Author Topic: Dear Atamara...  (Read 50003 times)

Dante Silverfire

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #105: November 24, 2015, 05:30:48 PM »
Just look for the people who chant "Moto! Moto!" while they ride giant white rabbits.

Dumps a sack of white rabbits on Wind ... I mean Blue Star.

*Looks through all of the continents with fine detail*

*Finds zero instances of this phenomenon*

*Continues with his day*
"This is the face of the man who has worked long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of them."

Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #106: December 04, 2015, 10:44:52 AM »
I will note some things that Indirik said that are wrong.

I play Regstav Pryde, the ruler of Tara.

Regstav never EVER threatened or in any way suggested that the alliance with Caergoth would be ended if they did not do what Tara said, suggested, or ordered.  Period.  End of Line.

Regstav always considered them a true ally.  And never forced them to do anything. 

Regstav also never offered up all of Suville to Caergoth.  Regstav wanted Suville weakened since he considered it too strong.  Weakened but not destroyed.  I worked to get Riverholm returned to Caergoth but nothing more.

The raiding campaign against Suville only started once Strombran started sending individual units to keep the Taran army from joining Caergoth in attacks.  There was much anger over that.

And when Tara tried to replicate the tactic in Caergoth, Stromban just used murderous settings to start the fights, and due to the diplomacy the Taran forces were shifted to attack Caergoth.  There was...more anger over that.

And so we started just raiding Suville because that was all we could do.  Short of ending the federation with Cagil that Regstav was not willing to do.

Then Strombran took Riverholm via ducal secession and claimed it and there was MORE anger.  Then they took Ser'quea via ducal secession and that was just it.  Done.  Put a fork in me.  Just done.

I told Wayburg and Caergoth that I didn't think I could protect them from Suville because I didn't think Tara was going to be in any position to project power in the very near future.  I suggested to both of them that they ally with Suville so they could look after each other, and then I relaxed relations with Suville so they could do that.  And have slowly been relaxing relations with Suville ever since.  No alliance...but...that's asking a bit much of Regstav...but certainly a "if you look after our friends I won't lay a finger anywhere near you" kind of thing.

And then Tara broke the federation and instantly attacked Strombran.  Strombran really couldn't do much.  But then Cagil jumped in.  They may have been a paper tiger a few months ago.  I can say from experience they are NOT a paper tiger now.  Not at all.  And I was VERY right to assume that Tara would not be in a position to protect either Wayburg or Caergoth.  Cagil is a tough opponent.

I would actually say that with the Cagil/Taran conflict going on and the Strombran/Wayburg/Suville/Caergoth conflict going on, things are fairly close to even between the two sides.  Basically everybody is getting their tickets punched while the northern realms watch.

It's rather impressive to see how much things are changing.

As a player, I wanted the federation gone the moment I became Tyrant.  Before that, all I could see was from Regstav's perspective and he wanted it strong and whole.  Then as a ruler and a player I saw how it stagnated the island.  And from that moment I as a player wanted it dead and buried.  So I started working to slowly take apart all the entangling alliances that have crippled the island.  Things actually worked pretty well on that regard, though each one took a while to get through.  The last and hardest one was obviously the federation.  That took some extreme work to get broken, and I don't know if that would have been possible without Strombran acting so...badly.  So props on the rulers of Strombran for giving everybody good reasons to hate them...;)

It's too bad the devs decided to shut everything down once it got interesting, but at least I can say one thing.

We did good.  One year ago, the League had an unmitigated lock on diplomacy on the island.  Every single nation was allied with at least one member of the League.  That mad warring pretty much impossible.  A year later, most of those alliances are gone.  Thanks in no small part to Cagil and Strombran being very helpful when it comes to breaking alliances when I or others put a little pressure on them.  Tara's alliance with Caergoth is actually the only one still active.  The federation itself is fractured, and there is war inside the League.

Atamaran politics have been smashed well and truly.  I would have loved to find out where they went after this.  But the devs decided not to let that happen.  That's on them.  We players did the math and chose to make a change that worked very well.  And I'm real proud of that.

