What happened to the invasions we use to love?

[Sedgistan]

I'm putting this here rather than in Technical, as it's asking for an explanation of player behaviour, rather than calling for Technical changes.

It's become a common theme to bemoan the change in the defender/invader game that's resulted in tag raiding becoming the primary method of raiding. This is usually accompanied by reminiscing about the old days when invaders used stealth to infiltrate regions, and would mislead defenders so they'd go to the wrong region or fail to realise an invasion had taken place - the suggestion is that things were more tactical then. Added to that, there's an "ideal" form of invasion suggested at - invaders slowly infiltrating a mid-sized region, then grabbing the delegacy one update, holding the delegacy with around 10-25 endorsements and remaining in the region for a week or so. During this time, defenders would work together to attempt to liberate the region over a few days, and would either win, or the invaders would eventually leave, taunting the defenders for their failures. Defenders would also have the chance to detect these invasions before they were successful, moving in to combat any they spotted. This allowed non-updaters from both sides to participate.

This is something we supposedly don't see any more, and I'd like to know why - as that's key to seeing what (if anything) can be done to return to those kinds of invasions. I'm going to make a few suggestions why - feel free to discuss those, or make ones of your own.

1. It could be that raiders these days just don't enjoy that kind of invading any more. It's been "done" and tag raiding is the new, and fun thing. Certainly, there are people who love tag raiding, but we also have plenty of "old school" raiders around, and it's not just defenders who claim the "old days" were more fun. This may be a factor with some people, but I don't think it's a significant one.
2. It's just too hard to hold onto a region. This, in my view, is probably the key reason for the change. Just as the daily data dump means that raiders can move in seconds before a region updates, it means that defenders can do exactly the same. To combat this, you need to pile - which means you'll end up with at least 50 endorsements. Defenders will struggle to get enough updaters to liberate - so perhaps will only manage that once during an occupation. This means that most the time, invaders are sitting around in a region, bored silly - not an incentive to hold a region. When defenders do liberate, there's very little chance to kick them out first, so really they're just racing against the clock. Moreover, double updates means you need to be vigilant twice a day (or have your delegate nation shared), so it's even harder to guess when defenders will arrive.
   If this is a reason for the change in raiding style, then clearly to address it, you'd need to make it easier to hold a region.
3. Switching is to blame. Switching has been around for years - even when these "ideal" invasions took place, but it could be that invaders have finally woken up to the opportunities it allows, resulting in their change of behaviour. The fact they get several chances in an update means that they no longer have to sneak into a region in advance - they can simply blitz in, and then try again elsewhere if that fails.
4. Defenders have improved their information gathering skills. I'm not privy to the information that defenders gather, but with the amount of script use these days and the improvement of tools such as the dossier, I'd expect that defenders have a much better picture of the movement of suspicious nations than they did a few years ago. This makes infiltration extremely hard to do.
5. The Security Council changed everything. Most of the "ideal" invasions (as described near the top) didn't result in griefing - but the threat was always there. Liberation resolutions means that it's near-impossible to password, empty and re-found a medium-sized region. Even if invaders weren't going to grief a region, they fact they could panic defenders into thinking they would, might have been an incentive to conduct these kinds of invasions.
6. There may be a lack of incentive. Following on from the previous point, there's not really much reason to conduct these kinds of invasions any more. This combines with the fact they may be more difficult than previously. In this case, something like the "annexe" feature would restore an incentive.
7. We may be misremembering - many of these "ideal" invasions may in fact have been griefing attempts. Macedon and Mencer used to be regular invaders - their operations being of a similar scale to what I've described as an "ideal" invasion - just that they would attempt to grief the region. These have stopped because of SC Liberations. If this were the case, either you'd need to make griefing more easily possible again, or accept that these invasions are gone.
8. It could be that these invasions still happen. Catholic is an example, and there have been other occupations of regions (though generally with higher endorsement counts). It could be just that the weight of tag raiding means that we think they've declined in frequency.
9. Influence. Well someone is going to blame it all on this.

The focus of this thread should be on why this change has occurred, rather than on Technical changes, as there's going to be the summit to cover that side of things. That said, feel free to claim that this change hasn't occurred, or that it's actually a good thing.

