Clans, War and diplomacy

Thaulos · 2019-07-31 22:22:01

Preambule

With the map rework the game inside the Rift feels a lot more solid. Multiple towns seem to prosper and while there might still be the occasional hunger cycle they no longer seem to be the norm. In my opinion game is much more enjoyable now and the Rift doesn't feel that oppressive anymore. I've seen quite a few people stating that they either don't mind the Rift anymore or that they actually enjoy it now.

A certain percentage of people will always dislike the Rift but my guess is that they now can live with it. Most complains seem to be regarding PvP and Griefing. Terms often used interchangeably (wrongly in my opinion).

Even the main topic on discord today seemed to be more focused on in-game drama (the great Eis-Slinker war), as opposed to the "Rift sucks, curse Jason" that had become normal lately.

Clans

We currently don't have an word for groups of families who lived long enough to understand each other. I'll be calling them "clans" for now.

The language updates and the recent change in the curse rules (you can now curse people from other families assuming you speak their language) means that clans might be maintained in a relatively stable manner. Griefers or inside-PvPers on any of the clan family can now be cursed and sent to donkey town. This effectively creates a soft enforcing of law and order inside the clan. Clan members will understand each other and will function normally as a big family.

The great Eis-Slinker war

Today have witnessed the emergence of a great war arc story. Legend says Eis striked first but it seems Slinkers built better fortified towns and are potentially winning at the moment of writing. Fighting is fierce but discord members talked about a single town where peace and prosperity reined between Eis and Slinkers.

Last I played my mom and other people from our town spent most of our iron on brand new war swords and went to raid. They never come back and I found out later while checking my family tree that they were all killed by Slinkers. No doubt in response to their failed raid, losing us manpower and crucial iron reserves while boosting our enemy's. (by recycling the swords)

I went to my neighbors asking to use their adze. Ours was missing, no doubt the result of a previous raid on our town. My neighbors had a small but very well fortified town. It was actually the first time I saw an airlock in OHOL. Pretty cool stuff.

Diplomacy

While the current war interactions and resulting stories are great, I felt a deep lack of options while dealing with my neighbors. They weren't aggressive and didn't kill me, even let me in to use the adze (I starved inside but I was very old already. Members of their family were also stuck inside which leads me to believe the gate owner was somewhere else taking a nap).

When dealing with strangers an individual can use /love and /happy. Or refrain from carrying any weapons. Or help out here and there. Chances are they will be tolerated, even adopted. This level of interaction might be enough in certain situations but they cannot replace actual diplomacy between towns.

I really feel the ability to do diplomacy is something vital for trading and meaningful war. What if a Eis town wanted a peace treaty with a Slinkers' neighbor? What if the war began because Slinkers had iron that Eis needed at the time? Could war been avoided by trade? What viable options do we have for diplomacy between strangers who can't understand each other?

Options

Currently the radio is one of two options for actual communication between strangers. However the radio feels more like an oddity than an actual tool. Creating takes way too much work and know-how. It's not portable and would requite both a transmitter and a receiver to work. I don't see it as a realistic option for diplomacy.

Written notes is also an alternative, but without a way to recycle paper it only leads to clutter and chances are there will be no empty paper laying around waiting for a foreign envoy to arrive.

I don't have a 100% good answer for this. I'll share a draft of an idea I had bellow as a normal post but this is probably a situation where many heads think better than one. There might a ton of possible options and I'm curious to see what ideas the community at large might have.

So, how would you solve the lack of diplomacy?

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-07-31 22:33:37)

Thaulos · 2019-07-31 22:44:00

Diplomatic robes

Following the theme of profession based clothing (such as the medic apron) what if we had something like a diplomatic robe (chest piece)?

If two people (or more) had a diplomatic robe on, they would understand eachother normally. Everyone else around them see them saying the usual gibberish.

Zero insulation and no pockets. Perhaps the same cost as an apron. Maybe even sourced from a woolen shirt too.

If every town had one or two of these they could potentially have diplomatic talks with neighbors, allowing trade, peace, ultimatums, etc.

