Development

[Money]

Okay I was woundering, Why don't countries, kingdoms and the like develop in Cantr? We have instanious communication in the form of radios, Speedy transport with cars and the like and yet we do not have countries and kingdoms that take up large parts of the islands.

[Cantryjczyk]

Okay I was woundering, Why don't countries, kingdoms and the like develop in Cantr? We have instanious communication in the form of radios, Speedy transport with cars and the like and yet we do not have countries and kingdoms that take up large parts of the islands.

You do not have? Strange. Mayby you do note care enough. I saw things like that IG, both long time ago and in present time. More in polish zone then english, but in english too. Make a traveler, tourist, explorer.Mayby you will find what you search for. Find-out-in-game. Or create kingdom, country, whatever on you own. Much of work, but it is possible.

[trexdino]

There are some. I will list some that are commonly known:
Stone Knights-sort of a kingdom
Baja-Empire on Aki Island
Empire of Alexilad
Macgregors even might be considered to have a kingdom
Shai Island, thst is a country.

[Chris]

Kingdoms and empires exist, but from what I've seen, they are more like confederations of city-states than nation-states. The explanation has a lot to do with Cantr players. Only a small percentage are reliably active in the long run. Most characters are sleepers or risks for heart attacks. Keeping a town functioning is a challenge in itself. If you manage to get a dozen active characters, you will accomplish more by keeping them together than by having them rule 12 towns inhabited by sleepers.

[Zanthos]

Alexian Empire typically selected governors and sent them to rule over their territories, primariy based on activity first, loyalty second. My character was virtually forced into being a governor, as it was the only way he would be allowed to get out of jail.

[SekoETC]

Either people have no goals or those goals are too hard to reach due to lack of resources. Meh... People only need food to survive, and shields in case of violent people or animals. Maybe weapons to hunt or to defend against criminals, but if there are no threats then people don't feel a need to make better equipment. You can gather resources and process them while chatting with other people so it doesn't matter much what you're doing, or how long it takes just as long as you have friends. In fact it's better if the projects are long, then you don't have to worry about what to do next, or even worse, telling your citizens what they can work on. Imagine if you had to rule over several towns, first of all you would have to find sub-managers who are active and not likely to drop dead or fall asleep, you need to convince people that they can achieve more if they work together rather than everyone doing their own smallscale projects and people must have desires, otherwise they can't find motivation to work or even live. Cantr gets options handed down from the skies by RD and ProgD. People can only show creativity in notes and names, and selecting which components they want to use to build their world. And those components are very limited. I haven't played Habbo Hotel but I assume they have loads of furniture to choose from, while Cantr has "a chair", "a table" and so on, no ornate versions. Because the people who originally implemented it were only thinking about the resting function. No one thought about style. Maybe it's because the furniture has no descriptions like clothing and because if it did, it would totally clutter the objects list. Because it would be all too much fuss to program a pop-up window, or a separate description page like for characters. Everything in Cantr is based on functionality and which resources it takes. If you'd have two projects with the exact same requirements, only with a different name (or description), some dick would say that the other one is obsolete. Or that it clutters up the menu, even though we now have the neat javascript menu and the search function. Also furniture is totally out of line with other stuff in Cantr, maybe because for a long time it wasn't functional, and the resting option is still rather useless since tiredness values were nerfed. There is no simple bench or simple chair or simple chair that could be done with the bone knife and stone hammer that the majority of Cantr population carries, you need to invest in a planer and chisel and whatnot. So most people are like screw this, I'll just build a longboat. Or a cottage. You'd think that it was easier to make a bench than a longboat but not in Cantr. So no wonder everybody is sailing away.

[CrashBlizz]

Alexian Empire typically selected governors and sent them to rule over their territories, primariy based on activity first, loyalty second. My character was virtually forced into being a governor, as it was the only way he would be allowed to get out of jail.

lol, you still going on about that?

I see towns in cantr a bit like countries in real life. And cantr history has kinda followed the same path as RL as well. At least on the two main islands.

Going back before cars, motorbikes, radios and stuff were wide spread towns were totally independent, with little regular contact. Therefore if they wanted more they had to go fight for it, hence big armies and lots of wars as towns try to expand. Some towns managed win and we could see things kinda similiar to the greek, roman, british empires etc. Towns needed to have control over others and have a presence there to know what was going on in the region.