[Alyekra]

There may be a lack of incentive. Following on from the previous point, there's not really much reason to conduct these kinds of invasions any more. This combines with the fact they may be more difficult than previously. In this case, something like the "annexe" feature would restore an incentive.

What would "Annexe" do?

[Sedgistan]

There may be a lack of incentive. Following on from the previous point, there's not really much reason to conduct these kinds of invasions any more. This combines with the fact they may be more difficult than previously. In this case, something like the "annexe" feature would restore an incentive.

What would "Annexe" do?

See this thread.

[Alyekra]

What would "Annexe" do?

See this thread.

Mmm... Imperialism. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[Sedgistan]

If you want to discuss Annex, please use that thread - it's not the purpose of this one.

[Alyekra]

If you want to discuss Annex, please use that thread - it's not the purpose of this one.

The last post was in February, so I wasn't sure.

My two-cents is that this type of invading no longer takes place because it would take work. You have to spend more than two seconds in the region before you become delegate. It sounds more appealing to me, personally, but some may find it boring.

[Smartass alcoholics]

I'm a somewhat new nation on this, and i'm confused but interested about this invasion process. Can you please post a forum link that explains it?

[Alyekra]

I'm a somewhat new nation on this, and i'm confused but interested about this invasion process. Can you please post a forum link that explains it?

Basics of Military Gameplay.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

It could be that raiders these days just don't enjoy that kind of invading any more. It's been "done" and tag raiding is the new, and fun thing. Certainly, there are people who love tag raiding, but we also have plenty of "old school" raiders around, and it's not just defenders who claim the "old days" were more fun. This may be a factor with some people, but I don't think it's a significant one.

I agree that this doesn't contribute much. I'm retired from raiding now, and I wouldn't go so far as to blame tag raiding, but I may have tried harder to stick around if raiding was more like it was in 2006-2008.

It's just too hard to hold onto a region. This, in my view, is probably the key reason for the change. Just as the daily data dump means that raiders can move in seconds before a region updates, it means that defenders can do exactly the same. To combat this, you need to pile - which means you'll end up with at least 50 endorsements. Defenders will struggle to get enough updaters to liberate - so perhaps will only manage that once during an occupation. This means that most the time, invaders are sitting around in a region, bored silly - not an incentive to hold a region. When defenders do liberate, there's very little chance to kick them out first, so really they're just racing against the clock. Moreover, double updates means you need to be vigilant twice a day (or have your delegate nation shared), so it's even harder to guess when defenders will arrive.
If this is a reason for the change in raiding style, then clearly to address it, you'd need to make it easier to hold a region.

This is definitely a contributing factor. Piling is not as easy as it looks. It takes calendar-coordination across multiple regions, and we all have our own agendas. We know what it's doing to the game, and we wouldn't do it if we could still win without it. However, without it, liberations would be cakewalks. If defenders can occasionally mount an update force capable of taking on a pile, imagine how easily they'd smash through us if we only had 20 or so endos. A few of us have tried to force the community not to pile by trying to hold multiple regions at once, with minimal success.

Switching is to blame. Switching has been around for years - even when these "ideal" invasions took place, but it could be that invaders have finally woken up to the opportunities it allows, resulting in their change of behaviour. The fact they get several chances in an update means that they no longer have to sneak into a region in advance - they can simply blitz in, and then try again elsewhere if that fails.

Not sure about this one. Switching has been on the rise because it's become easier to calculate update times. Since occupations have become spectacularly easy to sustain once the pile enters the region, people have stopped measuring success in how long they can hold a region - the answer is clearly "as long as we want." So instead, folks have started to measure their success in how many regions they can take in an update. Pretty soon though, I imagine the answer to that question will become "as many as we want" and we will have to find a new measure of success.

Defenders have improved their information gathering skills. I'm not privy to the information that defenders gather, but with the amount of script use these days and the improvement of tools such as the dossier, I'd expect that defenders have a much better picture of the movement of suspicious nations than they did a few years ago. This makes infiltration extremely hard to do.

