Injustice!

[Goretooth]

There u go all the forum warriors are out now for us.

before they go full tilt if you guys seriously would like to try and solve things diplomatically baleohay on steam

yeah lets trade again
rofl

[Arathian]

Well said Sandersson.

[Canary]

I really hate what I call "paper diplomacy". I'd rather have a friend than an ally any day. That's what I would consider FCC and VE to us. I could work out a nice business deal with someone, write it down on paper, and proceed to wipe my own ass with that very paper a week later. If I consider someone a friend and they consider me the same, I find that much more reliable than a business deal. After all, it's a diplomacy simulator on the internet. No organization exists to punish breach of contract, but reputation and word of mouth is pretty damn powerful.

Friends and allies can both do a disservice to the game. Friends, though, are what can ruin the game for long periods of time. Look at the UIF - or rather, the lack of "UIF". It hasn't been one conglomerate of allied clans since the first strat it was called "UIF", but the constituent clans that comprised it are still friends and therefore will never play the game at odds with each other; they'll say they're not allies but then work together and never be enemies. For a lot of people that worsened the state of the game; everyone who went against one clan in that group of friends met the wrath of the rest of them combined as well. The only way to solve that situation is to mass allies together, which in turn makes the game worse further after the friendship side has perished - because the allied side probably has recorded and notarized strat-legal documents proving their alliance, and so the course of an alliance might rigidly stay well past its due necessity.

An example slightly to the contrary, and pardon the use of past strats as examples, is the Chaos/Druzhina alliance in strat 2. It was an official and public alliance. We were friends, too, to an extent, but not to the point where we'd stay that way forever. We never talked much after the NA side got split from the EU side in later strats. Now here's where the example comes into play: Chaos members were also for a long time very close friends with the members of the FCC. It was personal. We had always wanted to work together with FCC on Strat, but circumstances kept us apart. The end of this scenario was when our ally Druzhina was declaring war on our friend FCC. Diplomatically, we were bound to Druzhina. We decided, in the spirit of the game, to go along with them and fight with our allies against our friends. I don't think some of them ever forgave us for it. I still feel as though there's a grudge harbored somewhere in there to this day... but would it have been better if we'd broken our alliance with Druzhina before it played out just because we didn't want to hurt the feelings of someone we liked?

So what does that get at? It's hard for everyone else if you have friends, and it's hard for you if you decide to play in the spirit of the game in spite of friends. Having friends is dangerous for you or ruinous to the game, having allies is constricting. Allies aren't much better because you put yourself into artificial positions where you'd do something you wouldn't normally do, which can be interesting, but usually winds up with the diplomacy of the map in a less fun state than if you had neither.

As to the current situation, certain clans put others in positions where they essentially have no choice. If you fight everyone you don't like, the people that don't like you (for doing it or for whatever) have no choice but to side with the ones you don't like. If clans that need help see an opportunity, they'll sell themselves out for you (or for the other side). When you fight so many factions on the map at once, and only ever certain factions, you cause the entire map to fracture into two sides, instead of what could be multiple smaller sides fighting on a more local scale. And when friendships between clans keep them from fighting, it essentially causes the factions to remain constantly as those two sides in a conflict. Friends are allies, but because it's unofficial they'll never stop forming the same side in any conflict that comes from one part of the side they've put themselves on.

"Helping the little guy" is not always admirable. If the little guy can't fight on his own, you step in, and no one will ever fight him, they'll group up to fight you. It keeps progress from happening and stagnates the game.

Maybe it all comes down to personal preference and who you dislike the most, but I'd like to think that situations can change and that wars and diplomatic alignments don't last forever - I certainly don't feel the same way diplomatically about Hospitaller this strat as I did last strat, but I don't imagine every faction is capable of that flexibility.

