Game 9 Start Up

I think it would help if there was clarification on 3 types of treaties and on which penalties (if any) could be expected by players breaking them. Clearly if there are no penalties then there is no benefit to keeping treaties.

I suggest:

Type 1 - treaties which establish the political structure of nations (example being Treaty of Westphalia, associated Imperial institutions, States General in UDP, Pacta Conventa for Poland, the English parliament etc) as are detailed in the various rule supplements. These treaties should be hard to change for players because they are integral to how each country operates and without them some unique features of positions would be lost. There would be nothing to stop groups of players getting together to replace those kind of treaties, but it would be an uphill struggle.

Type 2 - treaties in recent history which ended wars (examples being Rijwsick and the 1690s treaties to end Ottoman/Austria, Poland/Venice). These could have an agreed time limit (say 5 years into the game, at which point they would be downgraded to type 3 treaties. I accept Stuart's point that the provisions of these treaties must be commonly accepted and determined by the GM to stop argument before it starts!

Type 3 - treaties which are so far in the past that although they could be used as an excuse for war, there would be minimal (if any) penalties for breaking them.

Of course there will be debate over which actual treaties should fit into each category, but by effectively putting a time limit on type 2 treaties it would give players flexibility to try alternatives whilst removing the fear that they had to do something quickly in 1700 to avoid xyz happening.

OK, in the context of G7 the above would have been bad for France as I wouldn't have been able to have used the 1660 marriage treaty on its own as a discussion point for the Spanish Succession, though I would have been able to use the arguments to influence discussion over the will of Carlos II. Contingent treaties signed historically to cover situations which might exist would be very hard to include in the startup: there has to be some flexibility for players.

Treaties signed between players in the game should start off as Type 2 treaties (whether they are simple trade agreements or political/defensive treaties) and be live for 5 years after which time they become Type 3 treaties. So although in theory they never expire, their game potency diminishes.

The other consideration would need to be what happens when new players join. This is important for game continuity. The current rule is that new players are not bound by treaties signed by their predecessors. Overall I support this, but I do accept it is very hard on new players joining at difficult times. So when Churchill joined G7 and accepted King James, he could reasonably expect France to honour its treaty to protect King James for 5 years. If Austria suddenly quit, it would be a bit unreasonable for any new player for Austria to be isolated by its allies and have to start negotiating new treaties without knowledge or history of how honourable those allies are. I don't know how this can be reflected better in the rules, so perhaps others can suggest something for discussion?

As to the penalties, you would expect me to be very keen on this. I don't hold to the view which has been previously expressed that treaties don't matter and players should have total freedom to do whatever they please. At the moment among those who hold more traditional views that treaties matter, there seems to be a trade off: breaking treaties is OK if you have high enough honour to compensate. I think that is very much out of period and has damaged the game. Gentlemen may have regularly broken their word to peasants, but not to each other: keeping one's word was a mark of rank in itself. It was originally very sharply defined in the rules as the distinguishing feature of pirates: pirates gained honour by breaking their word whereas rulers of countries had higher standards. A drop of 1 honour point/turn, even over a sustained period is simply not enough to make much difference and can be counterbalanced by good play in other ways or by other players talking you up.

So I suggest much more rapid falls in honour until an apology is made (20%/turn), and then less rapid falls in honour until restitution is made (10%/turn) or the wronged party accepts 'honour has been satisfied'. This would prevent the total breakdown in trust which have had in G7 and allow Louis/Leopold a face saving way out. So if you have managed to build your honour up to 40 and break a treaty, the next turn your honour would drop to 32, the turn after 25, the turn after 20, etc. The higher your honour the more it should mean to you. Of course if it is a genuine mistake, then the initial 8 point drop if followed by an apology which was accepted would make an end to it without further action being necessary. There is no need to resurrect a Court Agema (despite there being a strong case to do so). Type 3 treaties could have penalties of half the above.

Just a few thoughts to stimulate debate

I think it would be hard to accelerate turns by changing from 1/month, though I do agree with Deacon that real time play is far too slow.

