[Idea] WA Embargo

[Unibot III]

I'm unclear what benefit we derive from doing this to random regions.

The same benefit as any invader has in invading/occupying/teasing random regions. The fun of it. We've seen invaders undermine the credibility of WA Liberations before by doing these kinds of false flag missions.

But I think invaders would get the biggest kick from using embargoes against defenders. (A) Tricking defenders into embargoing regions then taking advantage of the embargo.

The default you mean, if defenders can't do the above.

(B) Taking regions back from liberators before an embargo can be repealed successfully.

Again, likely the default and trivially easy to boot.

False flag natives are also very good at making the disingenuous case for premature repeals of embargoes / liberations.

Perhaps, but to what actual benefit would a premature repeal be? It'd pass at the beginning of update, at which point it'd return to being a re-run of a regular liberation attempt.

I'm unclear what you mean when you say "the default."

The advantage of getting a repeal passed prematurely is if you take back control of a region before a WA Resolution is passed, the embargo is lifted and you've got the incumbency. Invaders would have 0-1 hour to pile like snot to ensure full control again. If you're still in position to retake the region but you're not the incumbent, you might still try this maneuver regardless if the native lead is unreliable (which happens). An "Insta" Re-Embargo effort would hurt the credibility of the Embargo and the defenders in the WA Security Council.

The point is that these crises would be more dynamic than a conventional occupation.

You absolutely can form submit a Liberation or Embargo, nothing in the rules prohibits such (arguments must be relevant to the region, uniqueness is a factor in having multiple with the same target. Further, several of Kuriko's liberations are nearly form submitted, and strict for submission isn't possible there's plenty of opportunity to make a wide array of legal variances. Damage to the region is minimal (most founderless don't recruit much) and certainly less than the damage of the occasional extreme pile). The relevant target intel is somewhat easy to get, and certainly worth it for the possibility of being able to liberate a region with 0 updaters.

I think the reason why I'm having such a hard time grappling with why you or other invaders think defenders would actually do this is because it's deeply ingrained in defenders not to do this stuff. Defenders prefer the non-invasive approach where ever possible and try to respect regional sovereignty - submitting mass blanket embargoes for regions not only is begging for a rules violation, but you're making major decisions over a region's border control without their consultation or a proven active threat.

This is why stealth invasions are allowed to persist often for a long time even when they're obvious to spotters - defenders don't like to act unless they're certain that the events they're seeing translate into probable cause for an invasion. They usually don't, for instance, move into a region preemptively to take the delegacy of a region to banject suspicious sleeper nations. They could do that. Might even be smart to do that. But that's a cultural difference between defenders and invaders.

I would insist that on the contrary: if you know an invasion is going to take place, submitting preemptive embargoes is unnecessary and more work and could undermine your whole position. It's better to handle the invasion at update. You might warn the native delegate in advance and encourage them to take the matter in their own hand, but you're not going to tip off invaders and you're not going to complicate the defense and liberation of a region needlessly. If a defender doesn't have to use an embargo, a defender will not use it.

For instance, what happens if you pass an embargo preemptively and you can't get it repealed? Defenders worry about these things. A repeal isn't an open and shut case. You have to make your case to a public against arguments that aren't always sincere. I would be very worried about applying an embargo unless I knew there was no other option.

[Christian Confederation]

To my understanding the best raiders can take a region in less than a day so by the time a Embargo is proposed it wouldn't do anything useful.

Invaders take a region in a matter of seconds but they consolidate their troops and their grip on power over a period of a few hours - about a day. The time it would take to submit a WA Resolution would vary wildly depending on the update, the defenders online, and the decisiveness of the decision.

It's important for me to say here that invaders would probably keep piling a region anyways even if a WA Resolution is submitted because it amounts to 4+ days of extra influence, perhaps a lot of extra influence. The invaders only lose those endorsements when the resolution is passed and the embargo retroactively removes the pilers who were to late entering the region. The culling of these piles however offers an opportunity to liberate the region that would otherwise not exist.

Hopefully good luck my friend

[Custadia]

This has been the argument against taking piling seriously for a decade now... and it's misleading. Just because technically you can always defeat a raider pile if you have enough troops doesn't mean that there is not a practical limit to how many troops can be raised during one update - we've been doing this game for years, it's pretty clear that there is indeed a practical limit.

When we introduced WA Liberations, we did so because password raiding had made the possibility of recourse improbable. It wasn't that it wasn't impossible, you could still get a hold of a password via espionage (a la Belgium) but it was very improbable. There was good reason to believe that these passwords were in effect a trump card in most cases, piling has the same consequences.

Piling is used to expedite the destruction of some regions, but the use of piling is rather indiscriminate between regions of small and medium influence levels. This is because piling serves a dual purpose: it doesn't just expedite the timeline for a region's destruction, it also inoculates the entire occupation from the possibility of liberation (making it attractive.)

An invader occupation under an embargo would only have to eject (not ban) natives, similar to a password raid, and the embargo could not be lifted via a WA Liberation like a password can and it comes with no influence cost for an invader delegate like a password does. The trade-off of course is that your endorsement level would be less, but you could supplement this with updaters just as defenders do with siege operations.

