Messages

451

BM General Discussion / Re: Cities and Duchies

« on: February 08, 2012, 08:49:48 PM »

We have those things. They are called Dukes. -_-

So under the new system, do Dukes even have any responsibilities if they are not also a region lord? Region lords, especially, err, city region lords, have a lot of responsibility and duties. It seems to me that all Dukes are good for is taxing his lords and being useless.

This new system raises many, many questions:

Who draws the duchy borders?

Can region lords still defect to an adjacent duchy?

Who gets to create new duchies?

Who gets to name the duchies?

Who cleans up empty/dead duchies?

How are dukes appointed/elected? How much freedom do different government systems have to change this? Can each duchy have its own system for selecting its duke?

Will there be an easy and intuitive way for realms to say "This is all very new and scary. I just want to default to exactly how the old system works until we figure out the implications and controls of the new Trade system, the new Estate system, the region population re-balance, etc., etc., then we'll come back and figure out what to do with the new Duchy system."

452

BM General Discussion / Re: Cities and Duchies

« on: February 07, 2012, 10:11:06 PM »

There is no movement towards centralization in the game that I can see. The number of duchies has not changed noticeably. You are drawing a scare scenario that simply is not happening. And if it ever does - it's not like we're not here and couldn't add code to make large duchies ineffective, isn't it?

Again, we instinctively punish rather than reward. How about giving bonuses to small duchies? That's the same thing, right? Why does everything have to be worded as "No! Bad player! No cookie for you!" 

I will withdraw my opinions until we have some time to experience a non-buggy version of the new duchy system, then.

And it does seem that bugs keep breaking out of the testing island barrier and gleefully start to invade stable. Yes I know I'm anthropomorphizing software bugs. 

453

Atamara / Re: The Current War

« on: February 07, 2012, 10:01:04 PM »

I love how Leta's initial populist justification for war - CE's alleged pronouncements against Magna Serpaensism and wish to 'dominate' Carelia - have not only come to pass, but have now come at an additional cost of two thirds of Carelia!

That wasn't exactly false, but it's been spun beyond recognition. CE certainly made it clear to Queen Leta, and King Bartho before her, that it did not like the fact that the Serpaensists given shelter in Carelia were appointed to lordships, and then a third of the lords were Serpaensists, and then almost half of the lords of Carelia were Serpaensists. This was going to drive a wedge between CE and Carelia sooner or later. But CE also made it clear that it was not going to attack Carelia over the issue, as evidenced by the fact that CE never did declare war on Carelia.

If telling your ally what you like and don't like is "domination", then maybe realms should just stop talking to each other entirely.

Rereading what he posted, I see what you mean. But that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't match anything I've ever heard before, including straight from the players of the Kindon and Bedwyr families. Something's not making sense here.

Fair point. I am wondering how the plan got sold to Carelia's nobles. So you take two duchies away from one of your neighbors, and then give away two of your own duchies? That's a net gain of, err, zero duchies. All risk for no gain. ... Unless the plan was to take Skalk, Nida, and then keep going?

Was there a war plan beyond "down with CE!"?

454

Atamara / Re: The Current War

« on: February 07, 2012, 08:07:20 PM »

Now that it's over though, anyone in the know want to tell me whether all that going on with CE was actually real? Was Carelia about to get done over in a three way between Caergoth, Suville and CE before Leta promised Caergoth/Suville the earth or where those just manufactured fears? Malice will never believe Leta was right in a million years IC, but I'd love to know OOC whether Leta was justified or not!

So, in other words, no, no she was not.

455

Atamara / Re: The Current War

« on: February 07, 2012, 08:06:13 PM »

It makes more sense that it would be against Caergoth and Suville. But overall, it really makes no difference. Carelia's rallying point for the war was not "CE is going to destroy Carelia", it was "CE is meddling in our affairs, let's show them we won't stand for it."