I believe this is true. We began to abandon stealth when we realized that it wasn't doing us any good at all. No matter how stealthy we were, defenders still spotted us within seconds of movement. We began permitting "dirty puppets" on raids, because we knew there was a high chance we'd get spotted anyway. The idea that we had any nations that weren't in a defender dossier somewhere become beyond the scope of imagination. The death knell of stealth-raiding was the wild successes of tag-raiding. Once it became clear that even if we were spotted, we would still win all the time, it became wayy too much trouble to prepare dozens of clean puppets per day, and we just started recycling old ones.

The Security Council changed everything. Most of the "ideal" invasions (as described near the top) didn't result in griefing - but the threat was always there. Liberation resolutions means that it's near-impossible to password, empty and re-found a medium-sized region. Even if invaders weren't going to grief a region, they fact they could panic defenders into thinking they would, might have been an incentive to conduct these kinds of invasions.

(Aside: I still hate it when people use the term griefing to describe region destruction, simply because it's the same word used to describe some rule-breaking behavior.) Ehhh, I don't speak for every region out there, but TBH could really care less about destroying most of the regions we invaded in the old days. The ones we kept were usually ones that insulted or challenged us, or had strong ties to the FRA. Also, I think I can safely assume that defenders would come to the defense of a region whether or not they thought we intended to destroy it.

There may be a lack of incentive. Following on from the previous point, there's not really much reason to conduct these kinds of invasions any more. This combines with the fact they may be more difficult than previously. In this case, something like the "annexe" feature would restore an incentive.

Yes. See my comments above about the difficulty.

We may be misremembering - many of these "ideal" invasions may in fact have been griefing attempts. Macedon and Mencer used to be regular invaders - their operations being of a similar scale to what I've described as an "ideal" invasion - just that they would attempt to grief the region. These have stopped because of SC Liberations. If this were the case, either you'd need to make griefing more easily possible again, or accept that these invasions are gone.

The Black Hawks still try to occupy regions, we just pile cause we wouldn't be able to hold them otherwise. We usually don't target regions for destruction. See my comments above on the same subject.

It could be that these invasions still happen. Catholic is an example, and there have been other occupations of regions (though generally with higher endorsement counts). It could be just that the weight of tag raiding means that we think they've declined in frequency.

I believe during Catholic some of the big piling regions were conducting operations of their own that took priority. See my comments above about calendar-coordination. Also, there have been times where we've specifically requested a low endo-count, simply because we were tired of hearing about how bad piling was for the game. Also, as I've mentioned above, some of us have tried to hold multiple regions at a time, and thus split the 100-strong combined force among 3 or 4 regions. Naturally, this is difficult to coordinate, and to my memory has only happened once.

Influence. Well someone is going to blame it all on this.

Well, the invasions we used to love were still happening frequently in the 2006-2009 years, post-influence, and tag raiding didn't really turn into a thing until 2010, if I recall correctly. It's gonna be hard to pin this one on Influence, but I can't wait to see someone try.

[Eist]

While I think this form of raiding is moronic (possibly because I'm not an angry 15 year old), I think the thought process is: why would raiders put work into a raid only for it to be foiled by defenders?

Tag raids are quick to set up, require little skill and even less thought, and, above all, are unbeatable.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I think the thought process is: why would raiders put work into a raid only for it to be foiled by defenders?

This is exactly the thought process. While most raiders don't mind losing once in a while, we don't want it to be because we didn't do everything we could to win - we want it to be because both sides did everything they could, and you did it better.

[Mahaj]

This is definitely a contributing factor. Piling is not as easy as it looks. It takes calendar-coordination across multiple regions, and we all have our own agendas. We know what it's doing to the game, and we wouldn't do it if we could still win without it. However, without it, liberations would be cakewalks. If defenders can occasionally mount an update force capable of taking on a pile, imagine how easily they'd smash through us if we only had 20 or so endos. A few of us have tried to force the community not to pile by trying to hold multiple regions at once, with minimal success.

I don't really buy this. Summer 0f 2011, piling was getting about 25 endos on the delegate.

This past summer? *Routinely* something in the range of 50-60 endos, maybe more.

It wasn't like raiders were getting smashed when they were only putting 25 endos on. What happened, really, is that raiders decided that the most fun they could possibly have in this game was to endorse a nation and sit there for a long time. And for as many of them to do it as possible. Sometimes for weeks on end while also goading natives into... you get the point.

