Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

Started by JasonPratt, April 03, 2013, 10:16:14 AM

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JasonPratt

Quote from: Vlam on April 30, 2013, 06:51:04 AM
Hello!
I'll be able to play turn with the wifi :) .

Let the mighty statues rules!

Good! -- however, I should have asked you to contact me before you sent your turn, so I could revise the clock back first. That way Monday night would have still been the deadline, but the system would always be catching up to it. As it is, the system bumped up to Thursday before I could dial it back!

On further however ;) , it just occurred to me that if I had dialed the clock back immediately to 48 hours after setting it far ahead, we would have had the same effect without you having to contact me first (since by the terms of the request you'd be back and able to play by then in any case, barring further actual delay requests.)

I'll try to remember that in the future. Sorry guys!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Quote from: elitesix on April 29, 2013, 08:03:04 PM
A solid way to allow for enforceable simple trades is to:

Those procedures would indeed give me objective records of a trade agreement, but I would still have no way to confirm that someone breached the contract (or not as the case may be).
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

elitesix

Quote from: JasonPratt on April 30, 2013, 07:49:45 AM
Quote from: elitesix on April 29, 2013, 08:03:04 PM
A solid way to allow for enforceable simple trades is to:

Those procedures would indeed give me objective records of a trade agreement, but I would still have no way to confirm that someone breached the contract (or not as the case may be).

In case of a dispute, you can get the turn file and see the messages to see if they were received.

Philippe

I feel that dragging the game administrator in to make trades binding is not only excessively burdensome but also contrary to the spirit of what is going on in this fantasy simulation.  I hesitate to drag in the word realistic, because in the context of what we're doing the whole concept of realistic is absurd, but I would argue that the absence of a mechanism for enforcing trades is not an oversight on the part of the game designers.

Essentially what is being requested is an imposition of a nanny-state super regulatory authority, which makes absolutely no sense in a universe where there is no universal supreme authority who could impose anything on anyone.  The Pantokrator is dead and the world is in a state of anarchy.  If a successful pretender wants to make trades binding in the universe after he conquers it, that's fine.  But not until after he conquers it and restablishes order.

People tell lies but for the most part have fairly decent ethical standards when dealing one on one.  Governments, on the other hand, often have really lousy ethical standards and tell lies all the time, witness Bethmann Hollweg's scrap of paper.  I won't comment on the logical progression, but suspect that in our case it only gets worse as you progress upwards from human beings.  What kind of personal morality should you expect from deities who encourage their followers to engage in necromancy and human sacrifice?  And anyone familiar with Allistair Crowley knows what necromancy can actually involve, so the less said about this the better.

Is it reasonable to expect a Loki or a divine trickster (tons of them in West Africa and the American Southwest)  to keep his word every time he makes a bargain?  A rudimentary acquaintance with the world's mythologies will teach you that many societies have had deities who only keep their word when it suits them.  These are admitedly in the minority, but there's one in every family, and knowing the magic formula that will keep the devil honest is a motif found in many different folklores and religions.

The problem of people welching on a deal is something that is confronted in the real world (tm) all of the time.  The issue is more troublesome than many realize, because although there are hopeless reams of legislation that usually give you a pretty good shot at eventual redress,  the real damage is often caused by the failure of timely execution, not to mention the exorbitant legal fees that will get paid to lawyers along the way.  If a foreign exchange trader buys marks against dollars, he will probably have sold the marks on to someone else before he takes delivery.  When settlement day comes and he pays out his dollars but doesn't get marks in exchange, he still has to come up with the marks (from somewhere) when he pays them out in the next deal where he sells the marks to lock in what would have been his profit but is probably now his loss.  He may get his money back in five or six years when the lawsuits and counter-suits have worked their way through court, but the ROI stinks and the return is sickening when you factor in administrative costs, legal fees, and loss of management time.

