CNES: The Flames of War (BETA)

[Lord_Iggy]

And thank you, Terrance, for offering a reasonable voice.

 

[Thlayli]

The so-called obvious fact that backstory was supposed to be irrelevant is Dachs and Kraznaya attempting some serious revisionism.

Again, either Crezth deliberately misrepresented the amount of importance backstory was going to play (see the original Beta post), or he was pressured into reducing its importance.

 

[Angst]

edit: spoiler'd due to charles being reasonable

Spoiler :

accusation of stuff i never said + ad hominem + personal attacks + things unsuitable for a family forum

i write to establish a setting for my nation. and there's nothing wrong with wanting people to enjoy or appreciate my work. i mean really dachs do you understand the forum as a concept; as a medium; why would i ever post this stuff here if i didn't put it on display for people to see? writing it for yourself and then displaying it in public for your own sake is absurd and counterinituitive.

but i assume that you, when you write stories, simply keep them for yourself and not upload them on this forum. because you know, the point of a forum isn't interaction between parties.

your whole idea of me being an attention whore has merit sometimes (like when i'm drunk or i want nk's musical brilliance to teach me what i did right or wrong with a piece) but right now you're universalizing it which practically only fails to demonstrate a surprising disability to distinguish bad chat trolling from seriousness. you do demonstrate another thing, however: that you're generally an effin horrible person person to talk to in here.

anyways:

now i assume that the arrogant lardheads that roam the nesing forums have social lives, but if they have any resemblance to the irl douches i encounter in my life, you probably have a really hard time getting a significant amount of people to like you. and if dachs, well, i don't know your real life, but if the above is any kind of resembling your social situation, perhaps you should try actually being a nice person sometimes.

i mean, i've spent so much energy being apologetic for some of you guys when encountering people outside this forum or overlooking things when my buds in here had problems with harassment, but the fact that you bring in this kind of content to this kind of fora makes me really want to keep this attitude towards you. i'm not sure you're deserving of some of the respect you enjoy in here.

personal attacks. whatya know man. you guys actually had me do that. it feels strange, i haven't done it in a while, but hey surprise moronity breeds moronity

 

[Kraznaya]

The so-called obvious fact that backstory was supposed to be irrelevant is Dachs and Kraznaya attempting some serious revisionism.

Again, either Crezth deliberately misrepresented the amount of importance backstory was going to play (see the original Beta post), or he was pressured into reducing its importance.

Hmm. Really now.

Cultures

A large part of this pre-thread will be in establishing shared cultural heritages for the various regions of the map. This process will allow any and all applicants to write in submissions for how they feel the culture of a particular region or regions might look in an alternate universe of our devising. As realism is not the prime objective of this NES, scrutiny of applications will be limited to a much broader sense of what constitutes as “plausible” or not.

So what am I looking for with cultural submissions then? Well, for starters, a broadly original industrial (or even pre-industrial) society concept that may or may not be sprinkled liberally with real-world references. A good approach would be to envision what you want - a mostly agrarian society, say, with a large, deeply religious population - and then to look at the map, and other people’s submissions, and attempt to fit your concept into the context of The World (such as it is).

For this purpose, submissions will be split into two phases, each its own separate category: the first phase will be the Broad Cultural Spheres phase, where players submit a very general overview of the cultural mores and the history of one of a number of large regions. This will be focused more on style, feel, and good writing from a historical perspective to help establish a working context that others can engage with more easily. An example would be a region that has been home to a particularly large number of steppe nomads through its history. The second phase will be the Specific Culture phase, where players submit a more specific history of the culture, people, and history of one (or more) provinces. These should attempt to fit the spirit and themes established in the first phase. There will be more details on exactly what I’m looking for in the future, but this is a broad overview of what to expect.

What effect these submissions will have on the game will impact the way units from certain regions look, what kind of cultural bonuses/maluses that nations in those regions have access to, and the kinds of resources, the type of terrain, and the level of industrialization specific to each province in a region.

The map will serve a tabula rasa for this purpose; and you, my dear reader, are the master painter. Or, well, at least a child with a crayon. At least.

Until such a time as the map is completed, cultural submissions will likely not be accepted off-hand. This section will be intended for documenting cultural submissions and their proposed bonuses/maluses.

PROGRESS:
{----------} 0% (Current: Macro culture)

Last edited by Crezth; Jun 26, 2012 at 03:15 PM.

Basic Proto-Cultural Proposal Post

Why cultures?

