Latest revision as of 10:49, 29 December 2009

back to Groentje Players Manual content page

DIPLOMACY AND SOCIETY

Most of the other mages will compete with you for land and power, but you may find some players who would rather cooperate with you, support or protect you as you are allies or members of the same ‘guild’ (group of players, clan of players). This chapter deals with the options and rules for cooperative play. Note that there are different types of servers running rounds of The Reincarnation. On ‘solo’ servers cooperative play is not meant to happen (the Decalogue applies, illegal guilding may result in punishment), hence the ally and guild features are deactivated. Most servers allow you to choose allies and pick a guild.

Allies

Depending on server regulations, you can choose 1 (non-guild, non-solo servers) or 2 (guilded server) fellow mages to team up with you as allies (on solo servers, no alliances exist, as cooperation is forbidden). Alliances can be proposed and managed in the Diplomacy screen.

Selecting an Ally

Who you select to propose an alliance is entirely up to you, and so is whose alliance you accept. Mages may ally any other mage regardless of each of their specialities. If you have trouble finding a mage you perceive to be worthy of an alliance you may post a message in the Union of Honour section of the Bulletin Boards. Otherwise you may simply wish to scan the mages that appear in your ranking list and request an alliance with one of them. You may under no condition send a mass email to request alliances (or for any other reason). On guilded servers, if you are a member of a guild, your ally has to be a member of the same guild.

Registering an Alliance

Once you have found a mage with whom to ally, you can propose an alliance offer by choosing Diplomacy, entering a mage number, and clicking ‘Execute’. You can offer an alliance at any time, provided you have an empty alliance slot. You can withdraw or change an (unaccepted) offer at any time. Your proposed ally has to accept the offer, to confirm and start the alliance. The alliance lasts until one of you withdraws or one of you dies. If wanted, you can change allies during the game (but you cannot break an alliance in the first 24 hours after it was formed). On guilded servers, if you join a guild, your alliances are broken. In that case you can re-ally soon as your ally has also become guild-member.

Why allies are useful

Having allies helps for several reasons. Allied mages automatically send each other reinforcements when they are involved in battles. This can tip the balance in your attacks and in the defence of your country. The two most powerful stacks will not be send as reinforcements. To be able to send your ally reinforcements, you need to maintain at least three different units in your army. The size of your army affects the reinforcements you can receive. Lastly, allies can use spells and items and cast enchantments upon each other, regardless of blocking effects of barriers.

Coordinated actions within game rules

You are allowed to share sensitive information with your ally using in-game messaging. On guilded servers, you may also exchange sensitive information with members of your guild that are not your ally. This can be a strong benefit as knowing the whereabouts of a third parties army, greatly increases the chances of beating it. Obviously, you may ask your ally for assistance in battling other mages. Note that The Reincarnations rules of conduct are rather strict about exchanging sensitive information with other players using the in game messaging and the Reincarnation bulletin board (see the Decalogue). On non-guilded servers this means effectively that you may ONLY coordinate actions with your ally. If you play a non-guild server and are found to be coordinating with others, you will be punished for ‘illegal guild activity’.

Guilds

Playing your mage you will frequently encounter other mages, played by other players. The Reincarnation encourages players to coordinate their action together as groups of mages known as ‘Guilds’. Guilds add another level of cooperation, competition, strategy and diplomacy to the game. Joining a guild can be very helpful. Guild settings are handled in the SOCIETY part of the main menu.

There are many differences between individual players (inexperienced newbies, experienced veterans), between mages (different magic specialities, different knowledge of their spell books) and in strategies (offensive/defensive, battling duels/trying to rank as high as possible). Equally, there are many differences between guilds: some are newly formed, some have been around for many earlier rounds of the game; some aim to rank and only battle for rank; some aim to duel other guilds, rather than ranking as high as possible. Many guilds are open to new players and try to make experienced players out of them, some guilds are closed communities that only invite new members.

