Re: Olympia Gripes

From: cedman@capitalist.princeton.edu (Carl Edman)

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 00:00:00 +0000

In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.951127154641.14991B-100000@arcturus.oac.uci.edu>,
Mark Hendrickson  <eahg128@arcturus.oac.uci.edu> wrote:
> Well, in an open ended game you can certainly quit whenever you
> feel you're no longer enjoying it.  But to declare the game "concluded"
> simply because you & your friends quit is amazingly self-centered & unless
> you're more persuasive than I think you will be, totally wrong.  Jesus, the
> entire game doesn't revolve around your little cliq!  >:(

Let me -- for once -- try and speak bluntly.  The AOO is now so
powerful that it can in effect crush any real or imaginable opposition
with minimal effort or losses.  Furthermore the dynamics of the game
are such that this state of affairs seems unlikely ever to change.

Basically there are three alternatives for how the future may develop.
For one, we could go on building ever larger and ever more meaningless
empires, easily beating down rebellions wherever they occur for ever.
That is not much fun either for us, or for those easily beaten down
(at least that is what I'm told).  Or we can declare war on the entire
rest of the world and kill everybody else over the course of the next
game year.  While I admit that there is a certain frisson to the
thought of such a slaughter, in the end slaughtering friendly meek
little barons all over the world is not really the most fun way to
spend another eight weeks and twenty dollars for me.  Or for the
barons.

Finally, we can declare the game over now with the AOO as overall
victor and everybody else who survived and prospered this long granted
the honor of a partial win and with their holdings they spent so much
time and effort to build intact.  Then we can all go on to G2 where we
all start out on a level field with new alliances and a lot of neat
new code.  And of course if anybody finds such a conclusion
unsatisfactory, we can always invoke alternative two locally and
obligingly provide them with a more traditional ending.

If all that is not enough to convince some of the more determined
BtA-haters to leave G1 and join G2 when it starts, let me give you one
more reason: I will not be in G2.  There are a lot of reasons for
that.  For one, I think I've done everything which is possible within
the confines of G1.  At best I'll end up doing the same in G2, and
once is enough for me.  And even that is unlikely given how many
people who don't consider cross-gaming bad gamesmanship will be out to
kill my nobles in G2.  Finally I've been contributing to the suggested
code changes in G2 (and hope to continue to do so) to such a degree
that actually playing in G2 would not be fair.

Carl Edman

References

Olympia - Time for G2?
Rob Rodgers <rrodgers@unex.ucla.edu>
Mon, 25 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Olympia - Time for G2?
Rob Rodgers <rrodgers@unex.ucla.edu>
Mon, 25 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000