Bingo. So it is actually often beneficial to be honest, for the benefit of staunch ally in war, or to have a peaceful border, and to have reputation as a honest player in the eyes of others.
And the thing about honesty is - if you want to have honorable reputation, you have to be presistant about it. Just like in RL. =)
however I doubt very much the impact of this. I certainly don’t go examining the past record of all my opponents in Dom games. Some people might, who knows? But I think most people don’t.
True, and neither do I. But once you know for sure that other person does not care about breaking his word one bit, it would be stupid not to include this fact in your calculations, wouldn’t it?
For all we know, Clark was mislead about your power and capabilities, perhaps he gained new information after the signature of the NAP that led him to beleive that were he to give you a free hand, eventually he would be swallowed up…
Not in this case. I haven’t told him anything about my power or capabilities, so I could not possibly mislead him, if that’s what you meant. And his troops movements made it clear that he intended to break his agreement from the very beginning. Not to mention that he broke it next turn after signing.
This is one of the reasons I like anonymous games. Players instantly realize they can’t try to enforce “honorable”, not playing to win, straight and narrow, though-shalt-never-break-an-agreement rules by getting even in later games. As a result, diplomacy plays out like it does in real life, not some techni-color fantasy land where you always get a chance to get even. I like a little bit of role playing and simulation in my gaming, and such gamey-ness makes such things impossible.
IMHO people who stick to agreements that they know will result in another winning (or them losing) break diplomatic games, and are essentially colluding. Those who can’t handle the backstabbing inherent in diplomatic games should play other games.
It’s a game, not real life. I’m playing in three Dom 3 games right now, and in each of them I play someone different, who handles diplomacy differently. Why should the deals made by Penetheste or Korigol have any impact upon those made by Vimur?
Also, in real life machiavellian diplomacy, you don’t get a chance to build an “honourable reputation” “between games”. After you lose, you’re dead. Diplomacy games are largely meant to simulate real life diplomacy.
It’s immediately clear that you do not have much experience playing diplomacy games, otherwise you would already know that Rollory’s stance is a common one, especially amongst experienced and competitive players.
Umm, let me try… Because they are all played by Jasper? :)
I understand that it may appear unfair to you, but you will simply have to live with it. Either that or to play under alias when you feel particularly nasty. :D
When person plays with the same opponent for a while, he always learns his style and learns if other person tends to break his in-game promises or not. You can complain as much as you want that this is not fair and that you roleplay the different characters absolutely differently, et cetera, et cetera. However, unlike in-game characters, players do have memory, you know.
That’s a very weak argument Jasper.
First - you just said that this is not a real life, and now you are using real life example in the same breath. Make up your mind.
Second - many of lost wars did not result in one nation being totally destroyed by other nation - usually it took more than a singe war.
Third - it’s very much depends on the historic period and local customs. Machiavellian diplomacy is a general term that goes far beyond Europe of XV and XVI century.
And finally - I already used example of RL diplomacy. To put it very simple - when you have a reputation as a dishonorable nation that lies and renegades on his promises, you must expect other nations to treat you accordingly.
Hetzer
1685
To Stormbinder,
Umm, did you ever play a boardgame called “diplomacy” ? If not please do sometimes. It is essentially a game where you have to backstab one time or another… (or at least i have heard that its so. If you ever want to try this game and are staying in germany please contact me, perhaps you can teach me the rules so that we may try it ;) )
After a few games you will completly understand what backstabbing is all about…
Of course i dont know the situation in your game and a peacetreaty that is broken a turn after its made is somewhat lame… Normaly you have to wait until the heavy hitter armies of your opponent are a bit away from the border so that you can take momentum…
Of course as ever just my 5 eurocent
I did, as well as few other boardgames where treachery is part of the game, such as Game of Thrones for example. But all games are different. Dominions is Dominions, and Diplomacy is diplomacy, etc. You can’t play chess using rules and convensions of tic-tac game.
All that I said was intended for Dom2 game, not Risk, or Diplomacy, or Game of Thrones, or insert-your-game-here.
Anyway, this discussion does not seem to be leading anywhere.
My main point was that the Giants race in Bommerlunder game (played by the same game “Clark” player who plays Giants in Q3-Lictor game) are extremely treacherious and dishonorable and should not be trusted in trade or diplomacy, as they have clearly illustrated by their actions. All other nations in our game have been warned. What they choose to do with this warning is up to them. If some player is silly enough to disregard this warning - it’s his choice.