Yeah, sure, we can "occasionally" mount a force capable of taking on a pile. But, I'd rather have a gameplay where we could actually mount an attempt on a big raid more than once every... four months or so.

Also, remember that if we have to endorse a native, it requires more time, meaning we have to move earlier, meaning we get kicked more, and because of the amount of piling we don't have large margins, so we lose.

[A Million Voices]

My explanation of the trend is that piling raids don't always get the blood circulating as much as a tag raid does. Especially for new raiders who do not understand the relevance of a long-term occupation or understand why a particular target is worth occupying.

[Whiskum]

Stealth operations do still occasionally happen: but a week or so ago, The LKE's invasion of Strangereal took place, a stealth unit having been inserted and gained a native endorsement, though Strangereal was a relatively small target by historical standards. Looking for a bigger example, earlier this year, only in June, Capitalist Paradise (a very large region) was taken by The Black Hawks not only after a large, 23-unit strong update force was used, but also through the use of a sleeper unit inside the region gathering endorsements. Additionally, Capitalist Paradise was close enough for viable 'liberations' at several points and ITALIA was actually 'liberated' in April, so such activities are not impossible if defender organisations learn how to get on. On occasions in this calendar year, defenders have made viable 'liberation' attempts and these have failed due to ejections or (predominantly) organisational difficulties, but they had the chance.

From TNI's perspective, we have maintained large (albeit non-stealth-initiated) occupations in Belgium (in late January/early February), Scotland (in May) and Ireland (in August) periodically throughout the year, each secured through piling (allowing non-updaters to get involved as described above). So while cascade raiding enrichens raiding by offering another front for victories to be achieved in (as well as an excellent method of training) and there is genuine skill in the way Halcones cascades in particular, large occupations still happen. While some may complain that the piling of endorsements in Belgium, Scotland and Ireland prevented 'liberation', gathering those endorsements took effort and cooperation, while even when targets have a smaller number of endorsements piled (as in Strangereal recently, which did not exceed 40 and was below 35 a lot of the time), defenders still hesitate in attacking.

[Andacantra]

I think that actually number two hits the nail on the head - most raiders feel that they need to pile in order to stand any chance in holding the region at all (and piling is distinctly boring so everybody has stopped bothering). It's one of the (several) reasons that I'll frequently aim for later-updating targets - it means that variance is larger and things become generally much more interesting. It also means I stand a chance at holding the region without needing to pile because the time which defenders have to leave in order to liberate is extended as they're juggling against UD - giving me the chance to kick - as well as also meaning that if they make their margins too small they'll simply get beaten by the server. It also makes things more interesting when taking the region, as actually bothering with clean puppets is useful, and you also gain the rush that I'd missed from those tense 10-15 seconds waiting to see if defenders will move in/win.

[Gest]

TBR has done some larger infiltration but they just haven't panned out *cough* Space, Hell, Anarchy *cough*

Since RORMS I don't recall ever getting more than 20+ endorsements and by the end we only had 20 ish people there. We asked for less reinforcements than we could have from TNI, ect in South America. From then I only recall Asgard reinforcing us once and we still only got about 20 endorsements. We've mostly been using our own troops for a while now.

[North East Somerset]

I'd actually reject the idea that the "invasions we use to love" have stopped. They still happen fairly frequently, and particularly in the earlier half of this year, there was a region being held by raiding or imperialist groups pretty much the whole time. Sometimes multiple regions. Now, the issue is, when do we allegedly stop "loving" these invasions. Where is the "line" drawn where it goes from an invasion we "love" to an piling, which clearly defenders hate. The problem is clearly #2. With the advent of the UDL in late 2011, defenders started cropping up in larger numbers and utilising the same update timing techniques as raiders to liberate, making the likes of 10 units inadequate to hold a region. Thus, invaders reacted by increasing their support numbers. Up to 20 or so. And still defenders liberated. And so they were increased further. And then this becomes "piling".

What can be done about this? Well, invaders have tried limiting the numbers and putting it in the defenders reach. Abbey mentions above the late update technique, where there is increased variance etc. But there are comparatively simple timing techniques to get around that which defenders could utilise if they so wished. And well, I suspect they tend to try a bit harder against the likes of TNI and other raider groups than against her. So it doesn't make a huge amount of difference to us. The only way to make it hard for defenders to liberate is by utilising larger numbers. But then this removes the competition. So it's really a matter of finding that optimum reinforcement number where it's within reach but not too easy.

