Round 3 changelog and winner of Round 2!

Yeah, I noticed that the entire way through Round 2 and thought of using it, but I decided not to since the leadership of the nations would likely start drama with me about it, then I'd refer to the rules, and a chain of things would happen...

I'm glad someone else read the embassy rules though . Hopefully we'll have more careful embassy building this round.

Kevashim wrote:Yea, technically anyone from a Nation whom you have an embassy of can enter your land, use your mine and use your farms. It doesn't even state that they have to respect the rules of the leader/Nation they are visiting (only that nation's members have to respect said rules) ...

^^ This rule needs to be updated before the round starts. I believe Purple intended to show what embassies could be used for, not just give embassy-owning Natiosn free reign in other Nations.

Maybe specific rights can be allowed to each nation through the Embassy, allowing the leader to place a sign declaring "All Deserts may farm in Atlantian Land" or "Dwarves may not farm trees in Artemis Land" etc.

eternjc wrote:

Kevashim wrote:Yea, technically anyone from a Nation whom you have an embassy of can enter your land, use your mine and use your farms. It doesn't even state that they have to respect the rules of the leader/Nation they are visiting (only that nation's members have to respect said rules) ...

^^ This rule needs to be updated before the round starts. I believe Purple intended to show what embassies could be used for, not just give embassy-owning Natiosn free reign in other Nations.

Maybe specific rights can be allowed to each nation through the Embassy, allowing the leader to place a sign declaring "All Deserts may farm in Atlantian Land" or "Dwarves may not farm trees in Artemis Land" etc.

+1

Yea etern thats a good idea, it'll save what little trade the nations have with each other, and possibly encourage nations to be nicer then they already are to each other, and if they aren't then theres a punishment such as not being able to use the reed farms.

People seem to forget that embassies can be closed at any time. You should not allow a nation to open an embassy in your territory unless you realize what this means for your people and the people in the other nation.

It seems we forget everything about embassies.

Godsblade noticed this earlier as well. It's a rule and a faction leader can't just decide to override it. So indeed, don't just allow anyone to have an embassy; allow only those nations to have one that you trust or don't mind using your resources, and take into account who will be the ambassador, an ass who constantly rapes your farms or a trustworthy person you can strike a deal with. You may even consider swapping out embassies with another nation, both agreeing to not use that privilege or whatever.

I have some slight issues with the proposed Atlantean ruleset, or more specifically, the glass walls/dome requirement. People have made some excellent layout suggestions, like towers and underwater art-deco cities, and none of these specifically require domes. Lots of windows would be fine, I guess, if they're thick enough, but sticking glass everywhere is just asking for grief. If you remember what happened to the Tribe, through the actions of a single person, it was nigh-decimated, now replace all those tough, woody materials with glass D: My suggestion would be to tone down glass requirements. Keep them important, but not so important that they endanger the safety of the nation and restrict creativity which I think they currently will, there are only so many glass dome types One can build.

On the subject of embassies, some good suggestions came up during R2 to help stimulate a better trade system/economy. It was suggested we tear down the embassies and replace with Trade Houses. The concept being, nations without a Trade House cannot even trade, we could think of this as a Level 0 faction relationship. Trade houses would advance this relationship to a higher level, and trade would begin, with both/all parties listing their Needs and Excesses and the wanted price for sale items. Then, should a number of factions become extremely close, Embassies can be constructed to fulfill the roles they have now, allowing full cooperation. With everything above wrapped up into one bundle, I think it will add more depth to faction relations, and promote the passive-RP thing we currently have going even further :]

The problem is, if I allow to build just whatever underwater without any domes, atlantis will look like dwarfs very fast...
Even if you use windows. The water outside doesn't look really good (it looks much better from outside, then from the inside) so the esthetic difference between the two nations would dwindle even more then it already does.

Trust me on this, I've made the nation after all.

PurpleSkull wrote:The problem is, if I allow to build just whatever underwater without any domes, atlantis will look like dwarfs very fast...
Even if you use windows. The water outside doesn't look really good (it looks much better from outside, then from the inside) so the esthetic difference between the two nations would dwindle even more then it already does.

Trust me on this, I've made the nation after all.

This rule leaves absolutely no room for aesthetics or originality. It’s like if you told the Nords that the only buildings they could make were igloos. I don’t think any rule is really required to keep Atlantis from looking like anything else- the difficulty involved in building everything underwater will take care of that. If you really want to, you could make it a rule that all buildings must be at least 50% glass on the exterior, but even that is probably superfluous. If you artificially force everything to be in big domes, it’ll kill off Atlantis before it has a chance to get on its feet.

