Not just pride.

[BigFree]

I do not feel my post was any more harsh than his. I am on a team. I will not go around bad mouthing the decisions made in this game. He is threatening to quit because some of the "bad" choices that were made. If that is not insulting to those on the team, I do not know what else would be.

[DAVOUT]

OOC

This is a point where the roleplaying is confusing : Godking tells what he feels about the game (he said : the computer) and Togas answered about Spain ... No chance that they meet in the middle.

It dont like the treaty where I read in each paragraph that GS will have the last world on everything. I desagree with the idea that it is better to be second or fifth than last; there is only one winner, and a strategy which looses late is not better than a strategy losing ten turns sooner.

And Arnelos explains that this kind of solution is acceptable in Diplomacy (the game), I am vociferously unmoved because we are playing Civ which is a quite different thing. In fact, I have the feeling that this treaty is going far beyond the diplomatic moves acceptable in the game, and I fear that it can be qualified as unfair.

I would also miss the defensive war, because even if it is a loosing defence, it would have teach us a lot.

If you want this treaty, sign it, but dont lie to yourself : we have lost this game, and we should try to do better next time, without expecting the compassion of another player to help us on our way to the second place.

OOC

[civman2000]

Lawyers? Politicians? Engineers? Gee, I thought you were all 13 year olds

Well I am .

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
In fact, I have the feeling that this treaty is going far beyond the diplomatic moves acceptable in the game, and I fear that it can be qualified as unfair.

I was wondering the same thing myself...

[BigFree]

Just because you never see it in SP games, doesn't mean it's unfair for MP games. MP games were supposed to have all these different elements in them. This sort of Diplomacy/Game Strategy is not illegal. Any other team can do the same.

[Aidun]

I have a little bit of time left to post my opinion.

Godking, I am a political science student, a "politician". In politics you have to make decisions about plans. Every plan in politics is pased on predictions of the future, analyses of the current situation, guesses of the behaviour of the enemies and allies.

No matter how much we analyse, we fail to describe and explain everything, insecuities remain.

Politics is decisionmaking based on unreliable predictions, analyses and guesses. Still we have to use these unreliable sources to make our decisions because we have no choice: there is no other way to get better information to base a decision on and without decisionmaking the nation doesn't advance. Decisionmaking based on unreliable sources is the best option.

And no matter how skilled the analists are and no matter of what high quality their reparts and predictions are, there is always a chance, a quite big chance, that they are totally wrong.

For those who do not yet understand why I am writing my post this way: This game of competing teams and decisionmaking in teams IS POLITICS. The game Civilization 3 is not more than an economy-simulator on which we play our political game of decisionmaking.

We have made predictions about our future, sometimes we were right, sometimes we got stressed because it proved to be totally different.
I predicted some time ago that war would start in 9 turns, we will have to see is that comes true. If I look at the current situation, I can hardly believe I was serious when I did that prediction some turns back.

We have made analyses of our situation. We have very skilled members to do that for our team, but they cannot foresee everything and their analyses describe only the present and not the day after.

We have guessed - that is also the best we could do - about the behaviour and the interests of our opponents.
Arnelos supposed they were rational, now he admits that he was wrong. I personally doubted that GoW would be rational, although I hoped they would be. But to base our foreign politics on irrational opponents is folly. The questions you have to answer, but cannot answer are then: how irrational are they and in what way? It is then better to assume they are rational, because than simplifies the situation enormously, although it might be wrong to do that.

In this game we have made decisions based on analyses that are the best analyses possible, but far from perfect, on poor predictions and guesses. Now we face the probem that every team has faced at least once: we have made wrong decisions. That is not our fault, we did the best we could, it is simply the problem of politics: decisionmaking based on unreliable sources.

Just because things go wrong now we shouldn't but chuck it, that is the worst we could do: give up on the basis of an unreliable source: again, a prediction, this time of a loss.

About honour I want to say this: I don't believe in honour in this game. I just heard ABBA singing on the radio "The Winner takes it all", whether he has backstabbed his allies, mad false promises, or played fairly, whether he played with a peaceful building strategy or a warmonger strategy.

Do you esteem GoW highly? They cheat and play like mercenaries. Do you esteem us highly? we have, or so I judge, but I know I am biased, played quite fair. We did some clever diplomatic actions and developped plans that were sometimes a little bit foul, but not that foul as GoW's cheating. Still, if GoW wins, they will get the high esteem.
Do they deserve this esteem? T my opninion someone deserved respect if he has played fairly and under that circumstance only, and has won. GoW will clearly not deserve my respect if they win, nor wil they get it. I think but that others would call me a bad and unsportive loser If I publicly announced this opinion in the PTW forum.

As much as I do not believe in honour, I do believe in dishonour. For the loser is no time, nor honour. He is not remembered for his braveness, but for his foolishness to do nothing to prevent his downfall.

Is it dishonarable to become a vassalstate? To a certain extend, yes.
I am typing this behind my desk in Europe, in the Netherlands. If there is one country that knows how dishonarable it is to fall back to a vassalstate it is the Netherlands. I needn't to spam this thread with nationalistic talk that I sometimes have, but the Netherlands were once a superpower. See what is left of it: a puny little country that is internationally being ignored and that has to fight for its right at the European negotiation table. If it votes against a resolution, big countries like the UK, Germany, France and Italy gaze angrily at its representative: how dares he! And if the International Tribunal for War Crimes would judge Americans, we can even expect American bombs on our soil: we are allowed to do what we want as long as it doesn't intervene with the demands of bigger states. So dishounarable is it to be a vassalstate.

