Too much peace too much for Dwilight

[D`Este]

seriously Chenier, this is what you get by ignoring reality too long.

[Chenier]

The second part has code that is completely independent of TMP, and just as ridiculous.

Also, can anyone tell me just how many wars were encouraged by TMP, that wouldn't have otherwise happened due to nobles' boredom?

Playing a realm that relies on trade is perfectly legitimate. There is no reason arbitrary mechanics that do not consider cases that are exceptions to the rule to have such devastating effects. That the nobles failed to send a unit or two to fight rogues, due to the general being inactive and just stepping down, in no way reduces the absurdity of the situation.

[Sacha]

So your entire army grinds to a halt as soon as your general stops talking? No marshals, dukes, sponsors or the ruler to step up to the plate?

The !@#$storm you suffered is a direct result of TMP. No TMP = no drop in manageable tax level = no major loss of income. And harsh as they may be, the effects of TMP should never be a problem for D'Hara in the first place. Not with all the opportunities for fighting you have. You maneuvered yourself into this corner. You have no excuses.

[egamma]

Colonies:
Actually, realms do fight wars simply to get rid of TMP messages. I've been at the receiving end of every single realm in the Colonies deciding to attack Giblot because of their whining peasants. The other realms have actually said that they were attacking due to TMP.

From my position, that's just meta-gaming. Aren't we supposed to be avoiding that? I was even talking with the other Judges about having a monthly 'tournament', where realms pair off and try out the different marshal formations. Each side has a set CS and chooses the rest. Of course, we're not rulers or generals, so nothing's going to come of the talks...just wishful thinking.

D'Hara:
As for the whole TMP thing, myself and my two nobles are slogging through the trees to go visit the Zuma, and I'm hoping to run into some monsters--preferably after I make the food sale, of course. But is it really realistic to travel for several weeks, just to get rid of a stupid warning?  Should I wander around in rogue regions until I find some to attack? Is that SMA?

[Chenier]

So your entire army grinds to a halt as soon as your general stops talking? No marshals, dukes, sponsors or the ruler to step up to the plate?

The !@#$storm you suffered is a direct result of TMP. No TMP = no drop in manageable tax level = no major loss of income. And harsh as they may be, the effects of TMP should never be a problem for D'Hara in the first place. Not with all the opportunities for fighting you have. You maneuvered yourself into this corner. You have no excuses.

If there was a totalitarian leader, then sure, this could be avoided easily. But this is not what we've been pushing. We have been pushing for power to be decentralized. People got *bolted* for issuing orders to people they shouldn't be ordering. The general is also the marshal of the main army, so that doesn't leave many people to order others around. And people weren't being ordered to stick around either, as far as I know.

And it being avoidable does not in any way reduce how stupid it is that the effects are so great.

The new TMP effects were to add realism. These are changes I suggested myself. But if the game only considers one kind of strife with complete disregard for another, even more important (food), then realism is poorer than without any such mechanics at all. The exemption of the tax effect (not the troop training effect) to realms with bad food supply ratios would be both more realistic and more balanced. And I have been arguing for this since way before these disastrous results.

And as I said before, this would not only affect D'Hara. Secessions have low enough survivability as it is, and honestly this code means that seceded realms with bad food ratios must absolutely pick a fight with their origin realm just to avoid implosion. There are contexts that would make a different path both more reasonable and more fun.

Further, TMP is not the only mechanic that can cause bankruptcy. That code should absolutely be tweaked, regardless of whether TMP triggers it or if something else does.

[Sacha]

Nobody has to pick fights with other humans to avoid TMP. A few monster battles will do just fine. I think D'Hara may be the only realm in Dwilight history who have ever managed to suffer widespread TMP effects. And yes, I do consider that quite an achievement, albeit not one to be proud of.

Seceded realms with !@#$ty food ratios should maybe consider their predicament before seceding.

You still have no excuses. If your army is not doing anything because of the Marshal, have him replaced. Or appoint an active VM. Or create a new army. Or order your knights around personally. Or grab a unit and go fighting yourself.

egamma: D'Hara has two neighboring allies with a combined total of 8 rogue regions on their border. Three of these regions are only one region away from your own border. It would not take 'weeks' to find a place to fight. Station some troops in Thysan, Celtiberia or Rettlewood and see how long it takes for a rogue horde to attack. And if they won't come to you, go to them.

