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Fail! Ok, how about what do you think of the current variant map you are playing? I'm in a Crusaders match right now. It's new to me and definitely forces one to interact with others right away to accomplish anything.

I actually quite luke the mongolian empire variant

I've need to try that one. The orientation of that map throws me off a bit but the "highways" in there are very interesting.

Agreed. Makes for interesting plays.

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Dead. No bumping allowed : (

My part done have I to the Forum resuscitate.

Doeth gopherkind resuscitate Forum bumpier over protestations of zoumbie king.

"Fail! Ok, how about what do you think of the current variant map you are playing? I'm in a Crusaders match right now. It's new to me and definitely forces one to interact with others right away to accomplish anything."

How does that not apply to every variant above six players?

I'd argue that in Europa there are times where you just know what centers you're going to get and that you don't have to really say much accomplish that.

How sad for the players of Europa. LOL

If you don’t interact in Classic aka Europa, you will not really achieve much as well.

England, Russia have no guaranteed supply Centers at all. Germany and Austria must closely coordinate to take one or two of the SCs around them without someone rushing Bur, Sil, Tyr or Gal, forcing a early retreat from these Centers.

Arguably only Italy and Turkey have pretty Safe SC‘s in the first year, along with France.

But those too are worthless without coordinating with your neighbours and their neighbours.

Not to be Debbie Downer here but I'd like to know some of your oppinions on Germany, Poland, France, The UK and USA sending battle tanks to Ukraine. There seems to be a never ending supply of money and Military hardware being sent and I'm starting to feel like any chances for ending this war seem to be dwindling.

Isn't that the explicit intent of sending materiel rather than directly participating? Extend the war out (ie. delay a Russian victory)?

The options to end the war are a) Russia stops attacking or b) Russia wins. It's apparently been decided that the latter is not acceptable (given the massive support given to Ukraine), which leaves only option a). So it's either "wait until they get tired" (ie. not quick) or "overwhelming firepower", which has been explicitly noted as 'not on the table' for the entire war.

Thus, it's "Lend-Lease until Russia decides to stop". Which, yes, will take a while :/

Surely "Russia stops attacking" the same as "Ukraine wins"?

I understand fighting a proxywar mouse, I guess I was asking for peoples opinion (agree/disagree) on sending tanks and more powerful weaponry. As far as participating, we will be, these tanks will require training and maintanence and the Ukraine will need help with both.

The West is talking about sending a few dozen more modern tanks, whereas Russia has roughly 15,000 tanks in their arsenal and have witnessed over 500 destroyed in Ukraine. The tank deliveries, as currently being discussed, are largely a symbolic act. I view this as mostly a byproduct of the internal dynamics of Germany's neurotic politics.

The training requirements likely further diminish the efficacy of delivering more modern tanks.

There is a stronger argument for sending more powerful weaponry designed for small unit deployment.

The 15K tanks argument I have not heard since February last year. The absolute inferiority of older Russian tanks to modern guided anti-Tank weapons was so widely seen and demonstrated early last year, that no one is seriously disputing this.

Even Russian state TV is focusing a lot on the ramped up production of their newer tanks, APCs and so on.

Russian milbloggers meanwhile have over the past year widely condemned the lacking state of Russian hardware, the reported condition of which did not meet reality.

From what I read on the Telegram channel of Strelkov, the supplied western main battle tanks are a) far better in reconnaissance concerning enemy tanks and b) are designed to work in a interconnected way with the other supplied western armored vehicles.

That being said, I think that helping Ukraine to victory is the right thing to do. Tanks alone surely won’t do it, a mix of many different provisions will.

However, the political risk remains especially for Europe: what if Russia loses and turns into some kind of failed state? No one could want to have this kind of situation with a state of this size and power in Europe.

The open question in Russia has for a long time been: what, or who, will be after Putin? I thought it might be Medvedev, but his comments over the last year have been far more disconcerting than those of Putin himself. Likewise, the war is propelling other leaders to the political front line, Prigozhin and Kadyrov, and putting substantial military power in their hands, which they might use if a power vacuum were to arise after the inevitable death of Mr. Putin.

So as stated before, the aims are Ukraine winning by Russia conceding defeat, rather than being defeated.

The guys who plays tennis? What about the guy Putin put in the clink?

The advance of technology is a major advantage. We see this even during WW2. The British Radar was far superior to the Germans and allowed the Duke of York to bring down the Scharnhorst (which at the time was the ship that struck the most fear into its opponants - more so than the bismarck). Something as small as that can dictate the flow of battle. And modern day tanks versus soviet era, the difference in technology is much larger.

I do not honestly know that much about Navalny. But I know to be skeptical of what makes it through the Western media's filter about such people. As someone who knew whom Jamal Khashoggi was the day that he was hired by the Washington Post, I have always been more disturbed that such a person was able to infiltrate (and thus shape the coverage of) my country's most politically influential newspaper than I ever have been about his murder. Khashoggi was most certainly not a journalist nor a democrat nor even really a dissident. He spent his entire adult life as a creature of and mouthpiece for the former head of Saudi Intelligence: Prince Turki bin Faisel is not a terribly appealing figure from my perspective. Similarly, were one to go back and read Western media coverage of Khomeini before the fall of the Shah, he was almost inevitable compared to Gandhi.

I have faith in the ability of Russia's dissidents to be even worse than Putin and of the Western media to not notice.

One of the things going on politically in the US is that the current head of the US Marine Corp wants to radically restructure the Marines. He largely wants to eliminate heavy equipment like tanks from the Marine Corp's arsenal in order to transform them into a force dedicated to small detachment combat leveraging sophisticated almost personal use weapons systems. The early success of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russians added weight to his arguments. (His main premise being that China's entire strategy around Taiwan rests of denying naval access to the US through anti-ship missiles so as to block sustained resupply of traditional combat forces) So the head of one of the four branches of the US military would have been a strong ally for them if the Ukrainians had deployed their political capital to ask for the most sophisticated such weapons systems available in the US arsenal, up to our top tier combat drones that can be launched and operated by a single person, practically off of a smart phone.

I am still skeptical of how impactful a handful of tanks could be and have seen arguments by individuals I view as well-informed that more modern tanks do actually require extensive training in order to be used effectively.

Were I in a position of some degree of substantive responsibility for security policy for my country, now or at any point over the last 20 years, I would be more concerned by Russian weakness than Russian strength. The last year makes me feel more strongly in that regard. Russia can collapse, and a Russia-sized Libya would be bad. Aside from the impact of the political instability transmitted into Europe by once again having an anarchic, ungoverned steppe frontier, our modern world requires the regular delivery of Russian minerals to function. The Russians may pump 10% of the world's oil production, but they represent 20% of the production of battery grade nickel. Additionally, if the only two potential outcomes are victory or the striping of Russia of all pretensions of great power status and relegating her to the stature of Spain (or Portugal), then we are not offering much of a gap through which opposition to Putin and the current Russian policy can operate. One should remember that the Russians do civil wars like the Mexicans do civil wars...this is both cause and effect for Russia's proclivity for brutal, centralized authoritarianism.

My Russian friends have 'always' joked that the central factor in Medvedev's political position within Russia was that he is the only significant politician in Russia who is shorter than Putin and can therefore be positioned next to Putin in photographs or on TV. He exists precisely because he is not a possible successor. (Thing that I just learned: Georgy Malenkov lived until 1988)