nochance

Hi. I stumbled across this, no one had done the next move. So, i thought, Adalbert should be OK. Will he survive his family's sordid history of death and dismay? Opening his reign, Adalbert looked around the duchy. He had 3 pressing concerns: 1) Succession laws in the Duchy of Provence 2) He was stressed. 3) A son with Zero (0!) Stewardship He had 3 positives: 1) His provinces were extremely well built up 2) He had ridiculous amounts of money! 3) He had no local rivals. Well, except for his cousin the duke, but nothing could be done about that with the Strong Emperor. We discovered 2 ladies had been 26 & 48 years a prisoner. 2 lives utterly destroyed. How rude, they weren't even powerful. Feeling kind, the Duke let them go! Adalbert required just 1 more province to create the Kingdom of Burgundy, and 1 more duchy title. THIS would be his life's ambition. With nothing better to do with that much gold, Adalbert constructed 2 castles, one on the cheap. The HRE had launched a successful crusade during the reign of the previous duke. The Emperor favoured Adalbert with three vassals in the Greek territories. Unfortunately, they unbalanced the Provencal Electoral System. It meant there was a new problem. The wise, old man, the most revered in the duchy, the count of Vienne, had the majority votes of the electors. Hell, I wouldn't vote for my zero stewardship son. But, he was my heir, so wants were subsumed by needs. Even my +100 point brother was against me. B*(&^d. But, surely the old bugger would die before me. He was over 70 years old!! In a weak attempt to expand in Burgundy, with the county of Valais, we tried to murder the Duke of Savoy. After 3 failed attempts, we were caught and gave up. In our attempts to weaken the emperor, I somehow became the faction leader. It was a bit futile; at only 82%, and I'd spent the mercenary army money on frivolous castles to decorate my demesne. Oops. The emperor asked me to back down, which I did magnanimously due to my diplomacy skill. I had a spare for my heir, which i named after myself. How delightful. Across the border, France has split in three, with a rebellion and Aquitane rising from the ashes. The Emperor declared a new war, and the stressed Duke Adalbert fell ill leading troops. "Oh boy" he muttered out loud, and decided on a fast and furious transition to "family values". In Vain. Adalbert ruled just 7 years, dreams were shattered, he hadnt even ruled long enough to change to primogeniture. The Duchy was lost to the Count of Vienne. Long Live Count Walther, Zero Stewardship, female heir, with a maximum Demesne size of 1. 1! In the family crypts, ghosts flipped tables. Save and pics to come. Simon

The problem was that all your diplomacy up until the Shogun 2 divided realm meant nothing after it. You could play an effective game with several loyal and useful vassal clans, and after the event no one would stay with you. This was such an immersion break. But it was so close to being an acceptable way to bring about the endgame. Although in that respect it probably came to early, which is when you had, needed and valued your vassals, which is why it grated so much. Historically in war, most of the time people were not seeking to genocidally conquer another state. War was instead fought to take territory, which equalled resources, and population. There was little need to kill the subject population, provided they were not rebellious. Generally empires were pretty ruthless to rebellious subjects. Likewise, many weaker states throughout the ages 'signed up' to become vassals & allies of powerful neighbours our of fears for their survival. video games, the victory conditions and Video game players do not usually make much of simply surviving. I will agree that Paradox has this well covered, although then it becomes an issue of 'what is winning?' Its difficult to find an outcome regarding diplomacy and peaceful colaborative victory conditions that is useful for the game and acceptable for the player. Consider this example: I cannot imagine a Video game player, playing as WW2 Britain, would accept an alliance with the USA which basically boiled down to "We'll win you the war, but you have to give up your Empire." They'd rather hit "new game." I'd rather hit new game. Its interesting that most video games (about futuristic space warfare) exist in a pre-MAD intellectual arena. Nuclear weapons changed the rules in such that it became meaningless for the most powerful nations of the day to face off in fights for territory. Probably because its not very gamey, and peace is not as exciting as "action!". But conversely, this makes diplomacy vitally important. Final note, the 'incomprehensible genocidal unrelenting destroyer aliens' (eg. Aliens, Tyranids, Yuzang vong, Orcs, whatever) are a standard trope; they dont have to play with diplomatic rules.