I was....dramatizing. No real Larp. If someone wishes to produce a npc of sort to have diplo that's fine by me but I don't think I'll be doing that... What I'd like to have are nations with personality, no more.
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Dominions 4 - how about a diplo-heavy game for a change?
- Thread starter Grimwulf
- Start date
I was....dramatizing. No real Larp. If someone wishes to produce a npc of sort to have diplo that's fine by me but I don't think I'll be doing that... What I'd like to have are nations with personality, no more.
Dreaad
Arcane
Not sure how you people want to have a heavy diplo game without some RP-ing effort. Anyway if this game turns out to be politics in dominions with no flavor, then count me out, that sounds incredibly boring.
hoverdog
dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
yeah, this. even non-diplo heavy games like this weird pink nataraja shit have some larping and enjoy it, even though I'm not even playing that one.
Men, recent Dominions experience made me believe that rp part should not be forced. Some people love doin' epically huge and regular write-ups, while others do something more occasional and flavor-ish. Both cases are ok in my book.
And then there are people who don't rp at all. And THEN there are people who don't post or even talk at all. I mean, I'm not some sort of rp nazi - I can't and don't want to FORCE people into staying in character. But clearly those who post something interesting in game thread and private convos are more charismatic, and will probably win an extra vote or two during elections. I guess that should provide enough stimulation, without me crying out "POST RP OR GIT OUT!"
And then there are people who don't rp at all. And THEN there are people who don't post or even talk at all. I mean, I'm not some sort of rp nazi - I can't and don't want to FORCE people into staying in character. But clearly those who post something interesting in game thread and private convos are more charismatic, and will probably win an extra vote or two during elections. I guess that should provide enough stimulation, without me crying out "POST RP OR GIT OUT!"
sqeecoo
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2006
- Messages
- 2,620
I agree that disciples sound off. Having unbreakable alliances in a game about diplomacy? Doesn't sound right.
Why not just do something like the Kings and Traitors game and declare victory in the thread when an alliance holds all 5 capitols? And only capitol holders can be kings, for instance.
22+ players is a lot and diplo will be chaotic in the fist turns, but so what? That's fun, just make the turns slow enough. Also, people will get eliminated very quickly. Alliances will form, people will get gangbanged.
To alleviate the diplo a bit you might even say that kings cannot talk to foregin vassals - I mean they can, but it's taboo like blood magic and a king caught will end up with everyone having a casus belli against him.
Why not just do something like the Kings and Traitors game and declare victory in the thread when an alliance holds all 5 capitols? And only capitol holders can be kings, for instance.
22+ players is a lot and diplo will be chaotic in the fist turns, but so what? That's fun, just make the turns slow enough. Also, people will get eliminated very quickly. Alliances will form, people will get gangbanged.
To alleviate the diplo a bit you might even say that kings cannot talk to foregin vassals - I mean they can, but it's taboo like blood magic and a king caught will end up with everyone having a casus belli against him.
It doesn't sound like a diplomatic victory. More like a usual "fuck em all up!" game. And starting positions will be really, really messed up - in fact, I'll have to make like 10-12 players tops, and spread them across the villages (no major cities). I would probably have to make the map more traditional (all provinces are indies), because I can't see it work otherwise in non-disciple game. And there will be no point of elections and votings, since there are no victory points - the players have to destroy each other, like usual. Overall, it will be a plain standard Dominions game.
The map currently has 185+3 provinces, btw. The final version will have no more than 200.
Well, yeah, chaos is exactly what I wanted to avoid.
But I don't want to alleviate diplo!
Just don't want it to go full chaos from the start, like the guys in King and Traitors did.
Norfleet
Moderator
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2005
- Messages
- 12,250
My experience with games advertised as "diplo heavy" is that the ultimately aren't any more diplo-haevy than any other games, and games that are set up for "low or no diplomacy" still end up HAVING it, even if nobody says a word. In the end, diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Ultimately, the fundamental design of Dominions tends to preclude complex diplomacy. There's basically two kinds of diplomatic arrangement I have ever encountered, the first often established without a word said: "I won't attack you if you don't attack me" and "I'll give you X if you'll give my Y". Most "gangbanging" occurs without any agreement to do so, it's pretty much always just vultures feasting upon the dying: You notice a guy is losing ground rapidly against his foe, and your only option becomes "get yours before they take it all".
Ultimately, the fundamental design of Dominions tends to preclude complex diplomacy. There's basically two kinds of diplomatic arrangement I have ever encountered, the first often established without a word said: "I won't attack you if you don't attack me" and "I'll give you X if you'll give my Y". Most "gangbanging" occurs without any agreement to do so, it's pretty much always just vultures feasting upon the dying: You notice a guy is losing ground rapidly against his foe, and your only option becomes "get yours before they take it all".
Those are p.standard situations, yeah. It usually gets much more complicated than that, though. As long as the player is active.