[Sandersson Jankins]

Friends and allies can both do a disservice to the game. Friends, though, are what can ruin the game for long periods of time. Look at the UIF - or rather, the lack of "UIF". It hasn't been one conglomerate of allied clans since the first strat it was called "UIF", but the constituent clans that comprised it are still friends and therefore will never play the game at odds with each other; they'll say they're not allies but then work together and never be enemies. For a lot of people that worsened the state of the game; everyone who went against one clan in that group of friends met the wrath of the rest of them combined as well. The only way to solve that situation is to mass allies together, which in turn makes the game worse further after the friendship side has perished - because the allied side probably has recorded and notarized strat-legal documents proving their alliance, and so the course of an alliance might rigidly stay well past its due necessity.

An example slightly to the contrary, and pardon the use of past strats as examples, is the Chaos/Druzhina alliance in strat 2. It was an official and public alliance. We were friends, too, to an extent, but not to the point where we'd stay that way forever. We never talked much after the NA side got split from the EU side in later strats. Now here's where the example comes into play: Chaos members were also for a long time very close friends with the members of the FCC. It was personal. We had always wanted to work together with FCC on Strat, but circumstances kept us apart. The end of this scenario was when our ally Druzhina was declaring war on our friend FCC. Diplomatically, we were bound to Druzhina. We decided, in the spirit of the game, to go along with them and fight with our allies against our friends. I don't think some of them ever forgave us for it. I still feel as though there's a grudge harbored somewhere in there to this day... but would it have been better if we'd broken our alliance with Druzhina before it played out just because we didn't want to hurt the feelings of someone we liked?

So what does that get at? It's hard for everyone else if you have friends, and it's hard for you if you decide to play in the spirit of the game in spite of friends. Having friends is dangerous for you or ruinous to the game, having allies is constricting. Allies aren't much better because you put yourself into artificial positions where you'd do something you wouldn't normally do, which can be interesting, but usually winds up with the diplomacy of the map in a less fun state than if you had neither.

As to the current situation, certain clans put others in positions where they essentially have no choice. If you fight everyone you don't like, the people that don't like you (for doing it or for whatever) have no choice but to side with the ones you don't like. If clans that need help see an opportunity, they'll sell themselves out for you (or for the other side). When you fight so many factions on the map at once, and only ever certain factions, you cause the entire map to fracture into two sides, instead of what could be multiple smaller sides fighting on a more local scale. And when friendships between clans keep them from fighting, it essentially causes the factions to remain constantly as those two sides in a conflict. Friends are allies, but because it's unofficial they'll never stop forming the same side in any conflict that comes from one part of the side they've put themselves on.

"Helping the little guy" is not always admirable. If the little guy can't fight on his own, you step in, and no one will ever fight him, they'll group up to fight you. It keeps progress from happening and stagnates the game.

Maybe it all comes down to personal preference and who you dislike the most, but I'd like to think that situations can change and that wars and diplomatic alignments don't last forever - I certainly don't feel the same way diplomatically about Hospitaller this strat as I did last strat, but I don't imagine every faction is capable of that flexibility.

Your wall of text is both sound and lucid, and I feel like a bit of a shit-head to not give you one in return. However, I will give you a response.

It seems that the problem is that factions in strategus, and the members that make up those factions deem it impossible to have a conflict with another faction if they do not dislike them. It's a real shame.

If strat were wiped tomorrow, I don't reckon that in the next round my crew would be tied to VE, FCC, or the vikings. One can very rarely accurately predict the future, but my gut tells me that we'd be open to any sort of arrangement with anyone.

I also should have been more clear on what I said earlier; I do not hate that other factions use "paper diplomacy". Not at all. In fact, I find it pretty cool and conducive to the nice semi-RP that I am a fan of. What I meant was that I find it ineffective and flaky; not to be used personally.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any sort of solution to this. There's very little chance of changing folks' minds and hearts once they have been set. The large players in strategus have been large players for quite some time. Me, I'm new. Others remember grievances and such from previous strategus rounds, and remember them well.

I think my real problem is that I have a hard time putting anybody at a disadvantage in strategus; and that's something you've simply got to do. There were plans on the table to crush HG beneath quite a few mailed boots, and it would have been (in my estimation) rather easy and profitable. Although those plans were partly changed because of HP/LCO attacking us, they were also changed because I felt downright awful since Elindor was a damn nice guy. Here I am preaching about people refusing to attack those that they don't dislike, but I'm no better than anyone else. Maybe just a lot less angry.