The maths just doesn't add up here. Being able to eject instead of banjecting halves the influence required to remove natives. The pile makes up a much greater portion of the raiders' influence gain than that. The active updaters already do contribute to influence, jumping in on the initial update, so they're already accounted for and could not be used to make up that gap.

My point is that you wouldn't need to liberate the region. Once it is embargoed all you need to do is wait for it to meet the inevitable fate of all regions that cannot obtain new members.

If you apply a WA Embargo to an occupation, you still need to liberate it or the occupation will only intensify. The invaders are still there and active.

This was my mistake, I thought you meant when the SC takes offensive action against a region.

I meant that if the SC wants to punish a region, passing an embargo alone would be enough since denying a region new members will inevitably suffocate it. This makes SC liberations intended to make a region raidable as punishment obsolete, since an embargo would be easier. Your proposal would remove the actual military gameplay from those scenarios.

You really can't and shouldn't flood a WA Queue with "preemptive" embargoes: (1) SC Resolutions have to be original, the text can't be reused. (2) Embargoes carry risks to a region, you're not going to go through this process and run the risk of inadvertently setting a region's security backwards. (3) It is easier to take care of an invasion with foreknowledge without factoring an embargo into the equation.

And yes you would need to know and identify the target region to submit an embargo. The name of the target region is in the title of the resolution.

What you're suggesting ranges from unfeasible to undesirable; it would be a major invitation to tease/embarrass defenders and natives.

1: Defenders would maintain a library of embargo proposals for all regions vulnerable to raider operations, so they would have unique proposals for each.

2: I am not convinced that an embargo submitted by defenders who won't support it if it turns out that region isn't the target does pose that much of a risk to that region.

3: No, it's not. The presubmitted embargo is an instant win condition. If it passes, congratulations, the raiders have been mass ejected and the raid is over. The region has been liberated without a single defender having to update. If it fails, well that sucks, carry on as normal. It makes no difference to the other tactics defenders might employ.

The whole point of the presubmission spam is that you submit an embargo for all likely targets. You need to know the names of likely target regions (which the defenders already do) in order to put in the titles, you don't need to know which of those targets the raiders are actually going to go for.

If you actually have managed to discover the target through espionage, it's even more OP since you can guarantee a no-updater liberation by submitting only one proposal.

[Unibot III]

This has been the argument against taking piling seriously for a decade now... and it's misleading. Just because technically you can always defeat a raider pile if you have enough troops doesn't mean that there is not a practical limit to how many troops can be raised during one update - we've been doing this game for years, it's pretty clear that there is indeed a practical limit.

When we introduced WA Liberations, we did so because password raiding had made the possibility of recourse improbable. It wasn't that it wasn't impossible, you could still get a hold of a password via espionage (a la Belgium) but it was very improbable. There was good reason to believe that these passwords were in effect a trump card in most cases, piling has the same consequences.

Piling is used to expedite the destruction of some regions, but the use of piling is rather indiscriminate between regions of small and medium influence levels. This is because piling serves a dual purpose: it doesn't just expedite the timeline for a region's destruction, it also inoculates the entire occupation from the possibility of liberation (making it attractive.)

An invader occupation under an embargo would only have to eject (not ban) natives, similar to a password raid, and the embargo could not be lifted via a WA Liberation like a password can and it comes with no influence cost for an invader delegate like a password does. The trade-off of course is that your endorsement level would be less, but you could supplement this with updaters just as defenders do with siege operations.

The maths just doesn't add up here. Being able to eject instead of banjecting halves the influence required to remove natives. The pile makes up a much greater portion of the raiders' influence gain than that. The active updaters already do contribute to influence, jumping in on the initial update, so they're already accounted for and could not be used to make up that gap.

I'm not saying that invaders will be able to expedite the destruction of regions as quick as they would without an embargo. I'm just saying there are factors at play that leave the door open for invaders to accelerate their influence growth despite an embargo:

1. You can continue to pile a region even after an embargo is submitted. Those endorsements count for influence, they just don't count for endorsements after the passage of the embargo - which is 4+ days later.

2. You need about half as much influence to remove nations in an embargo because you'd just be ejecting for the most part.

3. You can have updaters jump into the region at update and endorse the delegate to contribute to your lead delegate's endorsement total and influence growth. I think (and I could be misunderstanding) what you're trying to say is that the invaders who participated in the initial invasion are also likely the same people you would want to use as active updaters. This is true. It's a common dilemma that defenders run into: the players most likely to have sleeper nations in a region are also likely the most dedicated updaters (i.e., people you want available for a liberation.) We get around this by shifting the account to a less active user.

I meant that if the SC wants to punish a region, passing an embargo alone would be enough since denying a region new members will inevitably suffocate it. This makes SC liberations intended to make a region raidable as punishment obsolete, since an embargo would be easier. Your proposal would remove the actual military gameplay from those scenarios.

Yes and no, yes it would be a means of punishment, it would also make it harder for international coalitions to actually invade and occupy. This is why I've said in this thread that gameplayers would have to decide what their priority is in assaulting these regions. Do they want to bleed them of resources or do they want to destroy the region in a demonstration of international force? Without military action you don't get your trophy. Sometimes, actually pretty often, I think the trophy is important to people.

