While We Wait: Boredom Strikes Back

[Imago]

Well, I'm making the thread. Given that TLK's 'ehetHJwehj' still hasn't been deleted, the worst that will happen is that Bird will give it a veto and we'll come back here.

 

[TheLizardKing]

'ehetHJwehj

Ahh.. the benefits of late night NES making.

 

[Anonymoose]

I support your lifestyle decision. And yeah, he'll probably veto it.

 

[Imago]

It's up. Not the most imaginative title, but at least it’s optimistic. Let’s see what happens.

 

[Angst]

ehetHJwehj

I am sleep deprived, and this makes me happy and I want it to be my wife.

 

[Dachs]

Ooh, casualty ratios. That’s an interesting topic. The first real war I had in INES I involved Luckymoose playing as Assyria, and I had the idea that because he was gaining territory, to compensate, he would lose more troops than NPC Persia. His general complaint – “I am winning, so why am I losing?” – led me to the idea that the losses on the defeated side should vary based on how much they were overwhelmed, and the casualties of the victor would be based on a fixed rate with a limited amount of modifiers. There are plenty of weaknesses to this approach (for one, it doesn’t model Napoleon and Russia very well), so I’m very curious what other mods do.

Lots of things could contribute to casualty rates. Disease and other wastage, especially relevant for an attacker beyond the culminating point, are the biggest in terms of what should be causing casualties, but nobody wants to deal with that crap, not even me and Perfectionist.

Then, I mean, casualties in battle entirely depend on how the battles go. You can win tactical victories and suffer ridiculous battle casualties all the same. Just because Ruki was advancing and taking ground doesn't mean he had to be suffering fewer losses. Of course, you ought to have more of an explanation than just "oh I felt like balancing out the territory you were gaining". If you didn't feel like bringing up wastage from offensive action, you could always say he won Pyrrhic battlefield victories or something. But yeah, fixed rates are bad unless they take a lot of things into account (like QJM theoretically does).

 

[Adrogans]

Which bothers you the most: technological policies, social policies, or inconsistent diplomacy?

It's been more the stories and the general attitudes of the gag nations. I can deal with settings and rules being out there I just get bored with the my nation's leaders are crazy like everyone else.

 

[das]

a- You shouldn't have started an NES at 15.

Yeah, real men start modding when they're 12.

(Sure my early NESes were awful and I don't dare to look at them, but back then no one knew any better!)

 

[Northen Wolf]

I play my NES's through NPC's. I develop them, into what could pose a challenge to players. With that, on some occasions (sadly) I've become attached enough to them to hesitate to allow players to join in as them, if I wasn't sure they'd do them justice. Of course, I never grew that attached.. but you get the idea.

I create NPCs to fit my universe. I then give them a meaning and a mission and behave according to that. I usually overpower NPCs in comparison to players. For an example a trade nation would focus on trade and would enter into trade union wars, while other players still don't have any bloody trading goods other than what their hunting trips bring in. That is why my NESes players usually can't play as NPCs (they have to create their own characters/nations), I use NPCs as things that would slow down progress, invade if someone goes too heretic, force players to deal with diplomacy and trade. Or even let bloody legions of Doom invade NPC nations first, just to show players what's coming. That - in my opinion - makes players want to defeat NPC's, to use them in their (rainbowyy-)schemes and it's possible to become stronger than NPC. That won't happen overnight tho and there is always someone stronger than you. But this approach slows down the "crazy invade everything" orders and allows me to tell more of the lore, while forcing players to follow this world laws without attacking every neighboring nation.

So I play NESes, as a moderator, through throwing obstacles towards players and letting them climb over these obstacles, just to find that it was just the beginning.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

We did have a bad trend towards completely crazy leaders in Imago's previous NES. It was funny at first, but if it's the rule then it ceases to be a funny joke and just becomes irritating.

 

[Abaddon]

'ehetHJwehj'.

I'm lost, what does this stand for?

 

[TheLizardKing]

When I was posting LizNES5, I somehow posted another thread with a nonsense title. If I recall, I was just trying to preview what I had finished, so I entered a random title. The only thing is, rather then hit preview, I hit post.

 

[Imago]

We did have a bad trend towards completely crazy leaders in Imago's previous NES. It was funny at first, but if it's the rule then it ceases to be a funny joke and just becomes irritating.

Not sure how much of a trend it was. There was Putin, and then, well, there was Putin. The second most crazy leader I remember was actually Adrogans' Qaddafi. Maybe part of the problem was this page in my current NES.

 

[TheLizardKing]

What? I managed three stories on that page!

 

[Anonymoose]

Yeah Putin and Qaddafi were the exceptional idiots in that NES. I like to think that most of the leaders were pretty reasonable.

 

[TheLizardKing]

The love between Putin and Condeleeza Rice won't be forgotten though.

 

[Imago]

What? I managed three stories on that page!

I liked it, but from a certain perspective it is overly wall-of-text-and-big-pictures-y.

Yeah Putin and Qaddafi were the exceptional idiots in that NES. I like to think that most of the leaders were pretty reasonable.

Suarez was cool.

The love between Putin and Condeleeza Rice won't be forgotten though.

I think I blocked that out. For good reason.

 

[Shadowbound]

Lucien Bouchard was only developed as a parody. Your new game is much worse, and not all of that is due to Poe's Law.

 

[Imago]

Well, let’s see here. In INES III, the cartoon villain leaders are Queen Victoria, the Kélen Toumani, the Proletarian Emperor, and more recently, Jacques Sangle and El Jefe. The Supreme Leader has his title, but he’s not presented in quite as overblown a fashion, Nico Romano has a cultured vibe that makes him a little different from the other ones, and Lord-Protector Gabriel Blacktyde, while that name hints at a lot of stuff, hasn’t really been developed as a character yet. Similarly, your Li Dingbang (before he was phased out) implied a joke, but wasn’t particularly overexposed.

Meanwhile, France and Israel have interesting multi-sided political situations, and the stories that have come out of Havana, CWOH, Siam, and the UK are much more focused on ‘normal people.’

So yeah, there’s a trend, but it isn’t a blowout.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Wait, Cleric re-used Lord Gabriel Blacktyde? He used a kind of evil aristocratic character in my SteamNES.