar arguement right now, though it would have even more holes than this one. The most interesting thing about SeVeR is that though he may not know it, there is only a razor thin difference between his current opinion and that of the most pro-Bush zealot you can find. All the difference is that he would need to see a source that he can believe tell him how nations like Iran truly function. The problem with that is the only source he would be willing to believe would be an anti-authoratative Iranian underground source, which doesn't exist in Iran because the country doesn't have free press. If the typical Middle Easterner were posting here, he would pretty nuetral on these matters. On one hand, they don't like the idea of far away governments telling them what to do. On the other, the nearby governments that rule them now are at best corrupted by tribal influences and at worst those tribal influences are the government. There is a lot of hatred but not a true positive cause to support. Thus the political opinion of your typical Middle Easterner is very angry. There is anger that their countries are influenced heavily by foreigners, there is anger that their own governments can't do their jobs, but most of all there is anger that there is no third option. However, all that anger has no direction, no purpose it can be put to. Thus, most Middle Easterners are stuck with no opinion.

Well, I for one don't like Baptists, primarily because they have a huge tendancy to act like this. However, there's a trick to dealing with either Baptists and similar Calvanist offshoots. I'll tell you what it is, though sub-conciously you already know it. See, us Catholics are currently getting the most converts of any religion by non-violent means, though we admittingly can't keep up with Islam's "join our peacefull religion or we'll shoot you and your family" arguement. See, we preferr to let our actions speak for us. Our favorite tactic is to move in to third world villiages, improve the place, and then after the people of the villiage are living a much better life then ask them to convert. Its dangerous work, because most of these places are filled with violence and disease. However, currently Catholicism is spreading accrossed Africa very quickly. Baptists however are weak. They don't go to the third world to convert. They don't go anywhere that doesn't have cons!@#$%^&*utionalised free speech protection. They prefer places like college campuses where there are no significant problems, pick a street corner and just talk and talk and talk. There's no action. They offer no proof that they are worth listening to. Usually something so small as the rain will cause them to pack up and go home. Confess+ is doing the same thing. He only engages in an environment that is comfortable for him. You can defeat people like this by changing the environment. In your case, you already have decided to change the environment from his own zone to this topic, so deep down you already know how to deal with him. When they preach, its always about fire and brimstone, which is a very dumb way to try to persuade someone. The path of true righteousness is difficult, and Christ demands that his followers carry their own burdens and defeat their own demons. Following Christ is a path of great difficulty and pain. It is paradoxical to tell someone that they should voluntarily endure one type of pain for the purpose of avoiding another type of pain. I'm certainly not a model Christian. The reason I follow Christ is because I despise evil. Its better than "I'm a chicken!@#$%^&* and am afraid of !@#$%^&*" but still isn't proper. The proper reason to follow God is out of love for that which is good. When attempting to convert somebody, that is the motivation you should try for.

What I mean was the cost in points per UP upgrade was linear.

There are two updates that absolutely *need* to be done: UP cannot have a max. However, it also cannot increase linearly. It needs to be a regressive function. The first round was a linear UP, and everyone's UP exploded. This time UP had a low max causing the bank and cost of maintaining weapons to exceed income. Not only that, but troop numbers didn't reach the level in which casualties could become a factor. Attack turns should have a rate of two an hour. That translates to a little more than 4 attacks per day, which is plenty. Infact, two per hour may be too much. If turns were valueble, it would be impossible to attack on the hour. That way if income is a little higher than it should be, it won't be a disaster. A third update I would like to see, though it isn't crucial, is the addition of a new type of soldier. In most KoC games, there are "miners". They are trained units that stay out of combat and bring in more income. In our case, I think we should have a "greener". However, I think they should NOT bring in extra income, and should only stay out of OFFENSIVE combat...if Adam attacks Bob and Bob has no defense but a !@#$%^&*load of greeners, Bob deserves to lose some of them. I've seen too many ASSS who relied upon the indestructible nature of miners...to be honest I've done that myself a couple times. However, if Bob has 1000 offensive weapons, he shouldn't have to send 10000 soldiers in to battle when most of them are unarmed anyway.

