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[Loud Whispers]

Was the British player the same one you had issues with in the past by any chance, regarding them trying to take you out with China in CKII and other things in EUIV?

lmao yes

*EDIT

Spoiler: a blast from the past. Warning=wall of text (click to show/hide)

Fuck I had a spicy run in. My friend lost Lithuania to my heir, but my heir was going to unify my Kingdom with the Byzantine Empire. My friend assassinates my heir and I discover this, I'm at this point immediately livid as he just cost me the Byzantine Empire. He wanted Lithuania, but I meme'd him saying I wouldn't - in reality I would have given him Lithuania. He says that he's going to keep assassinating my heirs until he gets Lithuania, at this point I'm telling him that warning works before you start assassinating heirs, and is rather alike the Americans warning the Russians after they've already nuked the Russians. He continues to try assassinating my next heir, at which point I remind him that I have four more heirs with claims to every single one of his Kingdoms, and send 70,000 troops to take his land. When the troops arrive he is shocked I actually sent them via truce break, I say of course - you're killing my sons. He calls in our third player in the British Empire, and before long it's looking like the first world war.
After some intense diplomacy, we manage to negotiate a diplomatic solution, wherein I would leave Lithuania provided it was put under the protection of a Greek ruler, to protect all the Baltic Greeks. He would pay me 2,000 gold in return for the loss of my heir, while he would help me regain the Byzantine Empire. In actuality he married the Byzantine Empress and her heir to his heir the moment I gave him peace and withdrew my troops; when I delivered him the ultimatum warning him why I shouldn't destroy everything he has even at the cost of my Empire, he sent me a private message detailing how he had made the marriages to thwart the British Empire's own attempts to secure the Byzantines, and that our prior anti-British pact remained in force. He broke the marriage and helped me remarry, but Byzantine politics fucked all of that up. It's now a sheer mess, but he is correct - when we port into EU4, Britain will be too powerful, and efforts must be made to ally Greek and German to thwart Anglo

How does multilplayer even work in this game? With all the different realms  and the real time nature of this game I didn’t think it would even be possible.

It works extremely carefully in a state of deep trust and paranoia

How does multilplayer even work in this game? With all the different realms  and the real time nature of this game I didn’t think it would even be possible.

Multiplayer is when you discover both your true self, and the true selves of the people who play with you.

There's something different between getting owned by your friend in Overwatch 1v1 duel... and getting cuckolded by your friend as he seduces your wife, impregnates her, and defeats you in the duel you challenged him to. Also he convinced your own council that he's a better ruler of your lands than you are.

Edit: Also lots of desyncs. Lots and lots of desyncs.

You forgot the part where your best friend does all that with a character picked at random while you min-maxed yourself into a god via Ruler Designer.

Dont forget the ol' "your bad luck is the same as good his luck", like when your heir to put your dynasty on the byzantine throne dies of plague and the inheritance goes to his heir's wife who he only married for the NAP or whatever

From personal experience, the beginning is where everyone's nice to one another.

Once people are capable of messing with each other directly (primarily because their borders are close), THAT'S when things start going downhill.

True. I am now at the point where both of my friends, despite publicly supporting me claiming the Byzantines, have both been caught either assassinating all of the Emperors who would have given me the Byzantine Empire, or assassinated my heirs poised to take the Byzantine Empire. As we approach the end of the date and are preparing to convert to EU4, the German foreign policy is incoherent and the British are already asserting their claim to the entire New World and the Indian Ocean trade - the Germans ominously say they are only interested in maintaining the security of Europe. Despite being betrayed by both the Germans and the British, I have in turn made a secret pact with the Germans to maintain the Indian ocean trade to benefit their control of Genoa and my control of Constantinople, if they will in turn destroy the British control of France and challenge their grip on the New World. Despite all of my attempts to negotiate solutions which benefit everyone, my friends have consistently taken every solution where everyone gains and instead made the actions which give them everything. Subsequently I have adjusted and rescinded my conciliatory gestures and have upfront confronted them all on infringing upon my spheres of influence, betraying their word, harming the Greek speaking peoples of the Balkans and Baltics e.t.c., and they have both responded well to my 90,000 troops

Still, I wish I had at least 1 Methuselah in my game. I just realised my friends are absolute opportunists and there's going to be 3 more games of real politik

Well, if you were all engaged in jolly cooperation against the AI, the game would be easy, after all.

