Political Capital/Diplomatic Points

[Georgi Stomana]

So I played Cybernations (are we allowed to mention that game here?) for quite a while before leaving, and probably the main reason I left is because alliances and bloc became completely dominant, not only was it impossible for a nation to survive and grow without being in an alliance, but alliances themselves couldn't survive without forming blocs with other alliances. Now what I'll say is, I think it's natural in a game about nations that you form alliances, but the current system feels rather dull.

 

So here's the idea: To make alliances and blocs of alliances less overpowering (like they became in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways)) and instead focus on nation-to-nation relations, every Turn/Day your nation gets "Political Capital" or "Diplomatic Points". You "spend" diplomatic points to improve relations with another nation. Once you spend enough, you become allies (though this would take a long time and require constant spending of points to keep the relationship good, and if it dropped below a certain number you would stop being allies or friends).

 

A player could still declare war on anyone in range, but you would need a reason (cassus belli), you could just declare war for no reason but it would cost A LOT of Political Capital points, representing the damage your nation has done to it's reputation/influence in the world by just attacking someone. If your nation was an ally of a nation that had war declared on them for no reason, you would be able to declare war on the aggressor for a very small cost of Political Capital (the cost would be smaller the higher your relations were with the nation being attacked).

 

I assume also that a nation would get more Political Capital every turn/day the older their nation was. The restriction on this would be that you can only declare war on a nation in your war range.

 

In this way nations in PW would have to actually go out of there way to forge relationships with other countries, instead of just sitting in any alliance, which can get boring. It would also tie the National RP aspect to the gameplay, especially if you had to build Embassies in nations to build up friendships, an inject more drama, intrigue and well... politics, into the game.

 

Anyway I'm sure just like my last idea this is full of holes and would probably change the game radically so many people wouldn't like it.

[Fox Fire]

This sounds pretty lame. Alliances at what these community based games are designed around.

You already have to spend money to fight wars and be in an alliance. No way in hell am I going to want to spend some imaginary points for virtually nothing.

-1/10

[Georgi Stomana]

Alliances would still exist, they'd just be smaller and limited around real relationships between players, ie if you went to war it would be to fight for a nation you have a pre-established relationship with, not for some alliance members you have never even heard of before. Wouldn't it be more realistic that a nation can't just declare war on everyone they see without getting -300 Political Capital points or something, meaning their reputation would be trashed for a long time.

[naTia]

I like the initiative, I just don't think it is the right fit for P&W. This seems like it would add a dynamic to the game that wouldn't be well received. Maybe if this was implemented early on as a small change it could have worked, but this sounds like a larger overhaul than I and I assume others are ready for.

 

Edit: As not to add really nothing other than a "no" I'll elaborate. I think that this addition would push away players because of the need to get points to declare war for raiding purposes. In this case, few casus belli's could legitimately be formed because a lot of what is in the game isn't regulated by mechanics. For example, how does the game know if you have a casus belli or not?

Edited December 3, 2014 by The Captain Nao

[Fox Fire]

Alliances would still exist, they'd just be smaller and limited around real relationships between players, ie if you went to war it would be to fight for a nation you have a pre-established relationship with, not for some alliance members you have never even heard of before. Wouldn't it be more realistic that a nation can't just declare war on everyone they see without getting -300 Political Capital points or something, meaning their reputation would be trashed for a long time.

Alliances don't need to be smaller. The relationship between players is already real. If you like a certain player, go.join their alliance. If you don't like a certain player, don't join their alliance.

All this idea does is severely limit what players can do and who they can be friends with. If I have tons of.friends in this game that I do know, then I intend to have a relationship with them. I don't want to have to spend imaginary points just to be friends with someone I'm already friends with.

 

These games are supposed to encourage community, not limit community. We can complain about realism all we want, but this is a game, and no matter how hard you try to make a game realistic, it will always have limits. I don't think realism should be the aim of PaW.

Fun>Realism

[Georgi Stomana]

Fair enough, but the underlying issue still exists, is P&W going in the same direction as (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) - completely dominated by big alliance blocs and nations just become cogs in the machine. The game is fun now because it's still very small, there's smaller amount of nations, there's unpredictable elements like the trade market, active raiding, but I would not surprised if eventually when more people join up and the alliance structures become more established - the game will become stagnant and get into the "build - war - rebuild" cycle.

[Vincent]

@ Firefox - a little diversion, going by your logic so, what if I like some players and I also dislike some players and they all are in the same alliance, so do I join or do I not.