I thought that was Leta's justification as well... Except that's not what Revan just said. He explicitly said that Leta's justification was "CE is going to gang up on us with Caergoth and Suville. Let's get them before they get us."

So before Revan said anything, I would have agreed with you. Now that he shared that bit of information, which side CE was bullying for becomes important, because it's the difference between Leta telling the truth and lying.

456

Atamara / Re: The Current War

« on: February 07, 2012, 07:39:28 PM »

"End it now, or we'll step in and end it for you, and you won't like it",

That's pretty much what Famine said, except he said it to the leaders of Caergoth and Suville.

Kind of an important difference.

457

Atamara / Re: The Current War

« on: February 07, 2012, 07:38:06 PM »

Yes. Yes, she was.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Since this is an OOC forum, and not the Indirik family's personal IC propaganda machine, I'll just go ahead and confirm, OOCly, that CE had NO plans to attack Carelia. CE is not so arrogant to plan for a two front war, and its target was the northern realms. CE was already mobilizing against Eston before Talerium declared war on Eston, when Carelia stabbed CE in the back.

If anything, CE was hoping that Carelia and Caergoth-Suville would stop fighting, so that the entire south would unite and finally crush the uppity northerners. CE was saber-rattling at Caergoth-Suville to try to pressure them to sign a peace deal with Carelia, because its leaders were worried that Carelia seemed to be losing. Yes, CE was playing the part of a bully, but it was a bully on behalf of Carelia. Those in the know in Caergoth and Suville can confirm this.

So, yeah, CE left itself right open on the diplomatic front, exerting pressure on Caergoth-Suville right when the northern realms were painting CE as a bully, and Carelia was promising two duchies to Caergoth-Suville in exchange for ripping two duchies out of CE. CE was trying to help exactly the realm that was trying hardest to destroy it.

That's why there was so much outrage when Carelia jumped on the anti-CE bandwagon. There was definitely a sense of betrayal there.

CE's nobles hated Magna Serpaensism due to their experiences fighting Falasan, but there was an uneasy ceasefire after they fled to Carelia. I'd like to note that CE did not do anything while more and more Serpaensist lords were appointed in Carelia, but you can bet that CE was keeping tabs on you. Nathan just threw a torch into the tinder-box that is anti-MS sentiment.

458

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: February 07, 2012, 03:34:04 AM »

So... which large wars are these? The only large war I know of is "Let's all kill CE." On every other island, the wars are all ending, with no new ones starting. Yes, TMP had it's problems. But without it, or something to replace it, all I see are wars ending, with none starting. And how long has it been since TMP was removed?

EC: The southern realms are mopping up Ibladesh. The northern realms are having trouble holding onto their piece of Fontan because they don't have enough nobles to go around. Once the new estate system gets pushed to stable, you'll see more wars starting again. Nobles won't start wars when a third of their realm's regions are revolting.

AT: To quote another player, "AT is hopping".

BT: Invasion.

FEI: I don't play there, but from what I hear on the forums, there are still wars and shenanigans going on.

Colonies: LOL Colonies.

Edit: Dwilight: Plenty of wars in the south. The Astroists in the north are keeping occupied with fascinating theological discussions, I'm sure. TMP is pretty damaging to SMA as well, in my opinion.

459

BM General Discussion / Re: Cities and Duchies

« on: February 07, 2012, 03:28:13 AM »

Or *all* in a single duchy, which I predict will be the trend.

Exactly. The benefits are obvious:

1. Everyone gets their tax income in gold rather than bonds when in-realm.
2. All civil work and police work gets the in-duchy penalty rather than the harsher out-of-duchy penalty.
3. All the region lords can see status reports realm-wide instead of just for their duchy.

Even those who oppose realm centralization will find it pretty hard to argue against those benefits.

Basically, by allowing players to draw their own duchy borders, you have effectively destroyed the duchy system. Duchies will just be realms now.