It took a decade to build the League into the most powerful alliance very possible in the entire game.  It took us one year to break it.  And if we did sorta decide in the end to do it via some OOC communication, I can say without reservation that everything was IC when it broke.  There were tensions for years, and we just finally decided...you know...for the good of the game...for the good of ALL the players on the island...let the tensions break.  Let's see where it goes.

It went good.  I'm happy.

This was the first real time I was ever an actual ruler.  I've ruled before, but never for more than a few days.  I've never really sought the position.  This was the first time I really did.  And it was because Foda is my home as both character and player.  It opened my eyes a lot to how people have to play.  To how rulers have to play.  Rulers have two jobs in a lot of ways.  One is to make their realm strong.  The other is to make sure there are other realms to fight against.  Which have to be some challenge.  Because if the OTHER guys aren't having fun your guys won't either because they'll run out of people to fight against.  So rulers really HAVE to take a step back into OOC just a bit because we have to make sure our players can have fun.

And this game is BattleMaster, not PeaceMaster.  So it is our job to make sure there are people to fight.  For one year, the entirety of my time as Tyrant of Tara, I've pushed for that.  And other rules have helped.  We all worked together to make sure that we could break the stranglehold of alliances that had Atamara crippled.  And we did it.

As a player, I'm down right proud of that.  Regstav the character is bloody unhappy about it.  But Medron the player is giggling with joy at seeing the biggest alliance in all of BattleMaster lying in ruins.

And it never would have been possible without the other rulers taking the same step back I did.  We worked together as players to give everybody a chance to fight and have fun.  And we had lots of ideas for the future.  Maybe we'll just have to replicate them elsewhere now.

;) 

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #107: December 04, 2015, 11:04:57 AM »
We need more rulers playing with OOC thought on player fun, not just their realm's success. Same with other council members. Same with religion elders.

It's unfortunate that your/Escent/others efforts didn't start bearing fruit until so late, but I look forward to the lesson here being applied throughout BM now. I think it'll be much easier once there are more characters within fewer islands.

Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #108: December 04, 2015, 12:13:11 PM »
The religion game is about to die with the new rules...

The rest...we shall see...

The devs killing off the one island that was working really hard to change has left a lot of people angry and disillusioned.

I've already seen a lot of people saying they won't go elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

I don't know what I will do, but one thing I am doing is trying to organize things so my people at least who want to can go somewhere else and have fun.  No idea if any of my characters will go with them, but I owe it to them give them as good a chance as possible.  Even if it is the last thing I do as their king...

Vita`

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #109: December 04, 2015, 12:30:16 PM »
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The religion game is about to die with the new rules...
Not sure I follow, but I've long been of the opinion that new and immigrating characters should also be required to join a religion like they choose a realm.

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The devs killing off the one island that was working really hard to change has left a lot of people angry and disillusioned.
People are going to be angry and disillusioned no matter which islands are closed. I don't think AT was/is the sole island working hard to improve. I do think AT acted too slowly for any change it was making.

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I've already seen a lot of people saying they won't go elsewhere.
Before the islands are sunk in January, all characters remaining on the island will be relocated to another continent.

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I don't know what I will do, but one thing I am doing is trying to organize things so my people at least who want to can go somewhere else and have fun.
I encourage your efforts. With the current density, isn't difficult to carve out a new area whether via the new realms or established realms.

Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #110: December 04, 2015, 03:11:50 PM »
If you can only have one noble in each continent, very few people will pick a priest to be that one noble.  Most people who have priests, have one warrior and one priest.  That is what I do.  With the new rule, that is not allowed.  Priests are simply not an interesting enough class for most people to want to play ONLY THAT.  Which means the number of Priests that we have will drop with this new rule, and that will probably cause some religions to disappear altogether...



One another note about the war and such.  I was very clear in my orders and they were followed.  No Taran unit ever crossed Strombonian lands to attack Suville until after Suvillan and Strombonian troops crossed Taran territory in missions against Caergoth.  I was very clear.  Tara would not be the first nation to violate that gentleman's agreement, and we were not.  I wanted it stamped in scouting reports that we were not the first to violate that, and we got them.  Strombran was caught red handed in our territory on an attack mission against Caergoth.

