The Glory and Fall of Empires/Norway

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The torn empire - Norway was the third part of a series The Glory and Fall of Empires written by Hungarian citizen Quicksilver.

Part 3. The torn empire - Norway

As is the secret of all empires on eRepublik, Norway too started its path to greatness with being discovered by two forums, and getting a big population growth from their members. It happened in early January, 2008, and soon Norway was up to second place in population (around 1500 people), only beaten by Sweden, its ally. Together they formed the Northern Alliance, which was the forerunner of Atlantis - and together, they started their conquests on the road that led to their separate empires. Norway started it off with a fast conquest of Finland, in mid-April 2008; it was admittedly only a strategic move to open up the way towards the Russian steppes.

Norway at the time claimed to be threatened by Russia's planned MPP with Indonesia, but in fact they, as every growing country needed a real war, to keep citizens in the game, by building up an empire. The war with Russia kicked off in 1st May 2008, just before Russia could make its MPP with Indonesia. Russia was at the time being converted to communism, being hampered by the theft of the state assets by the previous president, and in general having very few people for the huge country that spanned the whole northern part of Asia. Since the huge territory is only divided to a few regions, Norway conquered it quickly; Russia's allies could only send a few fighters to help mainly from Iran and Indonesia - the so-called Great Patriotic War ended in 6th May, and Russia, the first communist country of eRepublik has disappeared from the maps.

This was the height of the Norwegian Empire, and the way led downwards ever since. It started with Finnish freedom fighters in August starting a great recruiting campaign, that effectively doubled Norway's population, and started to PTO Norway from the inside, by making a party (Sovereign Finland) and running for elections. The relations between Finns and Vikings were not as peaceful at first as we might think from the end-result...and so they succeeded gaining the presidency in September and October (inunova), and it was their work and diplomacy that finally came to fruition in the Finnish Independence War 2008 October-November, and its continuation, the Finnish-Norwegian war (2008 November-December), that was organized as a training war for both countries (Operation Spear). It was the first such on erep, and also Finland the first conquered country to regain independence.

With the loss of Finland, Norway also lost a great percentage of its population; and also the older players started to leave the game; and so Norway's population dropped sharply, and with it its ability too to defend regions from inside and outside. Russians started their independence movement, just like the Finns, and the Red Resistance Front became a threat to the Norwegian congress in December, with some Iranian help - and forced Salve to negotiate with them. The negotiations got off a rocky start, both parties accusing the other with a lot of things both behind the scenes and in the public media, but were surprisingly successful later, as Norway agreed to free certain Russian regions, and giving option of freeing others later - in exchange for the Russians leaving the congress and stop ruining Norway's economy.

The first of the RW-d regions was Volga Vyatka, to give the new country the needed high grain, followed by West Siberia. But then the secret part of the pact came to light, when Romanians vetoed Russia's entry to Atlantis (not membership but Russia was trying to get close to Atlantis), started the RW first in Moscow region, and then for Northern Russia, and declared war to Russia with agreement from Norwegian government - to acquire the resources-rich region of West Siberia region - WSR as everyone knows by today. It was a crude forerunner of the region-swaps of today - only they did not ask the Russians about it... They conquered Moscow without problems, but the battle for Northern region proved to be more difficult - in fact it became one of the epic battles of the New World. It was so, because Russia acquired 6 MPPs with most of the strongest PEACE countries (became member of PEACE in fact), so Romania after this choose the method of presidential PTO to conquer Russia.

So, Norway lost its resource-rich Russian regions one by one; some to Romania and some to the reforming Russia later (like Kaliningrad), and also started to loose players, who got bored by the game; until it found itself again in a strategic position in the Indonesian-Romanian war, swapping regions with Romania and Finland to avoid Hungary or Ukraine blocking Romania. But Norway this time played too much with fire and burned itself... for in March and April 2009 Hungary decided to PTO the country, and not in a secret either - it was one of the first great PTO successes of the famous HUNTER unit of Hungary. With Marginaldefeat as the President, and with Hungarian congress majority Norway was taken out of commission both militarily and economically - and it never recovered either ever since.

Norway had one more failed move in the third world war, when it tried to block Russia, by attacking Northern Russia in 23rd July 2009 - but was defeated soundly, and lost even Nord-Norge region in the Russian retaliation. Norway now is down to five regions and barely 500 people - and is out of contention, despite of the still open wars and activated MPP-s. Norway is a member of Atlantis as always, or rather its European successor, EDEN, but contributing little to it nowadays.

Norway IMHO failed as an empire, because it nurtured its enemies inside the country; from the Finnish separatist to the Red Resistance Front - even including Hungarians, who as necessity demanded because of the country's lack of high resources, worked in great numbers in Norway - like the author of this piece... some Hungarians became so ingrained to Norway's society, that their allegiance only came to light in the Hungarian PTO, which at first was thought to be a tie between the fraction. And Norway, as the true Vikings slowly left the game has always been trying to negotiate with its enemies - but somehow always pulling the short straw - because by wanting to please everyone, they managed to fall to the ground in the middle... the interesting fact is in Norway's history is that it is not very empire-like... thing somehow happened to them, not they instigated them - except at the beginning.

And so it was the biggest empire of eRepublik - Norway.

See also

• The original article
• Legendarium
• Legendarium