[PLAYERS STAY OUT!] Lurker Thread - PB5 Starts A Day Late & Dollar Short

[spacetyrantxenu]

It would certainly be in bad faith to break the deal short of paying back the loan. I don't see any of these guys doing something like that.

[SevenSpirits]

Interesting. I'd consider it in bad faith to NOT consider breaking the loan a possibility. The main reason to play with AI diplo is so these sorts of things are not guaranteed.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I guess it depends what you want to get out of an AI diplo game. For me it's not spending a lot of time doing chats and emails if I don't have time for it. I don't think I'd be too enthusiastic about having someone break a deal with me. Then again, there are in game mechanisms for dealing with a deal breaker.

[novice]

I guess it depends what you want to get out of an AI diplo game. For me it's not spending a lot of time doing chats and emails if I don't have time for it.

That's my motivation too - it's a less clunky way of doing the "in-game diplo only" thing that we did in PBEM13, but it still makes it so that you only engage in diplomacy when you're actually playing the turn. There are side effects to AI diplo, though...

[SevenSpirits]

Around when we first started doing AI diplo, there was an incredible amount of frustration with long NAPs that, while perfectly breakable in good faith within the rules and expectations of the game, were hardly ever broken because people wanted to preserve their reputation. Game after game was decided by early NAPs that allowed players to run token militaries late into the game and made games pretty boring for lurkers, who always always always want bloodshed.

As time has gone on we've tried various ways of solving the NAP problem, including No Talking, Always War, public thread only diplo, and PB7 which you are quite familiar with, where the idea was to be as backstabby as humanly possible. I wish there were some way to have diplo without NAPs, because I love chatting with people about the game. But for me, making military strategy a persistent part of the game is worth far more than this.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Couldn't we just stipulate in the game setup thread for the hypothetical Next PBEM that there is diplomacy with no NAPs? There would have to be some expectation of backstabbing between trade partners, otherwise their trading could effectively be like a NAP. The trouble is that you won't be able to determine if two players were doing a de facto NAP without having a specific agreement in place, but maybe the prevailing rules in the game setup would emphasize the intent to punish someone pushing a hard farmer's gambit? I have no idea how to make that happen, but maybe it would work. Players who like diplo (or have time to do it -- same thing!) can have it, players and mostly lurkers who abhor NAPs can do without them. What could possibly go wrong?

[NobleHelium]

Uh doesn't Cyneheard have Machinery? Why wasn't his GG upgraded to a mace for free?

[NobleHelium]

Um, I have a big problem.

Somehow a bunch of my resources are missing form my city screens and all my cities are starving.

I think it might have something to do with pauses and resource requests but I'm not sure what has happened.

Looks like the equivalent of that super-sabotage scenario has happened...

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I think Nakor giving Iron to Commodore was a mistake. Unlike in other cases, Nakor is merely mid level. What he wants is for the world to present a united front against the Runaway™, he wants less chaos around the world. And that includes letting someone take someone else's land so they remain competitive. Krill and the coming anti-Krill coalition should be vying for Commodore's favour.

Also, WHALE sounds like a catchy name for an anti-Krill coalition

[WilliamLP]

Also, WHALE sounds like a catchy name for an anti-Krill coalition

It opens its mouth, and scoops up and consumes all his cites! How effective can a coalition be with AI diplo, even though it's clearly going to be necessary? The temptation to defect against a neighbor might be high, and it doesn't help that there is a pretty clear #2 with the most to gain.