>What is BLOC?BLOC is a Cold War simulator where you are a third world country. As of now, MLPOL doesn't have an alliance. If there is interest, we can make one
>How can I join and bring glory to the board and horse pussy alike?Go to
https://oppressive.games/bloc/Fill in the blanks.
Post your country name and region in this thread so we can invite you. Preferably we should be in the same region so we can protect each other if we'd be smaller.
Rumsod is a nigger when it comes to the layout, it should be fixed soon. It's been a while since a pone alliance has been in this game.
>Common mistakes:>HURR DURR SHITTY INTERFACEThe game is supposed to be a cold war simulator involving more diplomacy than actual war.
>HURR DURR ITS BORING AND ONLY FARMING AND BUILDING UR NATIONThis is true to some point due to the diplomacy, but a war always comes up sooner or later. Our objective would be to become the strongest alliance.
298 replies and 23 files omitted.
Thanks for the manpower! For some reason, when I try conscripting a second time I get the message "All of the available manpower has already been thrown into the meatgrinder!" I really should have more manpower than 2000 and I thought I could conscript 5 times a turn. Is this not the case?
>>136655Yes, the increase in costs is quite steep but I can see why it's implemented to prevent snowballing.
>>136656Unfortunately it's no longer based on manpower but rather 10% of your population. You can still lend troops to others but producing troops past your population limit is impossible. I'm not a big fan of the change but it does decrease your tech level instead of your growth.
>>136657Well, that must be how such nations as Athens in the Balkans are way above their force limit. I guess this means we should come up with a system where one or two of us are the military bulwark while the others send over new troops.
>>136658Yeah. I was thinking of providing 10k troops per each nation each turn, then after a certain point after we're at least 150k-200k we can redistribute to a good amount. Each of us would be fairly strong. It'd take about half a month but it'd be well worth it.
>>136659I've been meaning to ask: how long do these games last? Given such a long-term strategy I'd guess at least a month or two. Do major wars break out immediately or do alliances start fighting only when there's no more unaligned land left?
>>136660Usually they last anywhere between 2 - 4 months. Major wars usually only break out when there's no unaligned land left and there's border disputes or drama between major alliances. Generally the iteration ends when nukes start flying and one major alliance wins over the other. If I recall producing nukes in of itself is a challenge, because there's a 1% chance of each mine you produce being a uranium mine, so developing a reactor requires a large sum of money and uranium each turn, forgot the amount. The nuke itself costs 500,000k and 50 uranium and reduces your target's troops by 75%, half of navy, half of airforce, -100 growth, and half of their factories.
Completed an exchange of 50 research for $2000k. I put a quarter of that into the alliance bank.
Mutual Defense Pact signed with Pirate MMP
>>136671Nice, I think their position in the north means we won't get drawn into anything right away. Also I've just expanded raw material production to 12 (plus 1.2 from research).
Well, having tons of food as the food market collapses sucks. Mines are hanging on by a thread due to the insane price. If anyone does some market fuckery it'll be unfun times.
I may have boned myself.
Only things stable are the things I don't have in bulk, namely weapons and manufactured goods. Which also happens to be things not alot of other people have.
It's all in good fun, but man seeing the -48 growth was scary.
>>136698Is that you, Sunset? Generally speaking, food is a terrible resource to trade early game (from my assumption) because it's produced from spare land and everyone has lots of spare land. It'll be valuable only later on when lack of farmland and huge armies demand food supply; until then it's best to save up.
I'm in a great place because since I've gotten my factory I've invested consistently in resource production, particularly mines, and this constant investment means GDP will never catch up to potential GDP in the foreseeable future. We can get an economic aid package to you to help get you back on your feet.
>>136698Might have to have a couple of oil wells and try to put your nation on a slow decline, to where growth is down to reasonable levels (like maybe 5-10 million per month), that way you won't overshoot your natural GDP by a significant amount.
