During the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil-producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old pricing system, which exacerbated the embargo’s effects.
Effects
The effects of the embargo were immediate. OPEC forced oil companies to increase payments drastically. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974 from US$3 to nearly US$12 per 42 gallon barrel ($75 per cubic meter), equivalent in 2018 dollars to a price rise from $17 to $61 per barrel.
The crisis eased when the embargo was lifted in March 1974 after negotiations at the Washington Oil Summit, but the effects lingered throughout the 1970s. The dollar price of energy increased again the following year, amid the weakening competitive position of the dollar in world markets.
The Arab oil embargo ended the long period of prosperity in the West that had begun in 1945, throwing the world's economy into the steepest economic contraction since the Great Depression.
Impact on oil exporting nations
This price increase had a dramatic effect on oil exporting nations, for the countries of the Middle East who had long been dominated by the industrial powers were seen to have taken control of a vital commodity. The oil-exporting nations began to accumulate vast wealth.
Some of the income was dispensed in the form of aid to other underdeveloped nations whose economies had been caught between higher oil prices and lower prices for their own export commodities, amid shrinking Western demand. Much went for arms purchases that exacerbated political tensions, particularly in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia spent over 100 billion dollars in the ensuing decades for helping spread its fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabism.
The oil embargo led a sudden interest in the Palestinian issue. On 8 November 1973, Kissinger became the first Secretary of State to meet with a Saudi leader since 1953 as he met King Faisal to ask him to end the embargo. Within two week of the embargo being launched, all of the foreign ministers of the nations of the European Economic Community met in a conference to issue a statement calling for Israel "to end the territorial occupation which has maintained since the conflict of 1967".
OPEC-member states raised the prospect of nationalization of oil company holdings. Most notably, Saudi Arabia nationalized Aramco in 1980 under the leadership of Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani.
Impact on the oil importing countries
The embargo had a negative influence on the US economy by causing immediate demands to address the threats to U.S. energy security. Macroeconomic problems consisted of both inflationary and deflationary impacts. The average US retail price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose 43% from 38.5¢ in May 1973 to 55.1¢ in June 1974. State governments asked citizens not to put up Christmas lights.
The Soviet Union was not a beneficiary of the oil crisis. The crisis prompted the USSR to raise energy prices within the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).
The embargo was not uniform across Western Europe. Of the nine members of the European Economic Community (EEC), the Netherlands faced a complete embargo. By contrast Britain and France received almost uninterrupted supplies. That was their reward for refusing to allow the US to use their airfields and stopping arms and supplies to both the Arabs and the Israelis.
Japan was hard hit since it imported 90% of its oil from the Middle East. It had a stockpile good for 55 days, and another 20-day supply was en route. Facing its most serious crisis since 1945 the government ordered a 10% cut in the consumption of industrial oil and electricity. Moscow tried to take advantage by promising energy assistance if Japan returned the Kurile Islands. Tokyo refused.
The oil shock destroyed the economy of South Vietnam. A spokesman for Nguyễn Văn Thiệu admitted in a TV interview that the government was being "overwhelmed" by the inflation caused by the oil shock. In December 1973, Vietcong sappers attacked and destroyed the petroleum depot of Nha Be, further depleting fuel sources.
Consequences
OPEC soon lost its preeminent position, and in 1981, its production was surpassed by that of other countries. Additionally, its own member nations were divided. Saudi Arabia, trying to recover market share, increased production, pushing prices down, shrinking or eliminating profits for high-cost producers. The world price, which had peaked during the 1979 energy crisis at nearly $40 per barrel, decreased during the 1980s to less than $10 per barrel.
The embargo encouraged new venues for energy exploration, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus. Exploration in the Caspian Basin and Siberia became profitable. Cooperation changed into a far more adversarial relationship as the USSR increased its production. By 1980, the Soviet Union had become the world's largest producer.
Heavily populated, impoverished countries, whose economies were largely dependent on oil—including Mexico, Nigeria, Algeria, and Libya—did not prepare for a market reversal that left them in sometimes desperate situations.
