RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

I find it somewhat amusing that if we were to seriously whip down our largest cities, our soldier count would exceed our total population in the demographics screen. How do you figure...

[Ellimist]

Gotta be either machines or mercenaries.

[Bobchillingworth]

Gotta be either machines or mercenaries.

Or zombies

[spacetyrantxenu]

Or zombies

I think zombies would be unfair until someone is able to tech chainsaws as a counter.

[Lord Parkin]

Next turn I'm joining Rego in the war against Plako, so I'll take the first half of the timer. It all works out neatly that way: Mackoti, Rego and I play in the first half; Plako, Nakor and Luddite play in the second half.

The only minor issue is Locke, but (a) I'm almost certain he won't be joining the war initially, (b) his war with Adlain is almost over anyway, and © it's possible he may be switching to the second half of his own accord given Adlain's missed turn. So there shouldn't be any problems there. If he does decide to join the war with me before he's wiped out Adlain (which I severely doubt), he can always just play in both halves of the timer - making moves against Adlain in the first half, and moves against me in the second half. I wouldn't have a problem with that... I trust him not to take advantage of any possibilities for double moves.

Anyway, I've played in the first 6 hours of this turn (the turn before the war declaration), as per the rules. In fact I had all units in place at the start of this turn, and won't be performing any further actions or movements this turn. I've left the turn unended only so I can make sure it rolls over at a predictable time for me to play, as Friday is going to be enough of a hectic day for me without having to stay up through the early hours of the morning.

[Lord Parkin]

I seem to recall someone was interested in our post Golden Age demographics... so here we are. We've still got a good lead in GNP and MFG, despite lacking Bureaucracy and any foreign trade routes. Locke's really starting to push ahead in land area; we're down to third now. Food is a bit low for us at the moment due to some whipping and drafting, but that'll recover soon enough.

The good news is that our soldier count is rather impressive. Let's hope it pays off.

[Ellimist]

I actually feel that players agree to NAP agreements too easily, and adhere to them too strongly.

Not sure about the former statement, but I definitely don't agree with the latter. If you tell someone "I promise I will not attack you until at least turn X", then you break that promise without significant justification, then your words are worthless. What reason does anyone have to trust anything you say in the future?

I don't believe there's any inherent problem with NAP's specifically; it's more the process of diplomacy in general that results in the (usually) strong adherence to NAP's and other deals. It's all about people being able to trust that when you say you'll do something, you'll follow through on it. If you can't be trusted to keep to your word, then what reason does anyone have to maintain a friendship with you - or to befriend you in future?

I'd like to clarify my statement a bit.

In this game, everybody was willing to sign super long NAP agreements with you even though you had no military. (Clearly, this reflects well on your diplomatic skills.) Then, they were unwilling to revoke those agreements even though you had no military and were running away with the game.
Obviously this has worked out well for you, and you deserve credit for getting everyone make agreements that were very beneficial to you, but this game has highlighted some rather fundamental flaws with NAP proliferation in general.

The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is the combination of these two things.
If a NAP is an unbreakable super-serious oath, players agree to them too much.
If it's something less serious that everybody agrees to with everybody most of the time, then breaking one shouldn't be a very big deal.

[Lord Parkin]

In this game, everybody was willing to sign super long NAP agreements with you even though you had no military.

You've got the cause and effect backwards. I had little military because I had existing NAPs with my neighbours. As you can see, as soon as my neighbours decided not to renew their NAPs, I built a lot of military. Do you really think if people had refused to renew/sign NAPs with me earlier, I wouldn't have built up military then?

It's easy to look at the game through graphs in an armchair and say "oh, his power was low here, you should have attacked then". The fact of the matter is that there is a whole complex web of cause and effect that is all too often overlooked. If - at a point in the past when my power was low - someone had started acting in a hostile manner, or being suspiciously silent, or having unexpected rises in power, or displaying any of a number of other almost impossible to conceal tells... I would have noticed and reacted accordingly. Any other competent player would notice and react to the tells too.

It's not an accident that I started building up exactly when I did in this game. If there had been suspicious activity earlier I would have shifted back my buildup time accordingly. You can't just point to a dip in the power graph and say "this was when you should have attacked"... because if preparations had been made for an attack, that dip would not exist. It would have been replaced by a rising slope.

By the way, I wasn't alone in using NAPs to my advantage. Many other folks - including Locke and Rego - built little military for a long time because they also made use of their NAPs. The point is, it's a non-aggression pact, so you're not supposed to be preparing for war with that person. If you're building units heavily while other nations have said they won't attack you, you're either intending on something very sneaky (in which case perceptive people will pick up on it), or you're not doing it right. People will notice if you're building up troops while in a long NAP with them - unless you're completely twofaced, in which case you might get away with something sneaky once, but never again afterwards.

Then, they were unwilling to revoke those agreements even though you had no military and were running away with the game.

You're missing the point. If you view a NAP as something that can be revoked when you decide you no longer want it, then your words are meaningless. It's effectively like saying to someone "I promise not to attack you unless I feel like it". Or "let's agree not to attack one another unless we want to". Now if you find someone that's happy to agree to something like that, then good for you. But you'll find that most folks will view such agreements for the pointless, time-wasting gibberish that they are. They're not even agreements, they're nothing.

If a NAP is an unbreakable super-serious oath, players agree to them too much.
If it's something less serious that everybody agrees to with everybody most of the time, then breaking one shouldn't be a very big deal.

NAPs are by no means unbreakable. But by going back on a promise you've made, you can't sidestep the consequences of that action, which is what you seem to be trying to advocate.

NAPs are certainly not as completely ironclad and unbreakable as you suggest, but players do need to consider that their actions will have consequences, and make their decisions based on that. If you want to play in a game where your decisions have no consequences, play Always War with no diplomacy allowed. In a regular game, you can't just do whatever the hell you want all the time and get away with it. People won't put up with that for long, and you'll soon be screwed.

[Cyneheard]

What this game has reinforced for me is that a NAP should never be signed for as long as those NAPs were. It's not that you had NAPs with everybody. It's that you basically had NAPs that lasted for about 50t or so, so you'd always have way too much warning. Even 20t is plenty of time to build an army (as you did), but 20t = enough time to organize something IF one realizes that one's opponent is pulling away from the game. If you'd had to build this massive army at, say, T150, you'd have never had the massive tech advantage that's allowed you to throw Destroyers and MGs etc. against clearly inferior units.

[Ellimist]

You've got the cause and effect backwards. I had little military because I had existing NAPs with my neighbours. As you can see, as soon as my neighbours decided not to renew their NAPs, I built a lot of military. Do you really think if people had refused to renew/sign NAPs with me earlier, I wouldn't have built up military then?

You didn't need a military because of your long NAPs with everybody. Of course that's true, that wasn't the point. My point was, why would anybody think they need a NAP with somebody who has no military?

If - at a point in the past when my power was low - someone had started acting in a hostile manner, or being suspiciously silent, or having unexpected rises in power, or displaying any of a number of other almost impossible to conceal tells... I would have noticed and reacted accordingly. Any other competent player would notice and react to the tells too.

It's not an accident that I started building up exactly when I did in this game. If there had been suspicious activity earlier I would have shifted back my buildup time accordingly.

Of course. Adlain's neighbors had a massive build up in power graph and Adlain was slow to react to it. Clearly you didn't make the same mistake. As you said, any competent player would take precautions.