But thats very difficult because sometimes UDL won't bother at all, if its not somewhere they deem important, or the raid lead isn't one of their key enemies. And then, they will pull much larger numbers out when they see an opportunity to beat the key raiding/imperialist figures. So... it's very difficult. The regions I'm involved with have no interest in letting them win places, or putting them in reach of a liberation. But now we know we have the power/ability to hold places at will, and there is no challenge, it has certainly changed the game's dynamics slightly.

Defenders actually have a legitimate tactical option to combat our techniques which so far they have not utilised. I don't really want to tell them it directly though. But I am confident it would work. So far though they have shown time and time again they are not prepared to innovate. But their key problem is Unibot's mistaken obsession with his forces morale and that's actually why they have totally failed to engage us so far this year in large scale operations. All his subordinates similarly appear to lack the resolve required. Despite possessing significant latent capacity and unused resources, they remain obsessed with raid-style liberation victories. Perhaps we have to raise the stakes somehow to get a change of policy here. But, they are missing a trick, and I don't see why it should be up to Invaders to change our tactics to reflect the current gameplay position.

The invading game has gone through bad times before where we have been ineffective, and what we have done is innovated and created new techniques and trained new personnel, and co-operated together to increase our numbers. We didn't lie back, whine about the situation and say it is impossible. That is exactly what the UDL et al have done about piling. If I was in charge over there, I would sort it out.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I'm going to answer this without reading anyone else's opinion in the vain hope that I will come up with original or correct answers.

It could be that raiders these days just don't enjoy that kind of invading any more.

Tag raiding is fun, particularly with the recent record attempts first set by TBH and now TBRs smashing my (Spartz/Rawr/Tram/Sev?) record. I don't think this impedes larger raids however.

It's just too hard to hold onto a region.

There is a multi pronged issue here. First is that raiders want to win. Second is that defenders want to win. The only way to win now that some defender groups have perfected their update timing (finally) is to pile. We then get mocked or blamed for piling, even though there are still relatively few occasions where we pile beyond the manpower of a joint FRA/UDL/TITO effort. Which leads me to the issue of the lack of Defender solidarity. Personally I don't think it is difficult to hold a region. It requires a single (or two) dedicated players to watch the update. I don't think difficulty for raiders is the problem.

Switching is to blame.

This is true, but generally speaking we do infiltrate a region in advance for our larger raids. Defenders just don't notice We don't have the update force necessary to take a medium region without doing so.

Defenders have improved their information gathering skills.

Possibly. But I still haven't seen them snag one of our sleepers in advance.

The Security Council changed everything. Most of the "ideal" invasions (as described near the top) didn't result in griefing - but the threat was always there. Liberation resolutions means that it's near-impossible to password, empty and re-found a medium-sized region. Even if invaders weren't going to grief a region, they fact they could panic defenders into thinking they would, might have been an incentive to conduct these kinds of invasions.

Liberation resolutions kill attempts at refounding medium sized regions. Plain and simple. There's barely an incentive to try, except to force defenders to pass the resolution such as in Catholic.

There may be a lack of incentive.

They're great for moral/news/having fun. I love a good sized raid.

We may be misremembering - many of these "ideal" invasions may in fact have been griefing attempts.

Wasn't really around for this.

It could be that these invasions still happen.

I think this is true, combined with some defenders exaggerating the piling severity in some cases. Note my language, some cases. Sometimes a pile is a pile. Sometimes it isn't.

Influence. Well someone is going to blame it all on this.

It certainly makes raids on feeders/sinkers relatively pointless.

IN CONCLUSION: My own modest opinion would point to a few key points.

1. Lack of defender solidarity, which in turn makes larger raids more difficult for them to combat (resulting in piling accusations).
2. Liberation proposals reducing the incentive/threat to medium/large regions.
3. The summer lull reducing the ability of raiders to execute large scale raids.
4. Defenders underestimating the amount of planning that goes in to many of the larger raids that we pull off.

[Eist]

Pile-raids almost always come from tag raids. I don't think we are talking about either of these; quite frankly one is as boring as the other (although the latter seems to have even less of a function in GP).

