Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

[mkivcs]

Cheers Scottwar sorry never had a chance to test my Ermor vixens against your troops. Good luck with the computer, as someone who suffered a nightmare recently with a faulty motherboard on my new build computer while trying to get my turns in I know how distracting it is.

[elitesix]

My recollection is that the game's victory conditions of shared alliance victory was stated before the game started.

Unfortunately, it seems many people are blaming the victory conditions for the number of allied nations in this game. These people are in for an awakening when they play standard victory games and find as I did, that midgame is dominated by adhoc alliances.

W8 I agree about differing skill levels and that's why I suggested before we started that we make two games instead on one massive one. Hopefully everyone learned something from this experience.

An analogy from history: Hitler and Stalin hated each other and wanted to be the sole victor, but they happily temporarily allied with each other and carved Poland up. As long as there are more than 2 nations in a game, there will always be adhoc alliances, regardless of victory conditions.

[Beelzeboss]

I didn't manage to get my turn. I had to work late unexpected. I'm still in the game :).

[Vlam]

Anyway Scott, you died this turn.
It was a pleasure fighting with you! I hope it's not the last time we are facing each other ;) .

I wasn't blaming this shared victory alliance or something, I was just asking, becasue it seemed strange to me, I didn't heard about that.
Thi said, you will not win that easily, and I hope that if you finish all together, you'll end up stabbing the back of each other :)

[Faux]

My recollection is that the game's victory conditions of shared alliance victory was stated before the game started.

Unfortunately, it seems many people are blaming the victory conditions for the number of allied nations in this game. These people are in for an awakening when they play standard victory games and find as I did, that midgame is dominated by adhoc alliances.

W8 I agree about differing skill levels and that's why I suggested before we started that we make two games instead on one massive one. Hopefully everyone learned something from this experience.

An analogy from history: Hitler and Stalin hated each other and wanted to be the sole victor, but they happily temporarily allied with each other and carved Poland up. As long as there are more than 2 nations in a game, there will always be adhoc alliances, regardless of victory conditions.

Still, in my opinion, having a group of six nations declare an allied victory kind of defeats the whole purpose of playing Dominions 3 multiplayer, both roleplay- and gameplay-wise. After all the game is about the one last remaining pretender ascending to true godhood. I understand that there are players who might enjoy shared victory games and I respect their choice, but personally I'd never play in one of them. Alliances are an important part of the multiplayer experience for sure but I think the games should carry on to the bitter end.

I apologise if I'm derailing this thread with my rambling :). This discussion might be better left to a separate thread if need be.

[elitesix]

My recollection is that the game's victory conditions of shared alliance victory was stated before the game started.

Unfortunately, it seems many people are blaming the victory conditions for the number of allied nations in this game. These people are in for an awakening when they play standard victory games and find as I did, that midgame is dominated by adhoc alliances.

W8 I agree about differing skill levels and that's why I suggested before we started that we make two games instead on one massive one. Hopefully everyone learned something from this experience.

An analogy from history: Hitler and Stalin hated each other and wanted to be the sole victor, but they happily temporarily allied with each other and carved Poland up. As long as there are more than 2 nations in a game, there will always be adhoc alliances, regardless of victory conditions.

Still, in my opinion, having a group of six nations declare an allied victory kind of defeats the whole purpose of playing Dominions 3 multiplayer, both roleplay- and gameplay-wise. After all the game is about the one last remaining pretender ascending to true godhood. I understand that there are players who might enjoy shared victory games and I respect their choice, but personally I'd never play in one of them. Alliances are an important part of the multiplayer experience for sure but I think the games should carry on to the bitter end.

I apologise if I'm derailing this thread with my rambling :). This discussion might be better left to a separate thread if need be.

As far as I know, I don't know of six nations are allied. You know only for certain if there is a multiple front war against one nation then obviously that is a de facto alliance. Or if the alliances are public announced.

So far, the closest thing that comes to alliance is the fact that I declared a defensive pact with Vanheim (though that is NOT an alliance), and Tien Chi, Jotenheim, and Ulm's public attack on Machaka. But as I posted previously, Machaka did that to himself by aggressive expanding and blocking off the entire coast for no particularly good or sound reason.

Jason likes to make a lot of noises and call his non-aggression pacts allies from my experience, and I wouldn't be calling him out but for the fact that people seem to strangely take his words at face value. I say strange because his public messages often have mixed messages, such as his last one :)

Cheers!

[undercovergeek]

Machaka did that to himself by aggressive expanding and blocking off the entire coast for no particularly good or sound reason.

explain this to me please

[Lunaje]

As I don't know exactly what is going with the supposed alliance, I have some thoughts on why it would very bad if something like that is happening.
 
  Warning: I'm on the assumption that a six nation alliance currently exist, which is probably not the case. But it may apply for lower numbers of nations involved.

  To be honest, even when I've seen before the formation of alliances in different games, there are some differences:

  1 Alliances seem to follow the pattern of "surviving against a greater evil". Someone is going to win and end the game, so we must gather our forces (which we wouldn't do in normal conditions, as we are competing gods) to survive this threat. But who is the greater evil here? If an alliance is formed even before addressing the threat, I can understand how other players feel like being precluded from winning the game. As one may ask: against whom the alliance is forming? I dare to say, with no clear public enemy, the alliance takes form against all the other players. And given most players are "on their own", they are left in clear disadvantage for playing the game.
  (And by greater evil I mean some going-to-conquer-all nation, not any big nation around)

2 I've never seen an alliance as big as six players.  What options are left for the players who don't belong to the alliance? Just form an equivalent block, which may not appeal to everyone. And to bring down the alliance becomes a very difficult task.