That was when I unleashed my general to cross into their territory as much as he wanted.  And boy did he want to...;)  He was an awesome bad cop to my goodish cop...of course he was a Carelian...he probably wanted the League burned down as much as the southern realms did.  I never asked him though.  I was just happy to have someone even more aggressive minded than me as general.  He did such a good job ratcheting up tensions in the league.  It was awesome.  :)

From a player perspective of course.  Hehehe.

Gabanus family

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #111: December 04, 2015, 03:57:08 PM »
I can attest to what Medron says about Tara/Caergoth and believe I have mentioned this before as well. The relation between Tara/Caergoth was much better, more equal, than that of Strombran/Suville strangely enough. Although I did get the impression Tara wanted Suvilled wiped out, but that is only a minor detail :)

I do hope the Pryde family joins the quests for new lands (although you unfortunately can't join our efforts for BT which would have been awesome). You're always welcome in Oligarch (Duchies of Southern Sirion, yes I know...) in fighting a very strange war, or you can choose one of the new realms.

We have made the end of Atamara awesome and I'm not very fond of losing everything my chars have built up on AT (as you know I have 2 chars there). But I've decided to be positive in this and This is why I'm so active with collecting one cohesive group as you know better than anyone :) We'll turn it into a new chapter, the Atamaran invasions!
New account active chars:
Garas: First Oligarch - Goriad: Astrum - Goriad II: Obia'Syela

Vita`

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #112: December 04, 2015, 09:36:20 PM »
If you can only have one noble in each continent, very few people will pick a priest to be that one noble.  Most people who have priests, have one warrior and one priest.  That is what I do.  With the new rule, that is not allowed.  Priests are simply not an interesting enough class for most people to want to play ONLY THAT.  Which means the number of Priests that we have will drop with this new rule, and that will probably cause some religions to disappear altogether...

Does one have to play a warrior on all the islands? Can't one play a priest on one island and a warrior on the other three? And do we forget there are skilled priests on AT and FEI moving to these islands, as well?

With you declaring 'most people who have priests...', I took a quick look at priest families on EC, BT, Colonies. I didn't compare exactly so I can't say which is 'most', but yes, there's a large chunk of 1 warrior/1 priest families on an island, especially within Sirion/EC. There are still noticeable amounts of single-char priests on and island, as well as 2 priests families on an island (particularly Colonies).

Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #113: December 04, 2015, 10:26:27 PM »
One reason that most people do 1 warrior and 1 priest is because the priest game is so separate from the rest of the game that one can often become heavily detached from the actions of the realm.  It is much closer to the adventurer game than the noble game which is why so many people begged you to treat priests as adventurers.  When I had a single priest in one realm with no one else, I literally lost track of the realm.  When I brought in a warrior to the realm it helped to anchor me to realm and made me a much better player in support of the realm.

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #114: December 04, 2015, 11:02:45 PM »
Hmm....that's not how I've played my priest at all, but admittedly he rather came from a silver-spoon background within his realm as well and a bit of a buddha-esque giving up of imperial power to found the religion (meant to preserve an older religion from destruction).

I think, too often, religions fall into two major traps. Become too associated with realms and is basically used as an extension of the realms. Or becomes too disassociated from realms and thus irrelevant (usually those more focused on some *awesome* theology only they and a small group care about).

The way I've tried to play my priest is more like a spiritual advisor to the rulers and nobility on the state of the island, trying to push concepts/ideals that I/we think would improve the island. So there is a connection to realm politics without being an extension of another realm. To me, from a priestly perspective, I care less about the specifics of the realm (who wars who, specific person in power and their politics, who one allies) than the general atmosphere of 'are these virtues/values being fulfilled in this realm and what as a priest can I do to change that?' (there is a war or not or nature of war being gangbang/equitable or short/long distance, council talks to realm or is silent, realms choking island in alliance or not). It's more a cultural concept of shared values/ethos where we still disagree on other things and war based upon them, than an alliance of religious nobles working together or a group of players having theological roleplays or discussions.

