Destiny of Empires [Diplo Game] [Organization Thread]

[Russia (DoE)]

LOL - I told you guys and gals - this is just a propaganda to create anti-Russian hysteria and it works! Now everyone starts to think how to hurt and betray the poor young idealist Catherine.

[Inca (DoE)]

No. I really won't. There is nothing that the ACE can do in this game anymore.

Make stories. I haven't heard a single ACE story for like a month. Again, me, totally isolated, hacking through jungles and barbs, plenty of stories, 0 chance of winning at the time, basically in a tie for last place, horribly behind the rest of the world. Then, half my continent taken over by the English thugs, no diplo with my northern neighbor who was AWOL basically, I had contact with China before America, I think... Still enjoyed the hell out of the game. Indeed, your mindset might be wrong.

Anyway, I propose that in the next diplo game everyone gets two civs. One civ is in a good continent with good resources, another is in an "Africa", where there are poor resources and they must choose to create a truly unique and non-game-winning civ for kicks. These African states can be vassalized and cut up but not destroyed outright. They can never own any net resources, as they must sell all their resources off to their conquerors once they are able to for free. Civil wars, border conflicts, and the like must be constant. There will be 2 games going on: one of the "great powers" and "middling powers" of the world, and the other a microcosm of the first, everyone with a second civ crammed onto one crappy continent. That way even if people aren't doing so well in the "main" competition, they can still have a lot of fun and role-playing freedom within that second one.

[Japan (DoE)]

Has anyone contacted China? Robert can you please take a look at who China really is and see if you can contact him? This pause is taking way too long.

[Germany (DoE)]

Apparently this login cannot create a new thread so if anyone knows anyone who wants to be a sub please let France or Neandor know.

Read PM's.

[Vikings (DoE)]

Apparently this login cannot create a new thread so if anyone knows anyone who wants to be a sub please let France or Neandor know.

[England (DoE)]

No one has run away with the game yet, there is definitely still time to pull off the win. I'd say that there are 7 civs who can win this thing: France, Neandor, Inca, Russia, England, Ottomans & Egypt. I've been slacking off since the Great War, but hopefully my cool maps can catch up some ground for me. I'm still 27 points out of first right now, which might prove too much for me. But I'm going to have some time off coming up and am starting to get the spirit back, so maybe I can pull off a good come back. Who knows. The Inca are showing some more life now too, so they might end up vaulting into first eventually. I'm sure Russia and the Ottomans will find some more scantily clad ladies to help their case as well.

Don't forget that there is one and only score list that matters. So no, Russia doesn't have a commanding lead, France does:

France 252
Neandor 243
Inca 240
Russia 231
England 225
Ottomans 223
Egypt 218
America 158
India 135
China 134
Arabia 123
Natives 114
Vikings 109
Mongolia 107
Aztecs 96
Japan 86
Mali 81
Zulu 45

[Native America (DoE)]

With respect, Vikings, what do you WANT from a situation like this? In any Civilization game, there will be a whole lot of players who are going to "lose" the game. If you are a pick up your marbles and go home when I can't win any more player, isn't that going to happen a lot for you?

On the other hand, you say something about having "an actual chance to make a difference in the game." WHAT if I may be so bold, have you done to try and have that difference here? Several people have listed me as being firmly in the camp of the Russian Alliance. Not only is this not necessarily true, but if it is, it is because the only player outside of the Americas who has done ANY significant diplomacy with me IS Russia. I've had half-hearted proposals from one or two others (yourself included, IIRC), but that's not diplomacy, and certainly isn't going to "make a difference in the game."

Personally, I think you and the Aztecs spiced this game up considerably; after a relatively brief flare-up of tensions in our neck of the woods back in June, things had gone back to being quite dull. The story-line over Tlaxcala has been terrific. It has all we could expect at this point: proxies for the major European powers, expansionism, the interesting implosion of the Aztec Empire, the impending resumption of the titanic struggle in Europe forshadowed by the events in North/Central America. And it certainly isn't a forgone conclusion what will happen with Tlaxcala. So you certainly have made a difference in the game in that sense.

But might I point out that, since the declaration of the Aztecs that Tlaxcala had been leased to you, you've not made a single contribution to the story line thread. So if you are doing anything to influence the outcome of your great gamble, it must be happening totally behind the scenes. Fair enough; maybe you dislike writing and posting stories, and there are other ways to operate. Still, I'm a major player in what happens with Tlaxcala (at least, I would ASSUME I would be a major player, since it's right on my border!), and whatever you're doing behind the scenes certainly hasn't involved ME in any significant way. I find that baffling, under the circumstances.

