Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
A grand reply! 
I'm not going to comment on it all, but I nod toward your own rich gaming history and the general bent of your comments. I'm going to press mostly at points where we remain in disagreement, starting here:
On this point, your argument collapses utterly. To show this, we must examine the mechanisms of the AI sneak attack.
Fact: The AI launches sneak attacks from time to time (the most aggressive civs do it regularly).
Fact: If the AI has a RoP or gpt deal in place when it decides to launch a sneak attack, it will make no effort to cancel them. I presume this is mainly to avoid telegraphing the coming invasion.
Fact: The AI will continue to make new deals after deciding to launch a sneak attack, and knowingly make deals they "intend" to reneg on. Again, this seems bent more to concealing the coming military betrayal, with any economic benefits being an unintended (and possibly inconsequential) bonus. That is to say, the INTENT of these deals is not to rip off, but rather to conceal the sneak attack. The only warning you get that a sneak attack is coming is if you are paying attention to enemy troop movements and notice them moving aggressively.
Fact: The AI will not declare war voluntarily prior to launching their sneak attack. They will move their units into position at the target site (whatever that is, invariably a city with resources) and war comes about when they finally attack. IF they happen to have RoP rights, and you don't yet have rails, they may wander for any number of turns in your territory along the roads, etc, until arriving at their target. You can interfere with their plans with peaceful blockades, or occasionally force them to retarget, but you can never get them to back off entirely. Once on the war path, they're going to attack, somewhere.
KEY FACT: The AI always pursues the FIRST available opportunity to attack their chosen target. Any advantage they take of the RoP is entirely coinicidental, NOT intentional. If you have rails, they will get ONE free shot at you at a site of their choosing, but then the war is on and their rights are terminated. The rest of their units must then navigate through your cultural borders on a hostile footing.
Not that I stipulate your points about "If the AI does it..." and "If the game rules allow it...". I don't stipulate those at all. But even so, on this point, you fail anyway.
Because the AI never rapes the player on a RoP agreement. They do betray, but not to the max like a human can do. They will never move all their forces into ideal attack positions, THEN begin the attack. They rather mindlessly beeline to their target, and if you had a RoP in play with them, and don't see the betrayal coming, then woe to you. Yet that stops wholly short of the sort of betrayal you outlined, with parking our forces outside German cities and bushwacking them.
I definitely consider that option broken, a bug/flaw in the game exceeding the bombard bug (which was pretty bad), and yes, exceeding even save-and-reload. I just cannot read reports of players pulling this en masse betrayal in games of Civ3 and not feel contempt. It's the main reason I stay away from the CF GOTM.
The gpt betrayal that you pulled doesn't rise to the same level. I don't like it and don't use it, but you were right on one point: it has happened historically. So have betrayals along the lines of what the AI pulls. However, I am not aware of any civ in real history ever being sucker-punched as badly as Civ3 allows with an intentional RoP betrayal. Not even the most gullible, weak, cowardly, or overmatched civ would be stupid enough to turn a blind eye while an ally's entire armed force made camp inside their borders at all the key strategic locations. Nobody has ever been quite THAT gullible.
What's worse, the game is broken in about six regards with this point.
* If you catch the AI pulling a sneak attack, but a RoP is in force, the stain falls on you for calling off the deal. That's beyond ridiculous, but still manageable usually. They ought to fix this.
* The kind of betrayal possible is entirely unrealistic.
* The penalties for a RoP betrayal are one-size-fits-all. If you declare war while a RoP is in place, even if you don't have a single unit on their land, the penalty is the same as if you parked 200 tanks outside all their cities and commit genocide on a single turn.
* There are no recognized provocations that form a legal basis for early termination of a RoP, other than a war declaration. This is problematic in several ways.
* The rewards of a RoP betrayal have no limits. A "well-executed" maxed betrayal can literally turn the game.
* The RoP betrayal, if pulled in real life, would constitute the most severe form of war crimes next to genocide. Nobody would trust that civ ever again, and they'd either conquer the world or be ground beneath the heels of their intended targets.
Look at what happened to Japan after their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We got lucky our carriers weren't in port, but the depth of their betrayal and the sliminess of it and their total dedication to outlast us even when they had lost the offensive war and were beaten back, to make us pay with every last drop of blood they could squeeze from us in the hopes of making it too costly for us to win, led the USA to seek Unconditional Surrender. And we nuked them for it -- but even if we hadn't come up with the Bomb, we'd have invaded and done whatever necessary to completely and utterly conquer them. THEY CHOSE UNWISELY and were damn lucky we were satisfied with complete capitulation, and stopped short -- almost entirely -- of taking revenge. Rather, we treated them honorably, and they themselves offered to give up war "forever" if we would protect them. Yes, in real life, the consequences of war crimes -- actions so extreme that they earn the contempt and continuing distrust of the civilized world -- are most severe indeed. Historically, some such oppressors had the might to make their conquests and betrayals stick, for a while, but in more recent centuries, everyone attempting it has found themselves opposed by enough enemies that no amount of might could save them from downfall.
