Author Topic: Posts that do not provide evidence  (Read 31897 times)

De-Legro

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #15: November 06, 2013, 11:05:55 PM »
In some ways is it not easier for Enweil to take back Iato now? Rio can not drop troops as milita (so I believe) and must now use gold mules in order to transfer income to the city which from all accounts can not support itself in terms of income. It is unlikely to have the RC's to recruit significant militia even if the gold is made available and while Rio may be able to repair in the city, pretending the city is in a state that allows blacksmiths to operate, they still must travel back to their capital to replace their losses.

Now if we see a sudden influx of nobles into the new realm, I would re-evaluate the situation. Given the succession just happened (I assume) it is hard to know exactly how that aspect will play out.
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Naidraug

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #16: November 06, 2013, 11:06:37 PM »
Word of Tom.

By one guy. With practically no income, and a city that can barely support any infrastructure. Yeah, that's unbalancing.

Anaris, you seem to forget that this one guy won't be alone for long. After all the realm is being created for a few nobles.

Even if only 4 more nobles join now, Riombara has 7 other cities and a lot of gold and food they can provide for the 5 nobles.

They can fund 2-3 RCs on the city of Iato, and these nobles for the war.

These nobles can make an attack on Enweill and Nothoi quicker, causing the same mayhem Nothoi was causing on Riombara, with faster recruitment, without the need to go all the way to the other side of the map to get fresh units.

This does give them strategic advantage.


And please mbeal44 keep it civil.
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Vita`

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #17: November 07, 2013, 01:26:18 AM »
You can't wave away that the intent is a large part of the rule. It's a simple matter of if they seceded to circumvent the ability to only recruit in the capital or not. An instance of that would be CE or Darka allowing dukes to secede so their army could respond to attacks on the perimeter more easily. Happening to gain an advantage in the process of sensible IC developments is not prohibited. An advantage which I still attest is negligible considering the state of the realm, even recognizing other characters join.

Buffalkill

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #18: November 07, 2013, 01:58:14 AM »
This could easily be resolved IG if the seceding realm would simply observe a cooling off period of, say, a week, to allow the opposing realm to revise its troop deployments. I think you guys are over analyzing this. Forget about the intent. Trying to get inside the player's mind is a mug's game.

De-Legro

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #19: November 07, 2013, 02:04:13 AM »
This could easily be resolved IG if the seceding realm would simply observe a cooling off period of, say, a week, to allow the opposing realm to revise its troop deployments. I think you guys are over analyzing this. Forget about the intent. Trying to get inside the player's mind is a mug's game.

Um really? If it IS a strategic Secession the issue  is the ability to continuously field a force with significantly reduced refit times. A weeks grace isn't going to change the advantage that provides. Changing your troop deployments to respond is more then likely necessary, but won't change the fact that your enemy will recover losses much faster then they once did.

Likewise you could say, oh just have the realm be "neutral" Oh what a surprise when a region is taken over is being transfer to that neutral realm as soon as is possible.
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Anaris

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #20: November 07, 2013, 02:10:00 AM »
Forget about the intent.

No, that's out of the question.

This rule is specifically about intent, as much as some people would like to make all the rules simple cut-and-dried, "Did this happen? Was it in a situation that was absolutely clearly that? Then punish!"

If that's all there is to it (Secession? Check! Friendly with parent realm? Check! During war? Check! Close to the border with the realm they're at war with? Check!), then we don't need Magistrates. All we need is a relatively simple algorithm to recognize 3 of those 4 criteria and post an alert, and a couple of humans receiving the alert to do the fairly simple check of "are they friendly with the parent realm?" and if so, press the "yes, punish them!" button.

But the Magistrates are supposed to actually examine evidence and make judgments, not just hide behind "I don't want to try judging intent, because people are hard to understand, and some of them will try to trick you!"

If that's just too hard, then what the hell is the point of having human Magistrates anyway?
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De-Legro

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #21: November 07, 2013, 02:27:52 AM »
The arguments that there is only one guy are worthless. It equates to saying that the move that was done in the past (secession) can have been legal then, and then become illegal in the future (ex: a week) if certain criteria are met (nobles join it and infrastructure if funded). Something cannot be legal when it happens and become illegal afterwards.

The secession creates the potential to recruit closer to the enemy, and that is what matters.

