Dominions 5 Wiki

A NAP is a non-aggression pact. The exact details of this are often up to interpretation and have been long discussed by the dominions community. Ironically - they are in many ways the biggest source of player disputes in dominions - due to varied interpretations and arguments surrounding good faith and the like. As such this wiki page is dedicated to two NAP doctrines. One by myself (Cybertron2), one that is pre-existing - LucidTactics.

The intention is that when people agree to a NAP they can specify which doctrine they are following. This removes all ambiguity from the NAP. It means that a betrayal is less open to interpretation - and in a juxtaposition it is the authors view that this will actually result in less conflicts - as ultimately it is the 'you betrayed me - no I didn't' arguments that tend to be the worst.

More will be added here when the original article is found. For now - I will stick to what I have

Details covered in the video below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4g98HzxOy8

Many thanks MandarBMax as the graphs are a derivative of his prior work

Key takeaways from the video in addition to the chart

• Scout caught not a break but a scout army ping is
• Remotes are a breach
• Bane venom charms are a breach
• Sneaking enemy forces when NAP is ending - stealthing in forces is accepted as normal - not addressed whether a breach or not. Considered 'probably ok' but controversial.
• Harmful Globals are not a violation, but considered to 'nullify' nap
• Most people do not expect a NAP to hold when winning is imminent
• Note there are a swath of people who will NAP break to win a game
• Global Stealing - not a violation
• If indies take a province and you don't take it back it isn't a violation but its cheeky and its ok to be salty
• Rules lawyering and dirty dealing within the NAP is bad.

You follow the rules of the game. AKA the players create a NAP ingame. If an action would breach the NAP ingame, it is a breach. You follow the pre-defined preset illwinter rules - as coded into the game. AKA if the game says its a nap break - its a nap break.

Perhaps the biggest source of tension in dominions is treaty breaking – when games take months, it can be deeply frustrating for a player to ‘renege’ on a deal – or ‘backtrack’ on a deal. As such, this document serves as a base document for diplomacy – that if players want they can use as a reference. The purpose of this is to allow players to avoid ambiguity if they so choose – and lessen the sources of great conflict. There are other articles on this – see https://illwiki.com/dom5/toldi-diplomacy, but the goal of this is to reduce the problems that arise from NAPS.

A NAP is a non-aggression pact. It is an agreement not to harm another player as long as it is in place. For a more detailed analysis of what they do to the gamestate – I’ve added an addendum. Broadly – the rules of a NAP are as follows

1) No attacking the other player (unless its some sort of agreed province swap)

2) No remotes, assassinations, seduces, heretics, disease spreaders or the like

3) No blatant acts of aggression . #This is a fairly nebulous point, which I’ll go into detail on later To examine point 3 a little more – lets take some examples. In these examples, party A is pushing the boundaries of a NAP.

Party A and Party B work together to conquer neighbour C.

a) They both take roughly equal losses. When the defeated party is exhausted, party A uses remotes and stealth units to ‘cut off’ party B, claiming all the spoils. They then fall back to the NAP.

b) Party A takes more losses than party B. They then use remotes/stealth to cut the other player off claiming its only fair.

c) Party A has faster units and claims more of the spoils due to that before the other player can arrive.

d) Party A and B come to a loose agreement and attach a NAP on the back of it. Party A interprets that in an unreasonable way to take the majority of the spoils.

e) Party A informs party B they’ll be doing something. It is not agreed to. Whether or not they do it, party B interferes or takes the tile etc. This could be immediate or some turns later.

f) The NAP countdown has begun. Player A has stealthy elves and uses the countdown to move them onto all of player B's tiles so they have a better attack when the NAP runs out.

All of these previously could be considered passible behaviour – or NAP breaks. Since there is no clear line at present – this article will set one. These are all nap breaks. If a play exploiting a nap could be considered a ‘dick move’, it’s a nap break. Basically – treat your allies as you would want to be treated – double-dealing, stealth cutoffs, randomly claiming then not taking things. We are going to name these to make them distinct from regular nap breaks. We’ll call it an ‘indirect nap break’. Now there’s a limit to this. Basically, if its one unforted tile, or just a tiny amount of insignificant land under a very minor dispute (e.g. if 20 provinces are carved up and one tactically insignificant 40 gold tile could go either way), it’s not a break. But if a person takes an untenable position based on the diplomacy, it’s fair to consider the behaviour a break. People who behave like this are abusing the ‘future game consequence’ of a nap break – so I am creating and naming a mechanism for players who feel trapped by the threat of being called a ‘nap breaker’ when someone else abuses the terms. This is an Indirect NAP break

Generally the community accepts the following behaviours

1) Your scouts and stealthy units are allowed in their borders (outside of actively elfing said napped player).