On page 31 of the 5th edition rules it states that 'penalties for breaking a treaty are limited to a slow but grinding and severe reduction in honour'. So the intention was that the penalty should be felt by the player and that it should have an effect over multiple game turns. 20%/turn might sound harsh, but it is intended to be. Personally I would prefer a higher penalty, but given the slow pace of the game players have to be given time to undo the self-inflicted damage. In 3 turns honour would have been halved irrespective of the level it started at: those with higher honour (a reward for previously good play) suffer more; those with low honour (who don't value the concept anyway), suffer less. That seems fair and I can't think of a simpler way of implementing this. There also has to be some mechanism for both players to come to terms which there isn't at present. Clearly the aggressor would have been punished and if he tried it again shortly afterwards he would have established such a poor reputation it would cause internal problems for him. All players would be on an equal footing and penalties clearly understood. That is very much in period without getting tied down in legal/court disputes.

The justification for Court Agema was also found on that page, namely that it represented historical bodies of law like the Aulic Council. However, I have a subsequent sheet titled 'New Treaty Rules' which removed the penalty of Court Agema, demoting the status of treaties to 'statements of intent rather than binding ... 'where clauses of a treaty are believed to have been breached, the hurt party may publicise the fact to try and embarrass the dishonourable party into compliance. The effect of breaking treaties is probably to be seen in a downward pressure on the honour of the perceived guilty party.' On this sheet, the intention was that the court would be replaced by pressure from other players within the game who acted as 'neutral' parties.

Clearly this change had 2 major faults:
1. other players are not neutral parties. The Treaty of Westphalia was guaranteed by Spain, France and Sweden. In G7 Spain would not move against a Hapsburg emperor, Sweden was unwilling to get involved (or was NPC for most of the time), which left France alone against Austria. Meanwhile lots of little German states were too frightened to stand up against Austria and the majority of inactive members remained just that! Relying on players to act historically (and possibly against their own interests) simply didn't work.
2. honour affected a player's ability to field his army and fight any war resulting from a treaty breach. So there was a self-correcting mechanism. This is now no longer the case. There is no restriction on the number of units or formations per honour point, though all forces may suffer morale penalties, which frankly is too vague to make any difference.

Unfortunately I can't find the reference that new players are not bound by previous treaties, though I always understood that was the case. Perhaps it dates from an even earlier version of the rules? However, it is obvious that if current players are not bound by existing treaties (or at least not effectively penalised for breaking them) then the same applies to new players who may not be aware of the existence of those treaties when they join.

I like J.Flower's idea about treaties being classified by type and the details made available later. However, in 'moving towards 5th edition' there is a section on Trade Treaties: 'These no longer enjoy any special benefit, but simply act as all other treaties do. In other words if you agree to exempt a nation from trade tariffs, it can be enforced by a treaty, but simply having a trade treaty no longer embues any special economic benefits in itself, other than those gained by agreeing to permit trade, keep tariffs low or whatever the wording is.' If trade treaties don't really mean anything, that makes all treaties political in one sense or another, so perhaps we need some ideas for defined categories? Perhaps treaty details could be put on the wiki or forum so everyone knew about them?

I have every sympathy as I think games run best when players are committed which means having a long term strategic plan and being prepared to work towards that.

Looking back to page 5 of the 5th edition rules: One game turn is played every 10-15 days. We've been running the game since 1989 and wouldn't be too modest in saying since then it has run like clockwork with no more than one delayed turn a year - usually due to a birth(!) or holiday. Things also slow over the Christmas period due to the delays created by the postal service. Other than that you can expect a regular turnaround. The pace of the game was intended to be slow, to mirror the diplomacy of the period. It was originally set just in Europe, but since then expanded to include the world.

I think this quote simply reminds us that 10 years ago when we all played by post, I would allow at least 3 days for the post office to deliver my turn back, allow 2 days for the turn to be received (it always seemed quicker), which left a minimum of 5 days to write orders/letters. At the time that was fine if the 5 days included a weekend, but if it didn't and I had a heavy week at work I would struggle to find time to complete a turn. It was even worse when playing in 2 games at once so a game turn was arriving every few days. That said, I do remember that it felt like a game back then rather than an alternative world!