The best way to answer the question must involve contemplating a universe which contains no life. A universe which contains no life could hypothetically contain many wonders, but no being would experience them. As absurd as it is, the meaning of life question is related to the "If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?". Regardless of the answer to that question, it is clear that without someone around to hear it, the sound has no relevancy. The tree could sound like a tree falling, or make no sound, or sound like a duck quacking for that matter yet it would contain no relevance because no one experienced it. Without life, the universe with all its wonders would be like a painting in a box or a CD on a shelf. Until the painting is viewed or the CD is listened to, their contents contain no importance. The purpose of life is to provide meaning to the universe.

Pakistan and India aren't. Military might comes from economic might. The nations who are considered to have strong militaries are the ones with the strong economies to support them. Iran doesn't want a deterrent. They don't need a deterrent. You need an enemy before you need something to deter said enemy. Such an enemy needs to be a bitter rival. Too weak and they aren't worth worrying about, too strong and deterrance is impossible. Also, it needs to be an actual enemy. Not some force that merely disagrees with you politically or a force that will oppose you if you start making grabs for power - I mean someone who's actively trying to defeat you. For instance, most nuclear power developed nukes becuase of the Cold War. India and Pakistan developed nukes to deal with each other. And North Korea has pursued nukes because of South Korea (in theory...in practice the Koreas are pawns in a much larger game between the US and China.) Iran doesn't have an enemy right now. Iraq used to be their enemy, but not any more. They have multiple political opponants, but no one they couldn't strike a deal with if they really wanted to. Invade Turkey? WTH? There's no reason we shouldn't screw them over at our leasure, but we have no reason to invade them. I know Iran has minorities. However, civil war between cultures can only occur if they are close enough to equal in number. Iran is dominated by Shi'ites enough that it isn't a possibility. It is true that setting borders along cultural boundary lines has worked for Europe. That doesn't seem to be efficient for the Middle East however.

...and he's an ally regardless.

!@#$%^&*an's ecstatic that yesterday after losing over 1300 spies he actually succeeded in sabbing a handful of my weapons. This is precisely why I'm on top! I can replace the lost weapons in a matter of minutes, wheras for you to replace those troops would take over 500 hours. The point is you need to focus on winning wars rather than winning battles. Yes you succeeded in a sabotage, but that victory cost you dearly. In the long term, the heavy cost of this battle would affect you a heck of a lot more than it has me. Sorry Veg, I didn't notice. I was more concerned with getting rid of the bug than paying attention to who was active.

I did. They may be socially backwards and bent on reinstating a Caliphate, but they actually are going about their goal in a very intelligent manner. The North Koreans are the stupid ones. They think that if they get nukes all their problems will go away, though in reality they will all get worse. Iran is smart though. They are seeking to use politics to get some allies, and they are somewhat successful in that goal, as they are creating that organization of Non-Aligned nations. I am unsure if they want nukes to use as a weapon or a bargaining chip, or more likely they want to keep their options open. However, what is certain is that they know exactly what they are doing...every move they make is cold and calculated, every statement controlled. One needs to understand the difficulty of their situation. On one hand, they can't piss off all the world powers at once or they will get run over. However, on the other they have to gain support from a bunch of intolerant lunitics and thus have to have some sort of hostile posture. Hmmm....this just occurred to me. Our problem in Iraq right now is that the Sunnis and Shi'ites are fighting each other. Iran doesn't have Sunnis. If we did invade, the only backlash would be a normal political power vacuum type fighting, not the bitter thousand year old religious fighting. It would probably be a lot easier than Iraq has been, and infact the action would make the Iraq conflict easier as the Shi'ite lunatics would lose their funding. We should probably keep the option of taking them out if they get too mouthy open.

I fixed it you jerks.

Well, first off I figured out how to solve the massive influx of troops problem...everyone now has 5000 more troops than they should. Enjoy. Actually, the bank is not bugged. Under normal cir!@#$%^&*stances its fine. The army core system is a maddening mess of cordinated systems. You change one system, you change all of them. The problem is that a UP cap was put in place. When it was, the bank became effectively overpowered and weapon repair costs exceeded income.