Federation Soup

[Indirik]

What the heck is up with the federations on Atamara? One day Suville is at war with Tara and Carelia. The next day Suville signs a federation with Strombran and we're suddenly *also* federated with Tara and Carelia. We go from war to federation in one quick flick of the pen? Of the 110 possible diplomatic relations between the 11 living realms on AT, 24 of those relations are now Federation.

Something is really whack with the federations now. Suville is federated with Tara who is allied to Caergoth who is at war with Suville...??? That's not supposed to be able to happen.

[Charles]

I suggest the nature of federations needs to change.  I have two suggestions:

1. A realm can only be federated with one other realm.

2. Diplomatic relations for federated realms are all the same- if one federated realm wishes to go to war with someone, the other must as well.

I suggest that the federated realms be allowed to select which one realm they wish to keep as their federated partner and the rest be demoted to alliance. 

[Bael]

Well, I don't know about the supposed to happen (although I suspect you are right from what I have heard), but I must admit that it is hilarious. Tara gets a new federated partner, then get a double portion back on their plate. Classic.

[Indirik]

I suggest the nature of federations needs to change.  I have two suggestions:

1. A realm can only be federated with one other realm.

2. Diplomatic relations for federated realms are all the same- if one federated realm wishes to go to war with someone, the other must as well.

I don't really think that either of these needs to happen. (Although I admit that the second suggestion is interesting. It has its own problems, though. Like: Who determines the state of the relationship?)

First: Federations allow a group of small realms to play the big game. I wouldn't want to restrict the flexibility to the extent that two-realm federations would do.

Second: I think that the act of federating may need to be more transitive, and far-looking when signed. It needs to do a recursive look at relationships when accepting a new federation partner. If it is possible, through the new relationships that a federation will create, to trace a Federated-or-Aligned path to someone with a War or Hatred status, the federation should be impossible, regardless of the distance of that relationship. This restriction already applies, but I don't think it looks far enough when accepting new partners into an existing federation. We had a situation on EC where Perdan was allied to Westmoor and at war with Ibladesh, while Ibladesh and Westmoor were Federated. There's a bug about it on the bugtracker somewhere... If these relationships were further traced out to look for conflicts, then this kind of thing would not happen.

[Zakilevo]

First: Federations allow a group of small realms to play the big game. I wouldn't want to restrict the flexibility to the extent that two-realm federations would do.

Why not then limit it by number of regions? Limit the size of federation to 50 regions. If there are 5 small realms, they can form a federation with 5 realms. If there are two giants with 30 regions each, they can't do that.

[Penchant]

I don't really think that either of these needs to happen. (Although I admit that the second suggestion is interesting. It has its own problems, though. Like: Who determines the state of the relationship?)

First: Federations allow a group of small realms to play the big game. I wouldn't want to restrict the flexibility to the extent that two-realm federations would do.

Second: I think that the act of federating may need to be more transitive, and far-looking when signed. It needs to do a recursive look at relationships when accepting a new federation partner. If it is possible, through the new relationships that a federation will create, to trace a Federated-or-Aligned path to someone with a War or Hatred status, the federation should be impossible, regardless of the distance of that relationship. This restriction already applies, but I don't think it looks far enough when accepting new partners into an existing federation. We had a situation on EC where Perdan was allied to Westmoor and at war with Ibladesh, while Ibladesh and Westmoor were Federated. There's a bug about it on the bugtracker somewhere... If these relationships were further traced out to look for conflicts, then this kind of thing would not happen.

The situation you dislike, I disagree on. I see it as good as it allows conflict to still happen. It seems like the people problem of people going into large federations/alliances forever is more or less impossible to stop so I would rather have a situation that allows for war to still happen.

Personally I hate federation status as it encourages peace a hell of a more than alliance. You were considering to betray a federated partner? O that sucks, you have to fight all of your current federated partners than.

As I said above, I am definitely for requiring everyone in the federation to agree to the new partner, not just one realm.

Well, I don't know about the supposed to happen (although I suspect you are right from what I have heard), but I must admit that it is hilarious. Tara gets a new federated partner, then get a double portion back on their plate. Classic.

Its not funny to me. All that happened was someone figured out how to use game mechanics to forcefully end a war. I didn't complain when it happened with Carelia joining the federation about them not getting a choice, because I thought they did, which then surprised me we made got into the federation. Now I know thats not true, so I don't care for that either.