1: Defenders would maintain a library of embargo proposals for all regions vulnerable to raider operations, so they would have unique proposals for each.

2: I am not convinced that an embargo submitted by defenders that who won't support if it turns out that region isn't the target does pose that much of a risk to that region.

3: No, it's not. The presubmitted embargo is an instant win condition. If it passes, congratulations, the raiders have been mass ejected and the raid is over. The region has been liberated without a single defender having to update. If it fails, well that sucks, carry on as normal. It makes no difference to the other tactics defenders might employ.

The whole point of the presubmission spam is that you submit an embargo for all likely targets. You need to know the names of likely target regions (which the defenders already do) in order to put in the titles, you don't need to know which of those targets the raiders are actually going to go for.

If you actually have managed to discover the target through espionage, it's even more OP since you can guarantee a no-updater liberation by submitting only one proposal.

So I think you're forgetting a few things.

• If an embargo passes, the region is embargoed. The region cannot gain new members. It's not set in stone that you can actually get a repeal of this resolution passed. Nor do you know how long it would take.
• Defenders try to respect regional sovereignty, they pathologically avoid making administrative decisions for regions if there isn't a very active, obvious threat and the recourse is minimal.
• Presubmission of these texts would be a ton of work and not sustainable. The proposals would keep expiring.
• If the presubmissions are found to be spam or queue-flooding, you risk being expelled from the WA forever or DEAT'd. It's a very unpleasant fate for a defender. It can mean the end of your career. These things deter risky behaviour.
• If you know it's happening, an invasion is relatively preventable. Any rational defender is going to stick to preventing an invasion at update rather than engage in a convoluted series of quasi-legal loopy-de-hoops that could embarrass you and your organization, get you deleted, and/or raise a national conversation over the legitimacy of defenders and the WA Security Council.

[Custadia]

I'm not saying that invaders will be able to expedite the destruction of regions as quick as they would without an embargo. I'm just saying there are factors at play that leave the door open for invaders to accelerate their influence growth despite an embargo:

1. You can continue to pile a region even after an embargo is submitted. Those endorsements count for influence, they just don't count for endorsements after the passage of the embargo - which is 4+ days later.

2. You need about half as much influence to remove nations in an embargo because you'd just be ejecting for the most part.

3. You can have updaters jump into the region at update and endorse the delegate to contribute to your lead delegate's endorsement total and influence growth. I think (and I could be misunderstanding) what you're trying to say is that the invaders who participated in the initial invasion are also likely the same people you would want to use as active updaters. This is true. It's a common dilemma that defenders run into: the players most likely to have sleeper nations in a region are also likely the most dedicated updaters (i.e., people you want available for a liberation.) We get around this by shifting the account to a less active user.

These factors are not sufficient to mitigate the damage removing long-term piling would do to r/d.

So I think you're forgetting a few things.

• If an embargo passes, the region is embargoed. The region cannot gain new members. It's not set in stone that you can actually get a repeal of this resolution passed. Nor do you know how long it would take.
• Defenders try to respect regional sovereignty, they pathologically avoid making administrative decisions for regions if there isn't a very active, obvious threat and the recourse is minimal.
• Presubmission of these texts would be a ton of work and not sustainable. The proposals would keep expiring.
• If the presubmissions are found to be spam or queue-flooding, you risk being expelled from the WA forever or DEAT'd. It's a very unpleasant fate for a defender. It can mean the end of your career. These things deter risky behaviour.
• If you know it's happening, an invasion is relatively preventable. Any rational defender is going to stick to preventing an invasion at update rather than engage in a convoluted series of quasi-legal loopy-de-hoops that could embarrass you and your organization, get you deleted, and/or raise a national conversation over the legitimacy of defenders and the WA Security Council.

The repeal isn't guaranteed but-given the short time-frame between it and the original proposal, and the identical motivations-I think it probably would pass.

I think there most likely would be a ruling against presubmission spam, but the necessity of that speaks against the proposal as it currently stands in itself.

I don't know if things have changed since raider piles were last truly impressive but defenders didn't seem willing to oppose big raids at update even though the intelligence to do so must have been readily available. I think that intelligence-targeted presubmitted embargoes would be a cheap fix for that failure.

[Unibot III]

I'm not saying that invaders will be able to expedite the destruction of regions as quick as they would without an embargo. I'm just saying there are factors at play that leave the door open for invaders to accelerate their influence growth despite an embargo:

1. You can continue to pile a region even after an embargo is submitted. Those endorsements count for influence, they just don't count for endorsements after the passage of the embargo - which is 4+ days later.

2. You need about half as much influence to remove nations in an embargo because you'd just be ejecting for the most part.

3. You can have updaters jump into the region at update and endorse the delegate to contribute to your lead delegate's endorsement total and influence growth. I think (and I could be misunderstanding) what you're trying to say is that the invaders who participated in the initial invasion are also likely the same people you would want to use as active updaters. This is true. It's a common dilemma that defenders run into: the players most likely to have sleeper nations in a region are also likely the most dedicated updaters (i.e., people you want available for a liberation.) We get around this by shifting the account to a less active user.

These factors are not sufficient to mitigate the damage removing long-term piling would do to r/d.

