A Discussion on kingmaking and community standards.

[Sombre]

Edit: This reply is to qm.

Well there are two statements there. I believe one of them, while not kingmaking, is effectively the same. You aren't trying to win by doing it, just trying and make your opponent lose for daring to attack you, via proxy. I think you're mainly talking about scorched earth, so I'll address that:

I don't think burning down your stuff because you are about to get conquered is kingmaking but I do think it's a crappy way to play.

I don't really see how burning down all of your territory and hiding in your (also burned down) home province is worthwhile. I mean you've already lost, you're just taking turns for the sake of it and burning down all those provinces isn't really helping you, it's just spiting your attacker. You're also ignoring the possibility of recovering that territory in order to weaken a foe that you aren't going to beat. You're weakening them for someone else - why? Unless it's an allied game, you shouldn't have any interest in your enemy's enemy prevailing.

I'd say this is rather different from fighting to the bitter end, which involves defending those resources you can and inflicting maximum casualties. There you are honing your skills, giving the opponent a good fight and, to an extent, still trying to win (who knows, maybe they'll be savaged by a bunch of other nations and you'll claw your way back). Razing everything you own just to deny it to the attacker could possibly help you live a few more turns (since they'll have less income to use in cracking your home fort), but for what? The extra turns will be spent hiding in a fort doing nothing.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Edit: This reply is to qm.

Well there are two statements there. I believe one of them, while not kingmaking, is effectively the same. You aren't trying to win by doing it, just trying and make your opponent lose for daring to attack you, via proxy. I think you're mainly talking about scorched earth, so I'll address that:

I don't think burning down your stuff because you are about to get conquered is kingmaking but I do think it's a crappy way to play.

I don't really see how burning down all of your territory and hiding in your (also burned down) home province is worthwhile. I mean you've already lost, you're just taking turns for the sake of it and burning down all those provinces isn't really helping you, it's just spiting your attacker. You're also ignoring the possibility of recovering that territory in order to weaken a foe that you aren't going to beat. You're weakening them for someone else - why? Unless it's an allied game, you shouldn't have any interest in your enemy's enemy prevailing.

I'd say this is rather different from fighting to the bitter end, which involves defending those resources you can and inflicting maximum casualties. There you are honing your skills, giving the opponent a good fight and, to an extent, still trying to win (who knows, maybe they'll be savaged by a bunch of other nations and you'll claw your way back). Razing everything you own just to deny it to the attacker could possibly help you live a few more turns (since they'll have less income to use in cracking your home fort), but for what? The extra turns will be spent hiding in a fort doing nothing.

As thejeff says, at some point anything you do as a player is just screwing over one of the leading players, not winning the game. The real question when doing scorched earth is 'how far in the future could I ever expect to recapture this for any length of time?'. In a lot of cases the answer is 10 or 20 turns, if ever. At that point it is perfectly reasonable to try and deny your opponent the resources at the risk of some long term detriment far down the road.

As you say, your best hope to ever escape a losing situation is a pile on by other people, and the longer you can hold out, the more likely such a rescue becomes.