As you all know, CNESI: Insert Title Here is essentially a board-game war-game. However, one of the weaknesses of Flowers on the Razor Wire was its near-total lack of backstory. It's important to have, if not extremely compelling reasons for your war of aggrandizement, a compelling aesthetic to make it with.

The goal of this phase is not to make an uber-detailed alternate history replete with a cast of thousands of historical figures and battles and whatnot.

Instead, it's to hash out interesting cultural aesthetics which will make people *care* about their little collection of sprites and territories, and develop realistic reasons why you might hate, love, or want to conquer or ally with your neighbors, in addition to providing underpinnings for research and doctrinal decisions. It is *also* to prevent the Pseudo-Sino Imperial Empire from starting right next to La Republicca di Not-Italia, since that'd be incongruous and strange for people.

---

Okay, what then?

With these goals in mind, let's begin some basic analysis of the macrohistorical trends I believe this map presents us. I have provided a basic overlay of the climate map with my findings:



Ye gods, circles?

Yes. Red circles represent my proposals for Cradle Regions, or early centers of urbanization and agriculture. You all know what a cradle is. The larger blue circles are intended to be Classical Expansion Regions. An OTL comparison for this would be the Mediterranean Sea around 0 CE. These regions should be a meeting point and potential melting pot for multiple proto-classical cultures, such as Semites, Latins, Greeks and Celts.

The larger pink circles represent Early Modern Expansion Regions. This is to say, once the mastery of sea power, gunpowder, and cultural colonization have begun, or new states have emerged on the fringes of the Classical Expansion Regions (e.g. Britain, Germany, Arabia, Mongolia), larger regions and trans-regional empires will emerge. Maritime power, powerful ideological and economic imperatives, and relentlessly advancing technology in the 'core regions' of the world will become trends.

These regions will represent sub-global entrepots of trade and communication such as the economic zone of the Atlantic Seaboard which gradually evolved into the popular conception of the 'West', and the various states on the western fringes of the Pacific which acquired a vaguely similar cultural and linguistic aesthetic as the 'Far East'.

Finally, the black circles represent Cultural Isolates. These are regions where, by merit of their geographic isolation, cultures separated from the emerging global trade network will arise. These cultures can later make their mark on the 'civilized' world by joining it or invading it, but they are excellent places for markedly unique cultures that would be particularly resistant to conquest, at least at first.

I think this provides a decent guideline to begin working off of.
__________________

Post Date: Jun 26, 2012, 10:35 AM
Last edited by Thlayli; Jun 26, 2012 at 10:40 AM.

 

[Crezth]

This conversation is over.

My original position was that the cultural context should be an important part of the game, but as time went on a few factors brought this down a few pegs on my priorities list.

For one, development of the game rules and combat system were far more interesting to me, personally, and I don't trust myself to write any amount of prose in any depth for any length of time. This is one reason I eventually placed it on Thlayli's shoulders, because he was interested and I trusted that he would be able to take care of it to his satisfaction.

The other reason was that interest in the cultural submissions seemed minimal compared to what I had originally been convinced was the case, an impression that grew stronger as time went on with no submissions of any type. Only when I downshifted the scale of the submissions and delegated the process to Thlayli on whole did I receive any indication that interest was alive and well. Upon so doing, in fact, I remember at least one off-the-cuff post of "oh well I don't care anymore," which struck me as something of a surprise. For the one thing, I hadn't - at this point, anyway - actually relegated the cultural context to a bit part just yet. I had simply put it all in Thlayli's hands, and the outrage at this is perplexing because it wasn't like anyone was communicating to me about cultural stuff anyway, so I made the de jure case the de facto reality. At any rate, it represents a misinterpretation on my part - which Thlayli comedically played up as the death of CNES in general. That rather poisoned the well for me, despite my later attempts at backpedaling and reconciliation. But I realized the cause for the distress and it made me wonder if it was worth it. I figured, however, that the "storyist" crew would play by their own rules and be happy to do so.

The final "nail in the coffin" as it were came after the first update when I and the "math nerd" crew realized that there was a nontrivial quantity of bugs, errors, and inconsistencies in the rules and the code, evident in the way certain scenarios played out in the first round's battles. I was raked over the coals because these problems should not exist in what is ostensibly the full release of an NES. Which is true, and a fair point; make no mistake. Since the battle system was my baby at this point, this hurt and I realized that it'd be disingenuous and counterproductive to hobble along under the auspices of a fully functioning NES. So I had to make a decision, and I opted to downgrade the overall breadth of the NES and shift it so that it focused mostly on balancing the rules system. This would be my core interest, anyhow, because I couldn't very well run an NES with any atmosphere worth a damn before it has a ruleset worthy of the title. I adopted a policy of allowing people to do what they willed with their societies, and left it at that, again rationalizing that the storyists would make their own fun. It was not exactly a clear shift, but it was qualified as a moderator note at the end of one of the updates and I edited the first line of the original post as a disclaimer to this effect, so I figured that was clear enough. I was wrong, apparently.