So yes, this is a live issue, and has been one for a very long time.  It used to be refered to as Herstatt risk, after Bankaus Herstatt which went famously bankrupt in 1974 while in the midst of settling sales of dollars against marks.  Because Germany is to the east of New York and its business day ends several hours earlier, Herstatt took delivery of marks in a series of foreign exchange trades, but was closed down before it had paid out dollars, leaving everyone who had sold them marks holding the bag.  After that bankers began waking up and imposing trading limits.  These limits were usually self-policed courtesy of individual banks' credit committees, rather than imposed or enforced by one or more central banks (though I suspect that anyone who overlooked such a fashionable risk would have gotten a few caustic comments about what a prudent banker should do from their regulators).  Nowadays this subject is generally called counter-party risk, and applies to any kind of over-the-counter trading; typical examples would be fixed income securities, foreign exchange, and interest rate derivatives.

The world of trade finance has been dealing with the counter-party problem for a very long time.  My favorite stories have to do with how goods were exchanged on the West African coast around 500 B.C. (and for almost 2000 years after that).  The locals would leave a pile of goods on the beach and withdraw inland.  The Phoenicians (and eventually the Portuguese) would then sail up, leave a pile of their own merchandise next to it, get back in their boats, and wait.  The locals would come back, examine what the strangers had left, and if they thought it less valuable than what they had already left, they would reduce their own pile by an amount that they felt would equalize the value of the two piles.  This trading by subtraction would go on until one side would examine the other's pile and decide that it was equal to their own, and when that happened they would take the other's goods and leave.

In the commercial world trade frequently goes on between two parties in two different countries who don't know each other and often can't really tell how trustworthy the other party is.  They don't call in the nanny-state (which would be fairly useless anyway), they use common sense.  They start small.  My factory can make ten widgets a month. If I get an order from Joe Blow in Lower Slobovia  for ten widgets, that's a month of orders I might not be able to fill for my regular customers.  And if Joe Blow proceeds not to pay me on top of messing up my relationships with my other customers (who probably turned around and bought their widgets elsewhere rather than wait while I filled a mythical ten widget Slobovian order), then my real loss is greater than just the cost of the unpaid merchandise.

So what happens in real life?  You want ten widgets? Fine.  You can pay for them first, or you better get used to the fact that I'm not going to sell you two widgets until I've seen you make good for one.  And even then I'm not going to ship you that one widget without a letter of credit.   Eventually when the two parties have gotten used to each other as trading partners the terms get relaxed a bit, and maybe they graduate from letters of credit to open account with the value of one shipment coverd by insurance or a letter of guarantee, and then eventually (after several years) somebody will propose that they reduce the cost of trading and just deal on open account.

Nobody starts a trading relationship by insisting on large block trades when there's no track record to back it up.  Complaining that there is trading risk in doing block trades on open account is like complaining that there is gravity.  If you don't like gravity, not jumping off the Empire State Building makes more sense than suing the city for not installing nets (unless you're a litigation lawyer).   



Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.


History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.


Senility is no excuse for feeblemindedness.

Ubercat

I agree that trying to enforce trades, when the game does not include any mechanism for doing so, is excessive. I think it's enough that people have to deal with the consequences of long term mistrust in future games if they lie. If someone reneged on a deal with me, after taking my goods. I would go all out to destroy them, even if it meant my downfall as well.
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

- Thomas Sowell

W8taminute

I also agree with the above.  When one decides to be treacherous they will forever be remembered for that behavior.  One might get an advantage for a turn or two or maybe even a complete game but the next time that player plays against people he's played with before then the offender better be prepared to be wiped out right off the bat by a coalition of the betrayed. 

Unless of course the offending player is the be all end all authority on Dominions 3 in which case he'll never lose and can afford to be treacherous.   ;)
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

claes

Well said.  It is posts like the above that I live for, and I see that I have found myself in august company indeed.

elitesix

#592
I will say one thing in support of unenforceable trades.

I like the meta game that is brought up by unenforceable trades. It adds incentive to build trustworthy relationships. It also adds greater benefits to betrayal. Interesting. (But in case you are wondering, I am a man of my word).

I'm glad we moved the discussion from feasibility, to desirability. I think we may actually desire a game with unenforceable trades!

