Thinking About Youngia...

[Barrettstia]

I know it's usually better not to for the sake of my mental health, but I've been having a little think about everybody's favourite troll.

Now, obviously Youngia is a figure that NS is far better off without, but in spite of this I wonder if part of his motives may still have been worth considering.

For those too young to remember, Youngia is a troll who occasionally plagues the International Incidents boards as different nations. Youmania and Youngoslavia are two that I remember off the top of my head. Every time his actions are the same. He'll claim that although his population is only five or six million he owns "colonies" that up his population to, say six-hundred-billion and then claim that he is the most powerful nation in the world. This unrelenting godmodding and spamming has earned him delete-on-sight status with the Mods.

What I've been thinking about is that while Youngia's actions are certainly moronic and the Mods' policy regarding him is certainly the right one, I wonder if there might be some sort of justification for his behaviour.

It's a common problem that most, if not all new nations suffer from that, being many times less than a thousandth the size of the older nations, have trouble breaking into the RPing world in any meaningful way. I know I did, which was made even harder since I started playing at around the time when the prejudice against 09'ers was at its height. Most threads I was interested in joining either resulted in a swift threat of curbstomping or were of the sort where my nations' small size rendered my actions pretty inconsequential to the course of the RP.

Sadly, in spite of the warning threads at the top of II, we still see the older nations often responding to posts by newbies with one liners to the effect of "I squash you with an army the size of your whole country". Even I subconsciously avoid most threads where the players are less than a few months old. Sadly, we in NS have a collective problem taking smaller nations seriously, and it may be party for this reason (but mostly because he's a moron) that Youngia continually tries to RP a large population, so that he can play with the big kids.

I wonder if there might be some sort of argument that could be made for that motive as justification for his actions. If so, can anyone think of ways to solve the problem, either in our own RPing or by changing the gameplay mechanics?

I'm just trying to think of ways we can make the newer nations better able to interact with the older ones.

[Bears Armed]

Well, there's nothing "binding" in the rules to say that the older nations must claim all of the full populations that the game's mechanics say they've got, instead of more RL-reasonable figures.
For example, although this particular nation admittedly doesn't actually do 'war' RPs, for those occasional RPs of other types in which it participates I say that its population should be considered as only 18-19 million rather than nearly 8 billion...

[Grays Harbor]

I know I have personally been against the NS "inflata-pops" since the very beginning, and have always been in favour of more realistic ones. In my home region, I use a pop of between 190-212 million, a pretty reasonable size I believe. Some other nations I RP with have even smaller pops, one even has an RP pop of about 350,000. I only use the 12 billion + pop on the NS forum as that seems to be the accepted form. Should others lower their population voluntarily to something more approaching RW proportions, I would gladly do the same.

Although, I do find it amusing on occassion to explain the huge population count as including all birds and mammals along with sentient lifeforms.

[Weylara]

What I've been thinking about is that while Youngia's actions are certainly moronic and the Mods' policy regarding him is certainly the right one, I wonder if there might be some sort of justification for his behaviour.

Mm...nah.