Civ3 fails at every level to recognize or capture that level of diplomatic consequence. It's also very bad about rewarding evil acts and punishing good ones: the game mechanics make razing, mass murder, slavery, and starvation more rewarding and attractive than they really were. Well, this is not a sim game, and I can forgive it some foibles. I do raze, and I do starve, because those are "winning moves", but I lament the course of it. However, in those cases, there are unrealistic and even untenable penalties for playing it the morally upright way. Not so with diplomacy. If you keep your word, you are NOT penalized for doing so. So those elements do not compare evenly.
You should not.
That some would use any means at their disposal to get their way (in a game, or in real life) is not license to commit war crime. The very idea of war crime is an admission that some moves are so heinous, they rise above even the issues at stake in a war... so long as you believe the other side is only out to impose their will, and not to annihilate you.
The knife/gun analogy fails. False analogy. This is not about personal survival, it's a game of national policy. Most war is about control, not genocide. Nations who have nuclear weapons keep them as a deterrent against others who have them. Mutually Assured Destruction. In rare cases, such as Pakistan, a nation keeps them as a deterrent against a larger neighbor they might not be able to survive against in a conventional war. From there, it gets out of hand trying to draw further analogy, but the bottom line is that the Entire Game is at stake, and there CAN BE worse things than losing or potentially losing a war: our whole species might be harmed or destroyed if things get out of hand.
On the civ level, so too. The whole game might collapse into meaninglessness if extreme options are taken just because the game code hasn't taken them off the table.
A RoP betrayal was pulled in LK7, in which I played. I fussed a little, but was MOST distinctly unhappy about it, much more than I let on. I have not been back to any more LK games since.
I'm not happy with the one-size-fits-all 20 turn deals, either, though. I've been known to grow impatient in rare circumstances and reneg on a deal later. I've even betrayed RoP, but when I do, it's the AI sort of variety, where the RoP is not going to stand in the way of an attack I feel is in my best interest. But I do not park all my units into best position. Just that I'm not going to wait for the RoP to be cancelled peacefully before moving. And no, I do not launch sneak attacks. Part of avoiding CoG is remaining immersed, and for that I either have to play reasonably close to my own personal morals (my word means something) or I have to take on a particular role, such as in Big Brother.
For a competition, like the GOTM, if I know the game is to be played without restrictions, and players looking to squeeze any advantage they can to get the best result by any and all means allowed within the tules of the contest, I'll either play without complaint, or if something is just too objectionable, decline to participate. I am a ruthless competitor, but not insatiable. Not every contest is worthy of my devotion.
That's not necessary. I observe a certain nettiquette with games, started back with Descent 1 seven years ago, when net gaming was in its infancy: He Who Hosts a Game is In Charge. You hosted this one, your puppy, your rules. I did make some requests and thought we had an understanding that would exclude all exploitative play, but it's true that we did not spell out every last detail of what that covered, so I'll defer on any areas where we are not in harmony. I would expect the same in any games that I was hosting.
Just a final point of reference: I reject the notion that evil is necessary as a counterpoint to goodness. Gaming in particular is fixated on struggles of good vs evil, as well as competition in general, but for the sake of the game, evil is often granted a kind of ass-backward legitimacy, given credit it does not deserve and lent virtues it does not possess. I can find some entertainment in role-playing a caricature of evil, ala Dungeon Keeper or Syndicate, but not in the role of evil itself.
Perhaps you find it odd that I would raze cities and conquer nations and not find it objectionable, yet balk at diplomatic betrayals. The line I draw is at caricature. Making fun of evil while playing AT it is one thing. I find the brush with evil in the diplomatic betrayal aspect a little too close to home to reach that level of suspension of disbelief. I don't feel any attachment to slime when I happily roll my tanks over Zululand (in whatever form, in a particular game -- whomever has tried to bully me around and gets hoist by their own petard), but I DO feel slimy at the prospect of deliberately cheating the AI's with lies and military ambushes and betrayals or thievery of all kinds. Those... are just... not... my... style.
- Sirian
I'm not going to comment on it all, but I nod toward your own rich gaming history and the general bent of your comments. I'm going to press mostly at points where we remain in disagreement, starting here:On this point, your argument collapses utterly. To show this, we must examine the mechanisms of the AI sneak attack.