  I would understand if some minor nations ally to give themselves better chances. Or if a minor power helps a bigger one in order to try to make some gains for itself. But if we're talking about 3, 4, 5 or more nations, (many of them in good shape to hold against anybody on its own? I lack more info here), forming a block, I really feel it would be kind of unfair.

[elitesix]

Machaka did that to himself by aggressive expanding and blocking off the entire coast for no particularly good or sound reason.

explain this to me please

Many people prefer to conquer indies over declaring war. If you block off a nation's indie expansion, you force them to declare war on someone. I'm going to reveal some game information, much of it already public, but I think it's important and useful to discuss expansion strategy.

Jotenheim, T'ien Chi were located on the islands and were land powers. They could only expand to the mainland:

Jotenheim was blocked by Ermor to the north, T'ien Chi to the south, and you to the east.

T'ien Chi was blocked by Jotenheim in the north, Ulm in the south, and you to the east.

Ulm, also a land power, was blocked off by T'ien Chi to the north, Atlantis to the east, and you to the northeast.

And when I say you blocked their expansion, it wasn't that there was 1 province that all three nations bordered. All nations had multiple angles of attack on different provinces of yours. The logical action, for all three nations, was to declare war in such a fashion as to maximize their chances of success. And most easily won war is if all three teamed up on you, which is what they did. Geek, your capital was far from the coast. It seems, from my perspective, your beeline to take the entire coast put you in the crosshairs of three nations who had to go to war to expand.

I know when I play, sometimes I will purposely not take that 1 extra province, to ensure that I don't border a big bad nation - if you don't border a nation, they can't easily go to war against you or team up against you.

[undercovergeek]

i aggressively expanded in a war game?

i took indy nations faster than others?

i came to a coast and stopped and im supposed to know or care whats happening on the other side of the sea?

im supposed to have sympathy for those that got their second?

im sorry is this kerrplunk? or did i read the name on the game box wrong?

[elitesix]

2 I've never seen an alliance as big as six players.  What options are left for the players who don't belong to the alliance? Just form an equivalent block, which may not appeal to everyone. And to bring down the alliance becomes a very difficult task.

  I would understand if some minor nations ally to give themselves better chances. Or if a minor power helps a bigger one in order to try to make some gains for itself. But if we're talking about 3, 4, 5 or more nations, (many of them in good shape to hold against anybody on its own? I lack more info here), forming a block, I really feel it would be kind of unfair.

At the end of the day, I think you recognize what's going here.

-If you are about primarily winning the game and want to gain every possible non-cheating advantage (fair or unfair) you're going to form alliances.

-If you are about primarily role-playing and/or having fair battles, you probably will do poorly in a free for all game involving diplomacy as long as there are some other players who are willing to form alliances (including de facto temporary alliances, such as Germany/Russia gobbling up Poland).

That doesn't mean you can't mix and match, alliances and roleplaying, or vice versa. But which one you care about more is going to dictate your approach to diplomacy in the game.

[Lunaje]

Yes, but I was trying to say is that forming alliances and forming blocks are different things. I agree that any player trying to win the game will probable make use of allies, as most 1vs1 wars are non efficient regarding the resources required; much easier to speed the process with an ally. But I would assume that most of these are "de facto temporary alliances", which one will drop once they are no longer useful. I don't see anything bad in 2 or more nations grouping up against one; it's the diplomacy game.

But forming a defensive block against future wars (and I meant a big one, 3 or more nations involved) changes the metagame as it forces the rest of players into playing the nation block game; specially on a map as big as this one, where such a block will extend to large portions of the map. 

  That said, the move is probably still valid in the diplomacy field. However, if the block is aiming for an allied victory, that should've been stated in the winning conditions at the start.  In any case, if such a block forms, I strongly suggest that the rest of the players act as soon as possible against it, given the consequences it has in the long run.

[Phobos]

The object of the game is to have fun.

When a large percentage of the players in a game collaborate to play the circle-jerk version kingmaker, it makes every other player a lame duck.  That may or may not be fun for those in the circle, as once you're in, your only option is to keep jerking with a smile, or get stomped by a bunch of wankers.

It obviously is not fun for some of those that realise that they are lame ducks.

I don't care, either way.  Fighting on multiple fronts is entertaining for me.

I will point out that group victories are a houserule for this game.  Normally, there can only be one winner.

[elitesix]

Just throwing some options out there: I'm completely in support of immediately changing the victory conditions to one nation only.

(I don't think my game strategy would have progressed any differently since we're still in mid-game, but I can't speak for others)

[undercovergeek]

The object of the game is to have fun.

When a large percentage of the players in a game collaborate to play the circle-jerk version kingmaker, it makes every other player a lame duck.  That may or may not be fun for those in the circle, as once you're in, your only option is to keep jerking with a smile, or get stomped by a bunch of wankers.

It obviously is not fun for some of those that realise that they are lame ducks.

poetry, and right in every way