Anaris, I get that. But I think it must be absolutely excrutiating for players when the game plays a certain way and incentivises certain behaviours and then oocly players are ordered to play against their best interest.
The issue is a huge discrepancy between how the game plays and how admins want people to play it.
For example, I am absolutely convinced that Sirion and Nivemus have an unbreakable alliance not because they are all huge frends ooc, are powergamers or whatnot. But because the density rules made all conflict between them meaningless, as they were both very large realms with poor density.
You can tell them to break up their "unbrekable alliance". But it won't mean anything, because the in-game circumstances stay the same. They are still incentivised to stick together and have absolutely no motivation to be hostile to each other.
Does it makes sense?
How it seems to be happening now: It is lucrative to play a certain way, but people are pressured ooc to not play that way.
How it is in my opinion supposed to be: It is lucrative game mechanics-wise to be opportunistic. But it is also equally lucrative to stay out of a war or to aid the udnerdog. Importantly, it has to rely more on incentives than on restrictions. How exactly? I dunno. Realms collecting an equivalent of "honour" which boosts their gold production or whatnot when joining a weaker side and losing honour when joining a gangbang. Whatever. Same with alliances, larger alliances taking a toll on the economy. Etc., etc. It has to be a part of the game, not metagame.
I understand that you guys are coders, not professional game designers. But that's not how political simulators can be tampered with. When perfectly legal political decisions are slashed because Delvin and Vita said so in an ooc channel, in my opinion thats more dangerous for the game's health than all the bad decisions themselves.
Personally, I think we're fine at this point with war declarations. But even if further "fine tuning" had to be made, it can not be "manual". You need to introduce real numbers, tangible in-game consequences which players can quantify and take into consideration when doing diplomacy. Decisions have only to be made because players actually see they have merit according to the game's own internal logic.