[Anaris]

If there was a totalitarian leader, then sure, this could be avoided easily. But this is not what we've been pushing. We have been pushing for power to be decentralized. People got *bolted* for issuing orders to people they shouldn't be ordering. The general is also the marshal of the main army, so that doesn't leave many people to order others around. And people weren't being ordered to stick around either, as far as I know.

I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense.

First of all, the people getting bolted was years ago.  And it was for claiming non-orders were orders.  That was during the time when Tom had the Orders tag restricted to specific people. Now, anyone can issue an order to anyone else.

Anyone who lets their military grind to a halt because they're afraid of getting bolted is an idiot, and obviously hasn't been paying attention for years.

Furthermore, if it's your general who was inactive...why did your marshals do nothing?  That's what the whole decentralized power thing was about: giving power to the marshals.  If they're still utterly dependent on orders from the general to be able to do anything, while simultaneously being petrified of getting lightning bolts for issuing orders to the wrong people, you have so completely missed the point it's staggering.

[Chenier]

There are IR, you know? We weren't being invaded, so had no reason to replace the general/marshal.

Having the general not being a marshal is only meaningful when you have at least two significant armies. It's otherwise not logical.

No, I'm not afraid of bolts. So what if the bolts stopped? I never saw Tom saying "Oh, nevermind then, let's have rulers resume giving orders to everyone". The threat only stopped when people accepted to behave as was desired of them, and because that inflexibility did not account for cases where it was perfectly logical and acceptable for a character to give orders to another, but for which the game did not provide red paper.

If the problem was that a foreign army was marching on us, people would wake up and organize. But as egamma said, all of this just to pick fights with a few rogues?

Those of you arguing about how this could have been avoided fail to see how completely stupid it is to force players to go hunt for monsters in far-away lands to prevent an economic crash. It brings *nothing* to the game. Absolutely nothing.

And small realms bring a lot of change to the game, and therefore excitement to *everyone* on their continent. It is counter-productive to maintain policies that go against small realms.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Most realms on Dwilight have no chance of TMP affecting them, especially small realms situated in the wilderness. I bet Barca could just wish they only had to worry about TMP. As some have already mentioned, D'Hara's one of the exceptions because of its geography. You don't want to pick a bone with Terran? That's your choice, and whatever with your "blah blah goodness" about how it wouldn't make diplomatic/historical/fluffy pretty rainbow princesses sense. Yeah, it's a pain. So you have some choices to make, huh? No one said they'd be easy or painless.

You can stay there and keep weathering out the TMP stuff, and hey, maybe in the long term it won't be as deleterious as you might perceive.

You can go pack your things and leave the islands for the next idiot who wants to settle there if this whole TMP thing really is as severe as you say.

You can pick a fight with a neighbor because your populace is growing restless and bloodthirsty. It is not against SMA to, as a realm, go to war just because you feel like it.

You can go on long stupid quests to rid the wilds of monsters. I mean, hey, that sounds heroic but in reality would be pretty boring and dumb. But really, what romanticized notion isn't stupid and boring in reality?

[Sacha]

Those of you arguing about how this could have been avoided fail to see how completely stupid it is to force players to go hunt for monsters in far-away lands to prevent an economic crash. It brings *nothing* to the game. Absolutely nothing.

So do it for your allies. Do it for your own personal glory. Do it for !@#$s and giggles. Do it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster demands it. If you can't even come up with a reason to get off your ass, while your soldiers and your peasants demand battle and your allies fight tooth and nail against a neverending onslaught...

[Anaris]

No, I'm not afraid of bolts. So what if the bolts stopped? I never saw Tom saying "Oh, nevermind then, let's have rulers resume giving orders to everyone". The threat only stopped when people accepted to behave as was desired of them, and because that inflexibility did not account for cases where it was perfectly logical and acceptable for a character to give orders to another, but for which the game did not provide red paper.

So you heard some rumours about people being bolted for giving orders, and just took that at face value, didn't actually find out what the real situation was, and thus, when it became painfully obvious that everyone could give orders to everyone again, you decided that this meant that everyone was just being given the opportunity to get bolted.

And continued in this belief for (IIRC) about three years, despite lots and lots of evidence to the contrary, if you had actually bothered to pay attention.

