The Terrific Tangled Treaty Web

[Jazzy95]

12 minutes ago, Krihelion said:

You have made my day, thank you for addressing this customer service problem promptly. 

You may receive a brief survey on your experience today. 

[firingline]

3 hours ago, dane0 said:

30 more members than GATO

20 more members than KoRT

40 more members than NATO

50 more members than DT

50 more members than VE

50 more members than ODN

 

 

Yet all are larger than us on this web 🤷‍♂️

 

Might be strength, but that still doesn't explain VE being larger than us.

 

Hmm, strength seems more plausible then.

 

I don't know that the NS size is real-time so it's possible that at the last time the size of the bubbles were determined, you didn't meet the threshold?

 

I dunno, I'm literally just guessing here. I could ask, but that means I'd have to talk to Jazzy... and it's just not worth it.

[Duderonomy]

2 minutes ago, firingline said:

 

Hmm, strength seems more plausible then.

 

I don't know that the NS size is real-time so it's possible that at the last time the size of the bubbles were determined, you didn't meet the threshold?

 

I dunno, I'm literally just guessing here. I could ask, but that means I'd have to talk to Jazzy... and it's just not worth it.

Or you could literally just look in-game, bruh. There's a link for that. Edumacate yoself.

[firingline]

6 minutes ago, Duderonomy said:

Or you could literally just look in-game, bruh. There's a link for that. Edumacate yoself.

 

We're talking about the size of bubbles here.

[A1ph4 0m3ga]

Terrific work! I applaud the amount of effort and work that went into this project. Having working on an internal treaty web, I understand the work that went into this and am thoroughly impressed. Not that you needed to impress me, but you did it nonetheless. 

[firingline]

16 minutes ago, A1ph4 0m3ga said:

Terrific work! I applaud the amount of effort and work that went into this project. Having working on an internal treaty web, I understand the work that went into this and am thoroughly impressed. Not that you needed to impress me, but you did it nonetheless. 

 

First time in history CLAWS has impressed anyone. Good work @tehol!

[Johnny Apocalypse]

16 hours ago, Levonscott said:

Not to get too philosophical, but I think this is a good demonstration of human nature. Perhaps this was the inevitable end result. I think we tend towards friendship and mutual cooperation, over aggression and destruction. The better different AAs get to know each other and interact, the closer they become, and then they sign a treaty.

 

The more treaties, the more webby it all gets, and the less wars there are; that much is common sense. Much like in real life, where growing interconnectivity has lead to the effective abolition of war as a method of solving international disputes. Say what you will about the United Nations, but there hasn't been a world war in 70 years.

 

So yes, I think this is the perfect demonstration of why there is so much inertia, you're quite right. But I also suggest it's the perfect demonstration of humanity itself (not great for the game, but such is life?). Or maybe I'm thinking into things too much?

 

Woah now, don't let me stop you. Be as philosophical as you like, gotta shoot the !@#$ about something right? 

 

You aren't wrong, the game has played out long enough that most of the significant rivalries and feuds which could have shifted the political tectonics in the event of a global war are now dead and buried. Many of the best leaders we've seen have veni'd vidi'd and vici'd already. When you've beaten all your foes (or been beaten by them) there really is little incentive to keep going (obligatory shout-out to Alexander the Great)

 

The alternative is that people simply befriend all their former enemies. In a world where political gambits move at a snails pace and everyone knows everyone, it's inevitable that everyone eventually becomes friends in some form or another. The problem with this is that people are unable to draw the line between being a friend with someone where you would be talking about what's going on in your life/corner of the world (OOC) and being a vicious conniving Svengali to generate some actual dynamism into the RP.

 

For those of you who play the Civilization series; nobody ever wants to win a 'Diplomatic Victory' because it's such a painfully dull way for every player to go that route. You're just spending a few hundred turns building infrastructure and militaries that you'll never use. Abolition of war with regards to your analogy with the UN is not a bad thing in the slightest- IRL. But here? We need traitors, rogues, spin doctors, agent provocateurs and elaborate plots to see the overthrow of different entities. That doesn't mean we have to stop being friends to accomplish this. If I fell out with my pals for every game I beat one of 'em to death as Ethiopia in Civ V then I'd have no friends at all (except for you, Nebuchadnezzar ¬_¬ )

 

Like I said, you aren't wrong. It is a good demonstration of humanity inevitably coming together and finding themselves to be pals with people from all corners of the world through some series of convoluted chains that guarantee near-eternal safety from any bigger fish.