I think you need to qualify what you're talking about. Damage to R/D as a whole comes from threats that imbalance the game, remove skill (and introduce randomness) into results, and otherwise make the game less competitive, dynamic, innovative, or fun.

Currently we have a system where invaders can hold any occupation they like via piling - that's done an enormous disservice to the game. It slants the scales towards invaders who want to grief a region, it removes the operational need for skill and alertness to hold an occupation, and makes defenders mostly useless during the whole occupation: they hold natives' hands and write strongly worded WA Resolutions in the hopes of stopping a refound. Defenders may try siege tactics but if the level of piling is beyond 40-50 endorsements, the growth of influence is going to outpace the usefulness of sieges sooner rather than later. You'll even see invaders voluntarily forgo piling just out of pure sportsmanship - but they shouldn't have to do so, it undermines the sense of competition for one side to be handicapping themselves.

Mitigating piling is about repairing military gameplay - it comes at costs of expediency for region griefers but I don't believe they're insurmountable costs and I don't believe they're unfair. In many ways, invaders in an embargo situation would face similar or analogous challenges to grief a region as defenders do to prevent region griefing.

The repeal isn't guaranteed but-given the short time-frame between it and the original proposal, and the identical motivations-I think it probably would pass.

I think there most likely would be a ruling against presubmission spam, but the necessity of that speaks against the proposal as it currently stands in itself.

I don't know if things have changed since raider piles were last truly impressive but defenders didn't seem willing to oppose big raids at update even though the intelligence to do so must have been readily available. I think that presubmitted embargoes would be a cheap fix for that failure.

I don't know the situation you're referring to. I stopped a lot of invasions at update in my career as a defender sometimes with foreknowledge, sometimes not. Usually however a defender is supposed to be reactive not proactive about intervening in regions: getting ahead of an invasion can be perceived as military interventionism.

I do think that the SC Moderators would enforce rules on 'spamming' the queue and I don't think that defenders would have much use for preventive embargoes.

[Lexon]

1. Someone's puppet storage region's founder puppet gets DEAT

2. The region gets an embargo

3. No new puppets can be moved by to the region

[Custadia]

I think you need to qualify what you're talking about. Damage to R/D as a whole comes from threats that imbalance the game, remove skill (and introduce randomness) into results, and otherwise make the game less competitive, dynamic, innovative, or fun.

Currently we have a system where invaders can hold any occupation they like via piling - that's done an enormous disservice to the game. It slants the scales towards invaders who want to grief a region, it removes the operational need for skill and alertness to hold an occupation, and makes defenders mostly useless during the whole occupation: they hold natives' hands and write strongly worded WA Resolutions in the hopes of stopping a refound. Defenders may try siege tactics but if the level of piling is beyond 40-50 endorsements, the growth of influence is going to outpace the usefulness of sieges sooner rather than later. You'll even see invaders voluntarily forgo piling just out of pure sportsmanship - but they shouldn't have to do so, it undermines the sense of competition for one side to be handicapping themselves.

Mitigating piling is about repairing military gameplay - it comes at costs of expediency for region griefers but I don't believe they're insurmountable costs and I don't believe they're unfair. In many ways, invaders in an embargo situation would face similar or analogous challenges to grief a region as defenders do to prevent region griefing.

Your proposal introduces a mechanism by which raiders can be prevented from passwording/refounding in a reasonable time-frame. Operations would have no more lasting effect than a tag-raid, rendering them meaningless. Not only this, but it introduces a mechanism by which this can be achieved without engaging in military gameplay at all. This is a step away from reinvigorating the game.

Your factors mitigating the loss of the influence gain that pilers represent are not sufficient to resolve this problem.

I don't know the situation you're referring to. I stopped a lot of invasions at update in my career as a defender sometimes with foreknowledge, sometimes not. Usually however a defender is supposed to be reactive not proactive about intervening in regions: getting ahead of an invasion can be perceived as military interventionism.

I do think that the SC Moderators would enforce rules on 'spamming' the queue and I don't think that defenders would have much use for preventive embargoes.

I am by no means an expert, but I think that first-update defending has fallen out of favour with modern defenders. Maybe that's why the pile seems insurmountable these days.

[Unibot III]

1. Someone's puppet storage region's founder puppet gets DEAT

2. The region gets an embargo

3. No new puppets can be moved by to the region

Yes. That's how the system works. Move the puppets to a new puppet storage region...

And why is the region getting embargoed? Because the puppet dump is unpopular/controversial? The WA can already antagonize founderless puppet storage regions, this is just a new dimension to that.

I think you need to qualify what you're talking about. Damage to R/D as a whole comes from threats that imbalance the game, remove skill (and introduce randomness) into results, and otherwise make the game less competitive, dynamic, innovative, or fun.

Currently we have a system where invaders can hold any occupation they like via piling - that's done an enormous disservice to the game. It slants the scales towards invaders who want to grief a region, it removes the operational need for skill and alertness to hold an occupation, and makes defenders mostly useless during the whole occupation: they hold natives' hands and write strongly worded WA Resolutions in the hopes of stopping a refound. Defenders may try siege tactics but if the level of piling is beyond 40-50 endorsements, the growth of influence is going to outpace the usefulness of sieges sooner rather than later. You'll even see invaders voluntarily forgo piling just out of pure sportsmanship - but they shouldn't have to do so, it undermines the sense of competition for one side to be handicapping themselves.