>>136704>I'm in a great place because since I've gotten my factory I've invested consistently in resource production, particularly mines, and this constant investment means GDP will never catch up to potential GDP in the foreseeable future. Nice.
I just have too much gdp, and growth.
>Food is lategame when every one has big armies to feed, and all the land is for make the stuff. Hoard carefully.Got it.
>>136709That sounds like a plan. Once growth is no longer in the hundreds maintaining something reasonable shouldn't be insane.
Can anything on the market ever be worth zero or less?
>>136728I don't think that's how markets work.
>>136728The only thing I've seen on the market reach close to zero was food. Theoretically yes if you were to absolutely flood the market. I've seen the price of selling food reach -0.01k but it was mostly a glitch. It went back to positive a few minutes later.
Oof, I got the mine closure event. I chose to lower the mininum wage since approval and QoL are going up anyway.
>>136733Yeah, that's usually the bad part about using your investments to build mines or oil rigs. If your approval and QOL is too low it's better to just nationalize it, so you can privatize your nation later and get it back to free market.
Speaking of which for any of you still unaligned I'd go ahead and align yourself with the US under foreign policies, it helps with building your reputation and allowing you to get shit like guns or planes.
I can see what you mean about overshooting GDP, my potential GDP hasn't been rising and in two turns it will be overshot. Should I build mines or oil wells to do something about this?
Also, interesting that Pirate MMP signed a MDP with us and the the third-largest alliance. It's a great move on their part, since the first and third-largest alliances can easily overwhelm the second-largest (textbook geostrategy), and we can defend their scattered members in northern Europe. However the Mercenary Corps have a coalition of mid-sized alliances with a huge presence in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, to the point we wouldn't stand a chance if war between the two factions broke out. It would have been better imo to join the second group, but it's too late now and we can't go back on our word. Not really a complaint, but I think major foreign policy decisions should be discussed among us first if possible.
Also is it just me or is BLOC running slow?
>>136735Yeah, fair point. Anything else from here on out regarding diplomacy will be discussed with you guys first before action is taken.
BLOC usually runs slow sometimes depending on what's happening. Most of the time it's fixed within half a day or so.
On GDP, go ahead and let it pass a tiny bit so that when your growth is decreasing, as soon as it hits somewhere like 10 - 20 million per month, go ahead and start spamming oil rigs or mines so that it can be stabilized. Keep track of your Nat. GDP and if you want to grow your economy to earn more money, just be sure you don't grow it too fast to where it'll make you overshoot and bring you to the negatives.
Also, previously I tried signing an MDP with Invictus, the result was kind of funny. Pirate MMP is historically the best-performing alliance in terms of military and growth so that's why I chose them as my second option.
>>136736>economic advice>tfw game mechanics follow what Keynesians claim to be able to do>diplomacyYep, it looks like Invictus hasn't been doing too well in terms of diplomacy and they've gotten isolated for now. Mercenary Corps forming a broad coalition surprised me too and I doubt they offered us an invitation, though who knows if approaching them would have worked. Pirate MMP isn't bad at all and Sovereign League has a decent presence here as well, though with what looks like newer players.
By the way, if you want to send me troops best to do so now. I want to invest into training my army to a decent standard.
Huh so horsefuckers did remake alliance. It has been long time since I have seen it.
>>136745My bad, wasn't able to send it until later
Good news, I think my economy shouldn't spiral out of control. Bad news I accidentally sold 20 units of mg.
Re-nationalized everything so selling it again for a rainy day is possible.
On the bright side I have metric fucktons of mines, and everything else is looking good.
Interesting how everyone who's part of an alliance has left protection while those without an alliance are still all protected. Is it going to remain this way (which would be stupid imo) or will it just take longer for these presumably newer countries to leave protection?
I got my military training up to "good." Should I invest more into that or should I save up to buy 10 oil for 2 more airplanes?