Intent is bullocks, because you can't read minds. Intent is hearsay and propaganda. Intent cannot be proved. And no it would not be simple to code, and you know it. Friendly with parent realm cannot be coded, and any attempt would be easy to game. Proximity is relative and arbitrary. Heck, even war would be a poor filter, because that can be gamed as well by having troops loot while neutral, or by giving realms the ability to declare war on neighbors they know will split in order to turn planned splits into issues. This is not something a code can judge on.

The secession wasn't built to eternally have a single noble, nor a single region, nor little infrastructure. It wants to fight Enweil. It will get more nobles. It will attempt to annex Enweilian regions. It will have a much easier time with the logistics of it. The purpose of it existing is to be able to take over Enweil's territory, and it will be able to do so a lot easier by being closer than by having the capital forever away.

It is literally a 1/2 hour job to code as system that would prevent strategic secessions if this was the case. We already have the methods to determine distance between two regions, we can determine who is at war with whom. This could have been coded by Tom or the team at ANY time since he made his statements about strategic successions. So ask yourself, if that is the case why o why would Tom not have done so when we all know his complete aversion to rule lawyers?
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Buffalkill

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #22: November 07, 2013, 02:30:52 AM »
In this case you don't need to divine his intent because the strategic advantage is self-evident. If I'm playing soccer and the ball touches my hand before entering the opposing goal, then the goal doesn't count. By having a cooling off period, you nullify the advantage and maybe even create a disadvantage for the seceding and parent realms, which is ok because it's self-imposed. If they don't like it, they can wait until the war is over to secede.

Velax

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #23: November 07, 2013, 02:32:53 AM »
Intent is bullocks, because you can't read minds. Intent is hearsay and propaganda. Intent cannot be proved.

From the Rules and Policies page:

Quote
Strategic secessions are prohibited. This means creating a new realm, through secession, in order to circumvent recruiting-in-capital-only restriction. Friendly secessions are okay.

Intent is everything. The rule says it is only a strategic succession if its purpose is to circumvent in-capital recruiting. It specifically states that.

Anaris

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #24: November 07, 2013, 02:34:19 AM »
Intent is bullocks, because you can't read minds. Intent is hearsay and propaganda. Intent cannot be proved.

This is incorrect. People can be deceptive about their intent. People can be vague about their intent. Neither is the case here.

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And no it would not be simple to code, and you know it.

I don't tell you how to do your job, Dominic, don't you tell me how to do mine. I get annoyed enough when Tom tries to say what would and wouldn't be hard for me to code, and you don't have anywhere near his accumulated stash of forbearance.

If I say I could code something pretty simply, then do me the barest courtesy of believing that I know how to do my damn job.

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Friendly with parent realm cannot be coded, and any attempt would be easy to game.

Which is why—if you actually read what I wrote—I said that part should be handled by humans with access to the relevant information. "Friendly with the parent realm" is generally much easier to determine than the broader "intent of a secession," and if it's not glaringly obvious, then that means that, well, those humans will still have to use the tiniest modicum of judgement. Which is something that most of us are gifted with.

Quote
Proximity is relative and arbitrary.

Not really. There might be a few edge cases to catch, but by and large, if it's a true strategic secession, it's going to be right on the border or as close as the realm can achieve. I can measure twelve different axes of proximity and compare them if you really want, but 99.9% of the time, it won't be necessary.

Quote
Heck, even war would be a poor filter, because that can be gamed as well by having troops loot while neutral, or by giving realms the ability to declare war on neighbors they know will split in order to turn planned splits into issues. This is not something a code can judge on.

Oh, please. I'm not bloody stupid, Dominic. I know how to tell to a pretty good approximation whether a realm is at war with another realm, regardless of diplomatic status.

So, in summary, thank you for assuming I'm an idiot who doesn't have a clue how to do my day job. That really tells me a lot about your general opinion of me OOC. Enough that I'm pretty much done responding to anything you say here.
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Anaris

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #25: November 07, 2013, 02:36:00 AM »
In this case you don't need to divine his intent because the strategic advantage is self-evident.

Buffakill, please stop ignoring everyone who is telling you that intent is an important part of the rule. Just because you'd love to reduce things down to their simplest possible form doesn't mean that's how they are, or will be.

