A Discussion on kingmaking and community standards.

[K]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Well, it's pretty silly to say there are rules of conduct, or even house rules that can be codified. As Micah says the game is so open ended each situation is unique. I will say, ethically and from a sportsmanship point of view it's pretty crappy to do things for the explicit purpose of screwing up your opponent *after your defeat*. That's obviously a very ambiguous way to put things, but you know what I'm talking about. I doubt anybody would say any action was not justifiable if you did it to increase your own chances but there is certainly some behavior which is well over that line. If a nation attacks you and you decide you're (essentially) defeated it's nothing but sour grapes to try and make sure he doesn't win the game by razing your capital, sending gems to an uninvolved 3rd party, etc. You can try to justify it with RP, but it's just poor sportsmanship and detracts from the fun of the game. RP or not you can't lose sight of the fact that we are indeed playing a game, and when you get outplayed (or unlucky) the appropriate response is "gg", not "F-You".

But sometimes "F-you" is the only response you are going to get.

Let's take a game I was in: I'm a small empire in the early game because my local indies were super heavy. Sensing weakness, three players launch attacks on my empire at the same time.

So what do I do? Three players going into their first war vs one player means either they win, or I fight them off and I don't win.

I can tell you what I did. I ground up their armies, I blood hunted my capital, I send research mages to the front, I pillaged my own empire, and when I was done all three were out of the game and so was I. When a fourth player who had turtled the whole time came in, he took the smoking remains of my empire and the other three empires. While it lasted, it was a lot of fun.

Is that "bad sportsmanship"? I knew on turn 12 that I was not going to win the game, but I fought it out to turn 30 and made sure those guys didn't win either.

The thing is, every time someone starts talking about "fair play" and "good sportsmanship" they are basically saying "play in a way that is good for me and my play style, and bad for my enemies." Its the same discussion you hear about Attack Commander orders or Battlefield enchantment spells or gem gen items and a host of other things.

At the end of the day, it is a pointless discussion. I play computer games instead of tabletop games because I don't want to talk about rules that I should follow out of some sense of fair play and other people can break without getting caught. I mean, this is a game where you can totally set up a fake nation under an assumed name and double-team people and send yourself gems, items, and even mages; why even assume fair play is possible?