Diplomacy

Nations in the server have all the diplomatic capabilities of their real world counterparts- they can declare war on one another or form alliances. Warfare is controlled largely through power values, as the goal of nations at war will be to kill opposing players enough to lower power levels enough to claim land away from one another.

Setting Diplomacy
Diplomacy is handled through commands. National administrators are the only ones who can use these commands, meaning that they are the only ones who can form alliances or declare war. The commands are:

/n ally  /n enemy  /n neutral 

- Alliances
All these commands require the target Nation’s tag after the command. All Nations start as neutral with all other Nations. The ally command requires both Nations to agree that they wish to be allies, in other words, they both have to input that command for each other. Alliances are completely informal and at this point have no actual bearing ingame, as alliances do not compel the Nations involved to go to war if one is attacked. However, they are created if only for validation of an informal agreement. Currently the only functionality is that allied Nations can build or destroy most blocks and objects on each other's land, a permission not allowed as neutrals. Doors and chests can still not be used/accessed by allies.

- War
Declaring war is as easy, as one Nation declaring another nation to be their enemy; the Nations don’t have to agree that they’re at war. This means that one Nation can declare war on another Nation just by declaring them their enemy. Official declarations of war in-game have profound gameplay effects, much more so than alliances. Nations that are declared enemies actually have full access to enemy territory, meaning that they can go ahead and grief it, steal resources, and generally just wreak havoc. There are only a few restrictions to this. First, a member of the enemy Nation must be online for any of this enemy access to take place. A nation cannot declare war on another while they’re all offline, and then go in and destroy everything while they can’t do anything about it, and might not be aware. Only a single citizen needs to be online though, so caution is advised when going on and offline while at war. This may make it sound like any nation can go and utterly terrorize another randomly if they like, except that it opens themselves up to retaliation. The culling blade of war cuts both ways, so warfare is a risky affair that is not to be taken lightly. Somebody who declares war haphazardly is likely to anger other Nations as well to the point that they could get every other Nation declaring war on them at once. Also worth considering is the fact that it's not just you going to war, it's all your Nations members as well. The risk of having their items stolen or buildings griefed may lead to a negative relationship with some of your members, even losing some of your members leaving.

- Neutrality
The neutral command is used to end wars. Both Nations need to declare that they are neutral to one another for a war to end.

Warfare and diplomacy in general is very serious, has lasting repercussions, and can not be undone once it has begun. Both parties have to agree on peace, so the message here is basically not to start anything you can’t finish. Diplomacy in-game is relatively robust, allowing for many subtle situations stemming from those three options. However, there are limits to what can be done exclusively in-game, so we have extended many gameplay functions with the official OrigiNations forum.