Mitigating piling is about repairing military gameplay - it comes at costs of expediency for region griefers but I don't believe they're insurmountable costs and I don't believe they're unfair. In many ways, invaders in an embargo situation would face similar or analogous challenges to grief a region as defenders do to prevent region griefing.

Your proposal introduces a mechanism by which raiders can be prevented from passwording/refounding in a reasonable time-frame. Operations would have no more lasting effect than a tag-raid, rendering them meaningless. Not only this, but it introduces a mechanism by which this can be achieved without engaging in military gameplay at all. This is a step away from reinvigorating the game.

I think this is far too extreme of an interpretation - just because the time-frame is expanded and you're more exposed to challenges from liberators, does not mean that a region cannot be destroyed. WA Liberations, on the other hand, actually do prevent passwords and obstruct controlled refounds (and do so without operational effort).

WA Embargoes make it more difficult for an incumbent to hold their position, they're restrictive in terms of what external support they can recieve, but this does not amount to an endgame where regional destruction is impossible/implausible. In an embargo system, griefing is plausible and a liberation is plausible and retaliation is also plausible. In our current system, if a region is piled, griefing is very likely and a liberation is for all intended purposes impossible.

For players used to having a major advantage in these situations, I understand that competitiveness can look unfair at first glace, but the goal is simply to create the conditions for dynamism in occupations.

I also think that it is rather unfair to say that this tool will be used to avoid real military activity. Nowadays, defenders cannot reasonably liberate a pile raid so they turn to a WA Liberation to accomplish "something" (dropping a password, preventing a refound) rather than "nothing." A WA Embargo would encourage real military activity because it opens up the possibility for liberation that piling otherwise does not allow. The "preventative embargoes" that you're citing is predicated on sketchy legality, aggressive interventionism, and an uncharacteristic amount of risk taken on the part of defenders.

[Roavin]

This would utterly ruin an important liberation strategy that we defenders use, which involves building a beachhead of unejectable influence and then temporarily moving a nation out and back into the target region. It also only works on active native leads (or a defender sleeper), because there is no way in hell that defenders can keep "reliberating" every update for 5 days during sleepy weekday minor updates, for example.

This proposal would be a godsend for LWU in particular, and a nightmare for defenders.

[Unibot III]

This would utterly ruin an important liberation strategy that we defenders use, which involves building a beachhead of unejectable influence and then temporarily moving a nation out and back into the target region. It also only works on active native leads (or a defender sleeper), because there is no way in hell that defenders can keep "reliberating" every update for 5 days during sleepy weekday minor updates, for example.

This proposal would be a godsend for LWU in particular, and a nightmare for defenders.

I agree that you would really not be able to use a conventional defender lead against an embargo. It would be very unwieldy. I've said as much previously.

I think you seem to be under the impression that all occupations would be embargoed - as I've said many times in this thread, I would anticipate that defenders would only want to embargo occupations where the prospect of liberation is impossible due to excessive piling because embargoes challenge and complicate the process of liberation even if they make it possible where it would otherwise not be possible. Embargoes would not be "nightmare" for defenders, they would be challenging but would offer some regions hope of liberation that do not have hope otherwise; the real nightmare is the status quo.

I also think there is a large vulnerability in the strategy as you've outlined it. There's a way to ban nations that are surfing, even if the Regional Happenings is wiped as a part of a team effort. So moving a nation in and out is always a high risk strategy. It's predicated on invaders not taking advantage of a known loophole.

[Roavin]

I realize that not all occupations would be embargoed, but that means there are one of two options. Either there are a bunch of preemptive submissions by default, leading to fatigue and resentment in the WA and therefore less support for an embargo, or (more likely) the determination that an embargo is now appropriate comes later when such pile numbers are already there.

Regarding the second point, the idea is that it's a nation with enough influence that even an out-of-region ban by any of the occupying nations with border control can't hit it. Simple bit of math, works a charm.

[Benevolent Thomas]

So TBH and company just invaded ASEAN REGION. Lets say it took me 30min to write the proposal and I've just submitted it. Their current endorsement count is 13. Assuming it gets the necessary approvals, it will enter the queue behind "Commend CoE" (1 day), "Condemn Gatesville" (3 Days), "Commend Imperium Anglorum" (3 Days). TBH and company can pile and grief all they want until this resolution passes in a minimum of 10 days. Once that time has come to pass, their endorsements in ASEAN shrink back to 13 and the defender endorsements on the native also shrink back to 9 (we had less at the moment of update, but they were there when I submitted it, potential strategy there). There is also a great liklihood that Raiders will have banned at least some of these defenders by then as well. Both raiders and defenders have to log in every update to try and hold/take the delegacy, knowing that all of us jumpers will be banned in 10 seconds. Whoever sits in the delegate seat has 12 hours to ban whoever they can from the remaining opposition, regaining less and less influence each update. We would be stuck in this dance of death and destruction until either raiders give up or the natives give up.