Now with increased communication more diplomacy has come into it, mainly because its easier than force and people can talk easier. What were seeing now is groups of towns banding together while remaining independent. Basically we've gone from the British Empire to the commonwealth.

I also think a lot of this has to do with the high turnover rate of characters. In RL empires normally only last 2 or 3 generations.

First gen says 'oh no we've been conquered',
Second gen says 'Why are these people telling us what to do in our own country',
Third gen says 'We're not going to let these people tell us what to do'

This takes 150 - 250 years in RL but maybe only 20 cantr years....

[Zanthos]

not still going on, Oberon is long dead. I actually enjoyed it though, gave me something for him to do. If I spawned in the region i would probably be a loyalist. Some of the best roleplay i had revolved around alexian empire.

[CantrFreak]

Most leaders end up being those good, peaceful type that say the conquering is unneccasary and all that.

One of my characters has plans to unify and entire island actually. Even though his methods may be evil, they'll work. He'll ban them together using war and trickery, or by treaties and talks. Heheh...

[Zanthos]

Cantrfreak, they wont work. i tried, theres lots of bullshit you gotta deal with trying to do that. Most people wont want to help you, they will stop you at home and abroad, and eventually you will despair. Unless your island has 3-4 locations, that is doomed to failure.

[trexdino]

Agreed, all there has to be is a few people who don't know how to rp, and it is all over.

[Dogonabun]

I think the only reason countries and nations haven't really formed to the extent of the real world is because of war- or the lack of it. I'm not saying that war is neccesarily needed now, but in the time that civilizations were forming, it was the only thing that banded people together. Because of the morals people bring in from the real world, these kinds of big groups of people cannot form in Cantr. I actually think that if we had freeroaming instead of locations and roads connecting them, you'd never even find a collection of more than three people.

[CantrFreak]

I think you misunderstood me, I mean it will work, but it might not succeed. I guess that's my fault. But yeah, there's a big chance it'll fail, especially with those bad RPers out there.

[Sekar]

War could be what is used to create an empire/kingdom. But most wars fought in cantr aren't really wars, just massacres. This is because it is far too easy for 5 characters to take down 15 characters. Massacres result in nothing but thinning of power. If a group of towns agreed on some document that allowed for war, but with rules, than maybe it would result in only military personnel being slaughtered, instead of anyone who might feel vengeful towards the victor. This has yet to happen in game. Most wars fought are also led by players and/or characters who understand that war in cantr is basically massacre. But these players/characters don't care, and just like destroying anyone who challenges their ego.

My general point is that war in cantr just doesn't usually exist. It is replaced by massacres, and empires/kingdoms are not normally founded on massacres.

[Tiamo]

The main reason communities are so small, and not developing into countries, is that this is not necessary by the Cantr rules of nature. It is perfectly possible to survive in the game all by yourself.
In RL this necessity for large scale cooperation does exist. Single persons, or even small groups will eventually perish or get overpowered by larger groups.

One cause is the absence of offspring. Cantr has no sense of 'survival of the family/clan/species', which in RL is a powerful motivator.
No reason to cooperate because of bloodlines.

Another reason is the omnipotency of characters: any character can perform any task, given the right resources, tools & machines, without even having to learn how to. There are differences in efficiency, but those are not important enough to make specialization a necessity, or even a (community) survival factor.
No reason to cooperate for economical reasons.

A third reason is the abundance of available resources. I don't think there is any area in the game where limited resources actually limit the population size.
This means there is no reason for competition over land or resources, and thus no real reason for warfare. War, or rather any external threat, is a big factor in creating a feel of community (together you feel safer), as Dogonabun rightly states.
No reason to cooperate because of mutual safety.

Also, there is no viable way to limit individual access to the sources of resources. To keep unwanted individuals from foraging a community will have to permanently occupy all resource slots, or capture/kill the individual. This means that a community can not really prevent individuals from living a hermit's life on the same location.
Access to already gathered resources and products can of course be limited, but not access to the sources.
No reason to cooperate for access to resources.

Is there any reason for cooperation left, i wonder?