Re: [eia] [escrow] December 1807 Political Phase

[Michael Gorman <mpgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:10 AM 3/12/2004 -0600, you wrote:
> I hate the way we do the political phase, and I'll take this opportunity
> to whine about it once again.
>
> -Everett

I'm torn on this one.  The declaration of war step clearly states it is 
supposed to be simultaneously revealed by all players, as we do it now, but 
after that simultaneous revealing is used as the mechanism to resolve 
disputes rather than as the being explicitly necessary.  Nations backing 
down from simultaneous declarations of war on a minor nation is an example 
of that.

By forcing everything to be simultaneous we stop the possibility of 
conflict over timing.  No one can make a decision based on an already 
revealed decision and thus there will never be a timing argument where one 
person is waiting for someone else who is waiting for them.  We thus run 
continuously under the how to resolve a dispute in the political phase.  Of 
course, the downside of this is that it makes it much harder to coordinate 
joint actions since everyone has to remember the joint actions and whatever 
steps they each have to take to complete them.  And what we've seen is some 
turns they all work out, other turns someone forgets a step and the joint 
action crashes for a month until they get recoordinated.

I can certainly understand that this is frustrating for the parties 
involved in the joint actions, but at the same time, it sure makes the 
coalition feel like what you read about the real coalitions against 
Napoleon.  And so even while I can appreciate how annoying this approach is 
to some of the players, I like it at an aesthetic level because it makes 
the coalition feel like a real multi-national effort.

If enough people wanted to change it so we escrow just the declarations of 
war and required conflict resolutions, I wouldn't really be bothered by 
playing that way.  But all these being equal, I like the feel of how we do 
it now even though it wouldn't bother me to do it differently.

Mike


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