Comments on "Among Friends?"

[Hydro]

Marid Audran kindly pointed out that I had dropped the “Among Friends?” thread that Master Builder and I started an embarrassingly long time ago. So, in deference to MA and others who might have been following Zak and Pravin in their travails on Planet I am posting the rest.

Note that I am still cleaning up the horrendous text, which is a royal pain due to cut-and-paste from e-mails - lots of embedded gibberish. It takes 5-10 minutes per message – ack!! I think Master Builder and I only lost one year of posts, which is pretty good considering.

This will be one way I can clear my conscience for the New Year!

Next - finishing (**gasp**) Spartan Chronicles!!!

[Marid Audran]

I've brought myself up to speed with the some 60 years worth of logs you have freshly uploaded in the "Among Friends?" thread and continue to be as engrossed as I was before. From the start there isn't much doubt in my mind that your average expert, red-blooded pragmatic SMAC-ist would have annexed Data Angel land without a moment's thought early in the game, if he was the PKs, ditto the University towards the Morganites, simply for the sake of securing land, borders, a concise advantage, expelling one more AI nuisance earlier on than usual. "Peacekeeping Enforcement Policy" indeed! (found myself chuckling at Hydro's wry denotion of MB's early dealings with the Data Angels )

However , true to the strident role-playing bylines of these games, Masterbuilder went to great lengths to appropiately portray Peacekeeper behavior, that is, going through great lengths to make peace with one's neighbors, even the annoying ones infringing on potential territory, and in fact broker peace betwixt other nations, even if it's none of their factional business, like an inter-factional nanny. Additionally, true to University proclivity of non-interference and peaceful, secluded research Hydro refrains from stomping out the Morgans, even if it'd be easy to accomplish.

It's funny that Masterbuilder and Hydro set up this game as an attempt at a widespread Builders' game, with an absence of Momentum factions, but in some ways there is more tension in this game than the one where Hydro and MB played as Dee and Yang, respectively. In particular, there was a real train-wreck fascination quailty around the years 2230-2240 when PK-Uni relations just deterioated out of control over the Roze/Vendetta/Pact issue and neither party was really going to give an inch. All of a sudden the Uni and PKs are at Vendetta and there's seething over "buffer zones" and the like. I was curious if Josh was going to conduct diplomancy in a signifigantly different way from Lal but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, apparently.

Kudos to the subtlties of prose style in role-playing. MB veers more to long-winded grandiloquent and sweeping signatures, Hydro by is more trenchant and signs with a simple abbreviated name. Hydro is more lazzie-faire and simpler in concepts of diplomacy, apropos to the introverted University, MB however feels pressured to ensure "peace and at all costs" and plays by a dizzying set of rules, exceptions, examples, etc, in diplomacy, in the unenviable position of playing "Dad" to every faction on the planet. The Parent-Child analogy to Lal and Roze is particularly apt, considering her behavior. Actually, all AI personifications of their factions is pretty on par; Morgan with his probe infractions, Domai is somewhat blithe to what's going on, Aki perfects her little cyborgs as clear as clockwork, Roze is acting like a whiny punk.

I like some of the cracks that each player get in at each other's expense from time to time. I though Lal wondering if Zak really wrote his own missives anymore or if he passed them off to a graduate student to mad lib in for him like writting a term paper was hilarious. Zak accusing Lal of diplomatic hypocrisy is probably something most Apolytoners can relate with.

Kudos again to the players for adroitly switching gears in faction profiles. Hydro has played Dee and Zak, and compre Dee's empathic sensibilities and eco-sensitivity to Zak tersely talking about exterminating native life/fungus. And MasterBuilder's personification of Yang vs. Lal is a complete 180. Anyway, looking forward to the rest Hydro, I'm glad playing these tete-a-tete PBEM games continues to invigorate your interest in SMAC/X. Keep it up and keep us updated!

[Hydro]

MA - I'm really glad you've like it! The last posts, through MY 2294, have been posted.

The final document was 1.1 mb in Word and 307 pages (New Times Roman 12 font). So, it was quite a lenthy effort, but worth it all.

Hydro