A Discussion on kingmaking and community standards.

[Frozen Lama]

well you could also jsut ban VP giving specifically, if you feel that that is KM and gem giving isn't

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Micah

Wrath - Pardon my phrasing, but I'm having trouble with the idea that an experienced player such as yourself can really and truly believe that a third party can reasonably do anything about a well-executed VP gift.

I'll spell it out for you. First turn the gifting player drops any domes on their VP by suiciding the casters. There is no way to know this without witnessing an attack or launching a spell at the province the same turn. The next turn the attacker teleports in with a good-sized force including a few good anti-SC units and drops a crumble at the VP. The turn after that the attacker storms the fort while the gifting nation casts domes with a few units that remained in the VP province, scripted to retreat.

A third party seeing the teleported attack squad now has to throw his army at a wall of domes with no way of properly scripting his forces to account for the units that will be picked off by them. Additionally, the person being gifted with the VPs has the powerful first-turn advantage as they are defending from the third party. Plus, of course, all of this requires that the third party has forces on-hand to respond to an attack immediately, so they have to be equipped and sitting on a lab, ready to go.

I can't fathom how you could begin to say that this is in any way a preventable tactic, and hence the strong phrasing of my position. If you had simply failed to properly consider your position I apologize for my vehemence.

Yes. I was thinking of VP transfer in a more simplistic manner. You know, nation A sends a scout to empty nation B VP and casts crumble. Next turn it storms the castle. You can replace the scout with an army, or one SC, or army+SC etc. W/O the domes part (which I haven't considered at all) I think it can be countered (I apologize beforehand if I missed yet another angle ).
Now are you 100% sure about the domes?- IIRC casting order is random so there's no guarantee that they'd come up *before* nation C's teleporting SCs coming to bust the transfer.
I agree with you though. Its tough to counter and gives an advantage to nation A that is as inherent to the game as the fact the gem transfer is clandestine and un-counter-able, namely the defender's first turn advantage. The difference is that technically it's possible to try and counter and have a chance of success in case nation C is lucky/strong enough to have the right material to send in.

Originally Posted by Micah

As to the gem issue, clearly the nation sending the gems must be getting them from somewhere, and sending them means not spending them. It's the same as ganging. A good player can overcome a 2:1 war (which is essentially what gifting gems to one player results in) or being set back a few turns of gem income, and in fact where their superior skill really can shine through.

By contrast, VP gifting is the equivalent of informing them that their nation is now dead because they were outnumbered and removing them from the game, since it happens too fast to be countered and there is not interactivity. Gem gifting is, of course, non-interactive, but it must be turned into interactive units and spells to be of value. Obviously, as with ganging, there is a point at which even the best player cannot hope to compete with enough pressure, but that's a situation that shouldn't arise if people are playing to win, as nations will either want to remain sovereign since they are still contenders, or else will have too few gems to have more of an impact on the outcome than player skill.

"but that's a situation that shouldn't arise if people are playing to win"
Yes, but that's the thing, the don't always. I have seen it countless times. Not all ppl play to win. Oh, they sure enough join the game with an abstract notion of winning, but then RP or awe of the vets or losing interest in the game causes them to lose that drive to win. Then these players become unexpected and can and do influence the game. Type A players that are also good diplomats are usually deft at recognizing these situations and making the most of them which brings the game to a new level of meta gaming or in other words makes diplomacy king over tactics. Is that good or bad?- I honestly don't know. Depends on the mood
I mean so long as we identify the root cause we have a hope of addressing it in house rules. Whether or not ppl would be interested in playing diplo no KM games is a different matter altogether

BTW, just had an idea, what if instead of prohibiting KM acts players would be expected to announce them in the game thread for all to see. Something like:
"Arco will send 1k S gems to Pyth. this turn"
or
"Ermor plans to give it's VP in xyz to Caelum next turn"
Would that make things better?- If so, better in what sense?

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

well you could also jsut ban VP giving specifically, if you feel that that is KM and gem giving isn't

Agree. Yet I see this as possible source of resentment as well.
Say nation A leads over nation B and is candidate to win. They are duking it our while a bunch of lesser nations are out of the conflict. Yet they keep pumping B with gems/items/income. B ends up winning and A that knows nothing about what happened get his hand on the turn files. I can imagine A player feeling any of ,,,, etc. This can escalate into pure ugliness.
I say, either you go all the way or you don't even try. Leaving loopholes is not good.

[archaeolept]

Giving gems or gold to a nation is an old and generally accepted practice, in most cases. I'm not sure i've ever seen it give a victory to a recipient, though that would certainly be possible. For the most part, gems are given to help fight a common cause, or to a combatant most likely to be able to halt the player deemed most likely to win, or to prop up some failing nation. Even then, it doesn't tend to have such over-weening effects. As such, only in very rare instances would it be king-making, as almost always no king is made. Claiming that giving gems or gold to someone is somehow worse than throwing a winning vp strikes me as pretty close to absurd. I would suggest that players will easily be able to consider their own past games as to this matter.