What we are talking about here, I think, is the stealth raids that Whiskum eludes to, but then gives examples of a bunch of pile raids for whatever reason.If raiders don't pile, they have little chance of holding a region because, just like tag raiders can pin-point regions to attack, defenders can pin-point regions to liberate.

Strangereal has only a single WA member; this region is not even worth mentioning as an example of a stealth raid.

Defenders actually have a legitimate tactical option to combat our techniques which so far they have not utilised. I don't really want to tell them it directly though. But I am confident it would work.

You should just tell us what this amazing technique is because the game is going to change -- and become more complex (generally not a good thing). If we can prevent this by levelling the playing field, then this would be fantastic. If it's befriending raiders with defender spies, then, for the hundredth time, TITO is not going to do it. it's It's not a nice feeling when a spy is uncovered in TITO (more frequent than one might think), so we won't do it to anyone else.

[Mahaj]

(possibly because I'm not an angry 15 year old)

:/

[North East Somerset]

You should just tell us what this amazing technique is because the game is going to change -- and become more complex (generally not a good thing). If we can prevent this by levelling the playing field, then this would be fantastic. If it's befriending raiders with defender spies, then, for the hundredth time, TITO is not going to do it. it's It's not a nice feeling when a spy is uncovered in TITO (more frequent than one might think), so we won't do it to anyone else.

No, it really is nothing to do with spying. Much more simple, no idea why you haven't tried it yet. I quite like the idea of making the game more complex to encourage making it easier to hold regions with less troops though.

[Wopruthien]

We don't pre-invade, that seems to be one of the biggest suggestions from raiders is we can take a more pro-active rather than reactive approach. To me that is just raiding.


Back to Sedge's points. As an ex-raider joining the defender side for the first time I was amazed at how accurate (even before scripts) you could gain an update time. I was always told it was random at some point between 0500-0600GMT so move in a couple of minutes early. Taking part in my first liberation moving in roughly ten seconds before the update to reclaim a region was eye opening to say the least.

Something that always made me wonder why raiders weren't doing it. Would solve the sneaking in and using stealth and they'd win almost every time. Took them 2 years since then but they finally caught up. I remember reading all the moans and complaints on technical (similar to defenders now) saying how it was slanted in defenders favour with defenders always alluding to some almost fool proof way to raid but raiders always being ignorant of what we meant (I imagine the reverse is true now).

There was also a number of high profile defections to the defending side, Halcones included in 2010 shortly after 'tag raiding' emerged.

I think once one raider realised just how easy it was to achieve an accurate update time it was only a matter of time before raiders were hitting them within 10 seconds (and now with scripts 2 seconds) before update.


As for the decline of stealth raiding, I'd like to see a return simply because in 2009/2010 for almost 3 months I had almost every WA nation (or so it felt) in about 6 separate dossiers who entered the world assembly dossiered and just watched the report pages. Was easy to spot and along with one or two others (Joshua, Spartz, Coco) in FRA and any we did miss TITO spotted, we could virtually track every WA movement in NS not just founderless regions.

[Todd McCloud]

Ya killed it.

I've been saying this for years now: the raiding / defending game is based on a balance. Both sides need to be strong and need to feed off each other in order for this side of the game to be fun. The defenders have become stronger, especially in numbers, game-related tools outside of NS, and in organization among other things. Raiders have been hindered by some older commanders retiring, by the SC, and by some organizations literally falling apart (but there are good orgs still around, to be honest and fair), among other things.

So basically, the defending side of the game has been encouraged. Raiding has not. If raiding is severely diminished, defending will follow. Maybe the regions themselves won't fall, but the strongly pro-defending organizations will, based on the simple fact that there's nothing much to do and people want to play something that's rewarding and exciting. So, one of two things will happen:

1. Raiding will continue to falter.
2. Defending will slow to meet up with the now diminished raiding.

Until both sides are balanced and are encouraged, nothing much will happen. My suggestion would be to encourage raiding. Yeah I know they're all bad guys and defenders are all good guys. But there are many ways in which raiders are actually the good guys. Give raiders some tools to fight with, and we could see a resurgence in them, which would in turn lead to a resurgence in the RvD game overall and, in time, see a resurgence in defenderism and gameplay as a whole.