If the intention was to roll back the duchy system, we should just do that. You're not really giving players additional freedom or choice when there is an obvious, optimal configuration. Everyone will scream and shout until their ruler presses the "make my realm not suck" button.

460

BM General Discussion / Re: Cities and Duchies

« on: February 07, 2012, 02:00:26 AM »

I have to say that, just reading what players are saying about the new duchy system makes my head hurt.

Why the new duchy system? Have people really been asking for the ability to split one duchy into two? To have the Duke and Lord of a city be different nobles? What does this change add to the game? Does it make the game more balanced? More fun? More realistic?

Because all I see is needless complexity that adds even more boring busy-work. I don't want to have to open up Excel worksheets just to understand my realm's feudal system.

461

BM General Discussion / Re: Rant of the day

« on: February 02, 2012, 08:52:03 PM »

Easy there, killer. At the moment I'm annoyed by the folks who are dancing on Caergoth's grave and yes, they do know that. But it's interesting that people from CE or Arcaea feel the need to get defensive about it. Obviously I'm not the first person to rant about this kind of thing.

I play in other realms as well, thank you very much. You can see them in my forum signature.

462

Atamara / Re: Strombran!

« on: February 02, 2012, 08:49:17 PM »

So, argue all this IC and use it as counter propaganda. Indirik made a joke, its a game remember.

I would not object to in-game propaganda (there hasn't been much). What I am objecting to are these IC propaganda being spread on what is supposed to be OOC forums. We can't have a CE-related thread these days without people chiming in about how evil CE is.

People who play in Atamara can probably figure out that it's just joking around, sure. But not everyone who reads these threads play on Atamara. I don't want anyone who's shopping for an AT realm to join to end up with the wrong impression about CE. I don't want to lose potential players who might have joined CE but heard that we were evil baby-killers. I also don't want players to join thinking that they are joining a realm that actively tries to be evil. They are going to be very disappointed.

463

Atamara / Re: Strombran!

« on: February 02, 2012, 01:25:14 AM »

Okay that is it. The whole "Evil Empire" shtick was a funny piece of propaganda at first, but now it's past getting old. We're not the ones with infiltrators coming out the wazoo. We're not the ones raping and killing everywhere we went. We're not the ones who started this war.

If Tara and Coria can be called CE's puppets, then Minas Ithil is Eston's puppet because, hey, MI was Eston's colony way back when. And hey, Barca was a colony of Terran. They must be a puppet too! And Dwilight realms are just a bunch of puppets with dead/dying puppet-masters! 

And obviously starting new realms is a bad, bad, evil, bad thing to do. It might inject some new life into Atamara, and we don't want that. Oh no no no sir. The righteous course of action after winning a war is obviously to return all the territory you took, apologize to your opponent for making them declare war on you in the first place, and invite them to try again next month. Then everyone can go back to complaining about how nothing ever changes on Atamara, and all will be well again.

464

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: February 01, 2012, 12:22:00 AM »

Hmmm...

What is the difference between the Cagilan Empire and the Zuma?

Or Sirion. Or Enweil (pre-fourth, most likely). Or any other powerful realm?

Powerful realms have their own goals and they will !@#$ you up if you stand in the way of them. This is not new or unique to the Zuma, so why is there a twenty seven page thread about why it is the epitome of evil for the Zuma to do so? Hell, the Zuma have had less impact than a realm of equivalent position (SA...) would have had because of how passive they are.

The difference is, none of those realms you mentioned, as far as I'm aware, has Garret Artemesia for an ambassador. That's my only beef with the Zuma, really.

There is being a bully, and then there is cartoonish, supervillainy trolling.

465

BM General Discussion / Re: Rant of the day

« on: January 31, 2012, 07:13:07 PM »

I submit that gloating and rationalizations are all a part of the game as well, as long as it is kept strictly IC. You don't have to read anyone's messages if you don't want to. If someone gave your back an extra knife-related accessory, get revenge and/or get over it. I'm not sure what you are hoping to accomplish by complaining to us.