End of story.
Of course i dont know the situation in your game and a peacetreaty that is broken a turn after its made is somewhat lame… Normaly you have to wait until the heavy hitter armies of your opponent are a bit away from the border so that you can take momentum…
Oh, it was stupid of him, all right. I have already wiped out one of his armies of 25 sacred giants while losing only one soldier on my side. Now I am going to do the same with his other army. >:)
Nonsense. Just because you like to play like that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to play.
I myself agree with stormbinder (well, except for the outrage). I stick to agreements I’ve made come what may, though I do usually make sure there is an out clause or a time limit on any agreement I enter so I don’t have to sit by and watch someone win and not be able to attack them. But still, if I made a bad agreement and it leads to someone winning that I might have been able to beat in a straight up fight if I’d have attacked them earlier . . . well then I made a mistake in the agreement and I’ll learn from it.
I also realize that some people consider all agreements to be short term matters of convenience. In the long run I’m very leery of making any agreements with such people and if I do it’s on the assumption that it will last about two turns tops. I have an armistice with Clark right now in Lictor that I’m going to honor until he breaks it, but I’m recruiting and positioning troops on the assumption that he could be attacking me any turn now.
The diplomacy in dom3 has no relation to real life diplomacy. A dom3 game is a highly artifical fight-to-the-death winner-take-all scenario, so there’s no rational basis for diplomacy whatsoever. Assuming no out of game context and consequences the only logical path for every nation to take is to violate every agreement to their own benefit, attack like a rabid dog, and see who ends up on top of the pile at the end.
Sure, if you sit down and play the boardgame Diplomacy that’s the way it goes. That’s the point of that type of game, I agree. But I would contend that Dom3 is not the same style of game and different rules apply, especially when playing with the same group of people over multiple games. Players who build trust relationships over multiple games and who can then trust each other to honor agreements are more likely to enter into mutually profitable agreements and thus prosper over the paranoid factions.
I also realize that this argument has no real right or wrong, it’s just a matter of different styles of play and different expectations of the playing experience. Nobody is going to convince anybody, so let’s just agree we like to play differently and leave it at that.
Rywill
1689
Whoa, I drop into this thread to see if anyone has good counters to the super-blessing strategy that seems to work really well now that you can take a late-awakening pretender, and it’s a rehash of the argument I had with Rollory in that old Jason Lutes game. For the record, I’m with Nick and Stormbinder: if you abide by your agreements you actually help yourself in the long run, because you can form stable alliances with like-minded people. I won’t engage in any diplomacy with Rollory at all, and I generally regard agreements with folks like Steve Clark or Bruce Geryk as meaningless (so I don’t enter them, but am happy to trade info and so on). If I have Nick Walter on a border and we agree to leave each other alone until further notice, we can both concentrate our forces elsewhere and that gives us a leg up on our looking-over-their-shoulder opponents who have to defend everywhere. Pretty simple, really.
The counter-theory, that you should I guess just set up your diplomacy so it’s in everyone’s interest from turn to turn, seems sort of silly. If it’s in your interest to do X, and you recognize it, I don’t need any diplomacy to get you to do X. On the other hand, since I have imperfect information about your situation, I can’t tell what is or isn’t in your interest, much less what’s in what you perceive to be your interest. Making that your diplomatic theory sort of eliminates the point of diplomacy altogether.
Re: the claim that backstabbers are the better players, I’ll just note that in the game that spawned this same argument in the other thread, Rollory lost after backstabbing me, because I had a bunch of diplomatic allies on my side and he couldn’t get anyone to help him. And the person who ultimately won that game, Nick Walter, is probably the most trustworthy ally you’ll find in Dom3. It’s only one data point, but it sure cuts against Rollory’s theory.
Quaro
1690
I am also of the opinion that honoring deals is the best ‘rational’ strategy.
I wouldn’t be personally offended or anything with a player with a different philosophy though! I would just be suitably wary of whatever such players say.
And the diplomacy in Dominions isn’t much like ‘real life’, unless your dealings always end up with one side killing the other. If anything, it’s like a reality TV show or some other wholly artificial setup.
Anonymous games would be fun to try though, so reputation factors don’t come into play.
Kalle
1691
I’m disappointed by the Dom 3 thread. It’s only 56 pages long and hasn’t spawned a single sub-thread so far. Slackers.