[Todd McCloud]

I also read the OP for what it's worth. In my opinion, I think it's a combination of most of the points mentioned (maybe not all of them are major, but I'm sure all of them are at least partly to blame). Here's what I'd do to act as a 'counterweight':

1. Tweak influence a bit - We've been talking about this for years now, and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of posts that offer up some good suggestions to this. The bottom line is influence has been detrimental to raiding, and has made it difficult. Maybe something like reducing influence or lessening the amount of influence needed to ban someone. I don't know, I'm sure these suggestions have been discussed before.
   .
2. Annexations are kind of a cool idea but I don't know what they mean. The way I see annexations working is if there's a way for a raider group to permanently brand a region as 'annexed' (including the dates of when it was annexed and when it was liberated), and for that raiding group to have it mentioned on their region page. By permanently, I mean that the region will always have a mark that they were annexed at a particular length of time, but they won't be annexed anymore once said region is 'liberated'. Conversely, defenders can brand a region as 'liberated' when the annex tag has been removed. They can also have their 'liberations' represented on their region page. So, let's say the region 'Poland' was invaded by a raider group. They go to the regional controls and tag the region as 'annexed' and enter their region name (they can enter in a few others too, because a lot of raids are co-operated) as the one that did the annexing. Boom, the tag goes up, and on their regional page it's recognized that their region has annexed Poland. A week later, defenders come in and kick the raiders out. They liberate the region by removing the annex tag and enter in their region name (or names if multiple regions participated). Poland is no longer annexed, but the duration of the annexation is left on the raider's region page. In turn, the defender group's regional page notes that they liberated Poland on said particular date. There you go, right there is a huge incentive for raiders to raid, and defenders to defend.
   .
3. Get a 'pro-raider' mod - This is down the road I guess, but it feels like the last few mod selections have been former defenders or very pro-defender. Maybe it would help to get another person on the team who has a more raider-sympathetic mind?

[Hungry]

Ya killed it.

I've been saying this for years now: the raiding / defending game is based on a balance. Both sides need to be strong and need to feed off each other in order for this side of the game to be fun. The defenders have become stronger, especially in numbers, game-related tools outside of NS, and in organization among other things. Raiders have been hindered by some older commanders retiring, by the SC, and by some organizations literally falling apart (but there are good orgs still around, to be honest and fair), among other things.

I can't speak for TITO and Raiders but how many of those numbers actually show up? UDL had around maybe 7 Updaters for a major, during the summer and around 15 people in the last pile I remember. I'm not in the UDL anymore so maybe it dramatically shifted in the last month.

So basically, the defending side of the game has been encouraged. Raiding has not. If raiding is severely diminished, defending will follow. Maybe the regions themselves won't fall, but the strongly pro-defending organizations will, based on the simple fact that there's nothing much to do and people want to play something that's rewarding and exciting.

The reason their is nothing to do is that their is nothing we can do, we don't have large numbers to attempt most major occupations and defenses are next to impossible, I can probably defend if my internet is working but a lot of others can't move within a 4 second time-frame.

Also, defending isn't rewarding or exciting because the only thing to do is De-tagging. De-tagging isn't fun, nor rewarding and only boring. It's a reminder of a defense you've failed to do.

So, one of two things will happen:

1. Raiding will continue to falter.
2. Defending will slow to meet up with the now diminished raiding.

Raiding is pretty strong from what I've seen,
Defending is supposedly fast?

Until both sides are balanced and are encouraged, nothing much will happen.

Agreed

My suggestion would be to encourage raiding.

The simple fact that raiding is more successful and fun is encouragement enough.

Yeah I know they're all bad guys and defenders are all good guys. But there are many ways in which raiders are actually the good guys. Give raiders some tools to fight with, and we could see a resurgence in them,

Yeah, the black & white mechanicism doesn't exist within me, I'm a NS Centrist. Raiders have a pretty big presence on NS and I think we need a resurgence of Defending on NS,

which would in turn lead to a resurgence in the RvD game overall and, in time, see a resurgence in defenderism and gameplay as a whole.

Okay what? Wasn't your entire post saying the Defenderism is going strong and Raiderism is dying?