Doesn't have to be domes, other glassy shapes are fine too. You can still be creative with the stuff you build inside the domes/shapes/whatever.

Well there goes me joining Atlantians any time soon.

PurpleSkull wrote:Doesn't have to be domes, other glassy shapes are fine too. You can still be creative with the stuff you build inside the domes/shapes/whatever.

Still, it’s an artificial imposition. What we’re going to end up with is not a real underwater city, but some chunks of the surface world that have been transplanted to the seafloor and surrounded by glass. If everything has to be built like that, we’ll end up with exactly what you don’t want: a city that looks exactly like everyone else’s. However, if you toss the glass covering requirement, you’ll get huge architectural differences between what people are building on the surface and what’s down here. There’s no incentive to build different if you’re doing everything in air instead of water.

Zenrax wrote:

PurpleSkull wrote:Doesn't have to be domes, other glassy shapes are fine too. You can still be creative with the stuff you build inside the domes/shapes/whatever.

Still, it’s an artificial imposition. What we’re going to end up with is not a real underwater city, but some chunks of the surface world that have been transplanted to the seafloor and surrounded by glass. If everything has to be built like that, we’ll end up with exactly what you don’t want: a city that looks exactly like everyone else’s. However, if you toss the glass covering requirement, you’ll get huge architectural differences between what people are building on the surface and what’s down here. There’s no incentive to build different if you’re doing everything in air instead of water.

I fail to see the reasoning in this argument. Nords almost only built with snow, deserts with sand, tribes with trees/logs, dwarves with smoothstone. Those might as well have been rules, because everyone does and because buildings are expected to fit the theme by the majority. Still not only does the look differ per city, so does the architecture. The same goes for the Atlanteans.
A city can't look like everybody elses unless all those cities also look a like. In which case the problem lies not with the Atlantean rules.
Also within the city there is a lot of variation. The Atlanteans might even have more variation because there is no obvious theme like logs, snow, sand or smoothstone which is then used by everyone. Instead Atlanteans will variate in dome sizes and shapes for monuments, perhaps even having separate districts for other buildings in different shapes and sizes. All this to me seems to offer way more opportunity to result in a varied cityscape. And of course the overall feeling in a dome is WAY different from the feeling in other nations.

EDIT: There is no reason to worry NOW. Only time will tell if the city for some reason will look boring. I can't imagine that happening, but it may very well. I'll be the first to acknowledge you're right if it does. But why not see how it will work out?

[quote=“Decibert”]I fail to see the reasoning in this argument. Nords almost only built with snow, deserts with sand, tribes with trees/logs, dwarves with smoothstone. Those might as well have been rules, because everyone does and because buildings are expected to fit the theme by the majority. Still not only does the look differ per city, so does the architecture. The same goes for the Atlanteans.
A city can't look like everybody elses unless all those cities also look a like. In which case the problem lies not with the Atlantean rules.
Also within the city there is a lot of variation. The Atlanteans might even have more variation because there is no obvious theme like logs, snow, sand or smoothstone which is then used by everyone. Instead Atlanteans will variate in dome sizes and shapes for monuments, perhaps even having separate districts for other buildings in different shapes and sizes. All this to me seems to offer way more opportunity to result in a varied cityscape. And of course the overall feeling in a dome is WAY different from the feeling in other nations.

EDIT: There is no reason to worry NOW. Only time will tell if the city for some reason will look boring. I can't imagine that happening, but it may very well. I'll be the first to acknowledge you're right if it does. But why not see how it will work out?[/quote]

We’ll have the exact same problem the dwarves ended up with in R2. While everyone else could just go out, plop down a building, and go with it, dwarves had to laboriously mine out every new space they wanted to use. Now, Atlanteans will have to go and laboriously build a dome over any space THEY want to use. It’ll render the faction entirely noncompetitive with everyone else, though they might have a chance if not hindered by this useless and arbitrary rule!

Dwarves will still be the same. There is no reason for this to be a problem. We have seen how for example the Tribes could plunk down a whole system of domes within two days with three people. I don't know how many worked on Nords, but that thing was huge. Now imagine an entire motivated faction.
All these rules are arbitrary.
And you haven't gone into my rebuttal at all...

No doubt the faction will be hard, will require motivated and laborious players and will lead to smaller buildings. It may even fail to be successful. But so far I have not seen a reason to give up on the concept.

