While We Wait: Part 2

[Swissempire]

My idea is in the BirdNES thread....

As for award, what template do we work off of for favorites?

 

[Birdjaguar]

My idea is in the BirdNES thread....

As for award, what template do we work off of for favorites?

What ever you want. I have a list I've collected and added some of my own. Just post a few that you think would be important or fun.

 

[jeps]

Favorite moment: Aztec blood sacrifice of the king
Least favorite moment: Inauguration of King Ryan
2nd favorite moment: French take over papal states, new pope.

 

[Swissempire]

Best Colonial Power:
Biggest Colonial Power(in terms of size/amounts of colonies):
Biggest Rise:
Biggest Fall:
Explorer Award:
Warlord Award:
Diplomat Award:
Merchant Award:
Great Ruler Award:
Greatest Personage(Naval):
Greatest Personage(Militarily):
Most Ambitious:
Most Misguided:
Craftiest Player Award:

I'm sure i'll think of more later.

 

[Symphony D.]

Longer turns would move thing faster, but thay also make turns more difficult and to my thinking harder to write. Everyting switches to a macro level. Kings live one or two updates; everything is generalized and warfare gets surreal. In many ways big world sweeping NESes are a lot like Risk: big changes every turn and lots of ebb and flow.

I'd agree that this tends to be a problem, and generally a larger one as one goes farther back in time. It generally tends to be that (mostly as a function of technology, but from others too) that the pace of world events tends to quicken as people move farther forward, until in the last century or two the world can be completely rewritten in a year, a month, or in some cases, a single day. Part of the problem is we, all being from such a world, are used to seeing change occur at such a rate, and looking back on things view them from that perspective.

And the IT-BT system, though das must be given credit for trying, is not a solution, either.

I'd generally agree, and have always thought it was somewhat ill-named for the very reasons you suggest. I find the terms "Manual" and "Automatic" to be more appropriate.

 

[jeps]

EDIT: I misread a post. edited out.

 

[The Farow]

Hmmmm....

I hope I get some sort of award for taking a small German duchy to the center of attention for many years. I also managed to secure the title of Holy Roman Emperor for many years.

Brandenburg now dominates Northern Germany through a series of wars which I won. I think one war I technically did not win but that was only because of the religious infighting.

Hope I put up a good show for everyone

 

[Azale]

Best Colonial Power: Ayutthaya/Khmer
Biggest Colonial Power(in terms of size/amounts of colonies): Portugal
Biggest Rise: Islamic Empire
Biggest Fall: Islamic Empire
Explorer Award: Portugal
Warlord Award: Calusa
Diplomat Award: Genoa I suppose
Merchant Award: Genoa
Great Ruler Award: Ayutthaya/Khmer
Greatest Personage(Naval): Ashraf Sayf
Greatest Personage(Militarily): that one dude
Most Ambitious: Ayutthaya/Khmer
Most Misguided: Spain
Craftiest Player Award: not sure, silver?

 

[Birdjaguar]

My thoughts were to have you all list the awards and I would hand them out, but since you all seem to want to have a hand in the decision also, I will not ignore your thoughts on who should get what if such an award is given.

 

[alex994]

Actually, I agree with you bird. I think the mod should hand them out and that the players should have no input into the actual award-giving. And in addition to simply nation awards, we should have player awards too

 

[jeps]

I am just stating mine BUT do not use ours. We do not see all the things that secretly go on in orders, so we dont know enough to do them.

 

[Azale]

No bird, you decide! I was just throwing my opinion out there.

 

[Swissempire]

Yeah, Bird, don't let them ruin it!!!

Those were my ideas for awards

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't know the least bit about BirdNES, but I will add two cents about time changes.

Well it's about time you learned.

The main conflict at work is, I don't think, impatience vs. macromanagement. Instead, it would be impatience vs. connectivity. People do not mind managing big gaps of time, as I have gleaned from BT orders: they often find less stress and write much simpler orders if they don't think they need to manage every part.

