Re: [eia] impasse

[Michael Gorman <mpgorman@xxxxxxxx>]

At 01:30 PM 7/21/2005, you wrote:
> I don't know how to feel about continuing the present game.
>
> I wholeheartedly agree with the view that there has to be some kind of "line
> drawn in the sand" about continuing a game through your own country's ups
> and downs.  This is because I want to feel like there's a reasonable chance
> that a campaign game, whether the present one or a new one, can continue
> through its whole length, and I can play with long-term strategy in mind.
>
> On the other hand, Joel has been clear that he feels the present game
> situation is broken (in terms of players having fun playing), I assume
> Sterling and any theoretical seventh player would prefer to start over, and
> others might be on the fence but have reasons to look forward to hitting the
> reset button.  I don't want to create ill will by forcing the current game
> down several players' throats.  Also I must admit that the (apparently)
> widespread belief that continuing would simply be a "victory lap" for
> Britain would spoil a lot of the fun for me.
>
> So to sum up, continuing the present game feels wrong to me, but starting
> over without any reason to think this won't happen all over again after 2-3
> game years is disheartening.

My feeling is that as a group, we have been too committed to all or nothing 
wars and wanting to achieve game long goals in the first year or two.

As a result, games end decisively far earlier than they did historically 
since people fight to the death where the original powers had a clear idea 
of wanting to exist in a hundred years and would back down.  I believe that 
we will continue to see short games on the campaign scale if we continue to 
launch our nations into all or nothing conflagrations.  In our current game 
we've seen Russia, Prussia, Austria and France all shattered in under three 
years.  In the real Napoleonic Wars, everyone involved backed down as soon 
as things started looking bad and accepted short term losses in the hope of 
regaining them later.  We haven't been as accepting of the idea of losing 
something now in order to get something later.

So, barring some of us starting to believe that achieving a goal in 1810 or 
1812 is an acceptable time to wait, I believe we will continue to see 
short, incredibly violent games.  Great for action packed play, not so 
great for long game length.

Mike

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