While We Wait: Part 2

[Dachs]

Latin may be horrid, but it sure is stupid.

Though this really happened about three pages ago, I'd like to say that I've only played as Byzantium (bloody French names - ought to be "Rome" like everyone called it) once (and even then that started out as a Greek, not Byzantine, rebel movement in NES2 VI), and have fought wars against a Byzantine Empire as both Sparta and Rome (in stazNES V and ITNES respectively)...so I'm not sure why I get labeled as a "Byzantine". I mean, I've written one bloody alternate history about basically preventing Manzikert, compared to others involving more powerful Germany, French Second Empire, and a limited survival and even expansion of the Alexandrine Empire. Not sure where the charge of being a philhellene comes in there...If I had my druthers, I'd rather play some variant on Imperial Germany, which IMHO was the greatest power ever, especially before 1890, or at least Prussia after 1815.

I mean i'm sick of seeing Byzantium now.

I'm sick of always seeing someone else in charge of Germany.

especially how they constantly show up in Fresh Starts when it is simply impossible for a state based on the Golden Horn to rise before the advent of aqueducts.

Those are betrayals of the Roman Empire, not real states. I'm entirely on your side there.

"We must stop these people, or they will win the award at the end of the game, and that is unacceptable!"

Actually, my reasoning was more like, "We must stop Panda, he's getting too powerful! I don't trust him!", and I really couldn't care less about what you were doing with Asia, until you sent a fleet to attack me, which would have annoyed me had I still been playing...though I don't know about everyone else.

DisNES2: Holy Roman Empire landed 20-30 thousand troops on the mouth of the seine and were defeated utterly by about 10 thousand french troops

IIRC they were able to land on the other bank and march around for awhile under von Allendorfer, then were picked up again and left due to heavy losses. Seeing as I was never in that NES, though, I could be wrong.

Question: Why, in ITNES I, was Carthage so bloody powerful?

 

[Oruc]

Because Sheep is a good neser

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I was the original, old bean. LittleBoots and Thlayli aren't my fault. (Although I remember at the very end of ITNES I IT III Thlayli started PMing me about the general situation, lurking around etc...which was sort of cool.)


If they mattered, I would be shaking in my boots. Since penguins seem to be more interested in a random propaganda campaign in the beginning of the 21st century than actually winning the war, I'm not too worried.

Any "false sense of security" arguments are silly.

I assure you, Penguinska has nothing to do with such wonderful and enjoyable movies as those you refer to.

Its pretty annoying seeing the them faces in charge of the same places though. I mean i'm sick of seeing Byzantium now.

Indeed. It often appears without Rome even having contact!

I've always relished the prospect of being a villain. It just makes it easier for me to lay out all the annoyances I have without the need to try and be civil or polite about it.

Yeah, if NESing were a comic, I'm pretty sure you would be a genius supervillain or antihero.

Spoiler My Opinion on the Big Argument :

I think it's the fault of mods, for letting people get away with some things (I'm very guilty of this, and admit it). Also, nations seldom stagnate (they start of stagnant sometimes), and every leader is brilliant and capable of seeing the big picture and making skilled long-term plans, as are all of their heirs. One time, I'd like to take a powerful NPC and get a total hedonist glutton for a king.

I don't think anyone can be declared 'The Best NESer'. It's a loose term for a loose simulation of history.

Writing long orders doesn't make you any more devoted than someone who writes brief orders.

Although I still say that (Earth based) Fresh Starts are the pinacle of NESing and Cradles are inherently inferior to anything else.

Hey!

Please do. Religious diplomacy has always been a favorite of mine (see my own tenure in StKNES5 as the theocratic Israel).

Ah, what a great NES that was.

@Dachs- Your constant mention of Byzantine themes, and my rather intense memories of your rebellion (its aftermath, North King ran the nation when you rebelled) is what makes me associate you with Byzantium.

 

[Insane_Panda]

Because Sheep is a good neser

Or because Capulet wrote the decisive orders for him Sheep's performance was strong however.

 

[Insane_Panda]

I'm sick of always seeing someone else in charge of Germany.

Germany in Josefs NES will be the greatest Germany ever. I share your affinity with Imperial Germany. Do not worry, it is in good hands


BTW, I really, really despise Wilhelm II.

 

[Insane_Panda]

I think it's the fault of mods, for letting people get away with some things (I'm very guilty of this, and admit it). Also, nations seldom stagnate (they start of stagnant sometimes), and every leader is brilliant and capable of seeing the big picture and making skilled long-term plans, as are all of their heirs. One time, I'd like to take a powerful NPC and get a total hedonist glutton for a king.

I don't think anyone can be declared 'The Best NESer'. It's a loose term for a loose simulation of history.