[Vellos]

D'Hara has no excuse for it's TMP. Terran and Barca have been fighting monsters non-stop for weeks, and we've made no secret of that fact. Inactive general in D'Hara? Fine, but even if random knights had "gone questing," they'd have been fine.

So yes, wander into Maroccidens. Go questing. Ever read Le Morte d'Arthur? Go questing! You've got no immediate wars, you host fabulously expensive tournaments, you have good defensive alliances: go wander into the woods hunting dragons!

However, the economic collapse code does seem weird. Why did his entire infrastructure get wiped in one turn without warning? That seems remarkably extreme to me. Does the game pay for food by immediately "selling off" infrastructure? He had a few hundred gold in bills to pay: how much did he have to sell? How can it take the elimination of thousands of gold of infrastructure to cover maybe 200 gold in debt, tops?

Sidenote: this is why automatic transfers are for suckers. Remember during the brief "Advanced Mentoring" thing when I said in my tutorial that automatic transfers were lame? I was prescient. This is why. You cannot get into bankruptcy if you pre-pay out of pocket for your food. In sum: if you play hardcore and micro-manage each food transfer after each tax week, you will render yourself invulnerable to sudden economic collapse, but more vulnerable to starvation (and also lack of real life). If you let game mechanics automate it and play at a lighter level, you will be at higher risk of sudden explosive infrastructure collapse if you have 1 day of economic imbalance (say, by a banker cooking your books.... holy !@#$ I just found a way to reign in a duke. Exploit automatic transfers by shipping vast sums of food, and it will wipe out the duke's entire economic infrastructure.... headlines read: OVEREATING CAUSES INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSE).

[De-Legro]

D'Hara has no excuse for it's TMP. Terran and Barca have been fighting monsters non-stop for weeks, and we've made no secret of that fact. Inactive general in D'Hara? Fine, but even if random knights had "gone questing," they'd have been fine.

So yes, wander into Maroccidens. Go questing. Ever read Le Morte d'Arthur? Go questing! You've got no immediate wars, you host fabulously expensive tournaments, you have good defensive alliances: go wander into the woods hunting dragons!

However, the economic collapse code does seem weird. Why did his entire infrastructure get wiped in one turn without warning? That seems remarkably extreme to me. Does the game pay for food by immediately "selling off" infrastructure? He had a few hundred gold in bills to pay: how much did he have to sell? How can it take the elimination of thousands of gold of infrastructure to cover maybe 200 gold in debt, tops?

Sidenote: this is why automatic transfers are for suckers. Remember during the brief "Advanced Mentoring" thing when I said in my tutorial that automatic transfers were lame? I was prescient. This is why. You cannot get into bankruptcy if you pre-pay out of pocket for your food. In sum: if you play hardcore and micro-manage each food transfer after each tax week, you will render yourself invulnerable to sudden economic collapse, but more vulnerable to starvation (and also lack of real life). If you let game mechanics automate it and play at a lighter level, you will be at higher risk of sudden explosive infrastructure collapse if you have 1 day of economic imbalance (say, by a banker cooking your books.... holy !@#$ I just found a way to reign in a duke. Exploit automatic transfers by shipping vast sums of food, and it will wipe out the duke's entire economic infrastructure.... headlines read: OVEREATING CAUSES INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSE).

Thanks Vellos you just ruined one of my long term plans. That is one reason why most Dukes I've seen limit automatic food purchase to a reasonably low threshold. I have tried to investigate using automatic buying to damage a realm we were in a "cold" war with, but turns out they don't use any buy orders and just ship stuff in for free, real shame. I've been waiting for the chance to try it on a realm that actually buys food.

[Sacha]

*cough*d'hara*cough*

[Chenier]

So do it for your allies. Do it for your own personal glory. Do it for !@#$s and giggles. Do it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster demands it. If you can't even come up with a reason to get off your ass, while your soldiers and your peasants demand battle and your allies fight tooth and nail against a neverending onslaught...

Those are good reasons to fight. I'm not saying I don't want our realm to fight. Were I not a priest, I'd be the first one there, I'd have gone there long ago. But that's not the case. It would be if I was allowed two characters, but it isn't.

I'm not saying "I don't want us to get involved in any battle at all". I want to see Barca prosper. We all do. But due to OOC activity reasons, nothing was organized.

