Moral/rule-question

[unmerged(6147)]

In a post in the DbD thread Forzaa wrote

Had a nice war with Austria.. turning point was probably the anihilation of ~100k troops in Transylvania that had an unfortunate timing, each army arriving just as the last had been anihilated.

..and apparently, artillery is not a necessarily component of victory

Since I believe this is of a more general interest I have started this new thread.

First of all I want to say to Forzaa that I will kill you for making me remember it.

After this little prelude we can go on to the more important basic question.

As I wrote ingame to Forzaa my display got cluttered with messages about armies arriving etc and I could not get those messages away to be able to click for retreat on the armies and thus they perished one after the other.... It was horrible. As I recall I finally flung myself on the pause button and were thus able to save the last army.

I once read Damo telling that he played without these messages ON. That is remarkable I think, but perhaps something one should try to do. Although a young fresh brain is a necessary ingredient to make it work. Can't have bad "short-memory", i.e. tend to forget what you did 10 seconds ago

BTW, I paused at an earlier similar occasion when Karl was close to death and thus saved him. Forzaa was not very pleased about that.

The question is: do we have some kind of implicit gentleman rule about this. Is it OK to flung yourself on the pause-button when e.g. you get a message in 1780 that your navy is attacked and you believe it is quite superior to yours and that your only chance to have your fleet not exterminated is to
1. Press pause
2. get rid of the messages
3. retreat
4. Unpause

 

[Aladar]

We normally go slowly when at war anyway, and pausing would be extremely annoying.

Only the AI has the advantage of being able to any everything,

 

[Chaingun]

It is a difficult question. I tend to pause myself and tell others they shouldn't. :rofl: I think the EU2 game mechanics are a bit unfortunate like this because it basically depends too much on whether you pause or not. In my opinion it would be better if there was some minimum battle time of five days or something in EVERY battle, so at least small armies would get a chance to be annihilated and not retreated on first day.

 

[unmerged(38752)]

I always play without those messages on, instead I listen closely for the sound. If multiple land (or naval) battles are ongoing, the sound tends to mix instead of just playing the sound for one battle (for example, you can hear both a fire and a shock fase at the same time). These sounds are enough hint for me as to when a battle is starting somewhere. As I always have a clear picture in my mind of where my armies are (my memory is somewhat photographic, so I can remember the exact composition of a certain screen in the Carribean for example when I'm browsing over Europe) I mostly know when a certain battle is starting and where (just look at the game log then).

In general, I think playing without messages on is a must for fast reaction and it certainly halts the irritation of pausing. IMO, nothing is more irritating then people pausing, so it should be kept to an absolute minimum.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

1. If the only reason for the pause is to "clean the screen" of windows, that shouldn't bother anyone. If you then take advantage of the pause to re-direct armies before unpausing, you are abusing the privilege of pausing the game.

2. I most certainly recommend changing the notification choice on arrival of armies (as well as on a number of other pieces of information often allowed to plaster the screen in SP, where they can often be combined with the automatic pause) so that the notification arrives in the bottom log only. In the Napoleonic era, wars combine so many army movements that you simply cannot keep the screen clean if a pop-up window shows every time an army or navy arrives at its destination. And in MP, you simply MUST be able to select and redirect armies on a moment's notice.

BTW, I presume you set up your armies to be one-button selectable, using the assignable numerals? In a pinch, you can always select what you can't see that way, and redirect by right-clicking upon some visible province, then cleaning up the obscuring clutter, and once that is done, finally giving movement directions that actually make sense to the army or armies in question. I always envision the conversation such orders would cause:

"General. The Prime Minister has ordered us to Podolia."

"PODOLIA??! What the hell does that SOB want us to go THERE for??"

"Can't say sir. He is quite definite about it; we got the message repeated three times. Now, his office says he is busy, cleaning screens. Not certain what that means, sir."

"OK. Tell the men to take the East road at the junction ahead... (sigh)"

 

[Slargos]

:rofl:

Good one.

Re: Pausing.

I would never play in a game where pausing is done more than once every other hour (at most!).

Pause should be used to sort out situations where for instance the GM needs to make a ruling.

Pause should/could be used when:

- Tempers are flaring a an argument is threatening to break the game.
- Someone involved in a war desperately needs to leave the computer.
- An issue regarding rule interpretations needs to be cleared up with the GM.

Pause should NOT be used when:

- You are in a war and get lots of popups. Set your popups to only be the ones that are extremely important to you. If this means all of them, deal with it on your own damn time; don't pause.
- Someone involved in a war needs to take a piss. Take it like a man and hold it in until a lull in the fighting comes.
- You are in a war and too many things happen at the same time. The whole point of real-time is that you can't be everywhere at the same time. Small nations need to retain SOME advantage over large nations. If you can't control your armies, chances are you're overstretched.

I think Pausing is generally rude and uncouth unless you absolutely positively have to. Learn to deal.

I can't remember EVER pausing because I'm stressed. There's been many times I've wanted to, for sure; I've never (as far as I can recall) done it because it's a waste of 12 people's time just to satisfy your ego..

The most heinous use of pause is in war when one of your armies is about to be annihilated by a clever move by the enemy and you pause in order to stave off the inevitable. The few times my opponent has done this has left me fuming! It's a cheap way to get out of a poor situation.