2) Your dominion is yours to spread unless agreed otherwise.

3) Mistakes happen. I am strongly of the opinion that calling a NAP break is not trivial – as it impugns the integrity of your former ally. Occasionally, an attack, a bump, a seduce occurs by mistake or by not realizing it’d be a break. That is not a NAP break.

This is a third kind of NAP break that differs from the above. It occurs due to gamestate. So if a player casts a global that substantially harms an ally, or goes for a throne rush, the former is direct aggression, the latter indirect by threatening to end the game.

This article proposes a maximum NAP of nap 4. The reasons for this are the out of game advantages NAPS offer detailed at the end of the article, and the necessity on limiting them. 4 is a functionally arbitrary number, that is roughly in line with standard treaties, but still a limited number – so it prevents for example, 40 turn treaties.

A NAP occurs for N turns, including the turn it is ended on. So if a NAP is ended on turn 20 (aka a ping in discord on turn 20), you can attack on the ‘N’th’ turn. So a NAP2, means the actual invasion can begin on turn 22 – meaning attack orders can be declared on 21. It is considered bad form but not a breach to end a NAP just before the turn rolls over. NAP durations have been confusing in the past as people use different counting styles. This article proposes a simple one. You can actually invade on the current turn + the duration of the NAP. So if it’s a NAP3 ended turn 10, you can’t attack turn 10 or 11, you can declare attack orders on turn 12, and actually have contact on turn 13

Generally – trade deals are seen as binding. That means if you agree to trade gems for an item, or chip in for a global etc, the other player is bound to follow them.

So there’s nothing groundbreaking in the above article – and many players will disagree with this diplomatic format. That’s fine. The purpose of this article was to present a standard – so that if players wanted to use something pre-determined, it can exist without ambiguity. In short, the 3 breaches are

1) Direct Nap Break

2) Indirect Nap Break

3) Nap Break by Gamestate

Fundamentally – the existence of out of game diplomacy and its prevalence affects the game. From a game health point of view – this is not wholly positive – as different people have different standards on acceptable behaviour. The issue is that players who make out of game deals fundamentally have an advantage over those who don’t, the more over the top the deal, the bigger the advantage.

For the purposes of the below we are assuming NAP’s are honored – which is an issue of itself. Essentially, those that don’t honour NAPS face out of game consequence in deal-altering in future games / grudges etc. To give a couple examples, lets have a four player game in a square, so each player borders 2 others.

2 Players create a NAP. This means they only have to worry about 1 neighbour each, when the other two players have to divide their forces between 2 neighbours. It is objectively advantageous.

2 players agree to take awake dracoliches (or a similar – capital rush pretender) pregame and rush the other 2 players. Knowing they have a safe border, this is much more ‘doable’. The game ends on turn 3 for 2/4 of the players.

Now the community accepts the first example and rejects the second, but functionally, this demonstrates how gamechanging the out of game deal is. Players have different levels of how far they think is fair. Personally, I cap my deals at NAP3. I would prefer to cap them at NAP1 or NAP2, but this is a concession to the fact that most other players make longer deals. Others will make 50 turn or game long deals. Others will make pregame deals, and build their pretenders using that knowledge. Where the line is drawn changes player to player – but as a rule of thumb, the bigger the deal, the bigger the advantage for the players in it.

Taken to the absolute extreme – you could have a pregame deal in a 9p game for 6 players to rush 3 players. The 3 are functionally always going to lose, the 6 always end up ahead, then you end up in a 6p game. Repeat again with 4v2 to end in a 4p game, then 3v1 to end in a 3p game and we end up with 3 players before any real ‘game’ has been played, solely as a result of ganging up. This in my opinion takes the fun out of dominions, but is fundamentally a function of out of game diplomacy – to a lesser or greater degree.

This creates a two-faced problem. NAPS are mutually beneficial, but they also provide two players with an advantage over the rest of the lobby. As a community do we accept this. And layered onto that – how far is too far. This is not a question with a clear answer – but from a gameplay point of view is crucial – as it can go anywhere from slight advantage all the way to essentially locking players out of the game before it begins.

In short, I don’t want this to appear judgemental or like the author is trying to tell you how to play the game. This is used to illustrate the gameplay effect of these out of game deals, and how they functionally skew the game. Whether or not a player wishes to engage, how much, and how far is a personal decision, but due to the advantageous nature of it (and the general community scorn on deal breaking and lasting implications of being a NAP-breaker), it is a very real aspect of the game. Taken to its extreme, diplomacy trivializes parts of the game by turning it from a strategy game into a game of ‘gang up’.

Ultimately – it is for each player to decide where they draw the line – if at all. Until the dominions community as a whole dials back a notch on its ‘honourable diplomacy’ policy, this will remain a essential, and game-warping aspect of every dominions match.