Op Ed: Empire Mud and the warring system
It is with regret that I am discontinuing work on the empiremud soundpack. This is because of a conversation I had with the lead administrator Khufu about declaring war against other empires, which is legal to do within the game. He actively stopped the war that I had legitimately declared and forced me off my land, and told me that I was not allowed to declare war with a certain empire, Knashteran, because its members were "afraid to log in".
The background: Declaring war on an empire can only work when at least one of its members is online. When you declare war, you can reclaim open tiles that belong to that empire and destroy its buildings until one of the empires has no online members, and for an hour after that. When i was looking for a place to start up my empire, I did not realize that my desired location was very close to some extended roads from Knashteran, and my city ended up being built with its roads going through it. I tried to negotiate with Knashteran to remove the roads for a sizeable payment, but they said no, and told me that they would retain the roads if those roads would persuade me to pick up and leave. That clued me in that they were only keeping the roads to antagonize me, as they could have easily shifted location slightly, retained all their empire inventory, and stayed out of our way. So I declared war against them to take those roads back. After I told Knashteran that I would declare war on them if they logged on, they complained to the admins about it.
Khufu also told me that I could move, and even showed me to a large plot of land that would suit just well, but the mud is about power, and we were obviously the more poewrful empire. If knashteran were afraid of us they could have either done what we wanted, or moved. That is the way that PK muds like this work. Look at lords and knights. There is no one on there complaining that players rae too powerful and are bullying them off their land and destroying their stuff. They fight back or they retreat. On empire it should be the same.
Here is a log of a conversation I had with the game administrator, Khufu, about this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9eu2idmqspjp … n.txt?dl=1
After building my empire for a month, working many hours per day, preparing to war, and then being stopped because some weak-minded players complained to the admins, I am saying that the fun has come to an end. My empire mates and I deleted their characters from the game. We will not be making new ones, because it is obviously a stance that Khufu takes very seriously and will not change no matter how many good reasons we give. I will continue to have a link to the Empire Mud soundpack but it won't be updated anymore.
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