One of the biggest issues in Achaea when it comes to conflict, is that everything pretty much boils down to who punches the other guy harder. Ideological conflict is a kind of conflict that never has a real resolution, at best two people can agree to disagree because just like talking to fundie Christians, whatever you say seldom registers in the brain department. Sure you might convert a few people, but when you think about it, the bulk of ideological conflict can be broken down into

1a) In-fighting
1b) Cat fights (see: Shallam and their multitude of 'Good' gods)
2a) Non-stop fighting
2b) pk that eventually leads to every side whining on forums about who is lamer (see: Mhaldor and everyone else except Hashan)
3) supposedly neutral cities who get smacked for 'helping the enemy'. (see: Cyrene)

Why can't neutral cities stay neutral and yet be given opportunity to engage in meaningful conflict? I think it's simply to do with a lack of avenues.

For example:

I once played this message board RP where we were supposed to play leaders of individual cities/nations, and a big part of it involved negotiating alliances and what not. When sign ups were done, the GM took a look at the city sign ups and had half the applicants rewrite them. The issue? Everyone had everything, and every resource necessary. Basically a bunch of them built the equivalent of a god-mode city. Having everything makes for boring interaction, because then you'd never have any real reason to sit down and talk reasonably, you'd seldom if ever have a reason to form alliances or politely interact with another city/house you'd ordinarily loathe to interact with.

There is no room for negotiation because just about anything these days is resolved by 'stfu I kick your ass'. Nobody has any bargaining chips beyond 'surrender and give us X amount of gold/credits or never set foot in your city again'. Which is boring as hell once you've played long enough. Why does it always have to be conflict with force? Do we not have anything else to fight with? Are we ever in a situation where we can form an alliance or just have something the other side wants/needs that doesn't involve mass deathsights and taunting each other about 'my god > your god'?

This is actually a great point. It's one of the things I particularly hated about autoclass. Guilds had influence back then, because they were the gatekeepers to skillsets. With Achaea as it is now, you find Occultists without the pull they once had, Sentinels and Druids and Sylvans in every city imagineable and Jesters who don't know any of the history of the CIJ.

Similarly, cities had influence as a direct result of their guilds and their collective allegiance to the city. I think the combat conflict is great, but it's sad that -everything- is reduced to that side of things these days. Diplomacy was once a big part of Achaea, but it's taken a backseat to simply amassing the most fighters for your cause and applying blunt force.

Having events that were not settled by combat, but by wits, would be a godsend (no pun intended). I think Skye's got an excellent point here and I'd hope that something fruitful would come out of bringing this up.

Is this a "Please bring back landmarking" thread?

Kidding.

I'd like to see at least more puzzles and riddles, like the thing that had to be done at Xhaiden Dale to recover the athame. Though I don't actually know precisely what was done for it. Can anyone who was there or knows what was done elaborate on it? I just heard it was a logic thing.

You had to interact with various parts of a statue to swivel a locking mechanism reflected in the probed description into the proper position. Missteps could trigger traps.

Myst: Text Edition?

Slightly less maddening. *g* I admit, it was fun. Though I do wish I'd paid closer attention to the statue before the Shallamese legion descended.

I think Multiclass Houses are so much more self contained now. Your House doesn't really need to interact as much with other Houses anymore. Before, with only one Class per Guild, if you needed someone of another Class you'd have to go out and find him. And in the process, probably interacting with his Guild or City as well. Now, most Houses can recruit or make alts and get everything they need on HT. When Houses don't actually need each other anymore, there isn't much impetus to cooperate, or even negotiate. It's also highlighted the rather stark differences of the RP restrictions. In particular, the imbalances in Class access between Good and Evil and the suitability of those Class skills for raiding.

It's not just about class availability, although that is one horse that's going to be flayed to bits in this topic. I actually think that there's so much untapped potential in the commodities market and village relations. There has to be more we can do with village relations than just more contrived reasons for pk.

THESE.

The only inconvenient I see to this is that, as it is now, the commodities market are not that well-developed. If you were to start using it, then one would need certain arbitrage incentives and that would be just like MANY other browser games.

The only thing you could do is to combine both villages feelings and the commodities market as well as the defense of the villages. So cities would lay their defense (as in the recent announce) to the villages that were a natural mining/growing/etc spot of a certain commodity and as such, their price would be relatively lower in that city's market . If another city wanted those commodities they would have to either trade with those cities players, buy it from that city's market, or try the more expensive option of buying in any other market.

This could result in players arbitraging the prices of their accessible commodities, and also result in struggles to control certain influential villages (I'd imagine one with a steel mine would be very wanted, possibly too much). The only things needed to be ensure are the price differential (couldn't be too much or we would have any random player buying the commodities in the market and selling them over the MARKET channel) and that commodities could never be controlled.

This would bring back a bit of the conquering feeling for cities, as well as create different measures of battling in struggles like item blocks (such as herb bans and others) or the usual normal hostilities.


About Guild I won't add anything because everything has been said and repeated many times!

The problem with implementing a system of conflict based upon village defense, feelings, and commodities is that it is a primary source of conflict in Lusternia.

We all know how they feel about implementing things from other IRE games. Despite that they're all ripped off of Achaea to start!

The village thing was fun. I loved getting out-debated by someone about 300% of my might. The mental image was hilarious.

Agreed if people took it seriously. After getting Lordan Colse to side with the Pirates of Meropis I was there when a 41 year old female Eleusian red dragon shows up. So I state my intent of defense and ask her to leave them alone. So she waits till I'm gone and kills them. I come back and remind her to leave them alone or I might have to do something. She leaves. I hang around and sure enough she comes back and attacks them again. This time I tell her I'm going to have to attack her for it if she continues. She says, "Whatever" snubs me and gares. Then starts trying to drop Hermes shrines in response, garing if I show up on the same island as her?

Three chances for ANY type of dialog without combat and the only thing I get is. 'Whatever' with a snub. Something tells me this isn't how village relations are supposed to go.

Way to anonymize

Also, that story makes me sad.

Debates, negoations, ambassadors. All this could have been fun while I played instead its as you said and for WHAT? Raiders these day go attack a city till they are killed and kicked out and acomplish nothing. Now if you could send a delegation to speak with people and actually something come out of it. That would be fun, instead its Hey you XYZ you guys can kill come help us kill ABC.

Tons of fun..

If you hate it, leave.

I grow weary of your bitterness on this forum. Should you wish to continue, go to the Inferno forum. The Scarlattan Theatre is a place of civilized discourse.

Something tells me Forum_Anon is Peneon.

Who cares? Keep it off of Neraeos' little piece of heaven on this forum.

Might open a betting pool

I suppose it's in the way you say it, but both are the same point and I agree. Right now PK trumps everything else and that is a problem.