RFE: no trading
 

This has come up in multiplayer games - it would be nice if there were a toggle (and a corresponding flag) to disable sending gems, gold, etc. to other players - the concept being that this would reduce the tendency to form alliances.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

That would help but there are ways to pass the items anyway in mid game. Ive often exchanged mages with other nations by agreeing where to send them so that they can be taken by charm spells (or one of the many variations). You could just as simply pile them with gems and equipment. For equipment you could just send a scout and have him attack. He wouldnt even have to be charmed. Just killing him would give a chance of exchanging the item.

The most dangerous part of alliances that I see is the non-aggression pacts. And I cant come up with a way to control that.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

This is another example of there being a "right" way and "wrong" way to play.

From the nature of the game, as the Devs seem to express it, no nation should ever be allying with another nation, but you can't prevent players from doing so, even though it's disruptive to the concept of a "Dom3 Multi-player" game.

I'm thinking one solution would be education. Broadcasting and indoctrinating as many people as possible about the "Dom3 Philosophy" could go a long way towards solving such problems.

This is a unique situation though, and I kind of question who's side I should be on. I'm all for the freedom to play a given game any way we want, and usually I would stand up for our right to do whatever the hell we want in a game (if you want to "win" at chess by punching out your opponent and then declairing "that's check mate, M*****F*****!", and you don't mind dealing with the consequences, that's your choice) but, this game functions based on principles which vary from pretty much any other game.

Usually, in an MP game, you will have many sides. You'll form alliances and fight against dangerous, aggressive, or weak enemies until all that remains are two sides opposed. "Role-playing" can never entirely preclude the possibility of alliances, because of unpredictability and chaos-theory (not to mention the ability to wear people down by sheer annoyance-factor).

In such cases of fundamentally natural enemies, the question will inevitably come up in one form or another, "well what if this were an alternate universe?"

All sides will function within the same universe, though, alternate or not, and this will be a matter-of-course with pretty much any game you'd care to name.

In Dominions, each nation basically is living in and coming from it's own alternate universe, and the spread of Dominion represents the spreading influence of that universe.

What do you do when each side represents an entirely different point of view on the nature of reality, an entirely different reality, for that matter?

I don't know. It's not like playing Starcraft, though.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I find absurd to try to forbid alliances in any game with more than 2 players (or trade if there is something to trade).

Humans are social by nature.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Why not just agree not to have alliances in the game, and threaten to devour the soul of anyone found cheating?

Re: RFE: no trading
 

This would be a useful feature for the multiplayer games... at least the ones I'm playing.

Only one solution would be to have all participants swear and give their word the game will have no trading or communication. Also the host would have to personally know the individuals to ensure they are trustworthy to the agreement. A toggling feature to disable sending gems, gold, messages, etc, would also help for this scenario.
Otherwise in a game of complete strangers its currently not possible. Diplomacy is a major part of the multiplayer gaming.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Therein lieth the rub, Twan. Humans are social creatures, and we tend to form alliances. These alliances take all sorts of forms, friendships, relationships, forums, etc.

The nations in Dom3 are fundamentally unsocial towards each other. If they weren't, then you could have a much more extensive trade-based economy and a diplomatic engine in the game-things that apparently are prevented from due to "the nature of the game"

Outlawing alliances would probably be the most powerful step that could be taken. I don't know how easily you could sniff out cheaters though-and monitoring everyone for cheating isn't really very fun, is it? and like Twan said, it's absurd to expect that particular "law" to be followed well by everyone.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

It could be controlled I believe thru a PbEM game using blind email addresses, and careful monitoring of the game log. Such as, if I started a game called Blind on my server and gave the Ermor access to an email account of "Blind Ermor" BE@dom3minions.com and gave Ulm access to "Blind Ulm" BU@dom3minions.com then Id be able to track most actions.
But it seems awfully intrusive.

Honestly though, Im also torn on the subject. Personally I love alliances. I wouldnt want to create a game that allows proof and bragging that my strategy can beat your strategy by cutting out trading, alliances, messages, random events, etc. Id rather create a game that has majorly boosted AIs and game situations, and then bill it as a game of alliances between the human players.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I think it would be really valuable to hear the Devs' personal feelings on the subject and what their vision of the game's background as relates to alliances and trading is.

As to the extent of trade, diplomacy, and possible alliances that goes on in a Dom3 "world", they're the only ones who can really give us anything close to "the facts of the matter".

Anything anyone else comes up with is just gut-feeling, speculation, and conjecture based on what we think the Devs kinda-sorta-maybe had in mind when they wrote "such and such. The Devs atleast can give us the "Canon".

Re: RFE: no trading
 

If someone is going to cheat, there's not a thing you can do to stop them. As Gandalf said, even removing the entire diplomacy/trade system from the game won't prevent someone determined to trade. Even if you blocked that aspect of Dominions, there's nothing to stop them communicating via their personal email address or any number of methods with which they could co-operate.
I don't see the need of a toggle for that reason. If you agree beforehand there's to be no alliances and someone decides to cheat then turning off diplomacy won't prevent it, merely move it to less obvious methods.
I also don't think it should be removed from the game entirely. It should be up to me whether my God is willing to use other pretenders to achieve his goal or not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Remember, the Nazis and Soviets were "allies" (or at least had a non-aggression pact) once upon a time. They carved up Poland together, and even traded things like oil and weapons (= gems and magic items).