Fact: The AI launches sneak attacks from time to time (the most aggressive civs do it regularly).
Fact: If the AI has a RoP or gpt deal in place when it decides to launch a sneak attack, it will make no effort to cancel them. I presume this is mainly to avoid telegraphing the coming invasion.
Fact: The AI will continue to make new deals after deciding to launch a sneak attack, and knowingly make deals they "intend" to reneg on. Again, this seems bent more to concealing the coming military betrayal, with any economic benefits being an unintended (and possibly inconsequential) bonus. That is to say, the INTENT of these deals is not to rip off, but rather to conceal the sneak attack. The only warning you get that a sneak attack is coming is if you are paying attention to enemy troop movements and notice them moving aggressively.
Fact: The AI will not declare war voluntarily prior to launching their sneak attack. They will move their units into position at the target site (whatever that is, invariably a city with resources) and war comes about when they finally attack. IF they happen to have RoP rights, and you don't yet have rails, they may wander for any number of turns in your territory along the roads, etc, until arriving at their target. You can interfere with their plans with peaceful blockades, or occasionally force them to retarget, but you can never get them to back off entirely. Once on the war path, they're going to attack, somewhere.
KEY FACT: The AI always pursues the FIRST available opportunity to attack their chosen target. Any advantage they take of the RoP is entirely coinicidental, NOT intentional. If you have rails, they will get ONE free shot at you at a site of their choosing, but then the war is on and their rights are terminated. The rest of their units must then navigate through your cultural borders on a hostile footing.
Not that I stipulate your points about "If the AI does it..." and "If the game rules allow it...". I don't stipulate those at all. But even so, on this point, you fail anyway.
Because the AI never rapes the player on a RoP agreement. They do betray, but not to the max like a human can do. They will never move all their forces into ideal attack positions, THEN begin the attack. They rather mindlessly beeline to their target, and if you had a RoP in play with them, and don't see the betrayal coming, then woe to you. Yet that stops wholly short of the sort of betrayal you outlined, with parking our forces outside German cities and bushwacking them.
I definitely consider that option broken, a bug/flaw in the game exceeding the bombard bug (which was pretty bad), and yes, exceeding even save-and-reload. I just cannot read reports of players pulling this en masse betrayal in games of Civ3 and not feel contempt. It's the main reason I stay away from the CF GOTM.
The gpt betrayal that you pulled doesn't rise to the same level. I don't like it and don't use it, but you were right on one point: it has happened historically. So have betrayals along the lines of what the AI pulls. However, I am not aware of any civ in real history ever being sucker-punched as badly as Civ3 allows with an intentional RoP betrayal. Not even the most gullible, weak, cowardly, or overmatched civ would be stupid enough to turn a blind eye while an ally's entire armed force made camp inside their borders at all the key strategic locations. Nobody has ever been quite THAT gullible.
What's worse, the game is broken in about six regards with this point.
* If you catch the AI pulling a sneak attack, but a RoP is in force, the stain falls on you for calling off the deal. That's beyond ridiculous, but still manageable usually. They ought to fix this.
* The kind of betrayal possible is entirely unrealistic.
* The penalties for a RoP betrayal are one-size-fits-all. If you declare war while a RoP is in place, even if you don't have a single unit on their land, the penalty is the same as if you parked 200 tanks outside all their cities and commit genocide on a single turn.
* There are no recognized provocations that form a legal basis for early termination of a RoP, other than a war declaration. This is problematic in several ways.
* The rewards of a RoP betrayal have no limits. A "well-executed" maxed betrayal can literally turn the game.
* The RoP betrayal, if pulled in real life, would constitute the most severe form of war crimes next to genocide. Nobody would trust that civ ever again, and they'd either conquer the world or be ground beneath the heels of their intended targets.
Look at what happened to Japan after their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We got lucky our carriers weren't in port, but the depth of their betrayal and the sliminess of it and their total dedication to outlast us even when they had lost the offensive war and were beaten back, to make us pay with every last drop of blood they could squeeze from us in the hopes of making it too costly for us to win, led the USA to seek Unconditional Surrender. And we nuked them for it -- but even if we hadn't come up with the Bomb, we'd have invaded and done whatever necessary to completely and utterly conquer them. THEY CHOSE UNWISELY and were damn lucky we were satisfied with complete capitulation, and stopped short -- almost entirely -- of taking revenge. Rather, we treated them honorably, and they themselves offered to give up war "forever" if we would protect them. Yes, in real life, the consequences of war crimes -- actions so extreme that they earn the contempt and continuing distrust of the civilized world -- are most severe indeed. Historically, some such oppressors had the might to make their conquests and betrayals stick, for a while, but in more recent centuries, everyone attempting it has found themselves opposed by enough enemies that no amount of might could save them from downfall.
