@BYS2 and DI

If people go into a game knowing there's no mercy given or asked, fair enough.  With IC, not everyone has the time to be super active, and the game design tries to protect them somewhat.  Not because protecting them is good per se, but because we want to maintain a larger group of players.  For people who want to play no holds barred, there's the HC gals.

Consider two types of IC games:
In one it's all bottom feeding and do whatever, screw honour.  Yes the skilled/active players will do very well, but the vast majority of players (and especially the noobs) will not, they'll be relentlessly farmed by families and players against which they have no real hope of success.  Round after round of that, who's going to stick around.

Now picture another type of round.  The skilled and active players self-regulate and they try and pick more or less fair fights.  When you do this in the same round there are multiple games-within-the game.  The Top 10 fams are battling each other in a pool of skilled and active players.  Unless you're really immature, this is actually more fun for them as well, both because it's a real accomplishment to win in these settings, and because the game really can only ever be as good as your opponents.  I love bridge and I'll play against anyone, but most people here (no offense) can't give me a "good" game of bridge, you simply aren't skilled enough.  You could be if you invested the time and effort I have over the years, of course - it's not that I'm somehow smarter, just more experienced.

So as an IC player, I want good opponents and I also want to nurture along the noobs to give them a chance to develop into good opponents which typically takes in my estimation a couple of years anyway.

In the game in which the skilled players self regulate, #5 and #8 family are having their war and yes neither one will come first but they're still enjoying the war and feel proud if they win.  There's also that pluck #23 family who thinks if they can somehow beat back the #19 family which declared on them, maybe they can manage a "Top 20" finish.  There's even a team stuck at #34 all round which is trying to play as well as they can because they think they might just be able to catch #33.  In other words, there's more incentive for them to stay in, more people are enjoying the game, and more people are learning to become better and better.

The experienced IC player wants a big pool of players, not because they represents for farming opportunities but because they represents future opponents which might one day give a good challenge, make good allies etc.

So this is why a number of us who play don't for example declare on a family 27 ranks below us (ass 663 did this round), we don't continue to pound opponents past the nuke point unless we have little choice, and when it's clear we've won a war, don't demand multiple hundreds of planets of compensation.  Yes, we do clears, and often pretty ruthlessly too, but we don't set a huge core and with a tiny family which is clearly small or noobish, we recognize these guys are no real threat and we offer them a NAP so that they aren't completely farmed and have some chance to hold maybe even a couple hundred planets if they play well and smart.    The rules don't require is to do any of these things, but for many of us, these are in the "spirit of the game".

We also enjoy the back and forth, but we keep the trash talk within certain boundaries, that implicitly say, "I may think I'm a better IC player than you, or my family is better, but this isn't personal, in fact on a personal level I enjoy playing against you (particularly when I'm beating you, lol)".  This round's enemy may be next round's ally.

The honour whine is a very very frequent topic in here, to such a point that it's predictable and boring in many cases.  We all see our opponent's sins against us and are blind to ours against others.  He asked for it, he taunted me, he was in my core, there's nothing in the rules against it, etc etc etc   But for a lot of us, at least the concept is in play, sometimes we may decide we can get past the honour issues, sometimes the temptation is just tooooooo big, but the point is, at least we ask the question.  We try to win, yes, but we generally don't try and ruin anyone else's round - unless they really, really have asked for it.  And there's a difference between the two.

> Sir Prozac wrote:

> wow thats a long post to long if you ask me, chattax its to hot to post such things nobody will read them

spot on it may be a very interesting post, but I guess 80% of the people will skip it due its length. try to write a wee bit more compact

you hit the nail on the head in my opinion

very pathetic steam, sucks that does

> Steam wrote:

> Oh by the way. 663 was allied to my fam (642), when all of a sudden they cancelled the alliance and started clearing all their systems of us DURING our war with 638. How fu**ing cowardly is that? Recently i took about 20 planets back that were originally my fams, and now all of a sudden instead of asking everyone to stop attacking them they are back to attacking my family. Pretty pathetic.

I'm fairly sure Ancient started attacks on us

Pnap ?

Nananana

Nananana

Hey hey

Goodbye!

Steam rock

lol steam, ur funny
i know gary and anubis attacked and i would have gladly parted ways with some planets to make up for it had u but asked, instead you start attacks on us now that we have no attackers, without any explanation and expect us to just let it go?

and let me add the only reason u guys were able to even get those little bit of planets, is because 668 so graciously decided to rape our ground from like a mill soldiers to just 100k

hey oldi   it's me.......wanna know where u at right now..i  mean which family?

leave the poor fam alone

and back attacking my family