Norfleet
Moderator
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2005
- Messages
- 12,250
I can't say I've seen more complex diplomacy that actually had an effect. I'm sure there are people who try to complicate things for the sake of just being complicated and pretentious, but I've never seen anyone succeed in this way. Even backstabbing is fairly uncommon, and by backstabbing, I mean, an actual backstab, where someone changes sides on an ally of their own free will, as opposed to an "against the wall" situation where an agreement has come to a natural end regardless of what may have been explicitly stated: If I've agreed not to attack you, it's not really a backstab if I do so after you're the only person left.
I simply never really see a Machiavellian game where people are switching sides and betraying allies to advance a personal agenda, and keep making and then breaking deals with each other. Pretty much anyone who establishes this as their MO gets tagged as "untrustworthy", and if anyone is willing to still deal with them after that, it won't be for anything complicated. If you wanted to create a system like this, you'd need to make the following changes:
1. Players are anonymous. No player should trivially know who the other player actually is. Otherwise, reputation effects take hold. All players want to be reputable, because being disreputable and untrustworthy is an effect which follows them to other games. By making players anonymous, they don't retain a bad rep across games. Merely having the players anonymous isn't enough, though: Reputation in-game is a pretty strong, you can only backstab so much before the other players in the game won't trust you, even if they'll never find you in the next game.
2. Players are temporary. Real world leaders expire: Kings die, Presidents lose elections and hit term limits, governments get overthrown. Agreements fall apart because the new leaders don't feel like upholding deals made by previous leaders. To implement this, you need A: A neutral referee to hand over the relevant controls to the new players, and B: More players than sides. At an interval determined by the referee, somewhat randomized, a random player is replaced by another player. He is informed of any official treaties that are presently in place, and all players in the game are informed that The King Is Dead, Long Live The King (but not which player on the bench has replaced him). This mitigates both the continuity of in-game reputation and the "playing to win" factor.
Without these mechanisms to more accurately approximate the way leadership functions in the real world, you're not going to get "diplomacy", because continuity of leadership and player OOC behavior and metagaming both produce strong reputational obstacles to underhanded dealing.
In this regard, Dominions is pretty much the anti-diplomacy game, since your leaders in-game actually ARE immortal beings with continuity of leadership. But imagine something like, say, Crusader Kings played in this manner, where every time you DIE, you hand over the controls to another player and join the waiting-in-line pool for the next player to die.
I simply never really see a Machiavellian game where people are switching sides and betraying allies to advance a personal agenda, and keep making and then breaking deals with each other. Pretty much anyone who establishes this as their MO gets tagged as "untrustworthy", and if anyone is willing to still deal with them after that, it won't be for anything complicated. If you wanted to create a system like this, you'd need to make the following changes:
1. Players are anonymous. No player should trivially know who the other player actually is. Otherwise, reputation effects take hold. All players want to be reputable, because being disreputable and untrustworthy is an effect which follows them to other games. By making players anonymous, they don't retain a bad rep across games. Merely having the players anonymous isn't enough, though: Reputation in-game is a pretty strong, you can only backstab so much before the other players in the game won't trust you, even if they'll never find you in the next game.
2. Players are temporary. Real world leaders expire: Kings die, Presidents lose elections and hit term limits, governments get overthrown. Agreements fall apart because the new leaders don't feel like upholding deals made by previous leaders. To implement this, you need A: A neutral referee to hand over the relevant controls to the new players, and B: More players than sides. At an interval determined by the referee, somewhat randomized, a random player is replaced by another player. He is informed of any official treaties that are presently in place, and all players in the game are informed that The King Is Dead, Long Live The King (but not which player on the bench has replaced him). This mitigates both the continuity of in-game reputation and the "playing to win" factor.
Without these mechanisms to more accurately approximate the way leadership functions in the real world, you're not going to get "diplomacy", because continuity of leadership and player OOC behavior and metagaming both produce strong reputational obstacles to underhanded dealing.
In this regard, Dominions is pretty much the anti-diplomacy game, since your leaders in-game actually ARE immortal beings with continuity of leadership. But imagine something like, say, Crusader Kings played in this manner, where every time you DIE, you hand over the controls to another player and join the waiting-in-line pool for the next player to die.
Then I suggest you play here on 'Dex. I've seen some hardcore shit while I was playing here, although back in rus communities it was even more twisted.
There was one time when I invaded a player in a weakened state (let's call him Victim). I had an ally at the time (I'll just call him Ally), but we pretended to be enemies. So that ally announced that he will protect the poor Victim from evil me. He photoshoped some battle reports, as if he attacked me with enourmous forces, but failed nonetheless. Meanwhile, I was decisevely beating Victim into the ground. So what happens next is Ally starts to convince Victim in a most treacherous ways, like "Look man, I've lost my entire army trying to protect you. Now you are about to go AI, and I have pissed off Grimwulf to deal with. The least you can do is pass me your provinces that Grimwulf hasn't conquered yet, so I'll have a mini advantage, and a death basket ofc". I don't know what or how exactly was that formulated, but it worked. Ally gained roughly half of the Victim's land without a fight, turning my war against Victim into a blitzkrieg (Victim was reduced to one cap-province in literally few turns). Ally also got a death basket (gems and stuff) which we shared in the end. That's not, well, COMPLICATED diplomacy - I've seen worse in rus pbems. And I've seen worse on Codex too. I just can't really tell you those stories, coz they are not entirely mine stories to tell.
