Diplomacy ethics

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by vfb

Where, "Care bears"? What's a "care bear"?

Someone who whines about getting stabbed.

More generally, someone who fails to grasp that there are no rules to diplomacy, diplomacy is merely a vehicle for manipulating the actions of other players. Care Bears want everyone to always keep their word, and for people to play nicely. Needless to say, Diplomacy is a boring game when played that way.

Which isn't to say everyone will always lie, it means rational players will lie when it suits their purposes and outweighs the penalty for lying.

[Humakty]

Dominions 3 isn't the kind of game were I would expect to find binding diplomacy in every game, you're a god here to ban all others, so you can only expect temporary diplo solutions, as there are no such thing as allied victory.So even in a diplo binding game, you'll have to fight your 'allies' in the end.

Reasons that can lead to diplo violations in a dom game :

'Your women are all sorceresses : they wield long hairs !'

'Your hat is red, red is the color of evil !'

'How You Dare Eat Salad On A Friday, You Heretic !'

'Your God has got too many hands/tentacles/claws to be trustworthy !'

[Sombre]

Not all games are actually about the dom3 universe where pretender gods vie for absolute dominion though. Some are just games. The objective doesn't have to be 'there can be only one' or there wouldn't be team games etc

[Foodstamp]

Carebears? Since people are starting to treat people like this is an MMORPG forum, might as well start using the terminology too. So goes another good game community! IRC is totally to blame IMO.

[Jarkko]

Foodstamp, "carebear" is an old phrase from the PBM Diplomacy community (Diplomacy is a board game first published in 1959, and there weren't that many MMO's around then). As Squirrel above already defined, it means a person who freaks out when somebody backstabbs them. Actually, the word "carebear" is a derviate from the phrase "carebear allies", ie two (or more) people who stuck together from game to game, co-operating and looking after each others backsides (effectively playing as a team against the other players) then voted for a draw when just they two were left; it affected the Diplomacy ladder heavily in the 80's (and even in the 90's even though different rule-sets had been defined to prevent care-bears from ruling the ladder).

I don't know if the MMO carebear is a derivate from the Diplomacy carebear (in MMO's carebears are AFAIU people who do not like PvP encounters, but I might be wrong), but at least for me carebears in Dom are the carebears of Diplomacy and not the MMO carebears

[Foodstamp]

They sound pretty similar!

BTW been playing Diplomacy since the mid 80s and I had never heard the term used.

[rdonj]

The definition of what a care bear is differs highly from game to game. For example, in an mmo it could mean anything from a person who doesn't want pvp in a game at all, to a person who doesn't like pvp where any player can kill you at any time and take everything your character owns.

Under jarkko's definition I can't say as I've ever run into a dominions care bear.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Under jarkko's definition I can't say as I've ever run into a dominions care bear.

You've never encountered Dominions players who think diplomatic agreements are binding and they never back-stab others who think so, and freak out if somebody is more machiavellian?

[Sir_Dr_D]

I think he meant, he has never seen players who usually cooporate during a game, and then declare things a draw at the end.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Sir_Dr_D

I think he meant, he has never seen players who usually cooporate during a game, and then declare things a draw at the end.

Yeah, I meant the carebear allies thing. I've seen plenty of people freak out over being backstabbed.