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-07-31 22:52:24

Eis smell

ollj · 2019-08-01 02:06:13

slinker is ugly

Legs · 2019-08-01 02:17:11

I think I read something on the OHOL discord about peace treaties being in the works. Don't know the details but I imagine it's something like one elder writing a note with a pre-determined phrase that the game recognizes (like how naming works) then saying "I agree" or something. If elders over 50 from both families agree they become tagged as 'family' by the system. Presumably disabling use of war swords and allowing curses or something like that.

Age works really well as a gatekeeping method here because it prohibits players under a certain age to use long phrases by default. Similar to how kids can't curse or name anyone until they grow up. It also maximizes the amount of investment that a player has in their family by limiting use of peace treaties until you've already spent almost an hour in that community. So it's not just anyone that can make a peace treaty, it's someone with a more concrete interest in their family.

I'm not sure how the treaty would be broken though, maybe something like geographic speciation. One of the families dies out in town and if distant survivors don't interact with the other family for a certain amount of time they become unrelated foreigners again. Anyway, I think a mechanic for officially joining two friendly families would help a lot in promoting diplomacy. The way it is now you can never -really- trust a foreigner.

Lum · 2019-08-01 12:46:51

So wait. Your solution to different languages is to have objects that allow you to magically understand each other? No, the point is that you're supposed to learn the language if you ever want to achieve communication. It has to be an effort both families want to partake in.

Saolin · 2019-08-01 17:29:39

Legs wrote:

I think I read something on the OHOL discord about peace treaties being in the works. Don't know the details but I imagine it's something like one elder writing a note with a pre-determined phrase that the game recognizes (like how naming works) then saying "I agree" or something. If elders over 50 from both families agree they become tagged as 'family' by the system. Presumably disabling use of war swords and allowing curses or something like that.
Age works really well as a gatekeeping method here because it prohibits players under a certain age to use long phrases by default. Similar to how kids can't curse or name anyone until they grow up. It also maximizes the amount of investment that a player has in their family by limiting use of peace treaties until you've already spent almost an hour in that community. So it's not just anyone that can make a peace treaty, it's someone with a more concrete interest in their family.
I'm not sure how the treaty would be broken though, maybe something like geographic speciation. One of the families dies out in town and if distant survivors don't interact with the other family for a certain amount of time they become unrelated foreigners again. Anyway, I think a mechanic for officially joining two friendly families would help a lot in promoting diplomacy. The way it is now you can never -really- trust a foreigner.

Jason posted on the forum somewhere yesterday that he's implementing peace treaties and how it works.

Ah, here it is:

jasonrohrer wrote:

What I will be adding soon is this:
If you speak the word PEACE in another family's language (or if you are bilingual b/c of learning as a BB), then it unites the families in peace, and the war sword simply doesn't work anymore (it behaves as if you are one big family).
This is similar to how cursing works now, where if you know their language, you can curse them. If you know how to say PEACE, you can make peace with them.
This makes a clear distinction between true strangers (potential raiders, etc.) and people from different fams who are coexisting in one village long-term.
(And this does not affect knives and bows).

Last edited by Saolin (2019-08-01 17:43:02)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-08-01 17:51:36

I was in an eis town and there were two older slinker males who weren't being bothered, even though they were from the enemy tribe in the middle of the war.

I think everyone saw them as defectors and let them help and left them alone.

The slinkers were wearing red when I saw them, so I made the eis start wearing blue.. I helped the war effort in that sense

lilbogrusboi · 2019-08-01 22:09:59

DiscardedSlinky wrote:

Eis smell

We still beat the slinker's ass tho

schmloo · 2019-08-02 19:13:20

Just had an idea, what about an escort mode? While an unrelated family member is under escort from one of your own family members, you can’t use warswords on them. You can still however use knives and bows, but this kills the person escorting, not the unrelated person.

An unrelated person being escorted would work similarly to how you hold a baby, except of course you don’t actually hold them like a baby but instead hold them by the arm or something., and can’t move by themselves without breaking the escort. However, they can interact with everything in adjacent tiles. To avoid this being abused, the unrelated family member can’t pick up swords while under escort.

Last edited by schmloo (2019-08-02 19:14:15)

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#1 2019-07-31 22:22:01