Naah, I know only a couple of people who carry grudges from one game to another. For me and most of other players I know, every new game is a fresh start. There is no such thing as "reputation", well, maybe except for the skill. But what does the skill matter in diplo-centric game?
I don't think that's possible (not sure I can find even 20 players to play this with enuff dedication), nor do I believe it will make the game better. Each player has a Master Plan for development, he orients his entire strategy and tactics on it. Subbing ruins the Master Plan. And the further game goes, the more difficult it becomes for the subbed player to get a grip on whatever madness is going on with the nation he inherited.
I disagree. Once again, reputation of the player is basically how skillful he is in the game. You can't say that "oohhh, I know that backstabbing mf", or "omfg, that guy is honorable as fuck". Take CaptainCoxwaggle. I've seen him going BERSERK on everybody in Decline 2, not even talking, or posting, or replying - he managed to piss off several people back then. Including me, kek. But during next season, in Decline 3, he suddenly changed. Became an honorable and moderately talkative guy, discussed stuff with an ally(ies?) of his, etc. Completely unrecognizable.
Same goes for everybody, with just a couple exceptions.
It all depends on winning conditions.
Zephyr Arsland
Learned
Hello there! I'd love to sign up for this. But as I've just crawled out of the primordial soup and no-one knows shit about me, I think it'll hardly happen. Still, I've been reading some of the Dom4 threads around the Codex and these things take quite some time to get underway, So maybe there's still hope.
As for my Dominions experience: I played 3 some years ago and somehow managed to quit, bought 4 when it came out, fell in love again, played some pbem games, Real Life made me forget about the game, it hit me back yesterday, now I'm trying to get back to speed. I never won any games, but the rping and the diplo were really, really fun for me! And you seem to have this in spades around here. The Pink-Natajara is awesome!
Oh, nice to read you all, by the way.
As for my Dominions experience: I played 3 some years ago and somehow managed to quit, bought 4 when it came out, fell in love again, played some pbem games, Real Life made me forget about the game, it hit me back yesterday, now I'm trying to get back to speed. I never won any games, but the rping and the diplo were really, really fun for me! And you seem to have this in spades around here. The Pink-Natajara is awesome!
Oh, nice to read you all, by the way.
It's all in the rules guys. Like in medieval times, when conquering lands was relatively easy but without a "right to rule" no one would recognize your position and you effectively only ruled what you laid your eyes on.
We must simply come up with some sort of gentleman's agreement on how to score points and win the game, apply some penalty for unsanctioned expansion and a form of authority to enforce said rules and that's it. In my gaming experience if the rules are clear and functional, emergent gameplay does the rest.
The biggest probem I see here is simply to get enough people in order to satisfy Grmiwulf's ravenous bloodlust and having everyone agree on exactly what kind of game we want to play.
We must simply come up with some sort of gentleman's agreement on how to score points and win the game, apply some penalty for unsanctioned expansion and a form of authority to enforce said rules and that's it. In my gaming experience if the rules are clear and functional, emergent gameplay does the rest.
The biggest probem I see here is simply to get enough people in order to satisfy Grmiwulf's ravenous bloodlust and having everyone agree on exactly what kind of game we want to play.
Zephyr Arsland
Learned
I would brofist if I could. Instead, have a nonexistant cookie. But I agree that 22 players may be a demented warlord too many; from what I've seen around the Codex, it's hard to get even half that number of players to play regularly.
KoolNoodles
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2012
- Messages
- 3,545
Problem solved: I will play as no less than 6 nations.
Err, yes, hm. I need another week for this map. Had to start over, coz the map image was fucked up. Not to worry, the script from previous version can be used safely, it's just graphics issues micro-issues.
Drawing borders is teh hard. This time I'll try to do it sober.
I recently started using Gimp for my pnp map-making needs (I used vector software before). If you need some image editing just tell me, I should probably be able to help (probably).
Thanks, but I should manage. I'm using Gimp too. You know how it is - you've drawn all the borders; then decided to redo an area; and THEN you find out that you merged all layers together and saved the changes for some reason.
I swear, some other person fucks with my laptop when I'm away. I have no other explanation.
I swear, some other person fucks with my laptop when I'm away. I have no other explanation.
Zephyr Arsland
Learned
Dom4 Gremlins!
Are we going to play standard nations here?
Are we going to play standard nations here?
Yes, the only mod we'll use is Worthy Heroes 1.23
When using Gimp, always save in multiple slots... Like RPGs!
I learned it teh hard wai too....
I learned it teh hard wai too....
Zephyr Arsland
Learned
Will this ever happen?
I overrestimated my skill and my ability to stay sober.
Still working on it. Totally not abandoned.
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