The only issue was that I'd been making it easy for them and harder for myself, offering support to them whilst imposing restrictions on myself - I've been playing using just one Kingdom whilst they both went for Imperial Administration, min-maxed expansion. It's the awful moment you realise that your characters are all diplomats and theirs are elusive shadows xD

It's a pity because we originally did have jolly cooperation so powerful it restored the Orthodox Pentarchy

THE CHEEKY BUGGER IS THE OPPOSITE OF JOLLY COOPERATION

I spent most of the game as a Yuan tributary, while the British had barony-tier embassies which kept them in diplomatic range of the Yuan dynasty. The British had been storing up considerable grace through the selling of artifacts and eunuchs, though I always assumed it was spent on engineers, doctors and the such. Having spent a century and a half trying to regain my lands from the Byzantines, the stars aligned and a perfect opportunity presented itself.
For reasons unknown, my Brother inherited a strong claim to the Byzantine Empire.
I imprisoned my three children and executed them all. This act of brazen kinslaying tyranny incensed all of my vassals into assassinating me, passing the throne to my heir. After a year of consolidating my court (which had a -65 opinion of me based off my my now dead brother's tyranny), I swore fealty to the Byzantine Empire and set up a faction to install me as ruler. Both my friend in Britain and my friend in Germany were well aware of this.

The Byzantines went from being a paltry, dying thing, to an incendiary pheonix stretching from Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Then it became a paltry dying thing fighting a revolt against an incendiary pheonix stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: The Kingdom of Diogenes mobilized over 109,000 troops to fight the Byzantine's 9,000, with my real main opposition being the other two faction revolts also fighting to claim the Byzantine Throne. My friend in Germany was helping the Byzantines put down one of these revolts, with that revolt having lasted for 20 years.

I win the war and quickly rearrange my troops in order to crush the last rebel faction remaining when I receive a report which just confuses me. At first I thought the British and the Yuan dynasty were at war, then the truth of what had just occurred dawned on me. The British had spent 5000 grace to have the Yuan Empire dismantle all of my lands.

The British player lied horrendously through their teeth once they knew I knew it was them who'd done it. They cycled through a barrage of excuses - I didn't know it was you, I thought I was helping you by destroying the Empire you spent 150 years plotting to claim, I thought you wouldn't get destroyed if you were in a rebellion, you'll still keep a lot of your de jure lands (yeah 8 counties out of 500).

I must say I wasn't too concerned with rebutting these whilst 140,000 Mongol-Chinese troops were marching towards my borders, so I merely told the British that they were my enemy and left it at that. That 140,000 was not even counting their tributaries - 3,000 attacking Egypt, 20,000 Russians attacking the Baltics, 7,000 Indians attacking Persia. The Brits sent me 3,000 gold to try and prove they meant me no ill-will, but it was obvious they were just covering up - 3,000 gold was not much to either myself or him, and we both knew it would mean nothing when every Empire and Kingdom title was destroyed. He knew I was the Byzantines, and he called it the moment I wasn't a Yuan tributary.