Lunaje


In other forums I've played there seems to be a general consensus regarding trades, in which trades of gems and items are obligatory for the parts involved. Of course every game can set its own rules, but there is some minimal agreements that make for common understanding. It would be a real chaos if players didn't fulfill their trades, with players carrying grudges from one game to another; it would make things too personal. And as far as I know is better not to carry enmities along games, in fact in the official forum the multiplayer rules encourage to not do so (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-3-the-awakening/forum/thread/multiplayer-forum-rules); however good the simulation, is still a game.

I think gems and item trades being obligatory is just a way of dealing with the interface limitations. As someone said, the ideal situation would be a simultaneous trade; the "trade is binding" rule -widely accepted- helps to accomplish that.
   And is just items and gems to keep it as simple as possible; trading provinces, peace agreements, no aggression pacts and all kind of diplomatic stuff is much more convoluted. These last options are not included in-game and is one step further trying to enforce that. But one simple rule to keep trade fluid and things civilized seems a very good deal to me; that rule is almost implicit by now, but of course, not mandatory. But I see this game already has the "trades should be fulfilled rule" at the first page.




Philippe

I seem to have won the wooden spoon award this turn.  Oh well.

Next one will be quicker (if the server ever gets around to acknowledging that I've sent it in).
Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.


History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.


Senility is no excuse for feeblemindedness.

claes

This has suddenly become very important if we are trying to set precedent for a Dom 3 community at Grogheads.  Without a clear precedent, we run the risk of having this same discussion (and don't get me wrong, I am enjoying this discussion) in each separate Dom game here.

Keep in mind that I am very new to the game, but I like the idea that there can be a place where we can play as our chosen pretenders rather than their respective controllers.  It adds an incredible amount of depth to the intrigue.  I also like the idea of keeping as much of the burden as possible off of the person who graciously gives their time to host the game.  So, while I do not yet have the nuance of the intrigue down yet, and may not for years to come, I vote that we follow Jason's last lead and simply let buyer beware, trader beware.

I am enjoying the meta discussion though ;)

JasonPratt

We could of course have a house rule that people who void trade agreements will not be allowed to play a Groghead Dom3 game for x-period of time, but again it is difficult to investigate and confirm this. (Also the arbiter would ideally have to be someone of unimpeachable character if they're one of the current players, as the only way to even try investigating it would involve having total direct access for more than a brief period of time to someone's active game.)

It would be better I think for players to keep track among themselves about who is trustworthy or not -- keeping in mind that some players like myself like to roleplay their pretenders. Gamin would not have been a trusty trade partner, much less a trusty ally. But then again I made sure to mention this (or information pointing in this direction) several times out of character.

My other two current Dom characters are honorable pretenders, and I've roleplayed them that way; part of my success in roleplaying them involves convincing other players to accept alliances and then sticking to them myself even if (as in the Early Age game) there are fatal difficulties in doing so.

Which means I win even if Under'geek steamrolls me.  ;D


AND I WON THIS GAME TTOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!11
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

byrdman57

You role-played getting eaten by an octopus very well!

elitesix

While we're on the subject of role playing our pretenders, I think that is hard for all parties to implement unless we're all playing anonymously. Given that the ingame message system is pbem, we'd also have to have anonymous forum names created anew (per game played).

You could also add things like hidden victory conditions (a public list of coniditions privately distributed, such a vp game where every capital was a vp, half vps needed to win, but maintaining the hidden victory condition gives you +5 vps), if you have a non-playing moderator. Conditions such as: (1) own 15 mountain/forest/wasteland provinces or (2) betray and conquer an ally's capital, (3) Never offer to make peace...etc. many of These conditions would require a good moderator and the use of turn files if a player declares victory, but I think would add a lot to the intrigue.

It actually could be a very interesting idea :)....would lay a great groundwork or real goal oriented role playing.

Beelzeboss

In my opinion trades should be binding. The argument that the developers didn't add a mechanic to make trading binding isn't valid I think. They did add a mechanic that allows me to siege a fortress with scouts or send a lot of useless items to fill someones lab (I took these examples from the start topic, no idea how the sieging scout thing works) but still we aren't allowed to use this so you shouldn't look at the game mechanics to decide on what is allowed an what not.
And as Lunaje pointed out the start topic also mentions that trades should be fullfiled.