dane69 wrote:
Lolololol I find this NAP shit to be rather silly.
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This game is (or at least it was) about working people. It's about fooling people. It's about trusting and not trusting people. AND it is about tactics and strategy. It has turned into a strictly strategic game with less focus on the diplomacy aspect of things.
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THAT BEING SAID, I do love this game and I can evolve. I can play this new game where reputation seems to be so important and people take things so seriously that they judge me from game to game.
I mostly agree with what you are saying here, Dane. What I was saying before is exactly what you are talking about; breaking a NAP with someone because of their "shady" actions. Whether someone else wants to define "aggressive" only as attacking, I do not. If a player is plotting against me, I have no intention of keeping peace - notice or not.
Since there have not been any major updates, the tactical side of the game has not changed much. Players have determined what they think are the strongest strategies and attempt to recreate them the best they can. That said, I do not think that diplomacy has less focus now; in fact, with the major stratagem blueprints all fairly well known, I think that diplomacy is inherently more important. I just think that more diplomatic approaches have emerged, the meta has shifted to accommodate them, and people are using
*NEW* tricks to do their lying and backstabbing. That is why I use NAPs the way I described them earlier - in order to combat these tricky current maneuvers.
In this fashion, it seems to me that the game has become more nuanced, more complex, and in my opinion, more fun. Admittedly, I was not around for the beginning stages of the game like you were. If I had been, perhaps I would have drastically different thoughts.
There is one other major component to why diplomacy has changed so markedly; people have figured out that more often than not, they find their greatest success when they have at least one, and often two, strong allies. I'm sure this was the case even early in the game. Due to this, you will see players try to make gold-silver and gold-silver-bronze deals very early in the game, or even pre-game. Of course, this has also caused a number of problems, most notably a dramatic increase in multibox players and/or long term multi-game alliance deals or teams - but that is an entirely different subject.
This response turned quite a bit longer than I expected, so lastly, the community is still very small. If you play in nonrated games, you might see lots of new players in every game or have games in which you have never played with anyone (though beware of Math or Aclonicy hiding behind one of there many alts
). That is not the case in the higher rated games, of course; that's why reputation is so important. For me, I only play rated games and forum organized games, so I know virtually every player in every game. My previous experience tells me with whom I am better off making deals - and who to avoid.