 

But aside from signing ODP after ODP and having a good ol' circlejerk with the diplomats who joined your server to get the treaty signed? What gameplay is there to even speak of? There's no visible evidence of political intrigue, or a whiff of ambition from anyone. We're all just playing it safe, lassoing ourselves to one another in one of the most boring BDSM sessions, where there's all this rope lying around and no domination to be seen. It's a nice chart and well put together but it'd be even nicer if it had to be re-made more frequently because of political tides which shift more freely.

 

 

tl;dr - People should stop signing treaties with alliances already tied up in the web and kidding themselves into thinking it's some kind of spectacular event. Forge your own FA paths as independents, if your allies start forging paths that contradict yours? Remove that link for the sake of your own coherent gameplay, so what if you get rolled? At least you did what you wanted- not what everyone else wanted.

 

Or in other words:

 

[LittleRena]

Neat!

 

Not as complicated as back in the day, but more close together...

[Tevron]

6 hours ago, dane0 said:

30 more members than GATO

20 more members than KoRT

40 more members than NATO

50 more members than DT

50 more members than VE

50 more members than ODN

 

 

Yet all are larger than us on this web 🤷‍♂️

 

Might be strength, but that still doesn't explain VE being larger than us.

If I had to guess it's because the circle sizes were from an earlier version when NG was ranked like 20th or whatever.

[Duderonomy]

6 hours ago, firingline said:

 

We're talking about the size of bubbles here.

Don't you burst my bubble.

[Levonscott]

6 hours ago, Johnny Apocalypse said:

Abolition of war with regards to your analogy with the UN is not a bad thing in the slightest- IRL. But here? We need traitors, rogues, spin doctors, agent provocateurs and elaborate plots to see the overthrow of different entities.

That's pretty much it, right? Such a result of human nature is good for society IRL, but damn, if it's not boring as hell for a game!

 

Most games typically have some function that actively pit one against another (in your Civilization example, a win condition - even one as boring as a diplomatic victory - result in competitiveness, and thus, the desire and need to crush your opponents); in CN, there is no real in-game impetus to go to war. There is no "end goal", other than the collection of pixels. Thus, any meaningful event is purely the result of the RP of individuals and their alliances. What's the easiest way to grow pixels? ODs, MDs, and Trade Agreements everywhere.

 

All this to say... Admin needs to give us a reason to go to war. Otherwise, we're going to end up min-maxing the game (and thus making it unfun) in our human nature to cooperate, in order to get bigger pixels on a screen.

[Johnny Apocalypse]

2 hours ago, Levonscott said:

That's pretty much it, right? Such a result of human nature is good for society IRL, but damn, if it's not boring as hell for a game!

 

Most games typically have some function that actively pit one against another (in your Civilization example, a win condition - even one as boring as a diplomatic victory - result in competitiveness, and thus, the desire and need to crush your opponents); in CN, there is no real in-game impetus to go to war. There is no "end goal", other than the collection of pixels. Thus, any meaningful event is purely the result of the RP of individuals and their alliances. What's the easiest way to grow pixels? ODs, MDs, and Trade Agreements everywhere.

 

All this to say... Admin needs to give us a reason to go to war. Otherwise, we're going to end up min-maxing the game (and thus making it unfun) in our human nature to cooperate, in order to get bigger pixels on a screen.

 

That is how this game is different though, it is an infinitely long game and so the parameters for victory are determined by the players not the administrator.

 

The fact that the players cannot conceive of something greater than signing the most treaties and assembling the biggerest coalition over the course of a year speaks volumes to the absolute void of ambition we have here. In the long long ago; NPO decided that they owned all of red team, no other alliances could exist there. They set that parameter themselves and we all had to just deal with it (my first AA was formed on red before we were told to clear off or get stomped) 

 

What do we have today? More Optional Defense Pacts, is everyone that terrified of committing to a FA direction properly? As if we didn't all reserve the option to defend whoever we want in the first place? The Moldavi Doctrine was never nullified, therefore all ODPs are not only redundant but also vain opportunities for endless circle-jerks; "boy what great allies we have, didn't we do well!" 

