Does anyone actually build Beasts of Agares?

[Monkeyfinger]

Torture is different because if used, it tends to be reserved for people who deserve it. Nothing morally wrong about that.

 

[Randolph]

Hummmm... Torture is used on people who have information that you want. The correlation between that and "deserving" torture (whatever that means) is going to be far from perfect. Even if you can say that they “deserve” it, you’re not doing it because they deserve it, you’re doing it to get information. That strikes me as highly suspect in terms of moral justification. If two people commit the same (horrible) act, but one has information that you want, why should that person suffer and not the other?

Unless you’re thinking of torture as a punishment rather than a means of obtaining information? That seems like a pretty separate issue, the primary debate about torture is its use as an interrogation method, not as a punishment.

 

[psychoak]

I kinda like the guys. The build time is a little high, but the pop drop really isn't a big deal. Four pop tends to be four turns. The revolt is a little more annoying, but it's more national units.

I would say that if they had two speed they'd be a hell of a lot more worth it though. 1 speed demon units are a real pain in the ass. I like using them as calibim with the natural inclination towards going for the tech right away with losha there, them and eidolons both end up needing mobility promoted just to be useful with vampire stacks.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You know, US Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia recently stated that using torture could not be considered cruel and unusual punishment (and thus be baned by the Constitution) specifically because it is not punishment (he didn't try to claim it wasn't cruel or unusual).

(Cruel punishments also can't be unconstitutional anyway so longs as you use them frequently, right?)

 

[Fenboy]

You realise this is the AV we are talking about here. They have civics like Sacrafice the weak. Normal social dynamics certainly don't apply to AV occupations!

Al

There's a great quote on this subject by Nick Cohen, paraphrasing Saddam Hussein:

Fools say we kill without purpose. They can't grasp that fear works. Gassing works. Torture works. All the economic and social movements that the womanly intellectuals you allow to live in your countries claim will change society will be stopped if the men with the guns say they should stop. And not only guns. Here in Iraq all industrial implements have a dual purpose. When we imported a machine for shredding plastic, we didn't let it stand idle when its work was done. We dropped prisoners in head first, if they were minor criminals, or feet first if they deserved a slower death. If men won't talk, their wives are suspended from their hair or raped to encourage their husbands to help the police with their inquiries. If men or women talk against me, their tongues are cut out. If...Please forgive me, your eyes are glazing over and I can see I've lost your interest.

 

[Alzara]

There's a great quote on this subject by Nick Cohen, paraphrasing Saddam Hussein:

That sounds about right... the AV could be a little worse

"Criminals will be passed THE OTHER WAY through the planar gate"

Al

 

[Bad Player]

No, strength isn't really the problem, it is costs (not that boosting their strength too is a bad thing). Making them build almost instantly (with the normal population and anarchy cost) could be nice. It might be appropriate for them to just be a powerful permanent summon.

Extra movement could be good though. Hmm...if you made these summons then the mobility promotions from extension promotions would suffice. Of course, (when not using my modmod) Veil (High) Priests wouldn't be able to get extension. I was actually thinking that it could be nice to give archmages extra spells from the spheres associated with their religion.


Hmm...I was just thinking that it could be cool if they had the opposite mechanism as Repentant angels; they could gain strength with every win, and maybe lose it from remaining peaceful.

Oh, I also think replacing some of the holy strength with entropy affinity could be nice. I'm always a fan of affinity. (Hmm..does negative affinity still work? I was thinking that negative spirit/law/life affinity could balance out significant entropy/chaos affinity)


I was also thinking it could be cool if they didn't always take out 4 pop, but a random number. The unit's strength could scale based on the population it killed when summoned and maybe also the length of the revolt.

Having negative affinity for good mana types and positive affinity for bad mana types seems cool.

 

[Zobo]

The point is not actually the demons eating the citizenry discriminately.

Actually they might always reduce the population of the city they reside in

"You're resisiting? All right, I suppose, we'll bring these demons over to keep order. They also like humans. To eat."

You take the collaborators, and eat all the rest. If your evil civilization conquered a city from the order-worshipping Bannor, for example, you would need drastic measures anyway. Corruption, massive deaths and whatnot.

Besides, like Kael said about making war terribly costly, it's not really realism all the time. Fun counts.

 

[Alzara]

The point is not actually the demons eating the citizenry discriminately.

Actually they might always reduce the population of the city they reside in

"You're resisiting? All right, I suppose, we'll bring these demons over to keep order. They also like humans. To eat."

You take the collaborators, and eat all the rest. If your evil civilization conquered a city from the order-worshipping Bannor, for example, you would need drastic measures anyway. Corruption, massive deaths and whatnot.

Besides, like Kael said about making war terribly costly, it's not really realism all the time. Fun counts.

Hehe tasty Bannor

Al

 

[redazncommieDXP]

I guess what bothers me about the argument that "doing bad is ineffective" is that I feel it misses the fundamental issue. A similar example is over torture, whenever that issue comes up in politics someone always says that we shouldn't torture because torture is ineffective (ppl will make up anything just to make you stop). Now I'm no interrogation expert, and I have no idea whether that's true or not, but it misses the point. The reason why we shouldn't torture is because torturing someone is an evil act, and we shouldn't commit evil acts.

Likewise, the reason that governments shouldn't violently oppress their people isn't because such tactics may ultimately strengthen resistance, it's because it's wrong to violently oppress people. To argue over the practicality of such acts strikes me as giving too much credence to the premise that if they are effective, then it would be alright to do them.

Sorry for digressing from the topic so much.

You have to do what's effective. Great empires are not maintained by timidity. You shouldn't deny yourself useful tools like torture or extermination just because they're distasteful, because they ultimately do work.

Torture is not a perfect tool, and it is not always effective. But sometimes it is, and when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it.