 

[Chaingun]

Chaingun's "set as message in log instead of pop up window"-list:

1. Most or everything regarding warfare should be moved to logs because the sheer quanitity of these messages can kill one (people already discussed these in detail above I think).
2. Stability and technology increase/decreases have no use as pop ups (always pay attention to log though so you don't leave treasury at max when getting to +3 stab).
3. Merchants. I guess this depends a bit on what you prioritize. I find it helpful to know whenever I'm competed out, but then again this is not a priority during war. Also, all other messages regarding successful and unsuccessful trade expansion attempts should be logged only.
4. These promotion and demotion boxes are totally uninteresting (I'm talking about those that trigger based on certain VPs). Remove them totally; there is no need to clutter the log.
5. Building contruction finished notices are good log candidates.

These are all I can think of right now. Most of them are no-brainers except the warfare ones. The "fleet has faced too high attrition and is return to port" message should be disabled, because I sometimes get spammed by 20-30 of these at the same time when a fleet I totally forgot about somewhere dies. It's terribly annoying and nothing one needs when he focuses in a war.

 

[Tonioz]

Pausing during battles for retreating is bitch and should be banned. The proof is that following games - HoI and Victoria have delays for retreating, so you get losses, like you should do.

As to messages i prefer to move them out of the screen for better reaction on retreating if needed.

I loved 1.05 pause, when it happened several seconds after being pressed, so noone able to trick for accurate retreating. At the same way other could depress pause not waiting bitching 30 secs.

Sometimes we see the abusing of pauses by bitch peace negotiations, and the rest can`t do anything with that, coz they repress pauses each 30 secs.

 

[BiB]

Pausing during battles for retreating is bitch and should be banned. The proof is that following games - HoI and Victoria have delays for retreating, so you get losses, like you should do.

As to messages i prefer to move them out of the screen for better reaction on retreating if needed.

I loved 1.05 pause, when it happened several seconds after being pressed, so noone able to trick for accurate retreating. At the same way other could depress pause not waiting bitching 30 secs.

Sometimes we see the abusing of pauses by bitch peace negotiations, and the rest can`t do anything with that, coz they repress pauses each 30 secs.

Why did you pause quite a lot during our MP game monday?

 

[Slargos]

Why did you pause quite a lot during our MP game monday?

A poignant question. I must admit I was thinknig the exact same thing reading Tonz' post.

I'm very excited about the response.

 

[Stonewall]

I don;t like the popups, so I have them appear in the message box rather tahn as a popup. I've never had a problem with people pausing or pausing myself. Some situations require a pause and if I need to pause, I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to whine when someone else pauses. Only crybabies whine about people pausing.


EDIT: Since the humor was lost on some, the crybaby remark was intended to be lighthearted. Apologies if anyone was offended.

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Pausing for reasons other than technical problem (like lag), GM-issue that needs to be solved immidiately or some really urgent problem (like a burglar breaking down the door) during war or some other time when you simply can't afford to be AFK at all, is evil.

Ask the host for speed reduction instead.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

I don;t like the popups, so I have them appear in the message box rather tahn as a popup. I've never had a problem with people pausing or pausing myself. Some situations require a pause and if I need to pause, I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to whine when someone else pauses. Only crybabies whine about people pausing.

Oh, great. Now he will be the Elitist racist CRYBABY Borderjumper.

Would that people would keep handing me a ready made sig line... :rofl:

 

[saskganesh]

i agree 100% with slargos.

pause during events is ok. pausing to save a battle or reorganise or raise troops during war is not.

pausing cause of lag is ok. but then its hard to tell who is lagging and who is not.

main thing, reduce your message popups. get sleeker. learn to fight wars in a realtime environment by practising at higher speeds in sp.

 

[saskganesh]

Only crybabies whine about people pausing.

not if you are in a war, and your opoenent press pauses every damn month so he can fucking think.

 

[Stonewall]

not if you are in a war, and your opoenent press pauses every damn month so he can fucking think.

I admit that it can get tiring. TPC used to be the king of the "warrior pause." It never bothered me. I can see it becoming tiresome if there was a pause every 30 seconds, or every month, but I've never ever ever seen that kind of behavior.

But, in the end, if someone is doing so well that your opponent requires a pause to compete, they should take it as a compliment, stop whining, and just play the damn game...pauses and all.

 

[Slargos]

Ah, the anti-pausing brigade is back in action. Funnily enough, Chaingun sums it up by saying (with slight changes) that each of us pause, and then bitch when other people pause.

To each his own.

I don't pause.

I know how pissed off I get when someone pauses in the middle of an exciting war where your adrenaline is through the roof and the result is on the balance. Therefore, I don't pause, and I don't accept pausing of others.

 

[kurtbrian]

Did you just imply there are people in this thread that are whining about pausing and consistently called them crybabies?

Interesting.

for once, I find myself agreeing with Slargos 100%.

Pausing to move armies about in a war or other war related things is close to cheating imo.

If your opponent outsmarted you, you should be man enough to admit it, and not try to salvage the situation by pausing and reetreating or building more tropps or whatever.

 

[kurtbrian]

Everyone please watch your language, Slargos and DSYoungEsq take your fight to the pm's or ICQ, MSN or whereever, just don't continue it here.

 

[Hive]

I find pausing in a war acceptable in any of the following scenarios:

1. You get spammed by messages boxes that clutter the screen (like eg. 25 attrition messages).

2. You get an event.

3. A new leader spawns in the middle of a frontline army (God how I wish leaders had to be assigned to armies, like in eg. HoI).

4. You have severe lag.

But pausing should generally be kept to a minimum, and not exploited. It should not be used while discussing peace, it should not be used because someone goes to the toilet, it should not be used to retreat, etc. Pausing simply takes too much pace out of the game.