Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

What is your position on casting anonymous rituals on nations you have a nap with? And how would you react on it?

I personally think that it is evil but somethimes worthy the bad karma, and if someone did it to me i would just attack him.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Anonymous rituals are never as anonymous as they appear.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Anonymous rituals are against the spirit of a NAP but if you can cast them anonymously and get away with it then good for you as you will have succeeded in weakening a rival without them knowing.However if I were to catch someone with whom I had a NAP with catching a ritual at me I would consider it an act of war.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

As the stone oracle said:

Casting anonymous rituals is no breach of a nap as long as you're not caught.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

I did it in one of my first games against the leader while we had a NAP thinking anonymous spells were ok.

And I did get called out on it - gee, who could be casting murdering winter? Niefelheim, hmmm... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
But it was more of a joke then a blow up.

After thinking about it, I decided not to do it anymore, mainly because the gains are not generally worth the loss of trust if you are caught.

But I can see the argument either way. When I did it, I considered it like the espionage that goes on between allies in the real world. If you get caught, it could lead to a blow up, otherwise, it is just an accepted fact of life.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Hahah, here's the real evil/sneaky strategy (which I've successfully pulled off in the past): cast anonymous rituals where you have nothing to gain to start a war between two of your neighbors so you can move in on whoever gets the worst of their first fight. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Indeed, who suspects it's (ie) Sauromatia repeatedly casting murdering winter with their pretender?

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Baalz you are a stone cold killer. That is truly evil.

And quite funny.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Another evil strategy is to take provinces between two nations. I anger two nations, one nation is bound to take my provinces. However, that nation will soon be taking provinces that used to belong another nation, that's when all hell breaks loose.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

I am in the game in question.

We had a thread awhile back on what violates a nap. Many said any hostile act, including baalz. I am of the camp that if I am aware of a hostile act, the nap is over and it is war.

That includes stealth preaching, moving stealth armies through my lands, etc.

Baalz and I think K as well said boxing them in so they could not expand violated their naps, or taking an independent province that barbarians had captured.

So there is a range of actions that different players view as violating an nap.

In Fallacy, casting rain of toads so many times on Jotunheim's capital on the eve of war had to be you. Hadrian. Who else would waste the bloodslaves to cast 40 rain of toads on someone they had no beef with?

And with abysia and Mictlan already out of the game, the list of suspects grows thin(assuming Jotunheim did not cast them on himself.). So you knew you did it, and Jotunheim knew you did it. In fact everyone knew you did it.

So it was no longer a spell(40 of them) whose origin was in doubt. To me that is a breach of the nap calling for instant war.

As for future games, well i have had long naps with you in the Big Game and in EH II. In both of those games you were(to the best of my knowledge) a good neighbor.

So I would trust you, but I would make sure we were on the same page as to what the nap meant. To me a nap that does not ban all hostile acts is useless. I may as well go to war with that nation and make a nap with someone who is going to view the nap in the same light i do.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Hahah Baalz, yeah I've done that too. Also, I like to use weak anonymous spells to probe provinces for domes. Gives you targetting information for your spells.

Personally I feel that if I can catch a NAP-bound nation casting an anonymous spell at me that it is considered a violation. However I will likely just forgive the nation in question if they promise to cut it out and/or I have no interest in war with them.

All this said, it is technically impossible to pin an anonymous spell on anyone. Thus the term anonymous. Normally if I suspect a NAP nation of casting at me but cant prove it I will give them a warning and if it continues I will acitvate the termination clause of the NAP, however long that is.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Here's a good one: Would it be considered an exploit to rename a mage to a default name for another nation and deliberately launch a mind hunt to get caught? I think that's kind of abusing the renaming function personally, but it could be quite effective at starting a fight.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

People have problems with this? How odd. Sure, _if you get caught_ all hell breaks loose. But this is politics speaking. NAPs are all well and good. You shouldn't be trusted if you break one. But the point is that you have to be _caught_ breaking it for it to count on the world scene.

It's all about plausible deniability, and I wonder why the spells are anonymous in the first place if not to allow a little 'plausible deniability' in your actions.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Good idea! But now everyone knows this trick http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Besides, you'd have to know whether to rename the mage (for example) Citlalatonac or s2h2 or sshh or CitS2, if the nation you're trying to frame is actually using renaming ... and then it's pretty obvious if anyone's on your border and sees your commander. ("The army appears to be commanded by s2h2 the Rishi" ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif)

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

I engage in covert ops against someone I suspect of aggresion through similar methods, and if I am very, very certain, my ops go overt.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Or now you can use Micah's strategy as an excuse when you get caught - "wasn't me I swear! It was someone else who renamed their mage to sound like me"

Also, I agree the anonymous spells puts a little spice into the game. In a VP game, I'd fire off Blights at enemy capitals that I wasn't sure who actually controlled. I just saw the VP marker on the map and pushed the button.

Not sure if it led to any wars but it was fun.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

I just do not waste my gems casting rituals on nations i am not at war with. While it may weaken them, i typically have better uses for my gems.

Instead of casting tidal wave on a neutral nation, i would rather have a water mage summon 15 water trolls etc.

On occasion, if i was paid enough to make it worth the risk, I would cast a mind hunt etc on a neutral nation. But my incentive there would be to be paid well over the spell's cost. In one game I got a runesmasher for 3 mind hunts. A good deal for me in that game because i did not have the paths to make a runesmasher.

But I would not cast it on a nation with whom i had a nap for any price.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

To me, suffering from a sneaky ritual which can only be cast by someone with whom there's a NAP means the NAP is broken but I'd first contact (pm/mail/whatever) the person and get things clear. I'd probably attack immediately if the spell was preparation for an attack, or ask for repairs and attack if that's not accepted.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

If I was 100% sure of who cast the ritual I would probably consider the NAP to be obsolete. But in the case Xietor described, casting 40 rain of toads isn't being sneaky, that's clearly an act of war.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

This thread has shown me a new tactic. If you want to break a NAP and surprise attack someone all you have to do is claim they were hitting you with anonymous spells. You send them a message saying "You are spamming ___ on me, it can't be anyone else, prepare to die!" and attack them. They can't prove they weren't and you can claim they're lying when they rationally try to blame someone else. Additionally anyone they blame will turn on them, because they know they didn't do it. No-one did of course, since it's all made up.

You can make this even more convincing and effective by posting about it on the forum too, ranting about them being sneaky traitors for spelling you.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Brilliant, really.

Same with spying, to a more limited degree, but more applicable to the early-game, when reputations are still undetermined. If you're NAP buddy has access to spies, scream "HE'S INSTILLING UPRISINGS IN MY CAPITAL!!! TREACHERY!!!"

Hilarity ensues.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Best, strat, ever.

Jazzepi

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Hmm...isn't this the George Bush go to war strategy?

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

No, that would involve something like this.

"We attacked because they were stockpiling death gems that could potentially be used for ***BLACK DEATH*** to wipe out our capitol!!1!11!1111"

Jazzepi

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

I wonder if Machiavel would find it worth casting a ritual against one of his provinces (where someone else hopefully has a scout xho could see the spell) to then blame it on NAP-partner and attack it?

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Well there is one way of providing proof that someone is casting remotes at you, but unfortunately that would require posting a copy of your turn file for others to look at.

Re: Anonymous Rituals and NAPs
 

Let's avoid the politics, all right?

Everything said here seems quite valid as tools of statecraft, and actually seem rather tame compared to historical examples.

Clausewitz would be proud.