But should we have given up fighting during the second world war? Should we simply have said: "Guten Tag. Wilkommen in Holland" against the Germ, an Nazi's? I think not We have, called for help at door of the the US, and the US did help. Now we are perhaps a vassalstate of the US, but we are free and we are Dutch and not oppressed and German.

There would have been little honour for those who would have fought an driven into the North Sea, there would have been little honour for those who let the big cities be bombed away, there would have been little honour for those who considered fighting on their own without US support and being killed to be honourable.
There would have been little honour for those who thought their own honour was more important than doing a real attempt to seve the lives of millions of jews and other groops hated by the Nazi's.
There would have been little honour for those who belied their ideals of freedom and democracy to save their so called honour by fighting alone.

Now I stop with this post, I hope you value it. I hope you will evaluate your opinion and change it, but whatever you think, I respect it.

Aidun

[Nuclear Winter]

I wholeheartedly agree with Herr Aidun.
I also believe we can win, and I believe I am being very sincere to myself when I say this, inspite of what Davout said.
I have enumerated the reasosn why I think we can win many times already. I also think we would have our faces turned into hamburger (like what Godking wants to do with this netspammer he said ) had we fought alone.
We need their help. Then later on, we can demand our cities back, we can demand freedom, we can refuse to follow their orders, after all it is just a piece of paper (ok, a bunch of bits).A backstab? Maybe, disohonorable? But heh, history is wrikten by the winners. Besides, I ahve already given teh idea that if we get to the industrial age (an era taht E_T himself masters) we can make a communist coup, roleplay it, make the patriotic comunnists demand their nation´s integrity back and such... and also, I think we should keep GoW alive. Just for fun. And ND should be destroyed only to show them to never mess with Apolytoners. :j

LAstly, please, I ask that no fellow gamer from this team leaves or feels offended. I am quite the family guy, and so I hate to see any kind of friendly group or association broken like this. Please stick together , my friends.
Lastly, to add to Aidun´s post, my nation itself seems like a ´´game-over situation´´, yet we still strugle for it instead of bailing out of it... why? Heck, this is our nation
SAN DYEGO & ALLA!!!!
Nuke

[E_T]

Communisum, UCK!!

Actually, I do very well in Middle ages to Industrial. I normally conduct my wars at that time, too.

E_T

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
In fact, I have the feeling that this treaty is going far beyond the diplomatic moves acceptable in the game, and I fear that it can be qualified as unfair.

And what about teaming up with another team/civ to attack a third one? Is it fair or unfair? If they are using such kind of strategies I don't understand why we shouldn't pay them with the same coin. ND and GoW have attacked us. Maybe we could have avoided it if we played better, maybe not. I don't think that we played badly as overall. I just think that there are some things that we could have done better. But our first priority now should be to make ND and GoW pay very very expensive what they have done to us. If they attack us and we offer them all our cities and land in a silver plate this is a motivation for them to do the same (in the/ if there is a) next game.

And about winning or not winning... There is only one first position. Saying that everyone from the second to below is losing is maybe a bit too much. It is an evidence that first is better than second, but for the same reason second is better than sixth.

[OliverFA]

Nice to see you Aidun! I hope your holidays are goind well

Very good speech, I just would like to give my opinion about one point that you said:

Originally posted by Aidun
About honour I want to say this: I don't believe in honour in this game. I just heard ABBA singing on the radio "The Winner takes it all", whether he has backstabbed his allies, mad false promises, or played fairly, whether he played with a peaceful building strategy or a warmonger strategy.

Many of you are saying that honour is not important. I agree, but only to certain point. When honour means "I'd rather die than ask for help" it means nothing, but when honour means to follow treaties that have been signed, to build a reputation of a nation than can be trusted, then honour is very important.

I don't think that GS would be willing to help us if we weren't an honorable nation. I believe that Lego has acted without honour in respect to our treaty, and this is an added reason to side GS, and not them.

Other than this I agree with everything you said in terms of gameplay. I prefer not to comment politics (real politics) here

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by BigFree
I do not feel my post was any more harsh than his. I am on a team. I will not go around bad mouthing the decisions made in this game. He is threatening to quit because some of the "bad" choices that were made. If that is not insulting to those on the team, I do not know what else would be.

True, his post is hard, and I disagree with him in many aspects. That's why I have answered him. But I don't think that he has been unrespectful to us, and I think that everyone here deserves to be respected, specially the ones that disagree with the majority. First because they are person like you or me, and second because Otherwise we would be loosing one or two member with every major discussion. Let's friendly discuss our different opinions without losing the papers.

[BigFree]

You have a good point OliverFA. I apologize to GK for being disrespectfull. I hope you don't quit the team.

[OliverFA]

Good! I am sure that wathever the result of this war is, we will emerge stronger as a team

Now let's kick some arab ass!!!!

[BigFree]

Again, you have a very good point.

[GodKing]

Lot written since poly stopped letting me on.

I have not had a chance to read it, but rest assured that from teh glances I made, I thank you for your opinions.

I understand that this is just a game, and that you are all my friends. Even if some of the words were harsh, I understand to place them in context of this discussion. No hard feelings at all.