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[BFEL]

Its not 3 on 2, its 3 on 1, because Caesar is on the other side of the world from my 2 new enemies, and I'm pretty sure I'm carrying that alliance regardless

[EnigmaticHat]

Really?  So how about Caesar goes home and I focus entirely on you?

Someone needs to learn to be more appreciative

Edit: Going to need a 12h extension

[Il Palazzo]

Its not 3 on 2, its 3 on 1, because Caesar is on the other side of the world from my 2 new enemies, and I'm pretty sure I'm carrying that alliance regardless

You do have to admit that you were quite alright with the idea of a 3 on 1 roflstomp when the '1' was meant to be Abeig.

[BFEL]

Its not 3 on 2, its 3 on 1, because Caesar is on the other side of the world from my 2 new enemies, and I'm pretty sure I'm carrying that alliance regardless

You do have to admit that you were quite alright with the idea of a 3 on 1 roflstomp when the '1' was meant to be Abeig.

True enough I suppose, though to be honest I was fully expecting you to ally with them instead from the start. I thought I would have time to deal with you on my own terms, but you got the jump on me, so congrats on that.

I'm more confused about Horoken getting involved honestly. I mean, I was a good neighbor to them (well, mostly a ignore-y neighbor, but there was some good in there too!) and you're distracted throwing everything at my capital, so I guess its just go for the guy who's being overwhelmed then? I mean I GET IT, but at the same time you have much better real estate/targets for him then I do. All I border him with is crappy oceans.

[Frumple]

... mostly a case of oversaturated fish markets and an offer I couldn't refuse. Plus I've been getting incredibly antsy these last few turns. If it makes you feel any better, yours isn't the only province I took :V

[E. Albright]

Non-disciple Dominions is winner-take-all, so there's very little incentive to refrain from dogpiling anyone who gets significantly stronger than the pack. Indeed, to the contrary, as you tend to regret not having acted when you still could do something if you don't. There's a delicate diplomatic balance whereby you continue to maintain parity with everyone around you, at least superficially, while still continually developing faster than them. The only alternative is either to have such overwhelming power that no one can do anything about it, or hope for/foster enough discord among the others that they can't gang up on you - because while many players have ridiculous notions about it being "dishonorable" to "resort to diplomacy" to "beat players better than you" (hence the reasonable popularity of "no diplomacy" games), if you're not accounting for diplomacy, you're not playing better than them, and not ganging up on someone taking a clear lead is as bad play as not attacking a weakened or slow-developing neighbor, which is something the "honorable" crowd has absolutely no scruples whatsoever about doing.

[EuchreJack]

Non-disciple Dominions is winner-take-all, so there's very little incentive to refrain from dogpiling anyone who gets significantly stronger than the pack.

And the same holds true for someone that is significantly weaker than the pack.  If your neighbor, whom you love and adore, is going to lose anyways, you can't ignore his or her beautiful provinces and other resources.  Usually, diplomacy governs: If a player knows they are about to lose, they usually negotiate so their friends prosper and enemies suffer.  Gifts of all remaining gems/gold prior to going AI are quite common. 
And who says that small elite sacred remnant army has to protect provinces that border friends instead of enemies?  I've even received detailed summaries of Point Defense by Province from friends that were in a no-win situation. 

Fair? Sure! it rewards the friendly and punishes the aggressors.  It is the counterpoint to the "Screw 'em all, this a competitive game" philosophy that could so easily be applied.  And it keeps thing civil, especially since most of it isn't reported.

[Il Palazzo]

I'm with Euchre on this. The psychology of alliances in dominions is a complex matter, with many more factors than just cold calculation.

[E. Albright]

Oh, I completely agree, and if my prior post sounds at all to the contrary, allow me to correct that misapprehension.

[BFEL]

I find it amusing that for all this talk of the benefits of friendship, what I'm taking out of this game is "be more aggressive"

Somewhere in the first few pages of discussion for this someone said something to the effect of "its common courtesy to not invade your neighbors for a bunch of turns" and I took that as some secret rule I didn't know about, so I was going after some silly grand strategy involving ocean provinces instead of taking the land I should have been, all the while waiting for some signal that it was cool to go to war now. Caesar provided that and dragged me into a war I had little overall interest in (good job there ) while I was following research paths I didn't really have to resources to use correctly (though this is partly just having a weird path balance on my mages because Nationgen)

So yeah, that's where my head was at for this game. But I'm still gonna win just to spite you bastards

[E. Albright]

Edit: Going to need a 12h extension

Pushed 12h.

[AlStar]

I find it amusing that for all this talk of the benefits of friendship, what I'm taking out of this game is "be more aggressive"

Somewhere in the first few pages of discussion for this someone said something to the effect of "its common courtesy to not invade your neighbors for a bunch of turns" and I took that as some secret rule I didn't know about, so I was going after some silly grand strategy involving ocean provinces instead of taking the land I should have been, all the while waiting for some signal that it was cool to go to war now. Caesar provided that and dragged me into a war I had little overall interest in (good job there ) while I was following research paths I didn't really have to resources to use correctly (though this is partly just having a weird path balance on my mages because Nationgen)

So yeah, that's where my head was at for this game. But I'm still gonna win just to spite you bastards

I'd say that it's less "don't invade your neighbors for a bunch of turns" and more "if there's available indy provinces around, you're almost always better off going after them first."

The problem with going after your neighbors early is that it often ends with both nations much smaller and weaker then they would be otherwise - even if the winner manages to take over the capital of the loser, that's still multiple turns worth of sieging at a point in time where you want to be grabbing at least one province every turn.

[Frumple]

... 'course, that's less of a problem for some nations. Most of our giant friends could have been sieging just fine and not slowing down meaningfully, what with being able to take almost any indie province (and, let's be honest here, most of the non-indie ones, too) with 1-3 sacreds and a(n indie) priest. They could have dumped on any of the non-giant nations in the early game and not really slowed down to any substantial degree.

[AlStar]

Perhaps - I'll definitely admit that I've thought that NationGen's Fomorian giant sacred generation probably needs some tweaking - they're such a powerful chassis already that giving them things like magic weapons or large berserk values just makes them insane.

IMO, they need either a nerf on what they can get, or a major cost increase should they happen to generate with such things.

[E. Albright]

Do you have any specific suggestions? NG tries to maintain a rough semblance of balance, but by its random nature it's never tested thoroughly, and we don't get feedback as much as would be good - especially balance feedback, since lots of people play it for "ZOMG crazy imba!".

It would be trivial to e.g. add size locks to the existing Berserk filters and make more expensive versions that only apply to large units, f'r'instance.