Oh give it time. Dominions games aren’t like the latest fad of the moment FPS or RTS to come along, where everyone plays it like mad for 3 weeks and then abandons it in favor of the next fad, oh no. Dom3 games take weeks or months, so the players are are still getting their feet wet in their first games. Then of course they’ll want a next wave of games as the first wave ends, and probably a wave after that . . .
This thread will be on the first page of QT3 for probably the next three months :)
The bless strategy is a potent early game gambit, but it does have it’s limitations. It requires an absent pretender and crappy scales, plus it doesn’t grow well. For the majority of nations, the sacreds are capitol only troops, so they can only recruit X of them a turn no matter how large their empire grows.
On small maps with short games, bless strategies are hard to stop. In those games, everyone should be using a bless strategy. On large maps or long games, someone with good scales should be able to just outproduce a blesser and stop them by simply having a lot more troops. Very few sacreds are heavily armored/shielded and almost nobody mucks around with air-9 blessings so massed archers/crossbowmen can cut down enemy sacreds even if they do have water-9/fire-9 blessings.
Rywill
1694
Interesting. The “massed crappy troops” idea was the only one I was able to come up with, either, although I want to investigate the higher-level battlefield spells and see what might work. It’s too bad that it’s such a potent strategy in smaller games, though. Thanks for the tips.
I discovered that it is pretty vulnerable to bad luck also. I tried a semi-high bless blitz strategy in the Peltast game, but in the first three turns I had three unrest events in my capital. The effect on what should have been my blitz economy was rather bad… Ironically, misfortune was not one of the scales I tipped to max to get the bless, but a little misfortune at the wrong time is bad enough.
Rollory
1696
As I recall it, what happened was that in-game diplomatic messages crossed with in-game attacks that were launched because no immediate response had been received. I certainly was not under the impression at the time that we had any kind of clear agreement on anything whatsoever, in which case pushing you out of a water province before you consolidated your hold on it seemed like good sense, and your relentless jihad against me ever since speaks more to your thin skin than anything I’ve done.
If I had intended to backstab you I would’ve waited and made it a lot more sudden and overwhelming than it was; I wouldn’t have gratuitously made you an enemy over one province. This is part of evaluating the situation rationally, which you have trouble with.
As for the diplomatic thing, saying “Rollory lost” implies you won. You lost as surely and completely as I did, and you did so because you didn’t break your own agreement with Nick.
For what it’s worth, I’ve since made agreements with other players who think the way you do and I don’t believe they have anything to object to in my behavior - not because I made a point of being honorable, but because I made a point of making formal agreements that fit with my interests.
Edit: Nick among others is included in that last. And what I mean by it is that I am perfectly capable of understanding how and why you think and of taking that into account when making decisions so as to minimize unnecessary conflicts and bad feeling. What I don’t see is any attempt by certain of the “honor” players to do the same thing in reverse, figuring out how and why a “rational” player might consider an agreement to be something worth breaking. It goes both ways, folks.
Your problem is that you’re refusing to acknowledge that other people might not agree with you, and to try to force them to play the game your way, and only your way. That doesn’t make you right or superior, it makes you an asshole.
Hetzer
1697
Guys,
Drew a mighty breath in, hold it for 3 seconds and then let out…This IS a game after all and i am sure everybody here does it for the fun of it… Calling one a sneaky little bastard or the other a righteous asshole isnt fun.
Everybody here searches for a winning strategy, you can do it with superior understanding of warfare, with superior understanding of scale and magic picking and you can do it with a superior understanding of diplomacy or with a mix of it…
If someone thinks its ok to honor contracts until he looses a game over it, ok thats his/her winning strat, if another one thinks breaking a treaty at some point in a game that could have only one winner is also fine…
A discussion of said strats and tactics is ok but dont take it personally or you will have an ulcer in no time…
Of course if anybody tries some shit with me he will be grilling for all eternity ;)
Johan_O
1698
I am officially flinging poo on Perkins, in the bandar game. Poo on you Mr.Perkins, poo.
zenblack
1699
Fatigue is a good way to kill Hyperblessings as well, especially in the midgame. Spells like Rain of Stones and Quagmire can stall out the blessing troops and then allow you to kill them.
As for diplomacy. Diplomacy is in the hands of people, but mostly it’s about positioning and opportunity. While you can’t control people you have at least some bearing on your positioning and opportunity.
Besides, Clark is a likable giant. A bit ugly and looks like he has spiders under his arms, but, as long as you keep him at smelling distance, generally likable in a Fi-fi-fo-fum kind of way.