Writing long orders doesn't make you any more devoted than someone who writes brief orders.

Well, Iggy, the problem of leaders fits into your argument about mods. In NES2 VI, for example, we were able to essentially make our own leaders. Also, Valerien, who came after Julien, was hardly as great, and as could be seen by the numerous rebellions which spread through the Empire during his tenure , he was hardly in a very secure position. We were pretty close to defeat during the highpoint of the Second World War - had Dachs committed more men to his invasion and secured Italy, he would have broken my power, allowing the numerous rebels to succeed. We got through by the skin of our teeth, and the biggest contributor to the HRE's success would have to be luck. Our enemies made some mistakes, and we were able to exploit them.

I would agree with you. Its not long orders which win the day, its orders which are clear, decisive, yet give an adequate amount of detail.

 

[North King]

and my rather intense memories of your rebellion (its aftermath, North King ran the nation when you rebelled) is what makes me associate you with Byzantium.

Excuse me? If you're referring to the NES I think you're referring to, Kentharu was ruling when the rebellions exploded. I stepped in and saved the empire from dissolution, but it was unfortunately too late to regain Greece. Kindly do not blame the fiasco of the original rebellion on me.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot that Kentharu was working on it before you.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

You won't find many takers. Rule set discussion has a bad tendency to die here. Thinking is too hard, apparently.

I'm not going to comment on the whole argument that prefaced this, but this annoyed me enough to speak up. You, me, Disenfranchised, and Birdjaguar have consistently been willing to talk about rules, and judging from recent discussion, about 5 or so other NESers are as well. That's more than enough to have a productive thread. You just need to lower your expectations. I really enjoyed discussing your rules proposals in your ANES01 thread. You seemed to be annoyed because only 3 or 4 people were commenting on them, but isn't that better than no comments?

Of course, you could be having PM discussions about the rules, in which case my point is moot. If that's true, please PM me what you're working on...

@Israelite: why (I'm genuinely curious, not attacking) don't you like Latin? I really enjoyed taking Latin, because it has a much more regular structure than most of the languages I'm familiar with (except maybe Arabic, but I had different problems with that). Another advantage to Latin is that most people here will have a vague idea of what a given sentence is talking about. If you've read FarowNES02, I think I used Latin fairly well as a cultural to spice up Terra Trifluentia.

 

[Symphony D.]

You seemed to be annoyed because only 3 or 4 people were commenting on them, but isn't that better than no comments?

I'll be the first to admit my standards are extremely high but 15% or less involvement (3 - 9 people out of a population of 50 to 60) is pathetic no matter how you slice it, particularly when a lot of those same people who don't involve themselves come back later and whine about how they don't understand or don't like the rules. Reminds me of a juice commercial on TV a few years back "10% real juice. Would you settle for 10% quality in other products?" Then it showed this kid peddling along a sidewalk on a trike and the wheels all fell off.

Most NESers are quite content to just steal the latest das rules without changing so much as a single word, throw them up in a thread, and run with them. Others will occasionally pull out old rules and just say "Use that" or Frankenstein something together.

The number of people willing to look at a problem, look at the available material on it, and approach it with an open mind in regarding what to keep, what to throw out, what works, what doesn't, and most importantly why such things are the way they are is exceptionally small. Your own statements do nothing but reaffirm that fact.

Most people don't want to think, and they don't want to contribute, so why have a public discussion on it when most of the people who are willing to do such things are already well-known and you can talk to them directly? Yeah, sure, you might get some random input if you leave it all out in the open, but odds are you won't. Public review is more valuable when you have a semi-finalized product up and you want people to shoot holes in it--that somehow comes much easier than brainstorming.

Actually, my reasoning was more like, "We must stop Panda, he's getting too powerful! I don't trust him!", and I really couldn't care less about what you were doing with Asia, until you sent a fleet to attack me, which would have annoyed me had I still been playing...though I don't know about everyone else.

I didn't name names for a reason, but yours wasn't one of the ones not named.

 

[Israelite9191]

@Israelite: why (I'm genuinely curious, not attacking) don't you like Latin? I really enjoyed taking Latin, because it has a much more regular structure than most of the languages I'm familiar with (except maybe Arabic, but I had different problems with that). Another advantage to Latin is that most people here will have a vague idea of what a given sentence is talking about. If you've read FarowNES02, I think I used Latin fairly well as a cultural to spice up Terra Trifluentia.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that Latin feels too, well, fake. If feels very much like a constructed language with regularity this is just unnatural. Personally, I like languages for what they demonstrate of the human psyche and soul. Latin is simply too robotic to do that, IMHO. Latin is the language of managers, not of poets. That's why I like French and Yiddish more than any other lanuages (Italian comes close, Hebrew close behind that, while Hungarian might be in the list if I was more familiar with it than I am). They have an ability to express emotion and bare open the psyche of the speaker more than any other language I am remotely familiar with. Oh, and the complexity of Latin's grammar (declensions etc.) really doesn't help it's case. Yah, that was response was rather rambling, please excuse that as it is after 2 in the morning and I have a splitting headache.

