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Messages - Chenier

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7636
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 11, 2011, 12:38:43 AM »
Ha, you're getting into some pretty strong language lately. Anyway, the Banker position has always been an autopilot after the establishing acts. For a new realm, they are very important because the macroeconomics is visible only to the Banker. That very information is vital. It doesn't need to be physical ability. Sometimes the very knowledge of something is useful beyond measure. Same with scout reports.

Whatever is useful of the banker could just as easily be passed on to others. New realms don't need a banker, they just need the macroeconomic information (though honestly, I'd say they really don't need that information at all, as one-duchy realms already have all the info focused into one character, the duke, and the banker's data just becomes a clone of the duke's).

Personally, I'd rather have that position as optional. Some realms might like to focus some administrative/fiscal/economic tasks in one person, but they really don't need to and shouldn't be forced to have a hollow council position if they don't want to.

7637
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 10, 2011, 01:18:13 AM »
Huh, ineffective? If anything, they're effective alright. Maybe not exactly for the realm's best interests, but they do work quite well.

You mean embezzlement, right? Are you *seriously* arguing for the existence of a council position just because it can steal gold? That's pretty friggin' lame. Just pass a watered-down version to ambassadors, if you think someone really ought to have such a power, as it alone is not in any way justification for the position to exist imo.

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Dwilight / Re: The Zuma
« on: June 10, 2011, 01:11:34 AM »
As Artemesia posted for me while ago.

A lot of talk since then seems to ignore this but it says all that needs saying. Everything the Zuma have done has been due to interaction with players. Just because individuals do not know all the details does not give you the right to spread misinformation to the other players. No I will not be explaining any of the actions in an Out of Character forum.
If you are going to make statements about the Zuma or the GM behind them, make sure you have facts to back you up.
As I said before everything is done for a reason and has been done due to interaction with players.
Thank you.

I don't really care that you "had reasons". The way it was done was extremely lame, and the mysterious reasons sound like a bunch of bullocks to me, as while I'm not saying you are lying about there being reasons, there's nothing that indicates to me that they were any good. I've seen GMs do many really stupid things, and not necessarily because they were stupid people. I don't see this as being any different.

That you ask that we "back up" our claims while you content yourself with giving none for yours is just plain out hypocrisy. I'm sorry for being rude, but I've just gotten OOC tired of the Zuma long ago. Everything past the first interactions I was part of or witnessed has been extremely lame on your part.

7639
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 10, 2011, 01:01:01 AM »
I just think the banker's few (and mostly ineffective) remaining powers should be handed down to others and the position scrapped altogether. They just aren't worthwhile as they are anymore.

7640
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 10, 2011, 12:56:34 AM »
I agree with Peri on this one. If you want to advertise and arrange food sales, and put feelers out for more business, do it in game, and not on the forums. If your network of IG contacts isn't big enough to reach everyone, then expend the effort /IG/ to expand it and reach the people you want. Posting the info on the forum, and expecting people to take that OOC knowledge IG and take IG action on it is a clear, if minor, breach of IC/OOC separation.

A Lord in one of Summerdale's northernmost regions, who never joined any guild is SUPPOSED not to know that D'Hara is such a trade haven, especially because you purposely not advertise your trade between council members to avoid intrusions. And if he, reading on the forum what we wrote, decides that is the moment to take a walk to Morek and join a couple of trading guild, you served a perfect ooc intrusion in the game without any effort. I don't like it.

There's two points I'd put forward: the first is that anyone with half a brain that bothers to look at the map can assume that D'Hara runs a pretty huge deficit. Indeed, stat pages on food supply should confirm this, asD'Hara shows as having the world's lowest supply. Don't ask me how the number 114% is calculated, though. One can then reasonnably assume that this realm would take up particular efforts to compensate for this. Anyone interested in trade should naturally be lured to D'Hara, with its low food supply, safe trading routes, and central location.

Secondly, I believe I've already reached everyone in range that matters, or mostly. Summerdale's so far away, we don't have any traders that pass by there and automatic caravans don't make the trip. We were told when I asked that you don't make a significant food surplus, so there's no plans on sending anyone that way for a while either, as the distance reduces the desirability of small transactions.

My intent was mostly just to engage in OOC conversation about how different realms handle food differently.