But that's beside the point. While the thread was first about Dwilight, I now speak of tweaks for *all continents*. The effects are inbalanced. They need tweaking. They need forewarning so that people can prepare before the pain begins, they need to be toned down so that 8% taxes in a city that usually runs 18% doesn't become "stupid and insane", the winter exemption we hear about every turn should be fixed as it's obviously not working, and the code around negative incomes needs to seriously be revisited because the effects of having a negative balance are way out of line with the funds that would have been required for maintenance. For *everyone*, *everywhere*. When I said that acceptable taxes should be lowered during peace time, I certainly did not mean by this much! 20-25% drop of the acceptable limit maybe, not 75%! Lowered taxes should not cause bankruptcy, it should just mean that an realm of equal size that keeps fit military should be able to accumulate enough of a surplus so that if it decides to go to war with you, it has a distinctive advantage. My stance has never changed on this: TMP should never cause a realm to collapse or regions to seriously suffer, as the old code directly did, but rather gradually weaken the realm (without threatening it) so as to make it a more desirable target for its neighbors or to make them less able to seek retribution against seceding cities.

So you heard some rumours about people being bolted for giving orders, and just took that at face value, didn't actually find out what the real situation was, and thus, when it became painfully obvious that everyone could give orders to everyone again, you decided that this meant that everyone was just being given the opportunity to get bolted.

And continued in this belief for (IIRC) about three years, despite lots and lots of evidence to the contrary, if you had actually bothered to pay attention.

I'm pretty sure I witnessed one or two bolts. I know for a fact I witnessed warnings. I'm not saying there's a rule against giving out orders. But there wasn't a rule saying we had to value our oaths either, back before the estate system was implemented. Did that stop me from playing knights loyal to their lords? It was encouraged, and put forth as desirable behavior. Respect of the military hierarchy is still, as far as I know, desired behavior, regardless of whether there are rules with sanctions still attributed to it or not.

D'Hara has no excuse for it's TMP. Terran and Barca have been fighting monsters non-stop for weeks, and we've made no secret of that fact. Inactive general in D'Hara? Fine, but even if random knights had "gone questing," they'd have been fine.

So yes, wander into Maroccidens. Go questing. Ever read Le Morte d'Arthur? Go questing! You've got no immediate wars, you host fabulously expensive tournaments, you have good defensive alliances: go wander into the woods hunting dragons!

Except with the travel times, by the time we got the warning it was too late. Even had someone set out exactly then, he wouldn't have arrived before my production levels were destroyed. I considered investing, but with the current acceptable tax rate, that can't bring me to produce a surplus either.

However, the economic collapse code does seem weird. Why did his entire infrastructure get wiped in one turn without warning? That seems remarkably extreme to me. Does the game pay for food by immediately "selling off" infrastructure? He had a few hundred gold in bills to pay: how much did he have to sell? How can it take the elimination of thousands of gold of infrastructure to cover maybe 200 gold in debt, tops?

Not a few hundred. About 50 gold. Total, maintenance and pay. Food was 525 gold total, income was 136 gold. Lack of maintenance should cause *some* damage, not instant kill everything overnight. I had enough gold to pay both the food balance and maintenance costs on hand too...

Sidenote: this is why automatic transfers are for suckers. Remember during the brief "Advanced Mentoring" thing when I said in my tutorial that automatic transfers were lame? I was prescient. This is why. You cannot get into bankruptcy if you pre-pay out of pocket for your food. In sum: if you play hardcore and micro-manage each food transfer after each tax week, you will render yourself invulnerable to sudden economic collapse, but more vulnerable to starvation (and also lack of real life). If you let game mechanics automate it and play at a lighter level, you will be at higher risk of sudden explosive infrastructure collapse if you have 1 day of economic imbalance (say, by a banker cooking your books.... holy !@#$ I just found a way to reign in a duke. Exploit automatic transfers by shipping vast sums of food, and it will wipe out the duke's entire economic infrastructure.... headlines read: OVEREATING CAUSES INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSE).

Haha, yea, I should sell all my food to Port Nebel and Port Raviel, and generalize the economic crisis.

It's so abusable, it's not even funny anymore, now that I think about it. :-\

And I spend enough time micro-managing Paisly's economy as it is, I'm not going to manually set the deals on top of that...