Some invaders may make use of previously planted sleeper nations to get around an embargo but a mass attempt to move non-WA accounts into a region before an embargo is in place would be rulebreaking (puppet-flooding).

I don't think puppet flooding is too enforced of a rule anymore, please correct me if I'm wrong. If I invaded a region and added the puppet storage tag, would the mods honor it since the region is technically in my control? Also, if a between one and two dozen people all move in exactly 1 puppet, is that considered flooding?

Another problem I have with this, and I admit, its rather small of me, but you're asking me to take on the additional burden of authoring a resolution and campaigning for it (likely having to buy stamps), while doing everything else I need to do to liberate a region? You of all people know how many man hours goes into a large-scale liberation attempt. Its not like I can sit idly by and give TBH 10 free days to do as much damage to ASEAN REGION as possible. We're also giving even more power to the GCR's who heavily influence how WASC votes go. How many instant Embargoes (they need to be instant) will feeders vote for before they stop? You're just inviting bias factions to more heavily involve themselves in the GCRs and try to influence their policies in regard to the WASC.

I also don't know what mechanic would make an embargo not apply to foundered regions. With liberations, its as easy as only applying the blocking feature to the delegate. Wouldn't the admin have to build a brand new mechanic that acts as a green light for an embargo to kick in? Would an embargo written when a region had a founder automatically kick in as soon as that founder CTE? Would the nations automatically revert to the state they were in whenever the Embargo Proposal was originally submitted, no matter the passage of time? As someone who has famously pissed off all of the right people at the right time, I'm very concerned about how this could be weaponized to hurt UCRs.

Sorry if some of these questions have already been answered. I have a tendency to begin scrolling when I see the same flags repeatedly responding to one another with many quoted portions.

[The Allied Tribe]

I am against, because, well, banning nations from entering regions is not fun.

[Wabbitslayah]

I'm not sure this would have any effect on Noctis. Wouldn't Blockading be a more apt term?

[Unibot III]

So TBH and company just invaded ASEAN REGION. Lets say it took me 30min to write the proposal and I've just submitted it. Their current endorsement count is 13. Assuming it gets the necessary approvals, it will enter the queue behind "Commend CoE" (1 day), "Condemn Gatesville" (3 Days), "Commend Imperium Anglorum" (3 Days). TBH and company can pile and grief all they want until this resolution passes in a minimum of 10 days. Once that time has come to pass, their endorsements in ASEAN shrink back to 13 and the defender endorsements on the native also shrink back to 9 (we had less at the moment of update, but they were there when I submitted it, potential strategy there). There is also a great liklihood that Raiders will have banned at least some of these defenders by then as well. Both raiders and defenders have to log in every update to try and hold/take the delegacy, knowing that all of us jumpers will be banned in 10 seconds. Whoever sits in the delegate seat has 12 hours to ban whoever they can from the remaining opposition, regaining less and less influence each update. We would be stuck in this dance of death and destruction until either raiders give up or the natives give up.

Yes, TBH and company will be able to pile and grief ASEAN REGION and there is not going to be much that defenders are going to do about it for ten days. I will acknowledge that up front. Depending on how busy the queue is at the time of the invasion, you could be looking at a span of four to ten to fifteen days before any special relief might be introduced by the WA. Invaders will likely time a major invasion with a busy queue too. Crafty defenders might ask proposal authors to withdraw their resolutions to clear the queue (this is possible especially if you know the proposal authors - I've done it in the past for WA Liberations.)

Your endorsement margin is 39 currently in ASEAN REGION, that is in the range of possibility for liberation this update, but the margin will increase over the next twenty four hours as defender sleepers are banjected and pilers continue to filter in. If you hit past 50 on the margin, the chances of saving ASEAN REGION go from 10% to sub-zero - every defender understands this even if they don't like to acknowledge it.

So the question this proposal poses to defenders is... would you like to have a non-zero chance of saving regions like ASEAN REGION with an imperfect vehicle for relief (this proposal has pros and cons for both invaders and defenders), or continue to have no chance to save regions that are piled heavily? You can request more favourable proposals (that will face even greater accusations of bias from invaders), but the way I see it, since invaders are saying this proposal works too much against them and defenders are saying this proposal doesn't work enough in their favour, I think that is a good sign to adminstrators that a working compromise/balance has been found. I think it's better for defenders to have a way to open up these regions and contest these occupations, even if the way it's being done poses new challenges for defenders and isn't foolproof (it comes with limitations and it's subject to windows of opportunity); I wouldn't expect the site administrators to adopt a game change that favoured defenders without caveats.

The way I see it, if I was an active defender right now, I'd have written a WA Draft after the ASEAN REGION invasion last night, but I would have waited to submit the resolution until later today when the margin was around 40 (depending on the influence levels of those sleepers, if they're going to keep culled away quickly, they don't really count for much.) The reason being is I'd be very aware/concerned about the political sustainability of the WA Category all together; if you're proposing embargoes when the evidence of piling isn't clear, you run the risk of feeding an anti-defender narrative (i.e., defenders are lazy and want to use the SC to win without effort on their part.) Once you submit, you have to spend the next ten days using your time the same way as you would do without an embargo: aggressive siege tactics. Siege tactics help burn influence and keep the occupation in play till the start of the embargo; you're essentially ragging the puck till the buzzer.

