[Sensori]

FAJ said:
I don't really like scorched earth tactics, as it gives you no benifit. i can understand if the enemy were treacherous, or dishonest. Just for the sake of bitterness is weak in my opinion. I don't think grudges should carry over between games, so hurting the conquering player for no gain annoys me.

Now, if my armies had actually been effective against you, I wouldn't have had to go around pillaging in the first place. Why did I start it? I had to give you a very concrete reason why to run after my armies! It was your choice that you attacked Marverni (the province) instead of killing the armies that were ravaging your countryside, in my opinion, and your population paid the price. I didn't "hurt you" for "no reason". You hurt yourself for no reason! ;p Had you left Marverni open for a few turns longer (which is what I was trying to do), my troops would've still sucked, and you would've still managed to beat them all with just looking at them angrily.

But really, I don't see any reason NOT to pillage your (attacking) enemy's lands, especially when there's nothing else you could do to fight them. I don't think anyone *wants* to make his or her enemy stronger with practically no consequences. It doesn't really stand to reason. Why should I opt to not use anything I have in my toolset to fight a menace, if just to make it a little easier for his other neighbors to defeat him?

You know how much unrest that pillage added? Instead of something close to measly 100, that came with tax 200, some provinces jumped up to 300+. Now that's what I was looking for. Weaker provinces with unrest that won't die by just keeping taxes at 0 for a couple of turns. Real consequences! Oh yeah. I also used the income from the pillages to fund my last few armies since I was down to like 20 income. ;p Wasn't enough alone to keep them afloat.

It is my practice to give my extra gold and gems to the conquering player if they were honorable (to the effect of representing them plundering my stores).

Now, here we have a big difference in ideology. I don't think that attacking can ever be seen as honorable (especially since the reason seems to always be "I NEED MY EMPIRE TO GROW"), unless the target is something like Ashen Empire Ermor where it's a public service. I see it as the defender's duty to fight the attacker to the bitter end, and do whatever it takes to slow down his demise. The analogy that comes to mind is a mugger expecting the mugged to just, well, be mugged, if the said mugger says, "I'm gonna mug you now!" I see that things are only different if the attacker gets overpowered by the defender. THEN you're just getting what's coming to ya, and it's all your fault.

I always thought that capturing an enemy lab should steal a small portion of gems

It would've been funny if I had gotten some of your gems from taking over that lone lab in the corner of your empire. See how this idea just would never work? The loser could eat up your gems so easily. You could never have labs outside of fortresses, because one call of the winds could cripple you if you had forgotten an event caused lab somewhere.

Why can't the victor plunder their stores?

Because the stores are omnipresent, looming over everything and everywhere. When you need gold, it appears out of thin air if your God thus wills it (he has gold in his coffers in his seeeeeeeeeeeecret hideout). Closest thing to "plundering someone's stores" ingame is pillaging the place.