General

In the Reincarnation, each guild has to be officially registered to be considered a legal guild, and each member has to officially register as a member of the guild. Guild affiliations of individual mages appear in the rank lists and in the mage description.

All registered guilds have their descriptive pages within the game. You may read descriptions of registered guilds by browsing the ‘Guilds of terra’ screen. Apart from that, established guilds usually maintain their own web-pages, bulletin boards etc. Hereto The Reincarnation offers special facilities for guilds that donate funds to upkeep our servers. The motivations of guilds differ widely. Some strive for power, some for camaraderie, some are dedicated to helping new players, and some simply for the thrill of bashing other mages group wise. Most guilds will announce in their descriptions if they are interested in new members.

You may read descriptions of registered guilds by clicking on ‘Guilds of Terra’. The motivations of guilds differ widely. Some strive for power, some for camaraderie, some are dedicated to helping new players, and some simply for the thrill of bashing other mages group wise. Most guilds will announce in their descriptions if they are interested in new members. If you wish to join a guild, you may apply for membership. The guild leader will have to decide if you are accepted. Your best bet to find a guild that is good for you is to enquire on The Reincarnations Bulletin Boards, in the Union of Honour folder for your server.

A list of registered guilds, with descriptions is found by clicking ‘Guilds of Terra’ in the Main screen or in ‘Diplomacy’. A guild member list is also provided, but access to this is limited to mages that have spent a basic amount of turns since reincarnation. Your best bet to find a guild that is good for you is to enquire on The Reincarnation’s Bulletin Boards, in the Union of Honour folder for your server.

Joining a guild

Guild matters are handled in the SOCIETY part of the main menu. If you wish to join a guild, you may apply for membership menu, by clicking on [Apply] in the Guild of Terra list. Note that not all guilds are open to applications – some only invite new members. You can only apply to one guild at one time, and only if you are not already a member of a guild since a mage can only be a registered member of one guild. The guild leader will have to decide if you are accepted. While waiting for acceptance, you may recall an application in the Diplomacy screen.

Another way to join a guild is on invitation. You will be notified of an invitation in your main screen. You can Accept or Decline an invitation in the Diplomacy screen.

The in-game guild registration is the ONLY thing that determines whether you are member of a guild or not. In other words, just saying that you are a member of guild in your mage description, does not make you a member. Probably official members of the guild will not tolerate this. Similarly, not registering as a guild member, but coordinating with guild members, is an illegal action (see the Decalogue) and may get you punished for ‘non-description’ coordination.

Benefits for guild members

Once you have joined a guild, you have access to the Member list, Enemy lists, Guild Battle Log, Battles History and Guild history of your guild. These are found by clicking ‘Your Guild’ in the ‘Guilds of Terra’ screen. These resources can help you find allies and help you decide to attack which war target.

After you have joined a guild, you are protected from attacks by guild mates (i.e. it is no longer possible to attack a fellow guild member).

Guild members other than your allies are not able to send you reinforcements in battles – only your allies can. Of course guild members can be requested to attack a target before or after you plan to attack. This is within game rules in any situation, but many guilds have their own rules to do so only in special situations.
- You can activate battle report sharing in the options screen.

On the black market, you are informed which bids are yours (in bold), which are from other members of your guild (in italics) and which are from others (normal). You can overbid a bid from a guild mate.

You are allowed to share sensitive information with guild members using in-game messaging. This can be a strong benefit as knowing the whereabouts of a third parties army, greatly increases the chances of beating it. Obviously, you may ask your guildmates for assistance in battling other mages. Note that The Reincarnations rules of conduct are rather strict about exchanging sensitive information with other players using the in game messaging and the Reincarnation bulletin board (see the Decalogue).