To understand further, perhaps the question to be asked is what has changed between then and now? I suggest the following has changed:

1. As players have sought new innovations, the rules have expanded to cover more possibilities, thus making a more complicated game. In essence it is still simple and could be played by reference to just one or two rulebooks instead of six or seven, but does anyone build a standard ship of the line any more or equip a unit with an ordinary flintlock instead of some improved variation? More complicated rules require more time from the GM to check/process those rules. I happen to think this is a strength of the game. In period play and attention to historic detail give the game its rich atmosphere. As France I was probably the worst offender at making things complicated but for me this flexibility has always been where the game scored highly against computer games.
2. More games have been started. When there were only 3 games running we could be fairly sure of a 10-day turnaround, but by the time there were 4 running the 14-day turnaround seemed to be standard, with 5 games we were on about a 20-day turnaround and with 6 games this is closer to 25-days, or a month adjusting for holidays.
3. Lengthening the game turnaround gave us as players more time to dream up plans (and in the case of France write longer letters) which meant we submitted more orders. Add in the forum and we can discuss the game 24-hours a day if we want to! The change to unlimited orders can be seen as a concession to help deepen our game experience, but of course this merely made long turnaround times unavoidable.

OK, there are other points which I have mentioned elsewhere, but these 3 seem to be enough to address Deacon's main point.

As players we surely have to ask ourselves 2 questions:
1. Could we go back to playing a game where we had 5 days to complete each turn, yet still feel we were getting value and an enjoyable game experience? We would no longer have the luxury of spending time reflecting (or plotting), no longer have time for very detailed diplomacy, long forum discussions, etc ?
2. Could we accept working within a restricted ruleset, submitting a restricted number/type of orders each turn in exchange for a fixed game turn charge?

And, if having reached some kind of consensus, we would still be dependent on Richard having the time to commit to running this style of game.

To be fair to Richard, the game did run like clockwork until the 3 changes I referred to above made it impossible for him to keep control. Either:
(a) the rules have to be completely rewritten to change the pace of games, which as I have argued on this thread is likely to be impractical and cause as many new problems as are solved.
(b) the number of games run concurrently has to dramatically reduce, which will be controversial and tough on those who have been long term players.
(c) Richard will have to employ/train someone else to GM some of the games, which inevitably means their interpretation of the rules.

Given the large number of NPCs in some games and its effect on overall game play, there is a strong case for reducing the number of games. But I know how annoyed I was when G4 folded after all the effort I put in, and reducing the number of games would reduce the availability of certain popular positions for players.

I don't think there are any easy ways round this. However, for the sake of keeping the debate going, one possibility could be to have a game based on a version of the old rules (including such old fashioned notions as Treaties enforced by Court Agema, a top EH list, NPCs being more actively played by the GM), but restricted to Europe (incl.Mediterranean). Larger positions such as France/Spain/Austria could be played by multiple players so retaining the possibility of team play and so starting strength was more equal. Of course with no colonial activity other than 'investing' in trade, the game would feel very different as players would have to learn how small a place Europe is! With a strict 10 day turnaround and a fixed fee/turn there would be less incentive/need to submit lots of orders and the game would be quick enough to allow 10 year plans to be undertaken in a reasonable real-world timeframe. The concept needs more work, but I'm convinced a quicker game really needs to be a simpler game.

Game turnaround is clearly a difficult issue and I'm not advocating any one alternative over others, merely stimulating discussion.

It does appear, though, that we cannot keep adding new games of LGDR without having an impact on the turnaround times for all games and putting excessive pressure on the GM.

Deacon is right that a 3 week turnaround usually stretches to 4 with holidays and equates to about 15-17 turns over a year. As a personal opinion, I think the ideal pace would be 24 turns over a year, so we would have 2 game years to each real world year. Once you push above that, things start to seem to take far too long, and the closer you get to 1 game year to each real world year, the more the game seems to grind to a halt.

Whether we could ever return to a euro-centric game with less complexity, I have my doubts, but if players have any opinions, then perhaps the forum is the place to voice them.

I thought I had been clear, but in case I have been misunderstood, I have replied to Richard's other comments on the G7 thread.