Decibert wrote:Dwarves will still be the same. There is no reason for this to be a problem. We have seen how for example the Tribes could plunk down a whole system of domes within two days with three people. I don't know how many worked on Nords, but that thing was huge. Now imagine an entire motivated faction.
All these rules are arbitrary.
And you haven't gone into my rebuttal at all...

Okay, so your rebuttal was basically that cities don’t look alike. And, to a certain extent, that’s true. But Atlantis is supposed to be radically different from the other factions, by dint of being placed underwater. If they go with the dome thing, they’ll be removing the one really unique variable from the architectural equation- being underwater. With that gotten rid of, there’s no incentive to build in a way that’s really different from the land cities.

Anyways, you have come up with some arguments to defend this rule, with some elements of reasonability. But can you give me any reason at all that removing the rule would cause problems; i.e. that an underwater building NOT surrounded entirely by glass would be a bad thing?

A city built under glass domes looks seriously different from the other cities even if we forget that they will be built out of different materials since the other factions focus on their own specific materials. A city built under domes out of "normal materials" will lead to buildings and domes being constructed out of largely the same materials (there isn't much choice, dirt, cobblestone, planks). And you lose the under water feeling, which as you said is the one defining architectural quality of the Atlanteans, effectively turning them more into artificial dwarfs.

Why would Atlantis be supposed to look radically different, more so than the other factions? And who says it won't? It will be built out of different materials than are dominant in the other factions, perhaps with a large focus on glass.

Of course I am just as incapable of arguing there is nothing wrong with the rules as you are to say there is. We will have to see how things work out. But I think it is worth a try, seeing how the dome building contest turned out to result in quite varied domes in reasonable amounts of time. I may be wrong but I would really like to see how it goes.

Zenrax wrote:Anyways, you have come up with some arguments to defend this rule, with some elements of reasonability. But can you give me any reason at all that removing the rule would cause problems; i.e. that an underwater building NOT surrounded entirely by glass would be a bad thing?

One reason is that it could look ugly. When viewed from above the surface, underwater glass with lights looks quite pleasant. Underwater solid buildings look just the same as the sea bed and don't really stand out. Further, unless you made large underwater halls then you would never really see your own buildings from the outside, far limiting your capability to decorate. The domes allow you the freedom and space to make whatever style of buildings you like beneath them and should also allow an impressive view from above.

Kevashim wrote:

Zenrax wrote:Anyways, you have come up with some arguments to defend this rule, with some elements of reasonability. But can you give me any reason at all that removing the rule would cause problems; i.e. that an underwater building NOT surrounded entirely by glass would be a bad thing?

One reason is that it could look ugly. When viewed from above the surface, underwater glass with lights looks quite pleasant. Underwater solid buildings look just the same as the sea bed and don't really stand out. Further, unless you made large underwater halls then you would never really see your own buildings from the outside, far limiting your capability to decorate. The domes allow you the freedom and space to make whatever style of buildings you like beneath them and should also allow an impressive view from above.

I’m not talking about making totally solid, windowless buildings, but rather ones that incorporate some elements OTHER than glass. I’m all for large plate windows, but you need at least some cobble or wood bordering to break the monotony and make it look like an actual building rather than a glass jar. Besides, eliminating the rule doesn’t eliminate the ability to make domes if it is so desired; rather, it just grants the freedom to think outside the box (or, in this case, the dome).

Well in the case of SMALL elements, like linings or supports for the domes out of something other than glass, I say it wouldn't hurt to allow them. But those are such minor changes to the rules that they may always be implemented later in the round.

Purple has said "Doesn't have to be domes, other glassy shapes are fine too. You can still be creative with the stuff you build inside the domes/shapes/whatever." You can also build a non-glass framework inside the glass that would be visible from both the outside and inside, so long as the outside is all glass. In this way you can break up the monotony you are concerned about for the people living inside the glass structure whilst still meeting the outer glass requirement.

That just doesn’t make sense to me, though. Why not just incorporate the framework into the outside? We’re still talking about a building that’s over 80 percent glass on the outside. Of course, I may have not made myself clear; I don’t really care about a total overthrow of the rule, in fact I think some glass-wall requirement would be a good thing. However, this blanket ban on non-glass outer walls in just ridiculous. Changing it so that all outer walls must be at least half or three-quarters glass would be a good compromise, and I think would make the faction much more playable in the long run.

Think of glass walls like dwarven caves, build inside of the cave, don't build the cave itself.

Mattcraft wrote:Think of glass walls like dwarven caves, build inside of the cave, don't build the cave itself.

Except it’s not a cave, it’s a glass wall. And you actually do have to build the “cave”.