 

[shortguy]

Latin is the language of managers, not of poets.

What do you mean? I find that a somewhat odd thing to say about a language that outlived its everyday applications much longer than most others.

 

[das]

Latin is a language of Romans. As it evolved to be a language of a big empire, and then of a hegemonic church, the artificiality is not too hard to predict. Nor is it all that bad, IMHO.

One time, I'd like to take a powerful NPC and get a total hedonist glutton for a king.

Never quite did that one I'm afraid, but I often had opportunistic political adventurers take over and run everything into the ground.

What I do trully despise is the various "reforms" that make absolutely no sense whatsoever within the context, like an attempt to introduce some vague and ill-defined "Democracy" in... OTL 1836 China. A real shame HarlNES III seems nowhere near resurrection, because the point of my Qing China there was to see how far I could get without any Westernising reforms whatsoever (i.e. on Neoconfucianism alone). I really do think players should try and read up on their nation's culture of the time before making their decisions.

Btw, amphibious invasions fail often enough. In NES2 II, I recall a Finnish invasion of England utterly destroyed without even quite reaching the beaches. I think fire arrows and some flameable substances were involved.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Never quite did that one I'm afraid, but I often had opportunistic political adventurers take over and run everything into the ground.

almost, in INES your King was quite ermm corrupt. And you had a very intresting puppet master in your high priest.

I had kings that could do no wrong

----

anyway, In LINESII iggy has had my king deposed. I've actually got plans to follow his rise and fall of power with some stories.

Pity about the month long hiatus (and then you know, i'm on holiday, why does this always happen iggy? ).


@Sympth- I almost didn't recognise you with the avvie.

Then I died inside, laughed a bit and moved on.

 

[Azale]

I will say, in Symphony's defense, he is right about those who just steal rulesets without thinking it through *cough* me *cough* and most people not wanting to participate in rules discussions (probably because it is considered boring).

I don't participate in them because I never see exactly what I can contribute My strongsuit is NOT rules, thats for certain. I can only review and say "that looks good" or "dear god thats awful" but even then, as one can see looking at the rules of my nes (some of them), sometimes even that fails me.

 

[Symphony D.]

@Sympth- I almost didn't recognise you with the avvie.

Then I died inside, laughed a bit and moved on.

Once more:

 

[Kal'thzar]

so whos eroding whos soul.

I've been told I don't have one....

 

[LittleBoots]

Basically, it comes down to the fact that Latin feels too, well, fake. If feels very much like a constructed language with regularity this is just unnatural. Personally, I like languages for what they demonstrate of the human psyche and soul. Latin is simply too robotic to do that, IMHO. Latin is the language of managers, not of poets. That's why I like French and Yiddish more than any other lanuages (Italian comes close, Hebrew close behind that, while Hungarian might be in the list if I was more familiar with it than I am). They have an ability to express emotion and bare open the psyche of the speaker more than any other language I am remotely familiar with. Oh, and the complexity of Latin's grammar (declensions etc.) really doesn't help it's case. Yah, that was response was rather rambling, please excuse that as it is after 2 in the morning and I have a splitting headache.

Surprise, surprise, I agree with shortguy. Have you read Catellus? Or Ovid? And anyway, I said dead languages, but I meant ancient languages, as I like Greek more than Latin and that is a language of poetry if I ever heard one.

 

[das]

almost, in INES your King was quite ermm corrupt. And you had a very intresting puppet master in your high priest.

That king didn't matter much, mostly because he never intended to. The puppet master was of the political opportunist variety, though I suppose that would be an oversimplification, seeing as he was also a zealot who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I don't participate in them because I never see exactly what I can contribute

Same here, most of the times. When I'm not working on one of my own rulesets all I have is some vague ideas, if anything at all.

 

[alex994]

What I do trully despise is the various "reforms" that make absolutely no sense whatsoever within the context, like an attempt to introduce some vague and ill-defined "Democracy" in... OTL 1836 China. A real shame HarlNES III seems nowhere near resurrection, because the point of my Qing China there was to see how far I could get without any Westernising reforms whatsoever (i.e. on Neoconfucianism alone). I really do think players should try and read up on their nation's culture of the time before making their decisions.

I swear, it sounds like you're implying me and my actions as the various Chinas when you refer to yourself