The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Come play CyberNations! It's totally worth your 5 minutes a day!
Kilonum
[E]Somewhere near BostonRegistered User regular
[E]Somewhere near BostonRegistered User regular
CyberNations.jpg
CyberNations Is:
CN is a browser-based online nation simulation game. To be blunt, it's a spreadsheet where you collect taxes, pay bills, and fight wars. In CN you collect taxes, pay bills, buy infrastructure (a general catch-all that boosts your nation's population), land, technology, and military (such as soldiers, tanks, airplanes, cruise missiles, navy, and eventually nukes). As you build up you can buy improvements and wonders which increase the core stats of your nation and give you basic advantages. Each nation also starts with two resources (such as cattle, coal, gold, iron, oil, sugar, and wheat to name a few) which you can trade with other nations and get global bonuses. You can form alliances and protect eachother, and go to war.
This all sounds like quite a lot, but it really isn't. In fact, if it takes you more than five minutes to play on a normal day, you are playing incorrectly! If you have your password saved, you can literally do everything you need to for a day (without war) in seven clicks, three of which are logging in and out. In fact, you can fairly reasonably only check on your nation once every twenty days during peacetime without being punished.
The game isn't difficult, not by the slightest. What makes it is the community. Our alliance hails from SomethingAwful.com, a website that many of you may recognize as a satirical/current events website and home to one of the most heavily populated and active internet forums in the world.
Something Awful? Isn't that like 4chan or something
Oh god no
Ok I'll bite, if you're from Something Awful why are you posting on the Penny Arcade boards of all places?
That's a very good question! Some of you may be familiar with Eve Online, a massively multiplayer space combat game. Penny Arcade spawned a presence in that game in the form of the corp Merch Industrial. Merchi, as it is commonly truncated, eventually joined Goonswarm, a large alliance whose player core also came from Something Awful. I have played that game along those people and have nothing but good things to say about them, so I got together with a couple other goons and we came up with the crazy idea to repeat that experiment with CyberNations.
Alright, tell me more
Cybernations is a mundane spreadsheet for the most part like described in the intro paragraph, but it does have some intriguing and, in my opinion, redeeming aspects. First, there is a large and very diverse player base, currently numbering over twenty thousand players. There are commies (FCC, LSF, LSN, LCN, etc.), nutty Germanic roleplayers/closet Nazis (NoR), Teaparty/Republicans (GOP/TCU), fundies (CCC), weeaboos (SOS Brigade, TraPs) and Allah knows who else. So many of these people care far too much about their nations, which is (in our humble opinion) one of the elements that makes this whole thing so much fun. Second, so many of them are just bogglingly incompetent in understanding the most mundane mechanics of a simple browser game that, once you get the hang of it, really doesn't have that much to it. Partially because they don't have access to the guides, training, and tools that we and other top-tier alliances do, partially because they're just bad.
Finally, beyond simply having a good number of groups of secularized communities, CyberNations has a preposterously in-depth and involved political metagame for a simple browser game. Alliances treaty one another to create strategic coalitions for the next inevitable cycle of global inter-alliance thermonuclear war, agent provocateurs spread false rumors to create tensions between enemies and enemy becomes friend becomes enemy once more in an ever-malleable game of thrones. This entirely user-created aspect of the game is by far its most redeeming and lasting aspect, and I wasn't joking when I tagged the strip as "CyberNations.jpg".
Why should I play this game?
So many people play it for the utterly mundane pleasure of growing your nation. If that is all that floats your boat, then we're not the group for you. If you find that you are critically in short supply of schadenfreude, join GOONS. If you're a political science major and want to try your hand at world domination but didn't end up getting inducted into to the Skull & Bones society, join GOONS. If you want to join a community of like-minded, fun-loving and intelligent people and look down on communities of ignorant people physically incapable of experiencing the joy of laughter, join GOONS. It's your call, my friends!
This sounds amazing! How do I play?
You can find the game at http://cybernations.net but we also have a referral program to give free stats to our stronger nations. These larger nations tend to bankroll our smaller nations, so support is appreciated. Please access the site using one of these URLs:
Referral 1: Umar
Referral 2: SirWilliam
Referral 3: JamezBfod
Referral 4: Yung Flow
Referral 5: mattski133
Hopefully, you can figure out how to register and create your nation. At nation creation, remember a few things:
1. Be on black team. Our team color is black, and it helps coordinate trades.
2. Currency should be Dong. This doesn't actually matter, but come on. Dongs. Heh.
3. Tax rate is 28%, DEFCON should be 5. Just go with it.
4. Put your nation anywhere on the map. The map is worthless. I suggest the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because Congo sounds like conga and who doesn't like a party?
After you do that, you have a nation! Within about one minute, recruiters will start messaging you to join their stupid alliance! Don't do it! We have this all set up for you. You need to click on "Edit My Nation" and make your nation look like this one:
To change your alliance affiliation to Stupid Newbie, use the dropdown for Specify Other and just type it in. The SA Grenade is flag Custom 73, you should use it. Show your pride. Or hide it, your choice.
Aaaaaaa I have a nation what next
Congratulations, you have a nation! Next, you have to come to us and turn into the smartest CN player ever. To do that, go to http://cngoons.com and create an account, and then follow the Application steps. It is literally a form where you put in a few things, and it makes a thread for you. Someone nice, probably Slide, will come in and add you to Training.
In Training, we have all of the information you will ever need to know to play the game. It may seem overwhelming, but our goal is to make you smarter than 95% of CN players within two weeks of playing. During training, you will get set up into a trade circle, do tech deals, and start a raid.
After training, you are a Full Member! Congratulations. You are not mentally deficient. Or if you are, you can at least follow directions. Good enough.
Vote for Senate
DO THIS AFTER YOU'RE 15 DAYS OLD: In the Team Information panel in the sidebar, there's a thing that says Vote For Senate. You should vote for Umayyad Caliphate or Tiltakslos; whomever has fewer votes. These are the guys we want for senate. We used to support another candidate, but this way, we can push the nutty Germanic roleplayers (Nordreich) out of the Senate! What a quality idea.
Wait oh god I have some more questions
Unfortunately for you, that's all I'm going to cover in this initial post. Fortunately for you, I may be lurking and will try to answer any questions you leave in this thread as promptly as I can. If you want some more immediate answers, we can be found on internet chat relay on the synIRC server, which is the unofficial official goon irc server. Our public channel is #cybergoons. Most of the people there are helpful. If you are unfamiliar with IRC and want to give it a shot (all the cool people hang out on IRC), this is a pretty helpful tutorial. Thanks for stopping by and, hopefully, thanks for joining.
Kilonum on
0
Posts