Extra Benefits for Supporting Guilds

Supporting guild status is received when players donate money to keep the game in the air (to cover server hosting and traffic costs). To stimulate donations, these players and their guilds have the following benefits (facilitating easier/quicker gaming by players, but not giving their mage characters any extras)

A red star in the guild list
Signalling listed enemies and allies in the ranklists
A tool to filter ranklists by protection status or mage speciality colour (in the ranklist page).
A tool to keep track of enchantments on enemies by guild mates (found under SOCIETY in the main page)
A tool to help you set your preferred building routines (found in the building page)
A tool to keep in-game notes rather than to have to message yourself (found in the THRONE ROOM in the main page)
Player can see statistics on mage performance (found under SOOTHSAYER in the main page)
web space to host a forum/guildsite on the the-reincarnation.org domain (link in the guild list).

Supporting Players (have donated, not playing in a supporting guild) have access to most of the above tools too.

Guild specific Rules of Engagement

Many guilds (and individual players likely) have their own specific codes of conduct, by which their mages act. It tells you about the style and politics of the guild. Common examples are ‘our members only do single random attacks, unless in war time’; ‘1 attack – 1 counter’; ‘We are evil – we hit when and as often we choose to’. Following or not following such rules is up to individual mages, enforcing such codes of conducts is up to guilds. The Reincarnation tolerates any code of conduct, as long as it doesn’t violate the basic rules from the Decalogue.

Allied guilds, guild-coordinated actions within game rules

On guilded servers, guilds may ally to another guild. Their members are allowed to share sensitive information amongst each other, using in-game messaging (between members of allied guilds in the same way between members within one guild). Obviously, guilds may ask their ally for assistance in battling other mages (usually it is a leader or an officer that decides to do so). Note that The Reincarnations rules of conduct are rather strict about exchanging sensitive information with other players using in-game messaging or the Reincarnation bulletin board (see the Decalogue). If you play on a guilded server, and are found to be coordinating with other mages than the members of your guild / its allied guild, you will be punished for ‘illegal guild activity’ and possibly, so will your whole guild. Note: in the future, the number of alliances per guild may be restricted.

Differences between allies and guild mates

There are few differences between allies and guild mates apart from the obvious one that guild-mates cannot send you reinforcements. If you are member of a guild, your alles will have to be members of the same guild.

Non aggression pacts (NAP's)

NAP is an acronym that stands for Non-Aggression Pact. It is an agreement between two parties (two individual mages, two guilds) not to attack each other. An NAP-ed guild, is a guild that your guild has publicly promised not to attack. An NAP-ed mage is a mage that you have publicly promised not to attack. Just a promise, nothing more, nothing less.

Stating you have a NAP with specific other mages or guilds in your description is allowed on all servers, but is to be considered solely a reminder to yourself, the NAP-ed mages and the public of your promise. An NAP is not an alliance, which implies that sharing sensitive in-game information is not allowed. It further implies that coordinating attacks together with an NAP-ed mages is ‘illegal guild activity’ (which will be punished, see the Decalogue), but that breaking your NAP by attacking an NAP-ed mage is not.

NAP's on solo servers

For the solo servers, it is strongly discouraged to start NAP’s. The solo server is not anonymised for nothing! Developers may act if there appears to be block-NAP’s on this server (Decalogue violation: illegal guilding).

Managing Guilds (features for leaders and co-leaders)

Registering a new guild

To register a guild you will need to have four fellow founding members making the minimum amount of players needed to start a guild a total of five. The mage that registers a new guild is the leader of that guild. Apprentice mages cannot use guild recruit tools, with exception of the first week after a server reset.

To start registering a new guild, click ‘Register a New guild’ in the ‘Guilds of Terra’ screen, and a form will appear. An appropriate name for the guild should be chosen, i.e. a readable fantasy name, not containing offensive text (in any language). The short name should be an abbreviation of the full name (this abbreviation appears in rank lists). Mimicking existing guild names or abbreviations by using similar ones is not allowed. The game requires confirmation by all four fellow founding members, before your guild can be created.

Once the guild leader and all four supporters have confirmed their wish to start the guild, game administrators will review the application and either accept or decline the guild (within 24 hours since receiving the confirmation from the 4th founder). The guild will not be registered, when the guild names do not meet their requirements and when founding members are suspected of past Decalogue violations (founders are thoroughly checked).

