You know a lot of diplos are based in "the old days", middle ages, ancient times, etc. Well, in these diplos I've played I've seen more players act like time travelers from the present then properly roleplay to the time. I just think more often players should consider how people in the past thought quite differently from people today. Much of what is normal now, nationalism, peacetime alliances, striving for equality, lots of freedom, it wasn't normal in the past. Past values included the belief that kings got their power from God, more people before then now agreed with "might makes right" and valued pride, and before the renaissance, slavery was commonplace. What was normal then now seems like bullshit I know, our values used to be called bullshit, and who knows the future values. Just a word on roleplay.

Thank you for another one of your great insights

Also, before world war one and numerous tales and photos of the horrors of war, most people didn't know how bad war was, and saw it a glorious. It's thanks to mass media that people today know how terrifying war actually is.

And there comes a generation that watch "Horrible Histories" instead of doing required homework in history class. Well done goodgame! There is a lot to learn from you, please enlighten us more.

I don't know what you mean by "horrible histories"

(most of)these beliefs have never been held by anyone pre enlightenment. the view of pre enlightenment peoples as being barbarous bloodthirsty loveless people is a lie promoted by the same people who profit from modern capitalism, eg. sephardic jews, white women, and business execs who are under 5'10.
pre enlightenment slavery was simply the ancient form of modern wagecuckery. when you read roman documents from govt offices eg frontinus' "the aqueducts of rome" you see slavery as being a salary job with pension, very similar to mailmen, when slaves were caught doing something wrong, their master was punished, not the slave. Contrast this with the french and anglo post enlightenment ideals of slavery. Peacetime alliances were commonplace and were solidified through marriage, you see this as far back as the hittite and egyptian alliances all the way through the royal familial bonds between the poles and the romanovs prior to peter the great's faggotry. it is much harder to break these emotional bonds than to trash a treaty of paris. equality is and always will be a joke, this is not contested.
As for war being terrifying, this is a product of women gaining the right to vote. i mentioned this briefly in my post in the strategy forum but i will blabber more about it here. wars before suffrage were less similar to billygoats bashing their heads together for mating rights and more similar to the pufferfish who create beautiful geometric designs in the sand to attract mates. you see this in the armor worn by knights (floral, reflective, frills, very beautiful) and also the class of peoples who participated in war. War was a sport of the noblemen, to think that the state awarded knights hundreds of acres of land for fighting against germanic tribes is foolish and gay. the knights were simply noblemen prior to becoming invested in war. many of the troops(outside of mercenaries) were the lords slaves. This high culture environment led to fully flowered second generation war, which resembled more of a ballet than an actual struggle. you see this in medieval military strategy books- the imagery of wings, eagles, turtles, horses- all forms of velocity in a beautiful visionary sense.
the first downfall of this artistry of war was the creation of the crossbow, something the vatican warned against in the second lateran council. this tool of the devil allowed unskilled laborers to shoot a well trained knight and take him down without any real artistic merit involved. simple worthless bloodshed. the next (sub)downfall was the invention of gunpowder, but this was not much worse than crossbows at the outset. the final nail in the coffin so to speak of war as art was womens suffrage. you can see examples of the womans vision of strife in opposition to mans vision in the wild. fights between female rams leave far more death than fights between males, and lacking death, leaves them very winded. This was brought into a volatile world where guns had become a possible tool for the reintroduction of guerrilla warfare, and women made that into a reality. this mistake was realized immediately in the first world war, even before britain and germany allowed their women to vote. the effects of the suffrage mind disease had infested the minds of the men of these countries, leading to a war without regard to aesthetic value. world war II was the first true masterpiece of the feminine approach to war.

masterful

I could see how the message of people back then being "barbaric" came across, though that was not at all intended. Whoops, worded it wrong. Really I believe that humanity is no more or less shitty now then it ever was before. When I said "lots of freedom," I simply wasn't thinking, yes it's bullshit. If a picture of the past is rosier or uglier then it seems now, simply you've only seen one side of things. The alliance thing, whoops again, I forgot about those. As far as equality, I wasn't speaking of a difference in the amount of equality, but of how much the idea of equality is valued in common culture, and more notably the belief that there is no superior or inferior race or ethnic group. If you still disagree with that, please provide counter examples. As for the war bit, we can both believe whatever we want about what caused this, the point is there has been a sharp decline in support of war over the 20th century. We can't really prove much beyond that, because, simply put, we know less about the human mind then we do about Mars.
Also worth noting, I don't give a damn about how war plays out, even if it's like a ballad, it's still people killing eachother, so I hate it irl none the less. Of course, that's nothing against war games, as in where no one really dies.

Edited 10/22/2019 17:39:12

"As for the war bit, we can both believe whatever we want about what caused this, the point is there has been a sharp decline in support of war over the 20th century."goodgame

So you have a study that has monitored "war support" across a globe for a 100 years? I wonder when will you publish it, I would like to cite that one.

why are you even responding

you people have no dignity

As someone who hosts diplo games very now and then. (My diplos are called Virtual Warfares)

I've got different scenarios in which I play them, in multiple settings with different rules in some depending upon the maps.

I totally agree with you, in my games as a host I encourage all sorts of RP cause any and every scenario is possible. One of my games is called Virtual Warfare : Game of Thrones and I usually get a lot of hardcore GOT fans who have read the books and stuff so they sometimes go proper RP mode and I love it cause it makes these games so much more worthwhile. I do have a link to the forum post for my games, check out my templates if you want and see if any of them suits you (There's link to the templates on my forum post) . Feel more than free to play around with the rules if you like and host a game of your choice :)

I don't know GoT. I do know LotW though, and of course I know enough of the real world.

make a diplo with noobs and then boot them to win.