Clan in Fontan and Aurvandil

[Velax]

If these clanners are so good and so organized, then why aren't they winning more often?

Because while they are very co-ordinated and skilled in using the mechanics of the game, they're not really very smart. They tend to alienate everyone around them rather than making allies (see Arcachon on FEI and Thulsoma on Dwilight), and no matter how good they are, if you piss off enough other realms, you're going to lose. Thulsoma managed to provoke an entire religious empire into attacking them, while Arcachon alienated not only the strongest realm on FEI, but half their own realm mates as well, who rebelled against them and eventually managed to ban them.

[Anaris]

They were not able to save Thulsoma from the Astroists.

Really?
Seriously?

You're going to use that as evidence that the clanners aren't effective enough to be a worry?

GoldPanda, Thulsoma was a ridiculously poor three-region realm that took the entire might of Sanguis Astroism months to kill.

Then Averoth, a slightly less ridiculously poor realm, did the same thing, with more or less the same people.

If they hadn't been up against the single strongest powerbloc on Dwilight, Haruka Vanimedle' would still be annoying the rest of the rulers of Dwilight with long RPs peppered with Old Norse characters. (Letters, that is, not people.)

If they hadn't been in such piddly pathetic little realms, they might have conquered half of Dwilight's Northeast by now.

The kind of power that that sort of group can wield is devastatingly unbalancing to the game, even if you ignore their willingness to abuse family gold for all it's worth.

[Naidraug]

So, there is a Clan in Fontan and Aurvandil.

That is set in stone. And the problem (seeing that I understand correctly) it is not that there is a clan, but to define if the way they formed the clan is bad for the game or not.

The way I see it is this: When you play with friends the OOG messages will happen. Friends will talk, it is easier, or quickier,  to plan somethings with OOG messages on messenger or IRC than wait messages. And this will happen, and can disturb and exclude players.

I was in Averoth for a while, and I had different opinions from the ruler and other realm mates on what to do, and since I "know" him(don't live in the same country but we played together and have/had OOG contact) we even discussed things OOG.

Yes, it was hard to be part of the "gang" and in the end I ended up joining Astrum in the end. There was no big warm welcome, but everything(at least most of it I believe) was kept IC.


Now in a Democracy I find it easier to rebel against a clan. If a member is wining election running alone and with only a minority of votes that the other players have the ability to run as well and try to make other players vote for them.
If the clan doesn't exclude anyone this is possible and it won't be a problem to anyone and they'll find a way to continue playing or leading their ideas.

If this doesn't help them they need to be punished.

On the mass immigration to a realm, I see no problem to that, when you play in a realm and you have fun with the people of that realm, and then your realm is destroyed, i see no problem with you joining a new realm with your realm mates and trying to participate together, specially if they are active. They will participate, they will try to be part of the new realm. And it won't be a clan or anything illegal.

[Tom]

The issue is the one-mind thing.

A clan doesn't have to be 50% of a realm in order to consistently win elections, only more than the largest other candidate. As many players in most realms don't vote, and it is likely that there are 2 non-clan candidates, as few as 20-25% of the realm voting jointly one way can put their people into the government. The problem is that they don't need to do anything, but be friends. Even if they have only 1 non-clan candidate, that guy still has to convince people to vote at all and to vote for him. And he has to do it through IC means. He can't just hop on IRC or say during lunch break "hey, you all vote for me, right?".


To some extent, that's just part of the game, and OOC friends playing are not a major problem - until they can push out people without that advantage.

[Dante Silverfire]

The issue is the one-mind thing.

A clan doesn't have to be 50% of a realm in order to consistently win elections, only more than the largest other candidate. As many players in most realms don't vote, and it is likely that there are 2 non-clan candidates, as few as 20-25% of the realm voting jointly one way can put their people into the government. The problem is that they don't need to do anything, but be friends. Even if they have only 1 non-clan candidate, that guy still has to convince people to vote at all and to vote for him. And he has to do it through IC means. He can't just hop on IRC or say during lunch break "hey, you all vote for me, right?".


To some extent, that's just part of the game, and OOC friends playing are not a major problem - until they can push out people without that advantage.

That makes sense.

One thing I'd like to know is this: If I got together with 14 of the other most active players here in BM, and we all decided to send 2 character to some East Island or Atamara realm and decided not to take over the realm but to simply join it and build up its military to be hyper active are we breaching the game policy? We would participate as normal members, but we would have a mutual understanding that we could create our own army of 30 nobles, and depend upon 100% movement rates with everyone moving out from within 1 hour of the turn change happening so no one could predict our movements. This would not be a set policy, or asked of anyone, but since the group could do it, it would be the simply understanding amongst the members to try and help out the realm as best as possible.