While waiting for the review result, the guild leader can already start managing the guild, but the guild will not yet appear in the 'Guilds of Terra' list. Amongst others, you can fill in a website-location and/or a public irc #channel for your members and for enemy diplomats.

Managing a new guild

Once the guild is created, the guild leader can start managing the guild. This is done by clicking ‘Administation’ in the ‘Your Guild’ section (accessible from ‘Guilds of Terra’).

Here, the guild leader and those selected to be assisting members (Guild-admins) can:

Manage administrative access-levels;
Manage guild membership (accept/reject mages that apply for membership, dismiss members);
Send out messages to all the members, or to all the administrative members;
Manage your guild description and the way your guild interacts with other guilds (Open to NAP and/or Alliance offers or not) and membership applicants (Open recruit or Invite only).
Supporting guilds have additional features

Member Access levels

In the ‘Member Access’ section, the guild leader can manage the access levels of their guild members. Access levels can be anything between 100 (Leader) and 1 (newly joined members). The title related to each rank can be editted up to your imagination ('Leader' is only a default). The guild leader can appoint guild admins to help him/her with various parts of the guild management.

The guild leader and his/her guild admins can manage access to the following in-game guild features, for any member that has a lower access level then the admin has:

Is Admin (Guild-administrator, can be set by guild leader only);
Can Accept New Members, Can Invite New Members; Can Dismiss Members; Can Send Guild Messages;		Can Offer and Accept NAPs, Can Offer and Accept Alliances; Can Declare Hostility, Can Declare War; Can View Guild Battles, Can View Member list; Can View Enemy list, Can Edit Enemy list.

How to deal with guild-admin status and access levels is up to individual guild. For the leader, the admin tag does not apply: he can change access regardless of setting. Generally it is wise not to have too many admins, and not to have to many different access-levels. Note that e.g. an officer updating the enemy list or an officer doing the recruiting do not have to be admins to carry out their job. A simple example:

100	Leader	[Leader] full access	( can only be 1 person )
99	Co-leader(s)	[Admin] full access	( advice: 1 or 2 persons )
50	Full member,	manually given access to most functions	(whatever leader/admin decides)
1	Newly joined member	Trainee, given basic access only	(e.g. view member list)

Guild Messaging

The ‘Messenger’ section allows you to send out messages to all guild members or to all guild-administrators. When you send a message to all guild members, you receive that message yourself too. When you send a message to all guild-admins, you only receive that message when you are a guild-admin yourself.

Leader Guild Settings

The ‘Guild Settings’ section is for the guild leader only. Here the leader can edit the description of the guild. Furthermore, general settings for recruiting and guild diplomacy can be altered here. This page also allows to transfer leadership to another member (the transfer swaps level 100 and level 99 access between two members). Note that if the leader wants to remain an admin, he/she has to tag 'Is Admin' before transfering leadership (otherwise the new leader can make the old leader admin). The leader can also disband an entire guild (individual members can be dismissed from the recruitment office).

Recruiting guild members

In the Recruitment office, guild members with the proper access level can invite mages to join the guild, accept or deny applicants, and dismiss members. Note that general policies for recruiting can be set in the guild settings screen by the guild leader only. Guilds can announce that they are looking for new members on The Reincarnations Bulletin boards, in the Union of Honour folder for there server.

The guild leader remains ultimately responsible for all guild members. This includes responsibility for acceptance of mages that turn out to be played by cheating players. Guild leaders may ask assistance from admins (Email-adress differs per server) when they are not sure whether to accept a mage because of this reason. This is to avoid cheating mages to join established guilds deliberately to get them punished for cheating.

Achieving supporting status

To do so, make contact with the TR team through the TR-portal site and the forum. See also Supporting Guild Status. On receival of your donation, a designated TR-team member will tag your guild as soon as possible.

Groentje Players Manual Ch9