I don't see priest and advy as too similar. Priests, as nobles, still have *huge* communication options. Advies just...don't. That is the crucial difference. If nobles didn't have the communication options they do, it'd be little different than the primarily click-nature of the advy (and the game would suck).

Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #115: December 04, 2015, 11:23:16 PM »
I've been a priest in a Realm-Religion and we did get a lot more involved in the wars.

I've also been a priest in religions that spanned continents.  Sanguis Astroism over in Dwilight.  I was one of the priests that helped write their ten or however many prime tenants.  That was fun.  But we were divorced from the realms because we were priests first and realm nobles second.

My current priest is the High Priestess of Daishi.  That used to be a realm-religion started to protect the core of a nation after there was a rebellion and the priests went over to the rebel side and started driving the loyal regions rogue.  It morphed into an anti-Daimon religion when the Invasions came, and the Daimons did everything they could to wipe the religion out entirely.  Almost succeeded too.  They just missed one temple.  After that, Daishi became a non-realm religion and is now the dominant religion of the continent.  I could go into any realm and destroy them if I wanted to.  I have that kind of power.  But as Daishi is purely an Anti-Daimon religion that does not interfere in temporal decisions, everybody knows I won't do that.  So all the other religions have just faded away.  Nobody fights Daishi because Daishi doesn't fight them.  We are just...everywhere.

Daishi actually covers a similar role the one the League of the Eagle does on Atamara.  The League has people from every nation in it and it is the quickest way for people on one end of the island to talk to the other side.  It is the same with Daishi.  We have nobles from just about every nation in our ranks.  Heck, there are two of us who share the top position in the religion.  Our nations have been at knock down drag out fighting war for as long as either of us can remember.  We never have a cross word for each other.

Vita`

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #116: December 04, 2015, 11:29:11 PM »
Excellent. I've never had a fond impression of Daishi, but I think I'll have a char try it out now. Rather awkwardly, she's had conflict with Daishi before though...Oh well.

Indirik

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #117: December 05, 2015, 03:27:06 AM »
My quoting here is going to be a mish-mash from several different messages, all re-ordered into separate topics...

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If you can only have one noble in each continent, very few people will pick a priest to be that one noble. Most people who have priests, have one warrior and one priest. That is what I do. With the new rule, that is not allowed. Priests are simply not an interesting enough class for most people to want to play ONLY THAT. Which means the number of Priests that we have will drop with this new rule, and that will probably cause some religions to disappear altogether...
We know from experience that there are a certain number of players who will enjoy and prefer the priest game. We had, at certain times, 17+ priests in Sanguis Astroism on Dwilight. And you can only have one noble character on that island. There were also more priests in other religions. So, yeah, there are players willing to do it, if that choice provides enough options.

Having said that, I don't view a smaller number of priests as a bad thing. Nor do I view a smaller number of religions as a bad thing. Too many religions dilutes the limited amount of power available. Too many priests in a religion dilutes the amount of power and authority that a religion can hold over a larger number of players. It's like a realm with 8 rulers. A significant number of them will just sit around doing nothing, because someone else will handle anything that needs done.

IMHO, too many religions limits and spoils the religion game, turning it into a proxy for the realm. Every realm will have their own religion, and the vast majority of them will be nothing more than a blatant extension of their realm government. The realm leadership and religion leadership become virtually identical. It's a bad thing, and it greatly spoiled the early religion game. You have to have a limited number of religions so they can organically spread to cover multiple realms. That's when interesting things can start to happen. It separates the religion from the realm.

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So rulers really HAVE to take a step back into OOC just a bit because we have to make sure our players can have fun.
This is very true. And it's also very difficult. Those who tend to rise to long-term power are usually the builders. Builders (including myself) are loath to take actions which they know to be detrimental to their creations. Letting go is Hard!




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The raiding campaign against Suville only started once Strombran started sending individual units to keep the Taran army from joining Caergoth in attacks. There was much anger over that.
Ha! I'm glad that got Tara mad. At least something was going right.