Is that against the Social Contract? All of the players are well known and active members of the current BM community. We don't seek to take over the realm but merely to join in. Granted, it is possibly that one of the members wins elections every now and then, but that is not the intent but a simply by product of the number of nobles there. We don' all vote in tandum or always agree, but we do agree to build a 100% efficient and strong military system.

Is this wrong?

[fodder]

... that army of 30 would do the trick, won't it.

---
my point is that it's entirely possible to use ingame communications, only amongst themselves to achieve exactly the same thing as external communications.

[Kellaine]

... that army of 30 would do the trick, won't it.

No matter how you look at it, that would be a grey line. 

This issue is not as black and white as people might like and what ever decision is made by the magistrates. there are going to be some that are not happy with it.

I would like to say that the "Clan" members in Fontan are  now acting like any other member of the realm. they are talking and participating in the realm. this is good to see, though there is still the issue of how it got to this point. And I can only assume that the OOG communications are still happening, I do not see any evidence of it at this time. Time will tell. they may just be on their best behavior because of this case.

[Vellos]

That makes sense.

One thing I'd like to know is this: If I got together with 14 of the other most active players here in BM, and we all decided to send 2 character to some East Island or Atamara realm and decided not to take over the realm but to simply join it and build up its military to be hyper active are we breaching the game policy? We would participate as normal members, but we would have a mutual understanding that we could create our own army of 30 nobles, and depend upon 100% movement rates with everyone moving out from within 1 hour of the turn change happening so no one could predict our movements. This would not be a set policy, or asked of anyone, but since the group could do it, it would be the simply understanding amongst the members to try and help out the realm as best as possible.

Is that against the Social Contract? All of the players are well known and active members of the current BM community. We don't seek to take over the realm but merely to join in. Granted, it is possibly that one of the members wins elections every now and then, but that is not the intent but a simply by product of the number of nobles there. We don' all vote in tandum or always agree, but we do agree to build a 100% efficient and strong military system.

Is this wrong?

I may disagree with TOm here but, personally, I'd say yes, it's still wrong.

[Tom]

One thing I'd like to know is this:

Wrong topic, see board rules. No hypotheticals.

[Chenier]

Really?
Seriously?

You're going to use that as evidence that the clanners aren't effective enough to be a worry?

GoldPanda, Thulsoma was a ridiculously poor three-region realm that took the entire might of Sanguis Astroism months to kill.

Then Averoth, a slightly less ridiculously poor realm, did the same thing, with more or less the same people.

If they hadn't been up against the single strongest powerbloc on Dwilight, Haruka Vanimedle' would still be annoying the rest of the rulers of Dwilight with long RPs peppered with Old Norse characters. (Letters, that is, not people.)

If they hadn't been in such piddly pathetic little realms, they might have conquered half of Dwilight's Northeast by now.

The kind of power that that sort of group can wield is devastatingly unbalancing to the game, even if you ignore their willingness to abuse family gold for all it's worth.

Thulsoma was *cheating* for all these months. It didn't take SA long to crush it once that was resolved.

This is not a trial for what happened in Averoth, Thulsoma, or any other dead realm. This is a trial about what's going on right now. Being guilty then does not necessarily make them guilty now.

[Anaris]

Thulsoma was *cheating* for all these months. It didn't take SA long to crush it once that was resolved.

Thulsoma was cheating for some of the time. And Averoth took a long time to crack, too, even though they didn't have those family gold exploits to prop them up.

This is not a trial for what happened in Averoth, Thulsoma, or any other dead realm. This is a trial about what's going on right now. Being guilty then does not necessarily make them guilty now.

No, I realize that. However, GoldPanda brought up Thulsoma as an example of why the clan should be considered less of a threat.

[Indirik]

Averoth made its gold by investments and had a good gold ethic ...

FWIW - Near the end of Averoth, while the devs were dealing with the multitude of clanning/abuse accusations regarding Averoth (and honestly most of them provided no evidence but were just "Hey, these guy's *must* be cheating!"), the devs did do quite a bit of investigation. It was found that when you totaled up all the debt that the Averothian characters had to their families, it totaled up to over 30,000 gold. IIRC the majority of it was not from characters that had ever been in other realms, or other islands. These were characters that were created in Averoth, and never left. A few were carryovers from Thulsoma. That means that Averoth was the beneficiary of nearly 30,000 gold siphoned from family coffers. This was the primary motivation for yet another overhaul of the family gold restrictions to include things like gold from your aunt via family-home visits, and various other restrictions.

So, yeah, you made some investments. There's no questioning that fact. It's a smart move. But to claim that Averoth built level 7 walls, large high-quality RCs, and fielded 20K CS(?) of troops based on investments and food sales is simply absurd. And I know it, because I saw the figures. 30,000+ family gold debt doesn't lie.

[^ban^]

stuff

As I stated before, the existence or non-existence of a clan is not a topic of contention. Your posts have been deleted.

[Maxim]

. . .

[Zakilevo]

Have magistrates made the decision?