I don't think puppet flooding is too enforced of a rule anymore, please correct me if I'm wrong. If I invaded a region and added the puppet storage tag, would the mods honor it since the region is technically in my control? Also, if a between one and two dozen people all move in exactly 1 puppet, is that considered flooding?

If you move in one puppet back and forth to, say, clear a Regional Happenings - that is considered strategic not illegal flooding. Same goes for moving a non-WA during a move-time to provide cover. Puppet flooding is still enforced in other aspects of Gameplay.

Another problem I have with this, and I admit, its rather small of me, but you're asking me to take on the additional burden of authoring a resolution and campaigning for it (likely having to buy stamps), while doing everything else I need to do to liberate a region? You of all people know how many man hours goes into a large-scale liberation attempt. Its not like I can sit idly by and give TBH 10 free days to do as much damage to ASEAN REGION as possible.

I agree that drafting a resolution and getting it proposed is a big investment of time/effort on top of normal operations. I know the work load of preparing for a large-scale liberation. Which is why I said in this thread earlier that I think that some invaders here are being naive about how prohibitive the time/effort of WA Resolutions will impact the behaviour of defenders. I think that the fact that defenders have to plan a liberation at the same time as they're trying to get this WA Resolution queued up means defenders will have to learn how to delegate this workload and make important decisions on the fly over how much to invest in the WA work versus the mission recruitment and planning. It's a bigger deal than invaders realize and it's partly why this proposal works: because it's not easy for a team of defenders to stretch their available time and draft/pass proposals on top of their day to day efforts to defend and liberate regions.

It's also important to note here that over those next 10 days, you're not committed to sitting idly. You would be running conventional siege tactics and if you could squeeze out a liberation, you could pull the WA Embargo resolution before it goes to vote (if you liberate the region during voting, things get messy - you may want to try to campaign against your own proposal.) Remember, authors and co-authors can always ask for their resolutions to be pulled before voting!

We're also giving even more power to the GCR's who heavily influence how WASC votes go. How many instant Embargoes (they need to be instant) will feeders vote for before they stop? You're just inviting bias factions to more heavily involve themselves in the GCRs and try to influence their policies in regard to the WASC.

I agree that if you're putting powers into the hands of the WA Security Council, you're introducing more politicization into Military Gameplay because decisions for special intervention will be made by the electorate. Right now, this decision is being made by the major invader powers - if they decide to pile a region by an extraordinary amount, they're effectively vetoing the possibility of liberation unilaterally. I think don't think they should have that veto. I think that veto is bad for Military Gameplay. But you can't take away that "veto" without a new mechanism where someone else decides what is and isn't "fair play." I think the WA Security Council has proven to be a fairly honest broker for WA Liberations over the years and I expect them to be so with WA Embargoes too; it's not without blemishes and imperfections however.

I also think defenders will have to be wary of the political sustainability of WA Embargoes - which I think you're touching on in this sentence. You'd want to be able to make a good case for intervention every time and there may indeed be times where you fail to submit an embargo in time because you've come to the conclusion that you can't substantiate the case for intervention well enough at the time of submission.

Sedge and I ran into this problem very early on with WA Liberations - there was a backlash over WA Liberations. "Liberate Free Thought," for instance was defeated basically as an expression of the electorate's confusion over events and fatigue with intervention.

I also don't know what mechanic would make an embargo not apply to foundered regions. With liberations, its as easy as only applying the blocking feature to the delegate. Wouldn't the admin have to build a brand new mechanic that acts as a green light for an embargo to kick in? Would an embargo written when a region had a founder automatically kick in as soon as that founder CTE? Would the nations automatically revert to the state they were in whenever the Embargo Proposal was originally submitted, no matter the passage of time? As someone who has famously pissed off all of the right people at the right time, I'm very concerned about how this could be weaponized to hurt UCRs.

This is an excellent question, I was thinking about this myself for a while.

I know for sure that embargoes shouldn't apply to foundered regions because of the supremacy of founders over the WA. I also know for sure that an embargo shouldn't just 'kick in' (like a Liberation does) when a founder dies, because the time between this event and the proposal's submission could be years -- that could wipe a region out instantly.

My thought is (1) the "Embargo" might appear in Regional Controls after a resolution's passage - founders can access this control to toggle an embargo on/off but delegates cannot. And it doesn't unlock for delegates after founders CTE. OR (2) The Embargo has no effect if there is a founder present and if the region loses a founder, you need to embargo the region twice for it to have effect. (3) "Symbolic" embargoes just aren't allowed. The differences between these options is mostly semantical, the main point is I don't think WA Embargoes should apply to regions that have founders or had a founder at the time of submission.

[Unibot III]

Regarding the second point, the idea is that it's a nation with enough influence that even an out-of-region ban by any of the occupying nations with border control can't hit it. Simple bit of math, works a charm.

Back in the day we would move these nations out temporarily to get pre-endorsed to shave some seconds off the move-time; I’m not sure if that is what you’re using their excursions for.