[SHinOCk]

Friends and allies can both do a disservice to the game. Friends, though, are what can ruin the game for long periods of time. Look at the UIF - or rather, the lack of "UIF". It hasn't been one conglomerate of allied clans since the first strat it was called "UIF", but the constituent clans that comprised it are still friends and therefore will never play the game at odds with each other; they'll say they're not allies but then work together and never be enemies. For a lot of people that worsened the state of the game; everyone who went against one clan in that group of friends met the wrath of the rest of them combined as well. The only way to solve that situation is to mass allies together, which in turn makes the game worse further after the friendship side has perished - because the allied side probably has recorded and notarized strat-legal documents proving their alliance, and so the course of an alliance might rigidly stay well past its due necessity.

An example slightly to the contrary, and pardon the use of past strats as examples, is the Chaos/Druzhina alliance in strat 2. It was an official and public alliance. We were friends, too, to an extent, but not to the point where we'd stay that way forever. We never talked much after the NA side got split from the EU side in later strats. Now here's where the example comes into play: Chaos members were also for a long time very close friends with the members of the FCC. It was personal. We had always wanted to work together with FCC on Strat, but circumstances kept us apart. The end of this scenario was when our ally Druzhina was declaring war on our friend FCC. Diplomatically, we were bound to Druzhina. We decided, in the spirit of the game, to go along with them and fight with our allies against our friends. I don't think some of them ever forgave us for it. I still feel as though there's a grudge harbored somewhere in there to this day... but would it have been better if we'd broken our alliance with Druzhina before it played out just because we didn't want to hurt the feelings of someone we liked?

So what does that get at? It's hard for everyone else if you have friends, and it's hard for you if you decide to play in the spirit of the game in spite of friends. Having friends is dangerous for you or ruinous to the game, having allies is constricting. Allies aren't much better because you put yourself into artificial positions where you'd do something you wouldn't normally do, which can be interesting, but usually winds up with the diplomacy of the map in a less fun state than if you had neither.

As to the current situation, certain clans put others in positions where they essentially have no choice. If you fight everyone you don't like, the people that don't like you (for doing it or for whatever) have no choice but to side with the ones you don't like. If clans that need help see an opportunity, they'll sell themselves out for you (or for the other side). When you fight so many factions on the map at once, and only ever certain factions, you cause the entire map to fracture into two sides, instead of what could be multiple smaller sides fighting on a more local scale. And when friendships between clans keep them from fighting, it essentially causes the factions to remain constantly as those two sides in a conflict. Friends are allies, but because it's unofficial they'll never stop forming the same side in any conflict that comes from one part of the side they've put themselves on.

"Helping the little guy" is not always admirable. If the little guy can't fight on his own, you step in, and no one will ever fight him, they'll group up to fight you. It keeps progress from happening and stagnates the game.

Maybe it all comes down to personal preference and who you dislike the most, but I'd like to think that situations can change and that wars and diplomatic alignments don't last forever - I certainly don't feel the same way diplomatically about Hospitaller this strat as I did last strat, but I don't imagine every faction is capable of that flexibility.

I think it can change but for how long... Take us as an example, we've been alone as far as i know against VE (resources wise) and we refrained from getting Hospitallers to jump in and give us help even if we like them because we wanna do shit by ourselves and try different things, We also feel like we can defend ourselves and were still in good shape at that point but what can we do really when we are against overwhelming odds... At some point we are gonna get tired being a 60 man faction against 140 and inevitably we will try to find new allies to keep going just like FCC that came in to push on HP as we were starting our counter attack to push VE out of the desert. Same story all over again, yes we wont ever attack Hospitallers but im sure as shit FCC/VE wont ever go at war against each other.

In the end no one wanna be wiped and The options are limited when you're already facing half the map, so the first thing you think is to get the remaining ''big'' faction on your side to try and tip the scale. everybody is guilty at some point, Were all the same

[Tanken]

FUCK. MY EYES.