[Fox Fire]

Fair enough, but the underlying issue still exists, is P&W going in the same direction as (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) - completely dominated by big alliance blocs and nations just become cogs in the machine. The game is fun now because it's still very small, there's smaller amount of nations, there's unpredictable elements like the trade market, active raiding, but I would not surprised if eventually when more people join up and the alliance structures become more established - the game will become stagnant and get into the "build - war - rebuild" cycle.

I personally enjoy (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways). Although, (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) has very different and very cookie cutter mechanics. As for blocs and what not, I don't mind those either. The only thing that irks me about (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) diplomacy is the mess of a treaty web. But I believe that is the result of a community that was once much larger than it is now, has degraded and with that, you get a tangled mess of relationships.

Overall, I think blocs and such become an inevitably if the community becomes large enough. And I'm personally just fine with that. I've never understood people's opposition to blocs or overly huge alliances. In my experience, alliances that dominate games, like UPN, don't maintain that status forever. Things are always changing. For all we know, any alliance could split or merge tomorrow.

I like it when the community has direct control over the organization of said community. Makes things more interesting and personal, rather than just what is convenient.

@ Firefox - a little diversion, going by your logic so, what if I like some players and I also dislike some players and they all are in the same alliance, so do I join or do I not.

Completely up to you.

[Greene]

I feel like you play a Paradox game or two... I find this just weird.

[Georgi Stomana]

I feel like you play a Paradox game or two..

Don't we all?

[Alex]

I actually think the idea is kind of intriguing. So far it doesn't seem terribly well received by the community, but hopefully everyone will continue to hash it out and possibly come up with a good solution.

[Destroyer]

There could be something like a Non-aggression pact.

[Grillick]

I think this is a fascinating game mechanic that would make a dramatically different type of game than the other nation simulators that we have seen. I would love to see a game with this mechanic and see how it plays out over the long term.

 

But I think adding it onto an already-existing game is a terrible idea.

[Georgi Stomana]

I'm not being completely serious, I just like dropping ideas, feel free to say they suck or whatever.

[Morgan]

What's the harm in adding functions for relations between nations? It would be an interesting addition to the game. 

[ooohu]

I wouldn't care for this at all... I play this because it is like (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) but it doesn't have 8 years of build up time to actually play. While this is an interesting idea I know I wouldn't play with it because I don't actually care for inter-nation relationships I care for inter-political ones and those only happen on an alliance to alliance scale.

[Georgi Stomana]

Well, the thing is those kind of relations are outside the gameplay mechanics, yes the game recognizes alliances and integrates them into the mechanics, but actual relations between alliance come down to the people behind the keyboard, there's no "simulated" diplomacy for example like many strategy games do. Most players/nations are not leaders of alliances or government members/diplomats, so most nations will thus never really take part in this "politics" thing, they'll just sit comfy in an alliance and it's leaders will have all the power.

 

I guess it comes down to whether you want a game where alliances are the real "nations" and the actual nations are more like "citizens" or subjects who have no real power individually but make up alliances - or you want a game which actually simulates controlling a nation (this isn't a realism argument it's a focus argument).

 

As in, even putting aside the RP stuff, are we "players" or are we "nations". What ruined (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) in my honest opinion was that it became Cyberalliances or Cyberblocs, not Cybernations. I mean in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) (well in this game too) if you aren't a member of an alliance you'll probably be destroyed, and even most alliances still treat members like "players" and not as if they were ~independent states~. In (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) it became such that anyone could be completely destroyed without reason, I mean in the ~real world~ would a nation be able to declare war on everyone they see and not have negative consequences. At this stage the negative consequences are not in the mechanics of the game, it's just that raiders or rogues will get crushed by alliances or whatever. But that makes the problem worse, and makes alliances more all-powerful.

 

I guess this is the distinction between IC and OOC, but I don't think it would hurt to add some features to the game where the average nation can participate in global politics and diplomacy IN THE GAME with other nations, without having to become a leader in an alliance and dedicate a lot of time to some off-site board/IRC.

 

Even say being able to set up Embassies in foreign nations would be neat, what they would do I have no idea but I don't think it would hurt. Anyway soz for the rant. I just think (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) has some valuable lessons of the mistakes which made the game utterly stagnant and boring.

 

EDIT: I played (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) when it was a new game, this was actually when I was still in high-school but from memory it was very fun because alliances weren't very powerful, raiders were abound, it was chaotic and anyone could create a nation and become a world power. It was very much like P&W is right now. The decline of (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) came when the Treaty-web/Alliance/Blocs structure became completely established and "nations" on their own became irrelevant.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Georgi Stomana