Civ3 fails at every level to recognize or capture that level of diplomatic consequence. It's also very bad about rewarding evil acts and punishing good ones: the game mechanics make razing, mass murder, slavery, and starvation more rewarding and attractive than they really were. Well, this is not a sim game, and I can forgive it some foibles. I do raze, and I do starve, because those are "winning moves", but I lament the course of it. However, in those cases, there are unrealistic and even untenable penalties for playing it the morally upright way. Not so with diplomacy. If you keep your word, you are NOT penalized for doing so. So those elements do not compare evenly.
You should not.
That some would use any means at their disposal to get their way (in a game, or in real life) is not license to commit war crime. The very idea of war crime is an admission that some moves are so heinous, they rise above even the issues at stake in a war... so long as you believe the other side is only out to impose their will, and not to annihilate you.
The knife/gun analogy fails. False analogy. This is not about personal survival, it's a game of national policy. Most war is about control, not genocide. Nations who have nuclear weapons keep them as a deterrent against others who have them. Mutually Assured Destruction. In rare cases, such as Pakistan, a nation keeps them as a deterrent against a larger neighbor they might not be able to survive against in a conventional war. From there, it gets out of hand trying to draw further analogy, but the bottom line is that the Entire Game is at stake, and there CAN BE worse things than losing or potentially losing a war: our whole species might be harmed or destroyed if things get out of hand.
On the civ level, so too. The whole game might collapse into meaninglessness if extreme options are taken just because the game code hasn't taken them off the table.
A RoP betrayal was pulled in LK7, in which I played. I fussed a little, but was MOST distinctly unhappy about it, much more than I let on. I have not been back to any more LK games since.
I'm not happy with the one-size-fits-all 20 turn deals, either, though. I've been known to grow impatient in rare circumstances and reneg on a deal later. I've even betrayed RoP, but when I do, it's the AI sort of variety, where the RoP is not going to stand in the way of an attack I feel is in my best interest. But I do not park all my units into best position. Just that I'm not going to wait for the RoP to be cancelled peacefully before moving. And no, I do not launch sneak attacks. Part of avoiding CoG is remaining immersed, and for that I either have to play reasonably close to my own personal morals (my word means something) or I have to take on a particular role, such as in Big Brother.
For a competition, like the GOTM, if I know the game is to be played without restrictions, and players looking to squeeze any advantage they can to get the best result by any and all means allowed within the tules of the contest, I'll either play without complaint, or if something is just too objectionable, decline to participate. I am a ruthless competitor, but not insatiable. Not every contest is worthy of my devotion.
That's not necessary. I observe a certain nettiquette with games, started back with Descent 1 seven years ago, when net gaming was in its infancy: He Who Hosts a Game is In Charge. You hosted this one, your puppy, your rules. I did make some requests and thought we had an understanding that would exclude all exploitative play, but it's true that we did not spell out every last detail of what that covered, so I'll defer on any areas where we are not in harmony. I would expect the same in any games that I was hosting.
Just a final point of reference: I reject the notion that evil is necessary as a counterpoint to goodness. Gaming in particular is fixated on struggles of good vs evil, as well as competition in general, but for the sake of the game, evil is often granted a kind of ass-backward legitimacy, given credit it does not deserve and lent virtues it does not possess. I can find some entertainment in role-playing a caricature of evil, ala Dungeon Keeper or Syndicate, but not in the role of evil itself.
Perhaps you find it odd that I would raze cities and conquer nations and not find it objectionable, yet balk at diplomatic betrayals. The line I draw is at caricature. Making fun of evil while playing AT it is one thing. I find the brush with evil in the diplomatic betrayal aspect a little too close to home to reach that level of suspension of disbelief. I don't feel any attachment to slime when I happily roll my tanks over Zululand (in whatever form, in a particular game -- whomever has tried to bully me around and gets hoist by their own petard), but I DO feel slimy at the prospect of deliberately cheating the AI's with lies and military ambushes and betrayals or thievery of all kinds. Those... are just... not... my... style.
- Sirian
I've only played it a couple times, highly interesting, but the element of basically the winner being the most convincing liar and backstabber was not one in which I could enjoy the 'role'.
), and paying 64gpt to other Civs. We came out with empty treasury and earning +246gpt. What happened to our treasury for that turn?
to Ghandi, Joan and Lizzy for voting for us. Biz was pretty scary but just couldn't pull it out in the end. I must say I'm very very surprised Joanie voted for us over Otto -- those two were so close they should've been married....
but a lucky move? (Good means planned, NOT the case here)