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And when Tara tried to replicate the tactic in Caergoth, Stromban just used murderous settings to start the fights, and due to the diplomacy the Taran forces were shifted to attack Caergoth. There was...more anger over that.
Even better! Just like Suville was getting pissed that Strombran troops were joining with Tara to fight against Suville.

It's good to hear that the screwed up diplomacy was pissing off everyone. (Except perhaps Strombran. I never heard them complain all that much about it. In fact, they went on at great lengths about how it was really to everyone's advantage.) It's unfortunate that no one was willing to actually do anything about it, though, until too late.

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No Taran unit ever crossed Strombonian lands to attack Suville until after Suvillan and Strombonian troops crossed Taran territory in missions against Caergoth. ... Strombran was caught red handed in our territory on an attack mission against Caergoth.
Being in Suville, that's something that I never heard about. If it's true (I'm not saying you're lying, just that it's possible that something may have happened of which you could be unaware), then it's something that Strombran wouldn't have admitted. In Suville we were told that it was Tara that kept changing the rules without letting anyone know beforehand. I.e. Taran troops suddenly started appearing from Strombran lands and attacking Suville, and everyone acted surprised and angered about Tara taking more liberties with the federation.

In any case, the entire war was just about guaranteed to make lots of people very angry about the entire situation. Suville having three or four different rulers over that period of time made it difficult for there to be any kind of coherent, cohesive policy/response over the entire course of the war. Having stepped back as general of Suville before the war started, I'm not privy to all the higher level discussions, either.
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Medron Pryde

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #118: December 05, 2015, 01:39:18 PM »
I think I actually agree with most of your points when it comes to religion.  I also like the idea of fewer religions than nations because as you said it makes the religion game different from the nation game...

As for how the diplomacy stuff messed with the war in the south...yeah...that federation stuff was a bugger to work against, and Strombran was much better than we were at figuring out ways to stiff it to the other guy...

And I was better at ordering that Tara respect each individual little bit of the federation we could and just WAIT for Strombran to pull something tricky....and when they did I was really good at protesting the dishonesty of such disloyal tactics and such...and then unleashing my general to do the same thing right back...  hehehe

Ah...the Elder Channel in the League of the Eagle was a warzone...from a player perspective it was awesome...:)


On Daishi and such?  Absolutely.  The more the merrier.  Yao Ling runs the religion as...nonaggressively as possible.  Priests are banned from raising the people up against secular rulers...since it is of course the mission of Daishi to protect the common people from the Destroyers of mankind, the monsters, the undead, and the daimons.  ;)  When it comes to the beliefs and tenants of Daishi...well...the really basic one is that there are gods fighting a war against enemies that would break our sanity if we saw them.  The monsters, undead, and daimons are lesser servants of their enemies that sometimes slip through the battle lines and we must defeat them.  If we cannot, the gods may have to step in and their weapons are powerful beyond imagination.  Yao Ling teaches that the loss of the lands under the Blight was the gods doing.  They saw that we could not defeat the daimon blight and chose to remove it from the earth to give us a chance to survive.  She doubts they will be able to do that again if we should fail once more.  And anyone who dies in service to Daishi will go on to the next realm where the gods battle and be given the honor to fight at their sides in the greater war beyond our own.

As for individual thoughts on Daishi and such?  The gods reveal themselves to everybody in different ways.  There has never been a case of any member of Daishi being kicked out or even threatened with the charge of apostasy.  There are no tenants that everyone must believe, no chants that must be done verbatim to prove you are a true believer or anything like that.  The only requirement is that you stand against the undead, monsters, and daimons when they come.  Anything else can be worked with.

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Re: Dear Atamara...
« Reply #119: December 05, 2015, 09:01:22 PM »
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Priests are banned from raising the people up against secular rulers...
Interesting. My char (who had admittedly 'borrowed' a small amount of gold from the local temple months earlier under less than peaceful means) was thrown out by a fronenite priestess through religious means.

With the new scroll mechanic on BT, I'll be amused to see how Daishi respond to that. *cackles*