Personally I think federation status should not be group-connected. If people want to make a group federation, go for it, but I see no benefit to the current group-connected federations vs just keeping it like the rest of the relations.

[Forbes Family]

Being the one that made the federation, along with Suville's King, I must say both of us think that this is far from the end of the war.

[GoldPanda]

I see a relatively simple solution: Each federation member must agree to the change before a new member can be added to the federation. That way, it gets increasingly harder to grow federations, because you have to get more realms to agree to it.

In fact, I assumed this was how it worked until very recently.

With the way it's currently implemented, growing a federation actually gets easier as it grows, as more members = more rulers = more likelihood that someone will decide to unilaterally invite another member. And no one dares to leave the federation, because how do you know that this is not some conspiracy to get your realm to leave, and then everyone gangs up on you?

Of all the malicious pranks pulled in BM, I'm surprised that there has not been an island-wide federation blob yet.

[Indirik]

We almost had one on EC back in... '07? Maybe late '06. There was a three-realm federation in the north, and they were all allied to a three-realm federation in the north. The only realms not in the federation were Perdan/Caligus/Ubent, all three together were smaller than Perdan is now, and Light of Fountain.

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/index.php/Image:EC_Feds.png

[Indirik]

The situation you dislike, I disagree on. I see it as good as it allows conflict to still happen. It seems like the people problem of people going into large federations/alliances forever is more or less impossible to stop so I would rather have a situation that allows for war to still happen.

Mrh? Allows more war? The current situation doesn't allow more war. It actually prevents it.

Personally I hate federation status as it encourages peace a hell of a more than alliance. You were considering to betray a federated partner? O that sucks, you have to fight all of your current federated partners than.

The number of times I have seen a realm leaving a federation and going to war with the former members a is vastly outnumbered by the number of times a realm has left the federation, and then gone back to peace/alliance as soon as allowed by game mechanics. The "leaving a federation = war" mechanic is, mostly, useless, because it almost never happens.

[Jens Namtrah]

I'll do one of my "far out, it'll never happen" posts.

Get rid of Federations. Get rid of Alliances if it's possible to join realms together to fight some other way (in other words, make it via some sort of treaty/agreement that needs to be constantly renewed).

I don't know if it would actually change so much, but it would get rid of the problem of "we can't really go to war with anyone cuz this guy is linked to this guy is linked to this guy..."

Keep the default at neutral and make realms actively work somehow to maintain relationships. I think a good number of the alliances & federations are just leftover from forever ago.

And yes - as Indirik said, trace the lines and block them much earlier.

[Indirik]

Your idea it's not far out you might think.  We tried that. Everyone hated it.

[Penchant]

I do like the idea of no federations.

[Jens Namtrah]

Your idea it's not far out you might think.  We tried that. Everyone hated it.

What were the problems people had with it?

[Indirik]

Sorry for the previous short reply. I was typing on my phone.

We put forth an idea to remove all formal diplomacy relations, and replace them with fine-grained treaties. You could grant different rights to other realms by signing treaties with them. Passage rights, expelled diplomats, war, conquest, trade, facility sharing, etc. Each was a separate treaty. The information is available on the wiki in the page history, here: http://wiki.battlemaster.org/index.php?title=Enhanced_Diplomacy&direction=prev&oldid=164722

The key part of the treaty system was that treaties had "friction". This was RP'd as a resistance of the minor nobility to the treaty. The longer the treaty was in force, the higher the friction. Diplomats and ambassadors could spend hours to reduce the friction. If the friction ever hit 100%, the treaty was automatically canceled. The intent was as you've stated: All relations tended toward neutrality. Without any effort on the part of the players to maintain good relations, all relations would eventually decay back to neutrality.

The idea of the fine control was, in general, well-received. One big complaint was how many treaties it took to become an "ally". We proposed some "roll up" treaties to cover it, allowing one treaty to include multiple clauses and be signed all as one. The system was removed before we ever implemented this part.

The major problem of the system, though, was the friction. The idea that a treaty would be automatically canceled if it stuck around too long was widely opposed. Players had to spend significant amounts of time investing in maintaining treaties. Boring drudge work. Almost no one thought it was a good idea.

After trialing the system for a while as a "preview" with no game effects, it was decided that the "friction" aspect required way too much work, and was something that no one really wanted. So we rolled back almost all the various types of treaties, and left the free-form text one, with no associated friction, as the only remnant of the system.