As Velax says, the rule is specifically about intent. You cannot throw that out the window just because there is an easy misinterpretation of the rule that lets you think it's about simple static conditions.
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De-Legro

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #26: November 07, 2013, 02:36:52 AM »
In this case you don't need to divine his intent because the strategic advantage is self-evident. If I'm playing soccer and the ball touches my hand before entering the opposing goal, then the goal doesn't count. By having a cooling off period, you nullify the advantage and maybe even create a disadvantage for the seceding and parent realms, which is ok because it's self-imposed. If they don't like it, they can wait until the war is over to secede.

That is fine, since the creators of the rule intended it to function that way. The argument here is that Tom intended otherwise, which is why there have been so few punishments for strategic secessions compared to the amount of accusations (before the magistrate system was around mind you). Of course only Tom can confirm or deny this, everything else is based on assumption, and as we all know from long practise with this system, the chances of most people reconsidering the situation based on these discussions approaches nill.
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Vellos

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #27: November 07, 2013, 02:53:56 AM »
I just briefly flipped through past Magistrate rulings.

As best I can tell, the Magistrates have not ruled on strategic secessions yet.

I would caution either side against saying the rule IS about either outcomes or intents. Say it has been interpreted that way, fine. But the rule IS about whatever the Magistrates say it is about, unless Tom decides to intervene.

Most of the arguments up to this point do not seem very germaine. The core debate here is how to interpret the text of the rule. Specifically, we should be arguing about the phrase "in order to circumvent." Does that imply "With the psychological intent and expectation of circumventing?" or "With the effect of circumventing?"

Once that debate is resolved, we can argue about efficacy: can we police intent? How far removed must the effect be, or how incidental? But until we settle, based on the text itself, the intent/outcomes question, the rest is moot.

Also, while Tom is free to intervene, unless and until Tom does intervene, we cannot base any rulings on how frequently or not he has chosen to respond to accusations. We haven't usually gotten detailed explanations and justifications of those decisions, so we really can't reason from them. And, to reiterate, the Magistrates are not inheritors of a pre-existing set of rules. Tom's previous decisions and Titan decisions were not always consistent, not widely understood, not regularly recorded, and do not constitute a basis of principles or rules to which we can reliably appeal. The only exceptions are in stated rules like the IRs and Social Contract, and if Tom decides to speak on this case specifically.

So, someone convince me that "in order to circumvent" means something other than intent.
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Anaris

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #28: November 07, 2013, 03:00:52 AM »
I would caution either side against saying the rule IS about either outcomes or intents. Say it has been interpreted that way, fine. But the rule IS about whatever the Magistrates say it is about, unless Tom decides to intervene.

I think it would be instructive to read this particular passage:

I'm not making exceptions to the rule. If its the rule on the 'Rules and Policies' wiki page, I wrote that myself, with input from Tom. The rule, and what I remember Tom saying about his motivations for the rule, was strictly about a realm using a secession to gain an undue strategic gain in the war, as related to recruitment and similar mechanics.

It is not the job of the Magistrates to reinterpret rules that Tom has set down clear expectations for. It is the job of the Magistrates to enforce the rules.

Unless you've decided to take up Fury's cry of "The Magistrates should rewrite all the rules to suit us" now that he's gone?
Timothy Collett

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Penchant

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Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« Reply #29: November 07, 2013, 03:13:47 AM »
That is fine, since the creators of the rule intended it to function that way. The argument here is that Tom intended otherwise, which is why there have been so few punishments for strategic secessions compared to the amount of accusations (before the magistrate system was around mind you). Of course only Tom can confirm or deny this, everything else is based on assumption, and as we all know from long practise with this system, the chances of most people reconsidering the situation based on these discussions approaches nill.
This is ludacris. There is no arguing about a fact. Does the rule say that a strategic secession is based off intent? Yes, thus it is. Thats a fact, not an opinion or an argument.  You can't just exclude parts of a rule because you feel like it. "Well the rule stated you can not do x, but I excluded the not part because I don't like that so now I can do x" is obviously illogical and what is being stated in a different by seemingly all those who wish for the secession to be punished in some way or another already. As well, last I checked its innocent until proven guilty so Riombara does not need to prove its innocence, those who are prosecuting Riombara/the specific player need to prove guilt. (The magistrates should be somewhat prosecutors though as they are more or less the detectives as well since regulars players are the equal of citizens, not having the power to investigate.)
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