 

It's not upto Admin, it is upto us. I had my fun with this world, with the help of my friends we made it ours for the better part of a year. The stat-hoarding monoliths could do nothing about how we stomped around doing as we pleased. Instead of waiting for devs to set a winning condition for a reason to play? You just have to get creative yourself and not rely on an absent god to answer prayers.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Johnny Apocalypse

[jerdge]

My uneducated explanation is much simpler: this game exceedingly rewards seniority and there's no attrition or disincentive that goes against just staying there, doing little or nothing for any long period of time.

The seniors grew up but they didn't all leave the game, their interest for the game faded but they remained attached to their old big nations and alliances. They built a cluster of treaties to freeze everything they could, they have no incentive to put their old nations and alliances at risk. With time almost everyone became senior, and here you are.

 

If there was some mechanism that made stats disappear with time you'd see real action again. Good luck having anything like that implemented into the game, though. I won't hold my breath. (And I'm one of those seniors that moved on, anyway. Or though.)

[firingline]

53 minutes ago, jerdge said:

If there was some mechanism that made stats disappear with time you'd see real action again. Good luck having anything like that implemented into the game, though. I won't hold my breath. (And I'm one of those seniors that moved on, anyway. Or though.)

 

That's basically TE.

 

I think it's a combination of all of these things. The advantages of seniority are very real. It takes a long time to build a nation. I'll never be able to catch Steeldor, for example. It's one of the major flaws of the game.

 

But I think over time people grow more friendly with each other in general as well.

Edited September 20, 2021 by firingline

[jerdge]

6 hours ago, firingline said:

That's basically TE.

The Tournament Edition resets, I was talking of something more gradual.

[Johnkucka45]

I play Tournament edition as well , it's actually cool you guys must try it out for it's fast gameplay.

[Lucius Optimus]

TE sucks too. 

 

Same plotting, by the same people, everytime 

[Johnny Apocalypse]

12 hours ago, Lucius Optimus said:

TE sucks too. 

 

Same plotting, by the same people, everytime 

 

Herein lies the reason we gave up trying after 2 rounds of being sniped on day 6 by the same people utilising questionable methods to clip the wings of any potential challenger before the game had even warmed up.

 

It's like the speed-dating equivalent of coalition building for SE curbstomps but with less people in attendance.

[firingline]

52 minutes ago, Johnny Apocalypse said:

 

Herein lies the reason we gave up trying after 2 rounds of being sniped on day 6 by the same people utilising questionable methods to clip the wings of any potential challenger before the game had even warmed up.

 

It's like the speed-dating equivalent of coalition building for SE curbstomps but with less people in attendance.

 

Just gotta build and collect on day 6 tbh.

[Johnny Apocalypse]

2 minutes ago, firingline said:

 

Just gotta build and collect on day 6 tbh.

 

Which is what makes it a formulaic and deeply boring experience, No real variables are introduced for every new round, maybe a slight change in how many days until you can build x wonder or that you need y and z wonder's built before you can get x, Nothing meaningful that gives the game any depth for the players to get creative with.

 

Just play it the same way every time. Like I said, it's SE speed-dating, same mechanics but condensed and compressed to be played out toward a definitive end.  That's really the only actual difference; TE resets and starts the same game again and the same alliances use the same guides they've had for the past decade, while SE instead never resets but everyone still will never stop trying to play the politics according to the other playbook from that same era.

 

There are plenty of far more enjoyable, formulaic and rewarding games I can play instead if I need feed the dopamine feedback loop curse.

[Lollerobot]

Huh, this is neat. Is NPO really in 4 out of 6 existing bloc? I mean I guess they are big but that seems a bit overkill.

[kerschbs]

8 hours ago, Lollerobot said:

Huh, this is neat. Is NPO really in 4 out of 6 existing bloc? I mean I guess they are big but that seems a bit overkill.

treaty overlap is real and the unfortunate side effect is no one does anything because of it. 

[JadenStar10]

A Nice Display of the webby web, appreciate it, though I would recommend adding pictures like the PnW one does @Jazzy95:

[Jazzy95]

1 hour ago, Suyash Adhikari said:

A Nice Display of the webby web, appreciate it, though I would recommend adding pictures like the PnW one does @Jazzy95:

 

I've thought about it. It mostly came down to me not wanting to manually go and grab URLs for all of the AA flags. If someone (anyone :D) is up to build that list of image URLs I'd be happy to connect and talk more about it.

[Lucius Optimus]

On 9/22/2021 at 12:29 AM, Lollerobot said:

Huh, this is neat. Is NPO really in 4 out of 6 existing bloc? I mean I guess they are big but that seems a bit overkill.

Where have you been?