Thank god the Germans stuck by their pact with me, as they continued to fight the Byzantine civil war faction which was in my rear. If I lost the civil war faction, the Mongols would still destroy all of my titles, so I was fighting a four front war at the same time as a civil war - truly without the Germans, there was no hope. When the Germans asked me how they could help me defeat the Mongols, I told them to send God, because there was little else they could do. I expelled the Jews to claim 5,000 gold, and summoned my mercenaries, my levies and my cataphracts, and stationed them all in Persia. The British delighted in hearing that I had never defeated the Chinese before, and the son of a bitch was a terrible liar, feigning dismay at my resilient ability to fund vast sums of troops

Disaster struck when my troops, amassed in Persia, found instead that the Chinese were attacking the steppes north of the Caucausus mountains. They force sieged the provinces there, immediately bringing me to -99% warscore. The warscore from occupation was capped at -99% until 36 months was over, or the Mongols won 1 major battle. With my troops desperately rushing up to the Caucasus, I had 1 battle to win or lose.

My heartbeat: Palpitating. German player; Anxious. British player: Calm.
Battle won. Battle won. Battle won. Battle lost. Battle won. Battle lost.
I nearly died of stress when my 15,000 strong retinue of cataphracts was defeated and only 4,000 cataphracts survived. The Western Protectorate had 126,000 gold ducats so I wasn't going to win by attrition of gold, but when it came to manpower I was doing my damned best to make every battle hurt.

Numbers, the damned numbers. I was muttering to myself, you to Abkhazia, you to Lower Dnieppe, you to Azov, you to Crimea... When the warscore went up from -99% to -59%, I received a second report that the Chinese were sending reinforcements from the Indian ocean. The German player told me he saw 500 Chinese ships approaching the Diogenesian gulf of Persia. I redeployed all but 16,000 troops south from Aden to Oman and Hormuz in anticipation of this new threat. Months went by and I nervously made the call that the Chinese had landed in their tributary in India and were marching overland to attack in the North - I was partially right, they were attacking in the North and in Persia. My character in game replied: "What does it take to kill this beast?!!"

With every battle a desperate fight to stay in the war, I began to have a nervous breakdown which culminated in me singing several beatles songs with the lyrics altered to better represent my fear of the Mongol-Chinese legions. Help, I need someone, help, not just anybody, help, you know I need someone, help, won't you pleeeeeease please help me, OH GOD, SO MANY CHINEEEEEEEEEESE

It took what felt like years, but was really a matter of weeks, for me to realise the Chinese army of 200,000 men now numbered 12,000. My warscore from battles was capped at 100%, so I had to unsiege every sieged province - only at this point did I realise the Chinese tributaries had been called into the war. I had to send my armies from Persia to Egypt and the Baltics to unsiege all these provinces, and the last one in the Baltics was a nerve wracking siege to observe. When it was done the adrenaline in my blood made me thrilled and sick in equal measures, and I was screaming such profanity as unbecoming of an Orthodox King. But fuck it, fuck the dragon, I'm the dragonslayer bitch get fucked. GET FUCKED.

The British promptly used my victory to declare their own independence war against the Yuan Empire. With the Yuan's troops exhausted, their independence bid was simple.

In the aftermath of the war I set about reforming the Byzantine Empire. I intended to destroy the Imperial Title by casting it into the flames of Mt. Vesuvius, but by the time I won the great war I realised that my most powerful dukes had already declared themselves Kings and Queens, making a return to my previous system under the precious Kingdom of Diogenes impossible. I was now forced to become the Romans. I promptly set about reforming the Roman Empire, whilst planning an unlimited retribution against the dog of the British Isles - but that would have to wait. I had the Germans to support in their own civil war, while my Empire was vastly over its vassal limit. There now is less than 40 years until conversion to EU4

Gotta say, it sounds like a hell of a game and a well timed move from Britain. With the end of the time period drawing near, revoking those kingdoms may not be worth the hassle, better to just transfer vassals and make viceroyal kingdoms to get your vassals under the limit before this character dies.

I guess you've learned the lesson that Grand Strategy (and, indeed, history) teaches everyone: Placing trust in Perfidious Albion is courting your own peril.

Bewary the eternal Anglo: Never a friend, only an ephemeral interest

Do I have to go into the EU4 thread to continue reading about this story?

I'd love to read about in a seperate story in the subforum!

