Forge of Godhood - started

[Calahan]

Many thanks for the 15 hour delay qm. And my hungover head thanks whoever asked for the additional 3 hours as well.

Reading the recent posts reminds me of just why I love no diplomacy games so much.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Calahan

Reading the recent posts reminds me of just why I love no diplomacy games so much.

Reading the recent posts reminds why I love so much diplomacy games. No diplomacy games are just a variant of singleplayer games, period. Why play multiplayer games if you do not like to discuss with people? With no diplomacy there is no drama, there is no feeling, just pure dullnes

[archaeolept]

My threat to throw everything I had at you had nothing to do with metagaming. I was simply trying to break the double-team on me by threatening to go kamikaze on one of you, and I figured I had a much better chance of making a dent in you than I did in Pan, so you got the ultimatum

You gave me that threat immediately after I attacked. This was two turns before Pan attacked. It was just me, who was clearly militarily weaker than you were (I had no ready SC at the time; you had two). In fact, at the time, you were indicating to me that you rather expected Pan to come after me.

Secondly, all your hurf-blurf about my aggrieved posturing - I was upfront about my reasons, and that you needed a counter after pythium evaporated. It was surely you acting all aggrieved. But my other immediate rationale was quite real - you were elbowing in on those few scraps of territories that were due to me. That's how it goes. If you treat an ally with contempt, you should not act all shocked when he ceases to be your ally.

I still have no idea what you're talking about with Holburg. As I said, I took it to preach there to kill Pythium, and you never asked about claiming it after that

Our agreement during the height of the war was that I would get all the remaining pyth territories currently not in your possession. That included Holburg, as it was still pyth's. I then said I was moving in to take both those territories. You later took it to preach/cut off retreat.

, but watching you try to cast me as the villain after you launched a sneak attack at me is quite irksome. You can trump up whatever pretexts you want, but at the end of the day you stabbed me in the back to try to get an advantage, which is fine. The farce of you pretending otherwise is what I take exception

We had no formal agreement extending beyond the fall of pythium, so I can't quite consider this a backstab. As to trying to cast you as a villain - I was not the one to bring this to the thread.

[Executor]

It seems that the underwater nations are allied.
Who will next strike the forces of Arcoscephale?

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by archaeolept

In fact, at the time, you were indicating to me that you rather expected Pan to come after me.

Which was sort of true at the time I was sure Van would be after me, what with me having a low dominion and Van being able to blood-sac -> My dominion was close to get wiped around that time if Van had started a blood-sac campaign (but I have since learned that fear was unrealistic at the time). I even moved an army to the wastelands next to the Van border to take an indy barbarian province, but to also act as a first line of defence *and* to protect the temple I just built there. I pledged Agartha to help me in case Van attacks, as I had already run out of clean underwear because of the death-bells I heard gonging in my head. Agartha wasn't super keen, but said something along the lines he would be available after the Pythium business if the issue was still pressing.

Then of course I had the pleasure of having scouts in the area where you two were quarreling, and saw an opportunity. My dominion situation rapidly was improving with the new temples up. Thus I had second and third thoughts, and reversed course totally. I think I was able to do a pretty classic backstabb on Agartha (not that I am especially proud of that, I don't usually do such blatant backstabbs without a moral casus belli whatsoever; but as it is the theme of the game and because I could...), which I hope Micah won't hate me for the rest of his living days

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

...No diplomacy games are just a variant of singleplayer games, period.

Yes absolutely. And zero diplomacy SP games are exactly what I want out of my MP games

Originally Posted by Jarkko

Why play multiplayer games if you do not like to discuss with people?

Dominions is the only game I have ever done (online) multi-player gaming with. Everyone has their own reasons why they start playing MP games, but for me the one and only reason why was that I really loved Dominions 3 as a strategy game, and I just purely wanted to have better AI opposition. As I had played against the AI for 18+ months before playing MP, and I had finally run out of variant ways to handicap myself, or role-play against it. And the only way to get better AI opposition was to turn the AI opponents into human opponents.

I personally have no interest in the diplomacy side of MP games, as I'd prefer my fortunes to be based entirely on my actions and strategy in-game, and not on whether or not I can sweet-talk, bluff, threaten, plead, with my various neighbours. I have every respect for players who like the diplomacy aspect of MP games, and even to some extent envy those who are good at it. But for me diplomacy plays far too big a role in MP games, as it doesn't matter who you are, or how good or bad you are, diplomacy can counter-act everything. It is very common to see players making in-game decisions purely based on which player, and not which nation (or it's actions), they border, or can attack, or feel most threatened by.

I also think diplomacy in this sort of game is un-thematic, as if for no other reason than I can't believe for a moment that the nations would all share a common tongue, so communication between them would surely be difficult. Or that vastly differing nations would instantly get along as neighbours. Because there is no in-game mechanic for diplomacy, this results in there being no restrictions on which nations can team-up together. And of course the overall sticking-point of there can be only one.

In some ways I think diplomacy is the ultimate game balancer in Dominions. But I personally don't like the thought of there being something that is powerful enough to entirely negate a players skill level. And while it rarely happens that skill level is completely negated by diplomacy, even the greatest player(s) on offer would lose very quickly if surrounded by poor players who simply agreed to all attack the good player for no other reason than he/she was a good player. I've seen several well known players post on the issue of getting ganged purely because of who they were, and nothing to do with their nation or actions. And to me that is just wrong. As every player should start every game being completely equal in status (baring which nation they are)

And all of that rambling is why I like RAND games the most

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Calahan

And all of that rambling is why I like RAND games the most

I pretty much agree completely about diplomacy. That said, I do miss being able to discuss unusual happenings with my opponents in RAND games. For me, probably the perfect game is one that allows communication, but with an honorable group of players who agree to not make any kind of deals with it.

[DonCorazon]

RAND games should come with a game counselor...

[Executor]

I too agree with Calahan and QM, the most enjoyable games I was in were/are RAND games.
Although I do miss the occasional battle report exchange with my enemies in RAND games.

[archaeolept]

Dominions players get very concerned about the fate of their nations

Diplo is either a chore, or causes these sorts of kerfuffles, but it is entertaining to talk about the game w/ others. I think QM's attempt just to ban trading was a good idea.