7641
BM General Discussion / Re: Too much peace too much for Dwilight
« on: June 10, 2011, 12:48:05 AM »
Yes we could, if mendicant and his loonies relinquish their claims in Candiels and Candiels fields. Damm city stealers would be getting away nicely then

Since out of D'Hara, Caerwyn, Barca, Terran, Aurvandil, Madina, and Grand Duchy of Fissoa, that solution only appears to please Madina, I doubt it'll happen. Considering how poorly Madina is doing by living peacefully, I can't imagine how long it would survive the ire of the others.

7642
Development / Re: Treaty friction is boring
« on: June 10, 2011, 12:45:45 AM »
Yes but the realm everyone is using for repairs needs to have a treaty with everyone that wants to perform repairs in their realm, as well as the accompanying rights of passage. They then either need to maintain them all themselves or rely on the treaty partners to do it. Once you also have the treates required for military co-operation in the field, you are looking at significant treaties

Then imagine that you have 1 or 2 rogue diplomats somewhere in the alliance. They can speak against the treaty, which generates a message but does nothing to identify who is committing the act. They might easily be able to quickly destroy treaties given the accumulated friction effect.

The war is likely not to last long enough to friction to really matter, and that target realm is where everyone passes by anyways so renewing it would not be the slightest problem. In this case, friction is made useless because of the ease of replacement granted by the context. And in most cases, there are few alliance members on the same front, even in the case of gang bangs. If half the alliance strikes from the west, the other from the east, than both factions don't need any formal game treaty to effectively carry out their alliance. And the closer they come to needing one, the more convenient it becomes to travel to that realm to sign a treaty, because it means you are both operating in the same area.

That's certainly one option. But it's a very poor one.

The problem is that on order to do almost anything, you need to have a treaty to do it.

Oh look, your neighbor has a starving city, and you want to cash in by selling some food at highway robbery level prices. Well, we better send some right over!
  • Want to send a caravan of food to your neighbor? Sign a trade agreement treaty!
  • Well, I'll just send a trader instead. Better sign a passage rights treaty so the traders guards wont' get attacked by the other realm's soldiers.
  • Well, I'll just send him without troops. Better sign an open borders so he doesn't just get arrested when traveling alone.

What's that, your other neighbor has some monsters that need to be vanquished, and your troops are growing bored?
  • Better sign a passage rights treaty so we're allowed to move our troops through their lands.
  • And while we're at it, looks like we need a peace treaty so our troops don't attack each other. Or wait, is that covered by a Passage Rights? Not sure, better sign both. Oh, and while we're at it, a mutual defense treaty to make sure our troops actually fight together.
  • Oh crud, Sir Kepler's infantry got wiped out in the battle. Better sign an open borders so he doesn't get arrested on his way home while traveling alone.
  • Accumulated some heavy equipment damage and want to repair before you come home, because there's a monster group that wandered into one of your own border regions along the way? Better sign a Facilities Sharing treaty, too.

These are not unreasonable scenarios for peaceful relations with your neighbors. Anything you want to do requires a treaty. Unless you want to be a hermit realm and just sit within your own borders, ignoring the world. Peaceful relations with two bordering realms could easily suck up 8 to 10 treaties. Now contemplate going to war with one of them against a third realm. Tack on some facilities sharing treaties, a war declaration, maybe even a free-form to formalize the arrangement, and you can easily hit 14-15 treaties without even stretching.

Don't get me wrong, I like the new treaty types. The ability to control your relations to such a fine degree is very nice. But it is turning out that the amount of work required to maintain even a modest network of treaties among a small number of realms is quite burdensome. That's why I proposed some form of automated treaty maintenance, where treaties that are actually being used are either not subject to treaty friction, or accumulate friction at a much slower rate. That way the treaties that are used stay in pace, and the "fluff" treaties that are signed only as diplomatic ploys but never get used need actual maintenance by a player to keep in place.

That seems to be the spirit of the mechanic: to encourage everyone to live isolated in his own realm because of how impractical inter-realm relations are to become. Treaty friction at its best.

7643
BM General Discussion / Re: Too much peace too much for Dwilight
« on: June 09, 2011, 01:01:00 PM »
It's almost tempting to help Madina so they can continue the war :P

Mind you, there *also* is the discourse of "We are more civilized than the blood thirsty northerners and can handle this conflict diplomatically". :P

7644
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 09, 2011, 12:59:39 PM »
It is a perfectly acceptable stance, but I wonder what can then bankers do. Already now the majority of them are bent on gaining gold one way or another rather than helping the realm so much, given that their possibilities to fetch food are limited to the interaction with foreign bankers, which in turn may not have any control on food.