I'm tempted to make another thread, but I'll have to wait and see if I will actually be playing at all first. The other two players got together and agreed that I should be dismembered with console commands before the game begins, I am subsequently arguing rather fervently in defence of glorious Hellenism. There is a significant chance either I'm going to be kicked, or the British player will quit.

Seems like they’re throwing their toys out the pram there; they hit you with their haymaker and you dusted yourself off and kept going.

Though the current UK player was the CK2 Germany player, and the CKII GB player couldn't make these vic2 games. The thing is - the UK player is the one who organised this originally, bringing us all together to do a "concert of Europe" game. His idea of concert of Europe was the UK does a world conquest whilst the other great powers just kinda... Exist... In Europe. Though my other friends are complete noobs at Vic2 I'm still having so much more fun with them because they're playing to have fun, not playing to be powerful. What's the point of playing """competitively""" with a superpower? There's no sport in competition when you totally outclass your competition. We've since continued playing without the UK player as Algeria, megaBrazilhuehue and Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and we're having a blast just memeing world history together. A part of my soul is glad we could salvage something from this mess; the last time I introduced a friend to vic2, my UK player crushed him as France vs Russia, and the experience was so unpleasant I could never get my friend to play vic2 again. What drives someone to pwn noobs? Lust for gold? A heart of darkness? I'll never know.

[Kagus]

Jesus. That's, like... Someone who tries to be *good* at Magicka.

[Eric Blank]

Sometimes I think it's just the evil in the human heart coming out. The newb pwners are just a tamer version of it. They share the same affliction as the bullies in the schoolyard beating up the little kids for laughs, the wife beaters that get off on their lovers suffering, the kings who lust after the misery of the peasants, it's a species wide psychosis we recognize in people of all walks of life from all cultures, beginning in adolescence and only becomes more effectively hidden or justified to cultural norms with age, but never lessens. Why pwn newbs? Why be evil?

Apparently it's hilarious or something, infected youths often laugh while theyre doing it.

[hector13]

See, I enjoy being horrible in video games, it’s usually just to AI characters rather than other players.

Except in Fall Guys. I am horrible in some of the games in that.

[Frumple]

Your words give me transformice flashbacks. Ia ia, anvil god ftaghn!

[Eschar]

See also:
"Is playing DF immoral?"
- that one thread

[TheSteppeWolf]

See also:
"Is playing DF immoral?"
- that one thread

Lol what? Dwarves, are just data. They do not have a consciousness. About as intelligent, as something like bacteria, and about as complex. Which is to say, quite! But it doesn't make them special, like.

[hector13]

See also:
"Is playing DF immoral?"
- that one thread

Lol what? Dwarves, are just data. They do not have a consciousness. About as intelligent, as something like bacteria, and about as complex. Which is to say, quite! But it doesn't make them special, like.

How dare you my dwarves are the best and they could beat your dwarves with their hands tied behind their beards fite me. /s

But yeah. It reminds me of one of the snake stories in MGS2: Substance, in which you’re doing the VR mode until you figure out that the VR Machine has to pull the various participants in whatever you’re doing from different dimensions, until you actively exit from VR mode and continue the story.

[Kagus]

Some of y'all never read about the controversy surrounding the Creatures series of games and it shows

[Naturegirl1999]

Some of y'all never read about the controversy surrounding the Creatures series of games and it shows

what kind of controversy? Can you link an example?

[KittyTac]

Oh I remember that thread and I read about the Creatures controversy.

I wonder how many pro-virtual rights people were actually trolling. If they weren't they should really grow a pair.

[Kagus]

I don't have the greatest amount of time for digging today, and "Creatures" is understandably not a particularly useful keyword when trying to Google for results, but the gist of it was that Creatures attempted to model actual genetics, biochemistry, and living neural networks in their titular creatures; including concepts of "pain" and "pleasure" for the sake of developing natural avoidant and attractive behavior. Or, rather, the simulation of it.