So I urge you not to give this up. Rather, I urge you to get into the spirit of the thing. Find a reason to break up the Russo-Ottoman alliance and make it work with the Turks. Get the Inca to view you with more favor; they appear to be re-evaluating the events and their foreign policy regarding it. Engage in a serious anti-Russo propaganda effort, to encourage a more aggressive anti-Russian campaign among the nations of the world. You'd be surprised how many of the players in the game would be willing to get on board some sort of effort of this nature; taking down the "top dog" is a common desire of players in any game.

[Vikings (DoE)]

Well I guess I don't have the correct mindset for this game then, or diplogaming in general. I can't play a game expecting to lose and have some moral victory because I've been creative. I've played out losing games to the bitter end before, but that was when I had an actual chance to make a difference in the game.

And I can't be creative with a game I'm not enjoying. Nor do I look forward to another half a year of this.

I'll be attempting to find someone to take over for me.

[Russia (DoE)]

Hats down for mister America

Very, very well said.

[America (DoE)]

For me 'winning' this game really is the least important part of it. If it would have been, then I could have basically stopped after a few weeks. The joy is in creating stories out of the things you see on your screen, and having others interact with these stories. How bad or how well my civ is doing only influences the content of my stories, not the will I have to play this game. On the contrary; the point where my civ was attacked and facing destruction was the best part. Of course, there are extremes; if America had been reduced to but three cities in the North then it might have been tough to come up with good stories. However, even then, tales about a leader in exile, facing hardships and whatnot, could possibly have inspired another nation to gift me one or two cities in a new place, or provide armies to take back a city, etc.

That's the beauty of a diplogame: if you drop the focus on winning and shift it to storyline, the craziest things can happen. Unpredictable stuff. Where in a real civ game you would just try to kill opponents and choose the best civics in order to stimulate your civ to grow and prosper, in a diplogame you could do the opposite, and create something akin to N-Korea, or whatever, screwing up your own economy, spouting crazy propaganda, etc. In a real game, the AI would quickly annihilate you. But in a diplogame that won't necessarily happen and you can play out these ideas.

I don't get it that anybody would feel that the game is over just because Russia has become all powerful. I find that a great situation, because it might lead to a crazy final world war, with excellent stories of oppressed nations rising up, etc. If everybody doesn't care about the consequences to their score, then these things can happen. And I would be against forming a rule against alliances. The only important rule should be that everybody learns to see score as just one more number that can tell you something about how developed a civ is. But it doesn't determine who wins the game. For me, in a diplo game, it is about the fun you have being creative and seeing that creativity mirrored in a computer game. And about how what you write can influence others, how it can lead to funny, beautiful and confusing stories and tactics, and how the game then becomes a little bit more than just a game.

The motivation for a diplo game should not be tied to your score; it should be tied to how well everyone responds to each other, and how well everybody is able to let go of the traditional way of winning, and instead focus on creating the best possible storylines. The ones who do that, they are the ones 'winning'. It sounds very cliché, but a diplo game is one of the few games in which everybody can be a winner

I don't see any reason why the current world situation would be any less fun if there wasn't a superpower like Russia. I think that making rules to prevent superpowers from forming would actually make the game boring. I also don't believe in trying to make the game historically correct; a fun part of the game is that we get to actually rewrite history. So gifting rifles, forming huge alliances, strategical pre-emptive strikes, razing a few cities etc etc. all good! As long as all the players involved are open to new stuff that could even possibly cripple their country, but would make sense in our storyline. Because that is what I think makes diplogaming fun; letting the storyline lead you, not the score.

[Russia (DoE)]

BTW, I do miss the old Neanderthal King Veneta... He was such a sly mastermind and a zealous rhetorician, that now when he is gone, in the vacuum on the international scene even my humble and quite straightforward persona shines.

[Russia (DoE)]

Also,

unstoppable wall

is an oxymoron - it must be "insuperable wall" or "unstoppable power"

[Russia (DoE)]

No, no, no - I wont start answering to all of this. When the game is over (about half an year from now maybe ) we will write, write, argue, condemn, praise, and between many "crucify him" and "hosanna", everyone will take his moral of the story, the truth will take shape and I hope a valuable lessons for future diplo-games will be learned.

Too bad a lot of the current fascination will be passed away, the things and feelings will be faded somewhat and most of those things will just remain unspoken

[mzprox]

Being a "puppet" is not necessarily a bad thing except it sounds degradatory . There always will be small and big powers and I think it's perfectly normal that alliances consist of bigger and smaller nations instead of only big ones. The top powers should kill each other instead of allying, but this is also not a rule.. the players should have some basic sense of balance and act according to that.

[Russia (DoE)]

I am not bending any truths.

I was not pointing at you - we, the Russians say " The guilty one runs away without anyone actually chasing him"