King-making as it does exist in Dominions is mostly when allies remain loyal to one side, even when that side (ie. the strongest nation on that side, most relevantly) is prevailing. This happens - but at least there is a long war, and the continual possibility that the allied nations might change their side.

When there is an agreement between two parties such that the one in effect grants his vps to the other, there is no realistic way to work against this, within the confines of the rules of the game. Hence, why it has traditionally been known as "throwing" the game.

These various scenarios are not at all equivalent, and have never been taken as being so on these forums, among hundreds of games that have been played. Surely it was not some stroke of genius that recently created the idea of one nation giving winning vps to another. Why has this not (to my knowledge, at least in a real game with experienced players) ever happened before on these boards? Is it really just the case that no one has ever thought of it, or that no one has ever had the amazing diplomatic acumen to have persuaded some other player?

Has any experienced player here ever even tried such a thing? Why not? No game has even felt it necessary to consider whether such actions are legitimate, and so either specifically deny or allow giving away winning vps. The argument seems to be based on the claim that any possible legalistic interpretation of what may be allowed to win has to be specifically denied in a games OP. Has it really come to this?

I would think that the majority of games listed in the HoF thread could just have easily been turned around if only a couple of the losing players had been smart enough to band together in doing so. Perhaps one player could do it for the other in one game, and receive his proper reward in an other - This too would be legal; certainly it has never been banned behaviour in any game's OP. This is clearly not how it is best for games of Dominions to be played.

[Micah]

It's true that the domes are in normal caster order, but it's not too hard to get a few different casters in on the act and use casters at the front and back of the casting order. Since you are ending the game you don't need to worry about saving any gems, so dropping 10 or more domes isn't unreasonable, likewise, the attacker doesn't really need to keep any forces in reserve because the 3rd party will be a turn behind them in any assaults on the attacker's VPs, so they can have their entire army present at the final VP, or half their army split among 2 VPs, etc.

Regardless, the uncertainty of losing units in the attack force makes a proper counterattack virtually impossible, since you don't know if the unit you have set to cast a vital buff will get knocked out of your combat group, or the unit that's casting astral travel with all of your chaff, etc. I would much rather an opponent got a few turns' worth of bonus gems than running into that situation, at least then I have some time to deal with it instead of facing an immediate end to the game unless I make what would normally be a terrible tactical blunder (splintering my army on a bunch of domes) AND pull it off successfully. It is, realistically speaking, not able to be countered.

As to people throwing in the towel early and unbalancing the game...well, that's why I stick to vet games, I have no interest in dealing with that sort of behavior. I don't think it makes for a compelling argument about what the community standards should be, since those sorts of actions are pretty universally frowned upon.

[DonCorazon]

Thats my point llama. No more words needed.

[archaeolept]

Originally Posted by Micah

As to people throwing in the towel early and unbalancing the game...well, that's why I stick to vet games, I have no interest in dealing with that sort of behavior. I don't think it makes for a compelling argument about what the community standards should be, since those sorts of actions are pretty universally frowned upon.

Unhappily, that is surely not sufficient, as was clearly demonstrated

[WraithLord]

Micah/DonC/Archae, thank you for presenting your opinions so clearly. Although I still disagree with the distinction you make between different KM acts I can now better relate to your position.
I also agree with Archae, this discussion and the game that sparked it has proved that this distinction is not universal.
Some would see *all* KM acts as a valid manifestation of diplomacy and claim that all is fair in love and war while others would frown upon the KM act of VP giving.
My suggestion to players reading this thread is to make the ground rules clear from the start and when in doubt do your best to respect the feelings of ppl who may frown upon VP giving. Either refrain from doing that or declare your intentions in the game thread and follow according to ensuing discussion. This is just a game after all and I think we should all strive that it be as much fun as possible for all players

[alansmithee]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

For some reason gem/item/income transfer is not treated the same as VP transfer.

The reason they're not treated the same is because they're entirely different. If I give my last VP(s), I lose. My game is over. If I give all my gems (and all my future gems), it is still possible (but extremely unlikely) that I will win. And likewise, if I give someone the VPs necessary for them to win, the game is over, that person wins. I can't comeback to win (nor can anyone else). Even if I gave someone 100000000 gems, that act wouldn't directly cause the end of the game. I mean, if someone went to cast Nexus the turn that guy spent all those gems it could actually swing the game for someone else.

That is the fundamental difference-giving VP's leads directly to player loss/victory without other actions. And I really can't see how anyone could in good faith argue otherwise. I understand that this thread is in response to things that happened in a game you won, but I don't think coming up with...dubious arguments saying how X is the same as Y really helps prove your case. Your win was legit, there was nothing prohibited in the game about what happened (from what I can tell).

[Sombre]

Legit technically but definitely frowned up. Hence the need for some clarification of unspoken 'rules'. I personally thought that one would be pretty clear, but there are a couple of dissenting voices.

You certainly can't cover /everything/ in game rules. As I've said a few times on IRC if you are forced to make a laundry list of rules every game, you're not playing with the right people.