At the same time, however, hundred year jumps, or even fifty, are immensely difficult to adjust to. Militaries have vastly changed. A world class military can be an abominable third world mutinying pack of dogs after half a century. Infrastructure can utterly collapse: think of the Romans after their fall: yes, the roads remained, as did the walls, but who thinks the pipe systems still worked?

Most disconcerting of all, especially for story writers like myself, characters have most likely died. You need to invent a whole new cast... Or you could go the Years of Rice and Salt route and have them be reincarnated with the same first letters in their names. Everyone wants their king to be an Alexander, but it's difficult to build them up if you only have an update's space to do it in.

And the IT-BT system, though das must be given credit for trying, is not a solution, either.

While the struggles of individuals is vastly important, so are the tides of cultural change that are constantly sweeping over the world. It would seem like there isn't really an easy solution.

I'd agree that this tends to be a problem, and generally a larger one as one goes farther back in time. It generally tends to be that (mostly as a function of technology, but from others too) that the pace of world events tends to quicken as people move farther forward, until in the last century or two the world can be completely rewritten in a year, a month, or in some cases, a single day. Part of the problem is we, all being from such a world, are used to seeing change occur at such a rate, and looking back on things view them from that perspective.

If we know the problem, or at least what we preceive the problem to be, and IT-BT is not the solution, then what would move us closer to a solution? I will stick with the BirdNES situation for an example, but please don't restrict yourselves to it for the discussion.

BirdNES IT equals detailed 5 year turns that encourage character growth and small changes to the map and technology.

What if a BT was 60 years and was made up of three 20 year stretches (ie 4 IT turns each). Players would write very simple, but structured orders (format dictated by the mod) for 20 years. The map and stats would be would be updated with only short descriptions of what was happening. Then the process is repeated two more times to complete the BT.

Players could manage characters and families a bit better and things should move quickly.

Another way to speed up a slow NES like BirdNES would be to have turns go faster. A turn a week would make a huge difference. My current rate is 10 updatres in almost 5 months or about one every 2 weeks. That said I could never manage such a feat. But two mods could alternate turns so one is not overwhelmed. Of course the mods would have to communicate well and agree on some bascs for the game. This kind of arrangement might reduce burnout and sustain good games longer. There are lots of ways jobs could be divided up to make everything easier and smoother. Success would hinge on mods working well together and not letting things get too confused about who said what.

 

[Symphony D.]

Well, as I sort of hinted earlier, I think the problem is simply one of the terming of "BT" and "IT" and the perception the terms cause. By calling it "Boring" one implies nothing happens. That's not the case at all, nor should it be. It's a misnomer. Things should continue to happen just like always (and usually do).

By renaming it to something else, like Manual / Automatic (the former being "Manual" as everything is open to the players and such, the latter being "Automatic" because the players submit orders once and then it goes), you dispel the notion of there being anything "boring" at all. You're running it just like normal only with more abstract input (orders) over a longer period of time (updates). This is typically what happens in, say, a dasian BT anyway, but it may as well be made concrete and clear.

I think Kal'thzar had the idea right in that such events should be more disruptive and destructive than they tend to be, though. For example, the way das ran things, the odds of the Khmer/Oceanic Empire ever dying in ITNES were small. You shouldn't destroy things simply because they get too big, but you should be willing to destroy things because things get destroyed. No nation runs with a continuous lineage for very long without having some sort of upheval or other calamity, and that tends to be poorly reflected in BTs.

That all said, I would generally favor increasingly smaller "skips" of BT periods as time progresses, in series, instead of single massive "jumps," if only to keep the players in the loop.

 

[Swissempire]

Bird, I like the idea of those 20 year BT things. Since there would be little description, It could go fast, like in 2 weeks we could be done with the BT and get back to the IT

 

[Nylan]

Why not find other things to interest the players with during BT? The Olympics are a possibility, or any international competition for that matter (yeah, yeah I know NiNES people, I still need to tie things up and I didn't do a good job...).