As such, and this being 1996 when the first game came out, Creatures had a vastly more complex and "lifelike" AI than most other programs on the market. This led to some controversy (which I believe may actually have been in part encouraged by the makers of the game, as a mode of marketing) about the ethics of owning and raising these creatures and potentially subjecting them to the simulated experiences of pain, fear, and stress.

I can't find any particularly good articles on the actual controversy or why people saw it as controversial right now, but here are a couple links on the game and its workings itself:

Short documentary on the first game

Wikipedia page


I believe they expanded upon the biochemistry and hormones systems in Creatures 3, which is how you end up with special Norn breeds that have digital DNA that causes them to exhibit things like associating pleasurable inputs with fear, or the equivalent of auto-brewery syndrome and being permanently drunk from birth.

[Loud Whispers]

Your words give me transformice flashbacks. Ia ia, anvil god ftaghn!

To be fair, summoning an anvil god for noobs is a rite of passage. We are willing offerings before anvil gods

Though I fondly remember summoning an anvil god then totem summoning a balloon helicopter as noah's ark to escape. All aboard were spared the wrath of the glitchful one

Sometimes I think it's just the evil in the human heart coming out. The newb pwners are just a tamer version of it. They share the same affliction as the bullies in the schoolyard beating up the little kids for laughs, the wife beaters that get off on their lovers suffering, the kings who lust after the misery of the peasants, it's a species wide psychosis we recognize in people of all walks of life from all cultures, beginning in adolescence and only becomes more effectively hidden or justified to cultural norms with age, but never lessens. Why pwn newbs? Why be evil?

Apparently it's hilarious or something, infected youths often laugh while theyre doing it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wonder if you could use evolutionary game theory to determine why you see divergent attitudes in multiplayer games; between those who are always cooperative (PvE / CoOp), those who cooperate when their interests align (opportunists), those who are competitive with peers and cooperatives with noobs (honourable Zezimas), those who are always cooperative with just a few high trust partners (Methuselahs), those who feign cooperation and always betray (trusty Patches), those who never cooperate (competitors), and those who only compete when they outclass the enemy (noob pwners, pkers and hackers).

See, I enjoy being horrible in video games, it’s usually just to AI characters rather than other players.

Except in Fall Guys. I am horrible in some of the games in that.

Fall guys, among us, monopoly - some games just demand that you collect the wages of sin and flop everyone to death

*EDIT

WIEBLS
WIEBLS (Pronounced Weebles but stands for “Winning Isn’t Everything But Losing Sucks”). They want to win at all costs. They first work out how the scoring works for the Zine. Then they look for ways to exploit the scoring system. Their goal is to be number one in the ladder. The only way they have fun is by getting to number one. They are not interested in talking, having fun and endless negotiations. They just want to win. They have no clue that the other players are human beings and they don’t care about anything but themselves.

Role-player
They really want to play the game as if they were the leader of one of the countries. They would like to dominate Europe, but sharing power with others is OK as well. They will do anything to survive. They will do things that others would call cheating if it was something that might happen in 1900. They consider other things as cheating just because it doesn’t fit the roleplaying aspect. The WIEBLS and Role Players have a hard time understanding each other.

Basically describes the difference in playstyles between Hoi4 players and CK2 players

[Frumple]

Dream thing, but it was good for a laugh when mostly useless support character got an upgrade, took a risk on declaring the main protag's unknown boss as their patron (the other options had substantial problems that would have rendered them even more useless, heh), and ends up with a starting ability called "Satan, don't eat my soul".

Turned out the unknown figure that was bankrolling the party to fight its way through the legions of heaven and hell and kill the devil was the devil, ha. Apparently wanted to get killed so some kind of seal could get broken, allowing them to resurrect and reclaim hell or somethin' like that. Party leader goes into immediate denial, too, it was pretty great :V

[Iduno]

https://twitter.com/KazHiraiCEO/status/1339741387118526465


Edit: I know the difference between an image and a link.