Hall of Shame

[moderation]

vfb said:No nation necessarily considers itself evil. The people of Sauromatia may eat the flesh of their enemies to show respect or gain their powers. In the nations conducting blood sacrifice, it may be a great honor to be chosen as a sacrifice. The righteous flames of the Marignon inquisition save the souls of those who are burned by the fires of justice. The Ashen Empire removes the pain of life from the world, and when all is reduced to ash and dust, nirvana is achieved.

Okay I'm mostly repeating myself, but I think this is clearer and more concise. Hanging an arbitrary "evilness" hat on certain nations and deciding that they are the ones most likely to break treaties is not useful because everyone has a different definition of what "evilness" means and which nations it applies to. Without any common understanding of the "evilness" and or "goodness" the nations, it's hard to have a consensus that EA Abysia is likely to break treaties because they are evil and EA Mictlan is not. Because of this lack of consensus on "evilness" (and the fact that the designers made the majority of the nations morally ambiguous), it's not generally meaningful to blame a broken treaty or similar strategic decisions on a nation's "evilness" or "goodness". Ultimately, these decisions are still up to the player.

In addition, what kind of models do we have for how an ancient Aztec god with a entire nation under his control may have negotiated a trade or alliance with a Greek goddess like Athena who also happened to be also have an entire army and nation under her control? Keep in mind this is happening as numerous Egyptian, Indian, Nordic and Chinese gods all happen to be sharing the stage and in various stages of war or alliance with each other. If you were dealing with a WWI or WWII scenario, then yes, it might make some reasonably logical roleplaying, but roleplaying this kind of scenario in Dominions is just too weird because we really have no practical ideas about how gods are supposed to act in the realm of international relations. As a result, attempts at this sort of roleplaying just seems like a way to dress up strategic game decisions as a story. But there is no real compelling story there for me to see, just some people trying to win at a game. I'm happy to roleplay flavor elements, but attempting to roleplay diplomacy just opens up too big of a can of worms for me.

[vfb]

You mean, you wouldn't do something like this?

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...ev=#Post587784

Give it a try, it's fun.

[moderation]

vfb said:
You mean, you wouldn't do something like this?

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...ev=#Post587784

Give it a try, it's fun.

Well yeah, that seems like a fun flavor element. And it's helpful that you point out when you are OOC. Flavor elements are perfectly fine with me. Though I'm not sure I could conduct diplomacy or a trade as an unreliable and insane Starspawn.

[lch]

Oh, one of those threads again. Since lots of posts with lots of words have been made and some of those words are quite difficult, I chose to ignore them all and will just write a little bit myself. You may opt to do the same about my post.

Human players may chose to end/ignore/violate NAPs whenever they see it fit. If they think that a NAP isn't doing them any good, they will not honor them. That's what makes them better than the AI and I'd be pretty pissed if it wasn't the case but if they'd stick to them because of some honor system. But humans may even make errors. You better get used to that...

[lch]

P.S.: Maybe it would be better to have people signed up for a game without explicitly stating what nation they get. They'd only know their own nation and that's it, everything else would stay anonymous and under the radar. Do you think a setup like this would lead to heavy backstabbing? We could try it out, I would host a game like this, provided there's interest.

[gowb]

They did that in that Rand game, I believe. Stands for random.

[Tichy]

I'm assuming ground rules for such a game have to include not telling people who you are, and restricting diplomacy to the in-game message system.

[lch]

Ah, I see, Rand already did this. But that was a no-diplomacy game as well. I'd allow diplomacy, but disallow disclosing which player played which nation. Probably keep the player list a secret even after the game, unlike Pashadawg did it with Rand. People could post on the game thread, but only by sending a PM to me so that I post it under their name. Signup would be via PM, too, so that you have no idea who the other players are. Mmmhh...

[gowb]

That would be a pretty awkward system, I think. Maybe allow only in-game communication by closing the thread after it starts? Maybe set up a neutral admin in case anyone needs an extension.