I knew I should have listened in High School when they said I could only read at a third grade reading level.

[Hobb]

The problem i have with this theory of same size factions is in reality it will change nothing in a competitive strategus. Strat is a numbers game, and more resources wins the game. So the idea of strategus is simple: be bigger then the other side.

And honestly, i know what CHAOS has done this strat, you guys tried to attack factions your own size both in fallen and teutonics. Nothing came of it though and more importantly you guys only got to do a small handul of battles. You even saw remnant join in on the fallen war to grab a free village.

It shouldnt be hard to understand why factions like to gang up on smaller factions. Small risk big reward. The only way to stop this is with mechanical structure, which imo is worse, and lets face it: not going to happen.

Honestly i feel the problem that plagues strat is the forum butthurt over wars. (And im guilty of fueling the fire) But we should be wanting to fight as many wars as we can, and i think the butthurt stops alot of factions from having fun in wars.

I tell you what though, if we do a next strat the faction im looking at buddy-ing with occitan/chevs. No seriously you guys have been awesome to war with, and imo this has been a really fun war so far.

Also @ shinock: you all have no idea how close we were to fighting fcc. They chose remnant over us so that they could keep the remnant mercs and our mercs. We had invasion plans set up and made up excuses why we couldnt swap goods anymore. Remnant collapsed first though, and hospitaller never even asked us to join in. I guess we actually thought fcc would attack us first, but old news is old news and we are back on the same side. One thing though, in this strat we have fought against hospitaller, with hospitaller. Against hero party and with hero party. So dont say we didnt try.

[SHinOCk]

Your wall of text is both sound and lucid, and I feel like a bit of a shit-head to not give you one in return. However, I will give you a response.

It seems that the problem is that factions in strategus, and the members that make up those factions deem it impossible to have a conflict with another faction if they do not dislike them. It's a real shame.

If strat were wiped tomorrow, I don't reckon that in the next round my crew would be tied to VE, FCC, or the vikings. One can very rarely accurately predict the future, but my gut tells me that we'd be open to any sort of arrangement with anyone.

I also should have been more clear on what I said earlier; I do not hate that other factions use "paper diplomacy". Not at all. In fact, I find it pretty cool and conducive to the nice semi-RP that I am a fan of. What I meant was that I find it ineffective and flaky; not to be used personally.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any sort of solution to this. There's very little chance of changing folks' minds and hearts once they have been set. The large players in strategus have been large players for quite some time. Me, I'm new. Others remember grievances and such from previous strategus rounds, and remember them well.

I think my real problem is that I have a hard time putting anybody at a disadvantage in strategus; and that's something you've simply got to do. There were plans on the table to crush HG beneath quite a few mailed boots, and it would have been (in my estimation) rather easy and profitable. Although those plans were partly changed because of HP/LCO attacking us, they were also changed because I felt downright awful since Elindor was a damn nice guy. Here I am preaching about people refusing to attack those that they don't dislike, but I'm no better than anyone else. Maybe just a lot less angry.

Its easy to understand why most clan don't wanna attack clans they dont hate, look at the forums... all the shit storms a war causes. Ill give you an example on our try on your castle, i didnt really know frisia before that and to me, you were all good guys since i didn't know you (benefit of the doubt) then came Daruvian and all the shit/trolling he does and general ways he acts because were at war with you. At that point i was like what a douche bag and i didn't feel anymore guilt as to what we were doing really and yes most of our clan dislike the kind of trolling that he does but what can we do... It just goes to tell you how fast relations can sour when you go at war with another faction even when you were once neutral.

Were always at war with the same people because we actually have a good reason to instead of attacking randoms yes but tell me, if you are in front of 2 dudes irl and one is super quiet and seems friendly and the other one cant shut his mouth being a general asshole and picking on everyone at the first occasion with his bullshit (Kesh), who are you gonna give a nice new smile with your knuckles...