You’re correct to say that this play couldn’t be run in an embargo. An embargo would for the most part require a region-bound native lead and offer no opportunity for pre-endorsement (my mind is conjuring up some creative plays you could use to squeeze some room for pre-endorsement maybe, but it’d offer low returns for a lot of work.) I see this as part of the trade off of using an embargo - the need for precision gets greater but the means of precision gets less attainable.

Something I’ve tried to impress upon both invaders and defenders in this thread is an embargo does not present the ideal conditions for a liberation; if all things are equal, defenders would prefer no embargo if they can liberate a region without one. I don’t think it’d be a balanced proposal if embargoes were always preferable to no embargoes.

[Unibot III]

I'm not sure this would have any effect on Noctis. Wouldn't Blockading be a more apt term?

A blockade is a physical obstruction to movement, an embargo is a legal obstruction. I prefer embargo here because I don’t think the WA would “blockade” regions, but rather I see them enforcing sanctions against movement through non-military means as a matter of compliance.

This does open up the interesting possibility that maybe the embargo only applies to WA nations because only WA nations are required to comply. For the purposes of Military Gameplay, I don’t see any real difference either which way. You need WA status to endorse.

[Lord Dominator]

For the purposes of Military Gameplay, I don’t see any real difference either which way. You need WA status to endorse.

Move in non-WA nation, join after moving. Some of the fastest defenders might be able to manage all that, raiders wouldn't have much in the way of problems. The counter to that of booting all new WAs would wreck the ability to use sleepers, though with the interesting side effect of raider pilers not being able to drop WA in order to tag.

[Custadia]

I'm not sure this would have any effect on Noctis. Wouldn't Blockading be a more apt term?

A blockade is a physical obstruction to movement, an embargo is a legal obstruction. I prefer embargo here because I don’t think the WA would “blockade” regions, but rather I see them enforcing sanctions against movement through non-military means as a matter of compliance.

This does open up the interesting possibility that maybe the embargo only applies to WA nations because only WA nations are required to comply. For the purposes of Military Gameplay, I don’t see any real difference either which way. You need WA status to endorse.

Setting mechanical questions aside briefly, might it make more sense from a roleplay perspective if WA member nations found to be in breach of an embargo were expelled from the WA instead of from the region?

[Unibot III]

Move in non-WA nation, join after moving. Some of the fastest defenders might be able to manage all that, raiders wouldn't have much in the way of problems. The counter to that of booting all new WAs would wreck the ability to use sleepers, though with the interesting side effect of raider pilers not being able to drop WA in order to tag.

A fast defender could move, join the WA, and endorse but I don’t see what the value would be in that — the margin of time between your move and update would still have to be tiny to avoid ejection. And you have to join the WA to endorse, so the time you’re taking to endorse the WA is just wasted time.

And I’m sorry I should have clarified I was musing that if you joined the WA after you moved into the region, the embargo would still come into effect for you.

Custodia: Perhaps that does make sense and it would accomplish the same thing as far as military gameplay is concerned. New players may get frustrated with reapplying to the WA though if they tried to join an embargo region and didn’t understand the consequences of trying to move into the region (I don’t think that’s much of a concern, eh.)

[Unibot III]

I've edited the OP to include a note about some of the alternate proposals that have been hashed about in this thread.

ADDENDUM: After some discussion in this thread, other (I.E., better) possibilities for enforcement were raised. WA-specific enforcement, where only WA member states were removed from the WA or expelled from an embargoed region, have been proposed. In practice, these proposals would affect Military Gameplay in an analogous way. The difference is that if the WA embargo only 'expels' WA member-states from the WA, this enforcement method is more in line with the 'roleplay' expectations of the WA (which typically is regarded as having no jurisdiction over non-WA nations) and a WA embargo would constrict a region's growth less (since it could accumulate new non-WA members.)

I quite like the idea of an embargo only applying to WA nations and expelling nations from the WA rather than removing them from the region. It's fairly analogous as far as Military Gameplay is concerned to the original proposal, but it has the added benefit of reflecting old traditions about the WA and its jurisdiction -- and an "WA Embargo" proposal under these rules wouldn't constrict non-WA nation growth, so it wouldn't be the 'instant death blow' to a region that some have feared that the WA Embargo might be used as.

Non-compliant member-states might for instance recieve a telegram like the following after entering an embargoed region:

[Superbunny]

Strictly speaking from a non-defender/raider standpoint here: Do. Not. Want. Let me play the game without a bunch of powerdelegates telling me where I can and can't move. Liberations are overreaching enough.

[Unibot III]

Strictly speaking from a non-defender/raider standpoint here: Do. Not. Want. Let me play the game without a bunch of powerdelegates telling me where I can and can't move. Liberations are overreaching enough.

What game is there to play when a region is piled sky high? There's no game. There's not an ounce of competition faced after endorsements are piled onto an invader delegate. It ceases to be a game at that point. It's a foregone conclusion.

As for non-Gameplay events, we know from past experience with WA Liberations that if a region is targeted with a WA Liberation, it's probably because of something GP-related. Other delegates don't vote for resolutions that could create a precedent that could see to it their own regions are targeted.

[Red Millennium]

1. I agree with the fact that regions with founders shouldn't be able to be embargoed
2. NO ANNOYING WA TELEGRAMS. Just banject the WA members.