NEISG History Book: Chapter 2
Chapter 2: The Early Age Overview (Y1-Y8)
At long last, the “game” had begun, as it were, and the various nations began to vie for power. There were two basic ways that this was done.
THE LONG TERM
The Long Term was a military strategy that was based on attempting to promote their basic foot soldier into a powerful Queen or Dragon. There was one singular way that this could be done: by marching the pawn up to the promotion rank as quickly as possible. Some groups who utilized the Long Term Strategy include the Navs, the Pins, the Fischers, the Sams, and the Connans, with varying degrees of success.
If it were to succeed without a hitch, the Long Term was an extremely potent plan, ensuring the beginning of a powerful army. If it failed, however, and the pawn ended up being captured, the entire nation would become wiped out before it even began.
Those who attempted a Short Term strategy attacked - or should have attacked - these weak, vulnerable pawns. This brings us to our second main strategy.
THE SHORT TERM
The Short Term was a military strategy that was based on trying to gain a somewhat substantial army immediately. Using low-level pieces such as Knights, Guards, and Hunters, those who adhere to the Short Term strategy jump to an early lead in strength. They can then utilize these pieces to harass others, whether they be those using the Short Term or Long Term strategy.
Some groups who ended up trying the Short Term strategy include the Zhou, the Masters, the Third Empire, the Holographs, the WD, and many others. Unlike with the Long Term strategy, which only has two viable methods of execution, the Short Term can be applied in endlessly different ways, some of which are exemplified by these groups.
Users of the Short Term strategy were heavily reliant on energy, which is discussed in the following section.
ENERGY
Energy is a vague, confusing concept, never really clearly defined despite being such an important concept. The current scientific theory has it that energy is simply that - energy. Energy is related to mass, through Einstein’s scientific equation of E=mc^2. Thus, energy can be converted into mass, although at a horribly slow and inefficient rate. This is how pieces can be created out of nothing with energy alone.
When an enemy unit is “captured”, the natural reverse of this process occurs. The mass is converted back into energy, which, when harnessed by the capturerers, can now be used for their own purposes. Unfortunately, this process is essentially trying to harness the power of a nuclear explosion and trying to light a home with it. While technology for this is extremely advanced, it is not perfect, nor is it even close to perfect. Only some of the energy converted from the mass can be obtained.
Creating mass is not the only purpose that energy has, however. “Energy” seems to have varying magical characteristics as well. If a large amount of energy is poured into a single entity, it does not simply linger there. The piece in question will undergo a process called, “empowering”, which improves and adds onto its various abilities, thus creating the great Queens and Chancellors and Dragons, as well as giving the Witches, the Zombies, the Angels and otherwise their special abilities. In short, energy is a near-universal method for obtaining a powerful army.
Energy has gone by many names - power, mana, juice (by the Tomatoans), lifeblood, points, and, as it’s currently universally called, health. Please note that all of these terms refer to the same concept, and can be used interchangeably.
During the Early Age, as well as the time before the Monarchs ruled, energy was gained through a sense of national identity. As long as that identity still persisted, so too would “energy” continue to be created. This energy can then be manipulated, to that nation’s benefit, and their benefit alone.
The standard term for energy is now called a “Knowle”, after the Navian scientist who first discovered it. A single Knowle is defined by the amount of energy it takes to create a single pawn. Knowles, in fact, can be converted into other units. The average human from the religious higher realm of Reality weighs an average of 137 pounds, and is 69 inches tall. The average pawn is 36 inches high, which proportionally puts their weight at about 71.478 pounds, or 32.399 kilograms. Plugging this into “m” in E=mc^2, and 89,875,517,873,681,800 m^2/s^2 for “c^2”, the E value is found to be 2.912E18 joules, Thus, the standard conversion rate is currently stated to be 2.9*10^18 Joules = 1 Knowle
The Knowle is a very convenient unit for measuring energy, as all other units’ energy cost can be expressed in terms of either pawns or half-pawns. Knowles conveniently provide an exact parallel to this, allowing energy costs to be described in either Knowles or half-Knowles.
The latitudes of 6 and 10, and as it would later be discovered, -6 and -10, were extreme conduits of energy. A pawn can absorb the massive amount of energy there and “promote” to become a far stronger piece. Reaching these ranks was of course the ultimate goal for those who practiced the Long Term strategy.
But enough about science and lore. Let’s get back to the history.
MILITARY THEORY: AN OVERVIEW
From here onwards throughout the textbook, the author will refer to a concept called, “Military Theory”, or simply “Theory” for short. Theory is what a perfectly logical group would do, while obeying these two postulates:
- Survival. Each nation will do anything to keep itself alive.
- Strength. Each nation wants to be the strongest.
Point 1 takes a greater importance than point 2: survival comes before strength. A nation perfectly following Theory will gladly accept losing half their men with absolute assurance that the other half would be able to live. Survival precedes power.
Theory is a very important concept that is constantly discussed, as a group that perfectly follows Theory should be able gain in power perfectly: better than anyone else. Therefore, the more a nation follows Theory, the more perfect they are and the more power they will inevitably have.