>>136793It'll take longer for the newer countries to leave protection. It's according to sign-up date instead of by iteration. 7 days of protection starts as soon as you sign up.
Military training is good for now, you should save up to buy airplanes, although if you're at small (5 planes), then you're okay for now. RM and Oil should be saved up for any future factories or universities if possible.
>>136806Got the timing wrong off by a day, sorry. Does the protection timer go by time or by turn (that is, the start of next turn)?
Also, I officially will be going above natural GDP next turn if I don't do anything. Can and should I do anything about that? The cost of buying oil to expand my fleet of airplanes to 5 might not leave enough left for another mine or well.
>>136815I'm not honestly sure. It could be either one, but I'd assume by turn?
For right now, save as much money as you can by possible and wait for your growth to go between 10 - 20, or even in the single digits. Then buy a bunch of oil or mines until your natural GDP is about 100 or so above your GDP. I'll take some money out of the alliance bank for you if you need it.
>>136815Well I've been above Natural gdp for a while. The growth has a sliding modifier that reduces growth. But the current level of growth will keep going for a while.
I had an event about slums and rising crime, but I haven't seen a noticeable difference yet
I checked the region map we're all able to be targeted for war. (Or declare war.)
The only other people are in alliances at the moment. Also I'd assume spys and stuff are being sent.
>>136820Yeah. You've got to be careful when it comes to that though, before you know it you can have a nat gdp that's at least 500 below and be stuck with growth decreasing by -50 each turn.
When it comes to war, no alliance targeting for now, however any allianceless nations are fair game. I believe the general consensus for alliance nations are if they're inactive for over 60 hours, you can target them. If they come online before you capital march though, it's customary to peace them. No rules apply for allianceless nations, except for not "stealing" land from another invader. If you see someone invade that nation first, you can invade them but make sure they capital march before you do.
>>136820Good to know. I think we should coordinate any spy stuff in Alliance Chat which is secure. Mine has been sitting in my country getting points.
>>136821Hopefully I don't zoom that far past! I'll try to slow my growth to sustainable levels. How exactly does natural GDP rise?
Also what's a capital offensive?
>>136824Natural GDP can rise or fall depending on the markets. If you click on your Gross Domestic Product number it should show the total value of all your oil rigs, mines, factories/wep factories, and food. If some idiot decides to sell 1,000 mines, the price of mines will fall and so will your Natural GDP.
Capital Marching is when a nation has at least, I believe, 6k soldiers or less. When that happens, if you march using land offensive, you will end the war and acquire a portion of the nation's GDP, land, and any other resources they might have had.
>>136824Natural gdp is based on workers working and market value of the resource (at least for farming)
Farming has (units of food × selling point market value in free market[maybe])+farmers working
Roughly.
The other stuff I haven't crunched, but it's a rough estimate.
>>136826>If some idiot decides to sell 1,000 mines, the price of mines will fall and so will your Natural GDP.This, rip hundreds of gdp in food production.
>Capital Marching is when a nation has at least, I believe, 6k soldiers or less. When that happens, if you march using land offensive, you will end the war and acquire a portion of the nation's GDP, land, and any other resources they might have had.Neat.
>>136826>>136827Good to know about natural GDP though I wish I knew how to calculate it.
>When that happens, if you march using land offensive, you will end the war and acquire a portion of the nation's GDP, land, and any other resources they might have had.Nice. I guess regular wars are meant to simulate border conflicts, whereas capital marching involves totally breaking enemy resolve to fight and actually taking some core territory. If I'm not mistaken each of us can wage only one war a turn, therefore we need to be judicious in picking which countries to "claim" because it will take multiple days to crack their armies and dismantle the countries. Others will be claiming nations in East Europe as well so there's diplomacy involved to make sure we get enough.
>>136834As far as I know, you can have up to 3 defensive wars and 3 offensive wars. If you were to attack three countries however, as soon as you capital marched a country, it would show you as no longer being at war with the other two (for some reason). The same doesn't apply to defensive wars.