Just goes to show that even so-called "natural enemies" can make temporary bargains.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I think, in fact, that it is healthy and natural for people to gang up on weaker or stronger opponents. As the Hitler-Stalin example illustrates, this is the sort of thing different religions, even if they completely hate one another by dogma, would do for their own self interest.

The problem I have, so far, is with non-agression pacts. Players of dom3 have read too much game theory, or are too honest, or whatever, and are TOO TRUSTWORTHY.

As yet, I have never had the terms of a NAP betrayed - I've had wars after a NAP expired, but even those are rare. I feel kinda silly complaining about this, but the fact that everyone keeps their word makes non-agression pacts too attractive.

Maybe I just haven't played MP with a diverse enough crowd - but in ferion, for example (www.ferion.com), people trech (or bend the words of a non-binding treaty) all the time. Of course, ferion has built in, game mechanical, binding treaties - so these agreements are between alliances (i.e. alliance 1 and 2 agree to attack alliance 3 until it is dead, but alliance 2 attacks alliance 1 slightly before alliance 3 is finished off.)

To this end, I think game mechanical support for alliances, NAP etc. might almost be preferable, as players might then feel free to trech on non-binding gentleman's agreements etc. But this opens up an entire diplomatic can of worms that might ruin the (highly attractive) simplicity of dom3 politics, so I think it's probably more trouble than it's worth (coding difficulty aside.)

Anyhoo - if you have a gentleman's agreement to not communicate out of game, and if all in-game messages are suspended, that ought to be sufficient. You'll still get an occasional pre-arranged cheater, but approaching your neighbor and offering a NAP (if it is forbidden to do so) is probably enough of a risk that people wouldn't do it.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Lying and misinformation in in-game diplomacy is one thing, but breaking an explicitly stated pact is something I don't see myself doing, because reputation as someone who can't be trusted to honor agreements will carry over to other games.

Same goes for cheating in trade, etc. If I was trying to just win one specific game and never play Dom3 again, then treachery and such would certainly come in to play at some point, especially since people tend to expect pacts to be honored.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I was going to suggest making it possible to turn off item/gem sending as well as private messages, and then using anonymous TCP play, to really prevent private communications - allowing "send to all" messages for very limited coordination.

But then I remembered, it's a pretty standard thing in modern cryptography to be able to exchange private information on a public channel without prior agreement on a secret - in other words, the "sent to all" messages could be used to exchange private messages between players (all the other players could do would be to know that some player sent a private message; they wouldn't even know who it was for). So, you'd have to also take out public messages.

Still, a PBEM game with no diplomacy outside of the in-game messages would be fun - that would mean back-and-forth negociations would take two turns, so coordinating things would be a real challenge.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

PhilD, what you are saying make no sense.

The receiver must have the key for the encryption, so there has to be a prior agrement.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I've also thought the idea of a no-diplomacy game would be a lot of fun. And to the Doctors point I've never seen someone betray a NAP pact, many people make a point that they have never betrayed one and bring it outside of the current Dominions game and tie it directly to themselves or Avatar.

I'll even say that due to a couple of my informal alliances or "gestures of friendship" being betrayed (and destroying my chances of winning a game) I've resorted to formally defined NAP pacts.

I actually dislike the ganging up on a leader approach particularly with the incredibly easy way to discover the leader by looking at the graphs.

While I see Gandalf’s point of disliking the "my strategy can beat yours"... I feel there is a large desire by many people to have exactly that.

Why not create a scenarios where players can test there skill against each other purely with the game mechanics instead of it being decided (mostly) by who took the time to communicate and create diplomatic arrangements with the other players.

The current way games are played is great and it’s a TON of fun! However, there is certainly nothing wrong with alternate forms of play (no diplomacy) or creating scenarios where player skill (strategy and tactics purely within the game) can be objectively tested against others.

Another mode of play that would be fun, eliminates the “don’t get to strong” problem and keeps the social play is to play team games. Break the players into two teams and the first team to eliminate the other wins (shared among all players on the team).

Re: RFE: no trading
 

I think the developers intended diplomacy to be a part of the MP game, since sending messages and trading gems, gold and magic items are possible.

I don't find myself using these options at all SP games against the AI, so am somewhat puzzled by players who have concluded that using diplomacy and trade in MP play is not thematic.

I don't believe that adding restrictions and limiting player choices is the way to improve the gameplay.

Players who prefer to play games without diplomacy and trade already have the option of playing duels, where they can pit their skills against those of another human opponent.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Im not down on the strategy-vs-strategy games. They just arent my cup of tea so Im not motivated to try and figure out how to make them better.

But I have done SOME thinking on blind-man games. It has a draw to it. Personally I will defend the impressions of "Gandalf Parker", the virtual persona, more than my desire to win a game. Im a trusted ally and I want that to continue from game to game. But there are times when I wish I could join a game anonymously and play as an *******.

Maybe down the road when Ive figured out how to do better alliance games, I will put some time into putting up some blind-man games. And maybe even some enforcable no-alliance games.

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Gandalf, just don't forget that the blind-man games will likely draw the attention of similar people (ie, those that feel like being *******s), so those games could get a little more "crazy" then you'd expect http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: RFE: no trading
 

Actually I think that some people are professionally and openly *******s so they already have that personae to protect becuase its expected of them. At least, we did have them in Dom2.

So an anonymous game might have two results. Only the "Im kinda new at this ******* stuff" people would play, OR we would see the publickly known *******s joining the game to secretly try their hands at being helpful loyal allies without besmirching their known identity.
Either way it would be fun. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif