[Jazzepi]

I don't pledge, but...

I think this is fine if people know that they're going into a "commitment game" or something where they're expected to fight to the bitter end. I think it's also pretty clear that everyone has different definitions of at what point their nation becomes a hopeless train wreck. Losing one's capital is an arbitrary point, but at least an acceptable rule of thumb.

For example, I surrendered a rather large nation to the AI in Beyond after trying to fight off Pythium with a huge research deficit (I had just finished a twenty turn war) and just getting all three of my large armies smashed. I tried to appeal to other people that Pythium was a game ending threat, but I got absolutely no response, so I just went AI as it was a foregone conclusion to me that if Pythium gobbled me up he would more than double his gem production, and everyone else would be screwed. So I just went AI, as I couldn't provide any real defense besides hiding in fortresses anyways. To me the position, even the game for the other players, was clearly hopeless long before I lost my capital. I got attacked by Pythium wielding an amazing force of mages, and heavily artifact equipped SCs, backed up by several very strong armies, with zero help from neighbors.

It's also ironic to see this thread come up virtually at the same time that Burnsaber is abandoning EA Oceanian (without asking for a sub) in Legends of Faerun (that game + Beardaxe which are probably the impetus for Baalz making this post) with Baalz's blessing. I'm not really sure what to think of that, besides that any kind of "wriggle room" in the rules is undoubtedly going to be a dramafest when person A feels like person B shouldn't be allowed to leave their post.

So, that's a lot of stuff, but I actually have something useful to say too.

1. You should eliminate the wiggle room for people leaving their posts. It's going to cause you a TON of headaches.

2. You need to setup a simple way to determine who is, or who is not, "on the good list".

Even if you do 1, you're still going to have problems where something happens because you haven't setup some sort of structure for deciding who belongs on the list of players following these rules, and who doesn't. For example, Trumator set himself to AI in Legends of Faerun on accident, and I heard some grumblings that it was on purpose. Should he be "stricken from the honor roll" for doing that? Who would decide? Baalz? Or whomever the admin of the game was?

Obviously the same question would apply to a situation like in Legends as far as EA Oceanian is concerned where someone sets an untenable position to AI without discussing it with anyone until after the fact. Even if they do bring it up with everyone, and then say that they don't want to play it anymore, and nobody will sub, who gets to decide that they can leave? Is it a group vote from the people in the game? Or does someone outside the game get to decide? Or just the admin?

So, if you resolve those problems, I think I would be interested in playing to a "fight to the bitter end" game, but not until there are better procedures put into place. At least it would be better if everyone went in with the same expectations from a game, rather than people trying to foist their very narrow view of how people should play onto others simply by assumption.

TL;DR version - Great idea in the abstract, fix the implementation and I'd be happy to take this pledge for games labeled as "good pledge" games. I would never agree to something this sweeping for every game I ever played.

Jazzepi