Outside your city, just a few miles away is a nice Level 10 lake which, unfortunately, is owned by a big and fearsome player who is using that lake to help feed his or her army. You, on the other hand, do not have a big army and, in fact, have been colonized. However, you do like that valley so you take it.
In Age I, this type of action would be labeled DNR for "Do Not Recommend" because the big and fearsome player would likely visit your city, attack it, take it over and barb it so it could be the latest biker bar. In Age II, there is absolutely nothing the big fearsome player can do. To say the least, a player who has gone through the effort to BE fearsome would find that to be a suboptimal situation.
Now consider the game of space and distance. A player with strong survival instincts will attempt to keep cities around him from becoming "too big" because everyone needs to sleep and big cities can eventually mean big armies that sneak up in the middle of the night. In Age I, a player with a highly developed sense of self preservation could "encourage" his or her neighbors to move and, in the case of obstinate refusal, simply conquer the city and turn it into a biker bar. In Age II, a player can be forced to watch a city get bigger because - surprise - it's already been colonized and there is nothing you can do. It's amazing how quickly that city can become uncolonized and attacking.
Look, I get the whole kinder, gentler world but this is really starting to grind. You basically just gave every player carte blanche to act with impunity because there just isn't a big stick anymore. Sure, that big stick was used in ways that made many players not want to play. Removing it, however, didn't improve things. The mechanisms that lead to "bullies" is also the mechanism that "keeps people honest." Maybe we could all watch the Lion King and find some way to embrace the Circle of Life and allow just a little bit of all the bad and icky stuff into the game because the current situation is really not leading anywhere good.




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