Please do not confuse Theory with any other theories that may appear in this textbook, including scientific theories of the type mentioned earlier, the mathematical concept of Game Theory, or religious theories about higher beings. Military Theory can be differentiated from these other theories by the fact that Theory is always capitalized, or sometimes abbreviated as “MT”.
THEORY IN THE EARLY AGE
Both the Long Term and the Short Term strategies both have a place in Theory. As more groups use a Long Term strategy, so too should a nation following Theory use a Long Term strategy as well. A Short Term Strategy will inevitably fail, the smaller army will be unable to counteract everyone using Long Term, and the Queens produced from using a Long Term strategy would quickly crush the Short Term army. Using Long Term strategy is the only option to survive while everyone else uses Long Term.
Conversely, the more groups use Short Term, the more a nation following Theory should use Short Term as well. Trying to play a Long Term strategy while a majority of players following Theory are playing Short Term will result in some army attacking you, scooping up your lone pawn, and destroying the nation in question before it even gets started.
Under Theory, those using a Short Term strategy should only attack those using a Long Term strategy. Those using Long Term strategy are, in their current state, weak, and easy targets.
Attacking those who are also using Short Term will likely result in trades reducing both a nation’s army and their energy. This would leave them vulnerable to attack from both the mobile units of those using Short Term as well as the eventual Queens produced by using Long Term.
NEW GROUPS
While a large number of groups had appeared on the Board at the Beginning, a few other groups also happened to appear throughout the Early Age. These groups are discussed below.
In Y2, two new groups appeared. The first group is called the Rannish, a yellow-bearing group who decided to place their pawn right in the middle of the chaotic Central Zone. The Rannish were an entirely irrelevant group who did nearly nothing. Their nation barely grew past their first pawn, and their troops simply sat there, doing nothing and eventually vanishing.
The second new group that appeared on the board during Y2 was the Wengles. In their debut, the Wengles wore clothes colored a dark green. In direct contrast to the “strategy” used by the Rannish, the Wengles placed their nation’s first pawn very, very far away from all other pieces, farther west than even the Far West. This territory of the Wengles became known as the Hinterlands.
In Y3, a new group known as the Matten appeared. Placing their first pawn directly next to the Supers out in the Far East, the Matten always appeared in a light shade of pink. Much like the Rannish, the Matten were an inactive and entirely irrelevant group, quickly disappearing from history and being replaced by their successors, the Waffs.
PROPHETIC EVENTS
Among the Navs’ peculiar and eclectic religion involved a belief that every seven years, some Board-changing events or events would take place. Simply christened “Events”, the Navs spoke to others of this, warning them of the Events to come. However, with no knowledge of what these hypothetical Events even were, there was very little that could really be done to prepare for them.
After seven years, an Event did happen. As a matter of fact, two Events happened. One creating a massive amount of obstacles appeared all over the Board, and a second granted each army the ability to place these obstacles on any empty space they chose, with no cost to themselves other than time.
Obstacles themselves are strange things. As stated previously, creating mass requires energy. Yet obstacles seem to be created without energy.
The answer to this contradictory phenomenon is simple. Obstacles are indeed made of mass, just very, very small amounts of it. Obstacles exhibit an incredibly low density, almost similar to that of a gas. The only reason they exhibit the properties of a solid at all are the incredibly strong intermolecular forces they exhibit. At close distances, the positive cores of the atoms repel each other incredibly strongly, preventing a high density. At extremely far distances, however, the forces can kick in, and just manage to keep themselves together. Hence, obstacles are able to me solids with incredibly low densities.
The incredibly low mass of the obstacles permits very low, finite amounts of energy, with Joule costs generally somewhere in between 10^4 and 10^5. Compared to the the massive 10^18 values that energy is primarily measured in, the energy required to create an obstacle is essentially nothing. Therefore, obstacles can be placed with “no” energy.
This did come at some cost, however. While obstacles are mostly stable, their particles are so far spaced apart that there is still a chance that they could end up flying off. This would result in a chain reaction all across the molecular structure of the guard, causing it to spontaneously disappear. While the chance of this happening at any given time is incredibly small, (a miniscule 1.99*10^-15 % chance a day, which works out to be 10% in one year), it does indeed still exist.
All of the obstacles congregated in the Central Zone, generally blocking the various armies there. As what each army did each turn was a principle issue for both those using Short Term and Long Term, the ability to place obstacles was not used frequently.
INDIVIDUAL STRATEGIES
The nature of what each individual army did is the topic of the next chapter, where every nation of note will be analyzed in-depth. In general, however, the armies that used Short Term did not usually succeed. Those who used a Long Term strategy managed to promote their pieces, pulling far ahead in terms of power.
What’s interesting to note about this time was that there were generally many more groups using Short Term than Long Term. Under Theory, then, those using Long Term should have been quickly defeated. However, those using Short Term did not generally execute Theory well, or at all. This allowed the Long Term nations to succeed. The various failings of the Short Term will all be analyzed in detail in the next chapter.
