Esoteric Dixie Dharma

I’m playing a video game right now, and the worst thing about it is that I am forced to try to win a war without being able to actually practice the art of warfare. Instead, I’m forced to only play what the enemy is good at, a captured democratic bureaucracy & all the choking pressures of media, institutional, and corporation control. I know I could win the game if they patched in an update that permitted the raising of armies … but alas, it’s just not that game. Maybe a community patch comes out someday, that fundamentally changes the game - but until then, if I want to win the game at hand, I have to figure out how to beat the enemy in a game where he holds all the cards. Very difficult position to be in. I don’t like this game very much, but unfortunately I can’t simply return it - I have to play it through to the end, and there’s just no replay value at all. I’ve really got one shot to do it right, and it’s stuck on expert difficulty. And by far, the worst part about the game is - it’s a multiplayer game, one of those MMO’s … and you’re just one avatar in a sea of others, most don’t even seem to be interested in the game, they just shit up the chat logs, and no one has any motive or incentive to do what you say. Your starting “reputation” meter has just 1 brick out of like 300 million bricks … and half of them, get this, half of them have completely different victory conditions than you … and if they find out you’re not on their team, they can perma-ban your account. It’s a pretty stupid game, and I still struggle to both find out the best strategy - and get that strategy communicated to my teammates without getting myself & others banned from the server - which ofc doesn’t help anything. Right now; building competence (but anonymously, so as to not get discovered), selective & secretive alliance-building (aimed at - very patient compounding growth in small unit cohesion … sort of raising an invisible army, without the risks of fighting the core loop directly, as it’s heavily policed - lots of opsec, can’t ever have enough opsec … compartmentalization too), and putting all of my own specs into mana (I have a theory that the mana stat allows you to better probe and leverage system exploits, giving you better D12 rolls) - and that’s my strategy. One of the most interesting things though, is that sometimes the stated rules of the game, and the actual rules of the game - are a little different, and allow for some sneaky loopholes to exploit. The whole team does a pretty good job with those - and what I’ve noticed is that when using one of those exploits, even though the enemy team basically knows who you are, they are totally powerless to ban you. So I do think we should keep working those - though, as always, risk management is not sexy, but it is very fundamental. No sense in even playing the game if you’re not going to be patient enough to mitigate silly risks, while taking carefully measured risks. All in all, absolutely retarded video game that I resent feeling compelled to play.