[Omnirizon]

I havn't a problem with trading items, that makes sense. It is just that giving items away because your losing and decide to go AI doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't seem right somehow.

I can ONLY see it justified thematically if you fight to the LAST province, and before going under, send off your stuff. But if you actually fight to the last province, you won't really have any stuff to send. I suppose if you do that though, it is OK. But I think rarely that actually happens. Typically people have a respectable amount of stuff left, but know their fighting a losing battle. So they send their stuff to someone who might be able to win out over their aggressors and go AI. There are many ways to argue that this is NOT thematic, not the LEAST of which is the AI nation you leave behind; kind of difficult to explain their continued fighting when they just sent all their stuff to a neighbor, who they likely invade in the next turn or two.

I don't think diplomacy is bad. I enjoy all that stuff, all manner of diplomacy: trading to tribute to bribing, it is all plausible and understandable. I think giving away respectable sums of stuff requires some fangling and shallow rationalizing to pass it off as thematic though. In fact, if read through them carefully, most peoples responses even imply if not outright admit that it is more personally oriented. We could debate whether that is OK, though I think most would actually readily agree it is personal, not thematic, and that this is OK.

Lastly, we could examine this from a purely gaming perspective. However, I think that is unwise with Dom3, as many of the wild card factors that competitive gaming tries to minimize (in order to accurately judge skill rather than luck) are the very things that make Dom3 so much fun. However it is worthy to mention from this perspective that feeding is a HUGE wild card, perhaps to much for anything more than casual Dom3. You can build a strategy around diplomacy, but you can't build a strategy around being the benefactor of feeding. Yet the bestowal of this kind of gifting is very game shaping.