A Lengthy but Important Post to All Players
In a couple of days (HINT:
48 hour warning), I'll be posting the 1919 update. This is the 20th update of the NES, and important milestone for all of us. Those of you who have played the same nation since the beginning kudos! And keep it up! Those who have bounced around a bit or joined later, stick with what you know, and your nation will thrive. With the conclusion of the 1919 update, however, this first period of the NES will come to an end. We'll wrap up some loose ends, build some more background stuff, and move on to the next thread, covering 1920 - 1939.
First and Foremost: Continue on with 1919 orders as you were. None of this will be further developed until after the update, and I solely am posting this so that you may begin thought upon your nation now.
A List of What Will and Won't Change
1. The majority of stats and rules will not change, so don't be alarmed about that, your EP will remain as it is overall, though some nations may have increases/decreases in their various overseas colonies. Also, I will be taking the chance to clean up manpower stats, allowing for immigration, and this timeline's changed demographics. I have been listening to ya'll, believe it or not, and I do truly believe we could use some cleaning of the global manpower.
2. We will convert to a version of the map crezth presented not long ago. I will alter a few things, adding national borders, and editting a few shifts, not to mention updating the map since crezth did it in 1915. This mostly due to the fact that I still hate elements of the current map and it can really do with an update.
3. SRPs will start taking up a major role in the NES. As I discussed a few turns back when we dumped technology tree, this shift was planned from the beginning. That is why we've only had 2 SRPs so far (shame the more interesting one was rejected) and this will change with the next period.
4. There will be some changes/additions to the various Doctrine and unit stats. This will be done to encourage further modernization of your armies and the development of new tanks, planes, and ships. Overall, this is a party, that I hope everyone will be invited to.
5. None of the rules will change, but I will seek to make the first page ruleset more coherent and keeping any news rules that have been implemented since the NES began. This will include new pictures for the first post, and other things changed more pleasing to the eye. If you think of anything that NEEDS to be added or clarified on the first post,
please share it with me in your 1919 orders, or even on the thread. I will make a note, and do my best to deal with any problems or inclarities.
6. A new background/history thread. The current one clearly isn't getting much use, and I hope that all of you have been as inspired as I by Lord Iggy's attempt to bring reason and realism to my history. I'm the first to admit that the scenario was designed as jsut that, a scenario, and Lord Iggy, Circuit, and others have done much to bring character to it. To this end, we will have a new background thread upon which, once more, we will include new flags, nation backgrounds, and stuff relating to the discussion of terminology and the history, like those I currently have listed on the front page. This will also include the list of my own recommended reading for NESes, like we already we have on this thread. I hope that by doing this, we can establish a more interesting backstory overall, and I will state, that the goal WON'T be to discuss the stuff currently going on, but rather making good sense of everything that happened BEFORE 1920.
Why a New Thread?
The first and most practical reason for a new thread is that we have already surpassed 4,000 posts on this one. As I plan to take this NES to at the very least, the year 2012, at the current rate, we will have beyond 24,000 posts on this thread if we stuck with it. Not only would this be rather daunting to new players, but I suspect that, unless things have changed, the fine folks of CFC would be most displeased (especially after they got all testy when I asked for more attachment space for my beloved maps

).
There is another important reason however, and this goes back to a quite good book on geopolitics called
The Next 100 Years by George Friedman. The book itself has a different theme than this, but one of the statements that really floored me is this: "People and nations mistake passing clouds for something that will be with the world forever, while ignoring the creeping realities that slowly shift the world. One day, something like the jihadist war will seem like a permanent fact, and twenty years later, the world will have changed without anyone even really noticing it." Taking a look at the history of the twentieth century alone, and if you study the actual attitudes of the majority at any given time, you can see that this statement holds up very well. Therefore, I feel, that in an NES that provides a true insight into geopolitics, like that which I strive for, every twenty years, the world seems like a different place than it had been before. In keeping with this philosophy is the reason why the NES is changing threads. I encourage those who were here, think back to 1900, is the world now the way you thought it would be when the NES was new? Similarly, those of you who are with us in 1920, keep a memory of your thoughts now, as twenty updates from now, the world will be a different place.