Furthermore a good BT story can incite all sorts of creativity and ideas, even stories about peasants in London or Veritas or Huris who have little effect on the actual affairs of the nation, but are fun to read about anyways. Good storywriters should be able to keep things interesting no matter how dull international affairs may be.

 

[North King]

I'm not certain that there is an easy solution. The best way, I think, is to have updates more often, though this can often be impossible. Dual modding is certainly a way it could be achieved, I think, but both have to be utterly dedicated to the task at hand, and they have to work together very well, obviously. It could be that they could split up the world between them, however, this might lead to some interregional squabbles getting awkward... But I digress.

Part of it depends on the type of NES you're running. An NES devoted specifically to World War 2 or such (which I think is silly, but that's another topic) would probably have 1 year turns, maximum, and more probably half year or seasonal. Other topical NESes like the modern world also should probably update yearly; alternatively, they have to cover a lot of ground if they do have longer updates, given the fact that people will recognize the setting very well.

On the other hand, I think the NESes we would worry about are the ones which run from some starting point to an undefined ending point, like BirdNES which runs the gamut of the colonial era, and also like fresh start NESes that, though they don't often actually achieve it, theoretically are supposed to run for a fairly long time.

Personally, I think the IT/BT system, no matter what you call it, is inherently flawed. Some players come to mind when it was first introduced who opposed it violently, because they couldn't control their nation: and I fully understand; letting go of things is a bit hard, most especially in a fresh start or similar, where you have worked so hard to build your nation up. More than that, though, important parts of history will have to be skipped altogether, with no player input.

This robs the NES of one of its biggest good attributes: players creating history for themselves. Moderators certainly can create a rich and detailed world, but players will not really engage to the fullest unless they have had a hand in creating it. We see this all the time after BTs: a horde of new players join, because everything is fresh, and new. And older players often lose heart, and aren't able to continue onward: they are forced to rebuild everything from the ground up. One example of this would be in ITNES, when the continuation from part a to b had my nation suffer a fairly minor defeat over the BT; I was furious over a chunk of my empire having gone missing, especially as one of my prime avenues of expansion was blocked, and that a player had rebelled in my territory when I couldn't react, and quit. If you actually look at what happened, it was only a very minor decay. Imagine what would happen if an NES had entire empires implode in a BT.

The primary parts of an NES are the moderator and the players. Subtract either one from the equation for even a time, and the NES will lose something: it might gain something else, but it won't really be the same NES. Players will have to readjust. In a way, the NES is beginning over again.

I'm not quite satisfied with this kind of haphazard movement through time. The best that I can offer is that an NES should not have BTs or ITs. Probably the most feasible time is 10-50 years per update, with 20, being the accepted length of most generations, probably the most sensible. This will lead to rather slow going in some ancient NESes as they are structured now, so what would be needed is a rethought of this era, which isn't too bad, as they are currently run badly (I am guilty of it, too).

Ancient era NESes have to be just as interesting, year for year, as modern NESes, and this is quite achievable, if events were represented accurately. Indeed, wars were not quite as fast paced as in the modern world due to speeds of movement, but that indeed could sometimes lead to more changing in a year than normal, as an army could be utterly crushed instead of simply withdrawing, and the entire balance of power could be radically altered. Likewise, while diplomacy wasn't as far reaching, it certainly would be as important, and the smaller reach of contacts is correspondent with smaller nations, so there should be roughly the same amount of activity.

Thus, ancient, medieval, and modern eras can be modded on roughly the same timeframe: 20 years or so per update, and still be fairly interesting, I think.

 

[~Darkening~]

I actually like the IT/BT when its done right. I mean, it allows for you to lay basic plans for change that would take a long time to establish if you just did regular updates. I'm extremely against BTs when players are at war, especially if the mod attempts to "save" the NES by generating interest in it.

 

[Symphony D.]

Thus, ancient, medieval, and modern eras can be modded on roughly the same timeframe: 20 years or so per update, and still be fairly interesting, I think.

I would have to disagree with the last part. I'm trying to imagine the Cold War compressed into 2 turns, or the whole of the 20th Century into 5, and that just leaves a very, very bad taste in my mouth.