Sharing forum members

[Arnelos]

The idea has come up again in chat between GS and RP of allowing a member from each forum to have access to the other forum for purposes of coordination.

I am strongly against this idea.

The reason is that while a short-term alliance between RP and GS on the basis of a shared threat from ND and GoW is only limitedly threatening to the rest of the planet and I can convince Legoland (as I am doing) that it does not necessarily mean a long-term commitment, the knowledge that we are sharing forums is likely to make them believe that our teams are FAR closer and thus far more of a threat to the world at large.

The key factor is that while I'm not counting on the support of Legoland for our cause, I'd like to at least prevent their support for ND and GoW.

I'm fine with us having joint chats with them, I'm even fine with us conducting our turnchats in a single channel together. What I'm NOT fine with is anything that is going to make it blatantly obvious to Legoland that we are so closely tied to Gathering Storm that we might be incapable of doing anything outside of their notice or potentially even their approval.

If someone such as BigFree, who is as publicly visible as he is, has the Gathering Storm logo next to his avatar, people are going to notice. Noticing, it will give GoW and ND ammunition to use on Legoland for convincing Legoland to help them... because such a closely tied alliance with the most powerful civ in the game (GS) represents a far greater threat to Legoland than what I'm trying to convince them exists.

I'm convinced that we can work closely with GS in the form of being together in a single chatroom.... everyone, please add MilOps to your IRC performs... and GS should do the same (I'll send another PM suggesting this...). MilOps should become a permanent channel much as civ3rp is. If the channel remains hidden (thank you BF!!!) and since it is directly related to planning military matters, the rest of the world is unlikely to be overly spooked by its existence (even if known, which I'd prefer they didn't).

We do not need to have access to each others' forums and we certainly don't want the potential consequences of having it.

We're just going to have to trust one another.

[BigFree]

For me, it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of manhours available to get the job done and keeping the pace of the game going. GS and RP simply doesn't have enough members or manhours to do all things we need to do for each teams turn. As a community, we have too many games going on. I myself am stretched thin ATM with school, work, family, girlfriend, ISDG, PTWDG, PTWDG2, SPDG3, numerous PBEM's, Diplomacy game, ect....

Why would there be any ethical problems? What could be in eachother forums that we could not simple tell them or copy and pastes for them? The only reason we don't do either is that it is time consuming and we could not realisticaly get it done for each turn and have the game move at an acceptable pace.

I give the idea a big !

[Arnelos]

Did you even read my post?

I didn't object to the trust issue (though I object to that as well), I object to the PERCEPTION issue.

What I'm concerned about is how other teams would PERCEIVE the fact that we were able to view every d*mn thing written on another team's forum, including the ENTIRE HISTORY of everything they've written in their forum about us and about every other team.

Sharing our forums is the equivalent of two players in a game of Diplomacy allowing each other to invade the sanctity of each others' private thoughts.

It's more than an issue of trust, it's an issue of privacy. In essence, as far as relations toward the team you gave this power to, you have revoked your right to have a private forum. The fact that this means that the two teams can unconditionally trust one another is not good, but bad... it destroys the game balance and EVERYONE will realize this.

My concern, even more than that I think that the game balance should not be so destroyed, is that I realize how much it will turn all other teams against us if we seem to be winning this war. Because if we seem to be winning this war and we're so deeply in cahoots with Gathering Storm that we've revoked the right to a private forum with them, EVERYONE ELSE is going to do EVERYTHING in their power to stop us.

At least, for now, the uninvolved powers are remaining primarily on the sidelines... it may even be possible to trick one or both of them into helping us. Doing this will certainly drive them away from helping us and almost certainly send them into the enemy's camp.

[OliverFA]

I think that the reason given by Arnelos is a very important reason.

If ND or GoW notice someone sharing the GS and RP logos, then they will have a very very powerful argument to convince Lego to side with them.

We don't want that to happen. Don't we? It's better that these builders remain peacefully seated at their huge continent stacking block over block. I mean... brick over brick.

[astrologix]

I support you, Arnelos

[Togas]

Agreed. If we share forums, we're essentially one team. Such an advantage would tie us eternally to GS and force Legoland to side with GoW/ND against us. Legoland wants to win and still sees GS as their long-term rival. The only way we can keep Lego from getting involved in our war is to convince them that we remain independant and that once we win this war, we'll go back to being an independent nation.

--Togas

[Nuclear Winter]

I am against this idea ,too, for the reasons stated above.
Also, we still want to keep some independence, eh?

[Aidun]

Alhough I argued in the mainforum thread that I think teams should be free to decide how much they want to be involved with each other and how much information they share and in which way, I think that Arnelos is right that "unification"of GS and RP is something that is far too risky, at this moment. We could consider it later when we together posess Bob and Estonia.

Soldier Aidun of the Royal Spanish Army

[History Guy]

No, blast it. If they see what we've written in the past, they'll never trust us again.