Therefore if the bankers are unable to understand what's going on with food, that is not only in the hands of the Lords practically but also as an informative matter - so that bankers would be spoiled of their organizing-overseeing-controlling task too, I really don't see any reasonable task for them

Also if you may allow me to be the annoying guy here, I don't think the forum should be used as a way to give people informations on trade. One nice thing of dwilight is the sheer number of trading guilds that were created, and I know of many people that moved chars for very long trips only for the sake of finding the right contacts. I understand that what's written here is ooc but we all know how things can go. I believe we should discuss generic matters and not detailed ones about who buys food where and how etc

Bankers are practically useless nowadays. They lost their main powers, and their other important powers are mostly also present in others (rulers have tax options). I wouldn't really so no to having them merged into the ruler position anymore, last time I played a banker I found the experience to be very unsatisfying. Their only use is to be able to see the big picture. Just give dukes the power to get a copy of the big picture for a few coins, and you've got that covered.

I have advertized D'Hara's offers on these guilds various times. But not everyone is part of them, and I don't feel it bad for people to OOC know that there is a place where trading is taken completely differently.

7645
Dwilight / Re: The Zuma
« on: June 09, 2011, 12:54:17 PM »
Thats exactly what abbot learned of D'hara now :P

Hehe, I guess we got that in common. Mind you, we aren't invading Madina and telling you "Give us your food or else". :P

7646
Dwilight / Re: Barca
« on: June 09, 2011, 12:52:41 PM »
A short walk to Chesney will give you access to a ton of guilds. Then, pick a religion. There are quite a few in the region to chose from.

This broadens your contacts.

7647
Development / Re: Treaty friction is boring
« on: June 09, 2011, 04:57:58 AM »
It is my understanding that you can have as many unofficial allies and such as you want. The treaties I think they are trying to limit are things like passage rights or repair rights that are game mechanic related. I supposed it is to prevent a large alliance all using the closest realm as a repair based for pursuing a war. I would be far happy if there was no automatic treaty friction, and that friction was only applied by diplomats. The more treaties a realm has, the bigger the effect diplomatic friction would have, and as a consequence actions again friction would have reduced effect.

Also my feeling is that they want more interaction in terms of quality, IE much more frequent and in depth interaction between 1 or two realms, rather then more interaction in terms of quantity.

In terms of how friction would stop the large alliances, it only really has an effect for things like war I guess. A large alliance generally needs multiple passage rights/ repair rights treaties, which will require significant dedication to maintain. Without them the military effectiveness of the alliance should be questionable, but I'm not sure that it will have a massive effect as things stand.

Except you never really need to use the facilities of 10 realms at the same time. Just sign an unofficial treaty with them all, and only bother to sign/maintain it officially when it's of any use. Same benefits as having one with 10 realms for 99% of the cases.

7648
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 09, 2011, 04:55:41 AM »
Askileon Purlieus can't send caravans to any region held by D'Hara. If any region in the realm could, I'm guessing it would be the capital. Then again while the rates aren't quiet as good, the aren't too bad in PeL. I seem to recall Ramiel was one of those that got their panties in a knot when the idea of the cities actually paying for food was first raised in the realm.

It would appear the Giask from Nova can sell food to D'Hara though.

Port Nebel isn't within range of Askileon? That'd actually be a sea route now that I look at it, though. Cool. Maybe one of your border rurals can send via the land route?

7649
BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?
« on: June 09, 2011, 04:53:50 AM »
A trader could be sent to pass by for collection, if the available stocks are large enough to warrant it...

7650
Development / Re: Treaty friction is boring
« on: June 09, 2011, 04:40:16 AM »
Heh, solution: Don't make so many treaties.

So we have two contradictory roles: on one hand, we want to give people more to do, and on the other, the thing we want to make them do is something we want less of?

Putting so much emphasis on game-generated treaties is stupid. Realms will be friends or will be foes, regardless of what the game says. As people abandoned allies in the past, they will be able to just as much in the future. Just as realms created new friendships overnight in the past, they will just as much in the future. Even if it takes 5 months to get all the stupid paperwork done.

The big alliances weren't caused by the fact that diplomacy is static unless one party changes its mind. That big AT alliance was, you know, because some guy got all of his buds in the top spots of the world? Want to tell me how treaty friction will change anything to such a scenario?

BM is a game of *interaction*. Treaty friction's sole purpose is to *discourage* interaction. It's lame, and I'll just continue using wiki treaties and ignoring IG treaties as I do now if that's how it's going to be, and I suspect others will too, since the actual game mechanics of said treaties are very rarely required for anything.

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