The same goes for violent oppression, genocide, etc. Not always the right tool, but when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it just because it's "evil."

As far as Tibet goes, I've found that the more you dig and the more you research the issue, the more you realize it's a BS movement engineered by the United States. I mean, Tibet has prospered to such a tremendous degree under Communist rule you would think that would silence the naysayers (the infant mortality rate has dropped from an astronomical 43% to 0.661%, life expectancy has gone from 35 years to 67 years, ethnic Tibetan population has more than doubled). And when you look at the history of the situation, you'll notice that Tibet first rose up in 1956 thanks to CIA funding, and then when that funding disappeared the resistance died. Even today, the Dalai Lama's "Government-In-Exile" receives the bulk of it's funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, which, if you know anything about them, is quite the red flag.

Another thing is that the CTA claims the Communists killed 1.14 million Tibetans over the 20 years from 1959 to 1979. But the population of Tibet in 1953 was 1.27 million, and the ethnic Tibetan population (that is, not including Han Chinese immigrants) today is about 3 million. Does that sound plausible to you?

But the Dalai Lama is very clever with his propaganda and has put out the idea that a Buddhist theocracy with himself as Priest-King is a palatable state and preferable situation, and somehow people believe it.

Sorry to derail so much... I just hate seeing the protests against the Olympics and hearing people impugn my country's honor.

That Saddam Hussein quote is interesting. I believe it does somewhat reflect his philosophy (he did successful hold Iraq together for decades, and now look what "democracy" is rapidly doing to that country) but I don't think that it's something anybody would say out loud, and it's a little bit too much of a mustache-twirling villain thing to really be believable. Referring to intellectuals as "womanly"? Any chance you could find me a source on that?

 

[Randolph]

I for one never said anything about Tibet. I did refer to China "crushing resistance" at one point, but I was actually thinking of democracy movements, Tiananmen Square, and more currently internet censorship. I don't know a whole lot about the Tibet situation, but my understanding is that the Chinese government has repopulated the area with non-native Tibetans, so the fact that the area has "prospered" doesn't really mean much. The western United States certainly prospered after we massacred the Native Americans, but that doesn't justify it in any way.

Torture is not a perfect tool, and it is not always effective. But sometimes it is, and when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it.

The same goes for violent oppression, genocide, etc. Not always the right tool, but when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it just because it's "evil."

I don't think I could disagree more with the idea that sometimes GENOCIDE is "the right tool" and we shouldn't be "afraid" to used it when it fits some political purpose. Genocide is perhaps the ultimate evil, there is simply no way that it can be justified. While not as extreme I feel the same way about torture, whatever can be gained by its use in a utilitarian sense, does not make up for the damage it does to your own humanity.

The Saddam Hussein statement is illustrative here in the sense that it shows that once you start going down the path of justifying evil with utility, that is where you end up: a world where gassing villages is justified.

 

[Fenboy]

Torture is not a perfect tool, and it is not always effective. But sometimes it is, and when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it.

The same goes for violent oppression, genocide, etc. Not always the right tool, but when it is, you shouldn't be afraid to use it just because it's "evil."

WHAT THE F U C K DO YOU MEAN BY THAT YOU LITTLE ****? THAT GENOCIDE IS ACCEPTABLE GOVERNMENT POLICY "SOMETIMES"?

/and no, I'm not apologising for that. Honestly I never thought I'd find genocide advocates on something like the FFH forums...

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

WHAT THE **** DO YOU MEAN BY THAT YOU LITTLE ****? THAT GENOCIDE IS ACCEPTABLE GOVERNMENT POLICY "SOMETIMES"?

Really, when does genocide serve a useful purpose?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Can you consider the eradication of other species, like deadly pathogens, be considered genocide?

 

[Randolph]

No, genocide referes to a group of people.


American Heritage Dictionary
n. The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

Well in magister's case it makes sense but specifically targeting humans because they are different is what I, as a product of the U.S. educational system, have been brought up to believe but all the cases of genocide that I know of haven't been based on anything other than the victims being different.

 

[WCH]

WHAT THE F U C K DO YOU MEAN BY THAT YOU LITTLE ****? THAT GENOCIDE IS ACCEPTABLE GOVERNMENT POLICY "SOMETIMES"?

/and no, I'm not apologising for that. Honestly I never thought I'd find genocide advocates on something like the FFH forums...

He's a Chinese Communist. Don't try to argue with him.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

lol at fenboy failing at censor bypass. Leave that to people who know what they're doing.

 

[Arcite36575]

The value of human life is different when comparing cultures. Generally speaking, westerners see human life and individual rights as something valued and sacred, thanks in part to religious tradition and as well as the philisophical influences of the enlightenment.

A lot of other cultures such as the middle east and asia see human life differently. . . China has never had a real representative government which respects human life over the last few thousand years. The Chinese traditionally value order, conformity, and respect for authority, and if it requires killing a few people (or a few million people), well. . . so be it. The rights of an individual person mean nothing there.

Europeans and Canadians love hold their noses and spit on the United States for its "flexible" policy on human rights and "aggressive" democracy, but that will pale in comparison to what an authoritarian China will do in 20 years once they have the economic and military might of a superpower to do as it pleases. Not to mention since the Opium Wars in the 1800s, the West and Japan have utterly humiliated China for 100 years. Soon, China will take the world throne again, there's nothing worse than an unchecked authoritarian superpower which thinks the rest of the world has unpaid debts.

I just hope I'll be too old when the next draft happens.

Ok. . . Ok. . . I'll get off my soapbox now too

 

[Alzara]

Am I the only one not taking this discussion into the realms of reality?

This is a dark fantasy mod. Evil people are evil, and gobble up nice friendly good people. Evil people torture, good people dont etc. It's a game...

Al