When reduced demand and increased production glutted the world market in the mid-1980s, oil prices plummeted and the cartel lost its unity. Mexico (a non-member), Nigeria, and Venezuela, whose economies had expanded in the 1970s, faced near-bankruptcy, and even Saudi Arabian economic power was significantly weakened. The divisions within OPEC made concerted action more difficult. As of 2015, OPEC has never approached its earlier dominance.
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Playing Baldur's Gate 3, so much about it is very good, the writing, characters, setting etc but
I hate tabletop D20 skillchecks so much I hate D20 combat rolls so much why oh why does the combat have to be like a tabletop game we are not limited to dice we can use whatever why do you have to make a combat system entirely reliant on the worst, the absolute worst type of RNG in video games I hate this so much aaaaaaaagghhhhhhhhh
Oh no I missed an 80% attack, guess I misplayed
Oh wow I'm standing right next to someone and still only have a 75% chance to hit, where's the fucking risk management if I can literally always get fucked
Oh there's a fucking 2-24 damage range so it's literally jesus take the wheel on whether I win the fight or not
If I hit a 60% shot I don't feel like I played correctly, I feel like I got lucky
There is no strategy when every single move you do is a goddamn coinflip
I want to like this game so badly but the combat is so egregiously unsatisfying because we insist on using a combat system from the 70s for "authenticity" I guess when we have all the options in the world to just use a good system instead
There is no, and i mean no excuse for having accuracy in a game in 2023. There should never, ever, ever, ever be "50% chance to hit, 50% chance to do nothing" in a modern fantasy RPG. Some variance is fine, and there are good, fun, engaging ways to use RNG, plenty of it. RNG can be super fun. I love RNG in digital CCGs like Hearthstone and Legends of Runeterra.
But not this. This is the worst. I don't give a shit that it's how D&D does it, D&D has to because it's a physical game limited by commonly available tools. With a video game, sky's the fucking limit and you still decide to go for the absolute worst, most boring and frustrating RNG possible?
I could maybe excuse it if there was any actual strategy to it. If I had to choose between power and consistency in my moves but no, all of them have chances to miss because xD
If I miss my safe melee attack twice in a row, what the fuck should I have done differently??? Hello???
It makes every victory feel completely hollow for me. I don't wanna win a battle because I hit enough 75% odds. I just feel like I got lucky enough.
Sorry for the rant but I really liked the story and characters, was really looking forward to a game I could sink my teeth in but every battle just makes me roll my eyes, it feels soooooo unsatisfying. I feel frustrated when I lose and absolutely nothing when I win cause it's just. a fucking. coinflip.
Statistically, you'll roll average luck over an average encounter. If missing a few attacks is the difference between winning and losing then you're probably not planning out the encounter enough. You can't just use tactics, you have to use strategy as well. Not every encounter can be won reliably by just reacting to things happening.
Sure you can get Xcom luck and get fucked when you should have won an encounter but that's not happening every encounter.
And a lot of the strategy for builds is about increasing the number of times you roll (either by more attacks/actions or by advantage/disadvantage) so that you mitigate the effect of any single roll.
I get the school of thought that rng has no place in tactics and strategy games, but I like a little randomness, personally. It might seem counterintuitive to like rng and build around mitigating it, but I find that process fun.
It does get better once you get an absurd number of modifiers, but man would it be great if it was 2d10-based instead
Why can't it be interesting and fun RNG instead why do we restrict ourselves to "oh hey either you get the good result and win or the bad result and lose"
Why do we restrict ourselves to a system designed for an entirely different medium in the 70s
Badly designed for a different medium
That's XCOM, baby!
X-com amateurs complain about X-coms bizarre to-hit statistics.
X-com Experts know that the blaster-launcher doesn't miss
(I have not played the bourgeiseious revisitionist firaxis x-com)
I do rather like the Token System in Darkest Dungeon 2. I got some complaints on the game for sure, but managing the addition or removal of tokens that can make coin flips of accuracy is actually a damn fun system to play with. With the dodge and blindness tokens, there's also double-damage, crit, damage reduction, and a revamped Mark system from the one of the previous game.
Sorry yo. There's probably a cheat somewhere to force the outcomes you want.