I think it would be better in that case if we went after overlapping countries. Though our militaries are reasonably powerful I don't know if they could take on 3 nations each with 20k troops.
Well, I made a mistake. A new player offered to sell me oil (which I need to fill out my airforce to 5) but after I wired him half the cash amount I find out players can't send resources until they have a GDP of $310 million. Also I forgot that with the cost of tariffs I probably would have been better off just buying it on the market.
https://oppressive.games/bloc/stats.php?id=15563>>136868Well an IOU will work of he pays it back.
In anycase how much oil did you need?
>>136869I need 3.9 oil to finish my air force, though I would need more to actually use it. Otherwise I'm saving my money while keeping domestic QoL up.
Alliance chat is bugged so I'll post here. I scouted in our and neighboring regions and these are juicy targets I found:
East Europe:
Commieland, 8000 troops
Strakia 2 factories but 20k troops (I don't know if we can conquer factors, pogchamp moment if we can)
Emristan 9000 troops
Bashkortostan 9000 troops
Central Europe:
Slovan, 8000 troops
HESHAM, 8000 troops
Chacaski, 10k troops
Northern Europe
Elvoreto, high GDP, but 20k troops
IQ GOOD, ditto
Ponderosa, high GDP, 9000 troops
Scandinavian, 10k troops
If these targets leave protection seize the opportunity before someone else does. Eastern Europe is our turf so that gets priority, but if there is a country in another region not "claimed" by someone else I recommend going for it. Just remember to look at their stats so you don't accidentally declare on someone with 20k+ elite troops!
Also looks like Prozadia's already getting targeted by Mercenary Corps. We might want to engage in outreach with the latter to make sure we don't butt heads over targets.
Pakhtun is open for a spot
>>136871>>136869>>136871Also, unfortunately with many of those nations they have either already been invaded or have been offline for over a certain amount of time so they can't be invaded
>>136873Alright, I'm going after him.
>>136874Cursed. Somehow so many nations disappeared all at once. Does this always happen?
>>136878Pakhtun unsurprisingly is already in 3 defensive wars and I don't want to barge in. How did so many countries get deleted? Were they eaten so fast or did they get deleted for inactivity?
>>136879>>136878No, it doesn't always happen. It'll usually happen after three months of inactivity, but apparently there's been a lot of nations cheating that are being deleted.
>>136881Unsurprising as I doubt this game gets so much publicity that new players will "try it" and log out. However the inability to expand does through a monkey wrench into my plans. Where do we go from here?
>>136882Honestly, I'd say we wait for the first opportunity of land to take. In the meantime we should build up our facs, weapons, and troops so that when shit does hit the fan (usually halfway in to the iteration) we can be prepared to either defend or attack. We can make up for lack of land by investing more into researched facs/mines/rigs in order to decrease space that they take up with bought research, or just have a fuckton of universities so we can make it ourselves.
Sooner or later tensions will most likely rise between Invictus and Pirate. If we get called to action through the mutual defense pact then we have an excuse to go after a ton of land. Although at that point we'd need to make sure we'd have a ton of planes, navy, and troops. I'm currently slowly building up our alliance's troops, with each nation getting 10k troops per about one and a half days. A little while longer and we'd be able to get 100k troops and more.
>>136883Sounds good. I vote on building universities and specializing with research because it's incredibly valuable. I've been selling 50 research to Mines for $2250k but he's Invictus, and either he's distributing this research or he'll use it to make nukes. I think we should negotiate an equivalent deal with Akhlaken or whoever is the representative of Pirate MMP to get an equivalent deal.
On the plus side the lack of massive invasions into neutral territory means our reputation won't go down, making it still possible to buy 2 weapons every turn. I won't be getting any more planes from the U.S. because the 6th one costs 26 relationship points. This means to expand our airforce we will need more factories.