[SHinOCk]

The problem i have with this theory of same size factions is in reality it will change nothing in a competitive strategus. Strat is a numbers game, and more resources wins the game. So the idea of strategus is simple: be bigger then the other side.

And honestly, i know what CHAOS has done this strat, you guys tried to attack factions your own size both in fallen and teutonics. Nothing came of it though and more importantly you guys only got to do a small handul of battles. You even saw remnant join in on the fallen war to grab a free village.

It shouldnt be hard to understand why factions like to gang up on smaller factions. Small risk big reward. The only way to stop this is with mechanical structure, which imo is worse, and lets face it: not going to happen.

Honestly i feel the problem that plagues strat is the forum butthurt over wars. (And im guilty of fueling the fire) But we should be wanting to fight as many wars as we can, and i think the butthurt stops alot of factions from having fun in wars.

I tell you what though, if we do a next strat the faction im looking at buddy-ing with occitan/chevs. No seriously you guys have been awesome to war with, and imo this has been a really fun war so far.

Also @ shinock: you all have no idea how close we were to fighting fcc. They chose remnant over us so that they could keep the remnant mercs and our mercs. We had invasion plans set up and made up excuses why we couldnt swap goods anymore. Remnant collapsed first though, and hospitaller never even asked us to join in. I guess we actually thought fcc would attack us first, but old news is old news and we are back on the same side. One thing though, in this strat we have fought against hospitaller, with hospitaller. Against hero party and with hero party. So dont say we didnt try.

Ill give you that man, I'm getting tired of all the logistic but shit its been the best war I've been part of since i started strategus

[MURDERTRON]

Guys, guys, guys, just remember: Everyone is on your team half the time.  At least, on NA 1, not Strat.  I don't really dislike many people in this game, its a combat game and a war game.  So you must have combat and war.

It's actually the people who find ways to interfere with good wars that earn my ire.  People with bad night time settings and illegal fief transfers top my list.

Also, its not unnatural to want your friends to fight on your side.  You get to talk to them during battles, make jokes, create rivalries, etc.  That is part of the fun, because just playing purely for combat runs pretty dry after a few generations.

[Matey]

@Canary
You guys coulda just honoured your "paper diplomacy" NAP with us and stayed neutral... ya big jerks.

@other stuff.
FCC did indeed almost end up at war with VE this strat; not because we stopped liking them, we love VE, but because we thought we would end up with remnant vs VE in a bid to prevent VE total domination. But then Occitan came back and we had to wait until we found out what they would. Imagine if we had ended up at war with VE? hosp and occitan prolly woulda jumped against us too. Anyways, side A vs side B can be awful, but I must say, it has been pretty damn fun so far this strat because "Side A" and "Side B" are not actually all allied together, they just share some enemies, but they don't share all enemies. Overall there has been a lot of big battles and neither side is dominating so it makes things interesting. It is also fun playing with the VE guys again.

[SittingBull]

Guys stop derailing the thread with sensibility.

Lets talk more about how Astralis is very similar to Asstrails in pronunciation.

[Keshian]

Its easy to understand why most clan don't wanna attack clans they dont hate, look at the forums... all the shit storms a war causes. Ill give you an example on our try on your castle, i didnt really know frisia before that and to me, you were all good guys since i didn't know you (benefit of the doubt) then came Daruvian and all the shit/trolling he does and general ways he acts because were at war with you. At that point i was like what a douche bag and i didn't feel anymore guilt as to what we were doing really and yes most of our clan dislike the kind of trolling that he does but what can we do... It just goes to tell you how fast relations can sour when you go at war with another faction even when you were once neutral.

Were always at war with the same people because we actually have a good reason to instead of attacking randoms yes but tell me, if you are in front of 2 dudes irl and one is super quiet and seems friendly and the other one cant shut his mouth being a general asshole and picking on everyone at the first occasion with his bullshit (Kesh Shincock]), who are you gonna give a nice new smile with your knuckles...

Corrected

[Homey_D_Clown]

good fight

[lcrispyl]

great fight tonight guys... came down to the wire! great xp and thanks for the fun!!!!