Now I want to make this abundantly clear: my focus with this particular NES, the one with (BETA) plastered in the thread title, is to vet the system and prime it so that CNES I can be a consistently working system (and yeah, the full-release of CNES I will feature more flavor in that regard, all the more heartily endorsed by a mod no longer pulling his hair out over the fact that Business & Individualism is freaking imbalanced). If you want to make your own fun in the form of fictions to grease the wheels of progress, you go right ahead. It is no concern of mine, and as terrance mentions it tickles me when people do so. His stories in Diplomacy were the best part of that abortion of a forum game. I appreciate the storyists and I appreciate the mathists. But the storyists should not expect me to place their context at the forefront of what is, for all intents and purposes, at this point in time, a development stage for a ruleset that I can use for other NESes where there will be time for stuff like that.

But if mod points are where we're going to start throwing tantrums, then fine. I'm removing them from this NES entirely. If you want sprite changes and the like, contact me separately - either by PM or on #nes - and I'll see what I can do within reason. I like to think I've been very tolerant of graphical changes thus far, even when they didn't include spending mod points. The only real limiting factor on them is time on my part, and to wit I'd like to apologize to those who are overdue for a sprite change.

I hope that settles this debate. Anyone who would like to continue to rage and can either PM me or contact me over #nes. And Thlayli, if you want to slit my throat for selling you out, I understand. Just remember that I wouldn't even be doing this NES if it wasn't for you and so far it has been a lot of work to maintain so I'd appreciate it if you could be a little more patient and a lot less passive-aggressive with me.

 

[Masada]

The so-called obvious fact that backstory was supposed to be irrelevant is Dachs and Kraznaya attempting some serious revisionism.

Down with the revisionist counter-revolutionary Kraz-Dachs clique! Hail comrade Thlayli!

 

[ChiefDesigner]

I know how frustrating modding a game is, and I think you've been doing a bang-up job of it. Certainly one of the top three mods I've had the pleasure to play a game with, and I've been at this a *long* time.

(and yeah, the full-release of CNES I will feature more flavor in that regard, all the more heartily endorsed by a mod no longer pulling his hair out over the fact that Business & Individualism is freaking imbalanced)

Is this something you're looking for suggestions to fix?

 

[Crezth]

I'm always open to balance recommendations. Some take this invitation more readily to heart (*cough* Kraznaya *cough* ) than others, however.

 

[Thlayli]

You have to know that the degree of whining I put into a NES/throw at the mod is directly proportional to how much I actually care about the NES.

So, I apologize for any consternation I've caused. Truly. You're a great mod Crezth.

 

[Angst]

also have to note that my ******ations were purely due to care

the incessant bickering is mostly because people care, crezth

even with us being dicks, do remember that

 

[Nuka-sama]

I'm quite happy for the backstory, as it allows me to play in character. I mean, I would be lost, both as a player, and as a nation without it in deciding what motives drive decisions in the PRFK

 

[Daftpanzer]

I'm quite happy for the backstory, as it allows me to play in character. I mean, I would be lost, both as a player, and as a nation without it in deciding what motives drive decisions in the PRFK

A hint of sarcasm here? Not cool bro. Its one thing not to be bothered about backstory, but you went to the extreme of creating a LOLnation. I do hope in the 'full' version there won't be LOLnations!

 

[Lord_Iggy]

It's only a LOLnation if the joke is funny.

 

[Angst]

I thought it was pretty lol.

 

[Daftpanzer]

LULZnation may be a better term!

or Trollnation

Trollfaction?

 

[Terrance888]

Its a Lolpire, A Trollpublic, A RAEGarchy.

 

[Nuka-sama]

I assure you, the issue of the PRFK is a grave one, one that I will be using completely IC motives to resolve. The people of the PRFK have one purpose, and I will guide them to their destiny

 

[Lord_Iggy]

The deadline is past, btw, so you guys who haven't sent had better get orders in now and beg for the dark lord Crezth's mercy.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: Please do not bring #NES into the forum as a tool to attack or embarrass others. It's recent use in this thread has been deleted. Chat has its own style and lax rules and folks post there differently than we allow here. Unless it is constructive or game related, what happens in chat should stay in chat. Thanks.

 

[Dachs]

hihihi