Erastide wrote:So a nation is a long time resident of the region but begins to feel that the region is going in the wrong direction or that the region needs a change of leadership to make it better. He calls in a few friends from outside the region to come support him since he's probably already got internal support and boom, he's delegate. Now, he kicks the people that he thinks were bad for the region and they cry foul.
I would call that an acceptable situation and not something that should be interfered with.
But the situation could also be run where its an invader plant who had been in the region for a long time but only joined the WA a few days/week before the friends come in so he can get a few legit endos from natives to boost him up even more. He kicks a few "natives" and they cry foul. But he doesn't gloat on the RMB, he just declares there's a new forum and a new system of government since the old one wasn't working.
How could you tell the difference between these two scenarios? How would you judge it?
I quite agree with your analysis.
It seems to me that natives perceive an "invasion" as "a bunch of outsiders came here and stole our region!" If an infiltrator is a puppet that more or less just laid around building up Influence until it got a WA a couple days before D-Day, it's obvious it was never _really_ a native of the region.
But what if you have a nation, complete with WA, resident for a LONG time? Then a gang of nations pop in and endorse that nation and you have instant regime change. "Invasion" or a
coup d^etat using mercenaries? If after the ensuing pogrom and blood-letting, the mercenaries leave but original nation (now Delegate) remains, would that constitute an "invasion"?
I have a hard time with that last one because the bulk of the force that causes the regime change were pointedly NOT from that region. But I'm still stuck on that honest-to-goodness native that orchestrated the affair. Definitely not a nice thing to do, but most Banana Republic coups aren't nice affairs.
So, what I see as being the telling difference between "invader" and "native" is the Influence attached to a WA. So let's look at the Influence: just what is it good for? If you removed every aspect that is related to the I/D game, what is left? Furthermore, who, other than a WA nation uses it? (Leaving out the Influence that a puppet has that must be eroded before it can be ejected from a region.)
The most objectionable thing that a puppet does with Influence is that it sits in a region and pretty much does nothing UNTIL the invasion starts. Then all of a sudden it becomes a WA and it becomes Delegate (or helps a similar puppet to become Delegate). From shut-in to Dictator overnight.
The tactic of using a puppet this way changes drastically if change just one aspect: the Influence it accumulates just sitting there. So what about this idea: Since the only use of Influence seems to relate to the I/D game, and you can only really use that Influence _actively_ (i.e., spend), how about making it that a nation doesn't accumulate Influence unless it is also a WA?
All of sudden the complexion changes when invaders have to infiltrate a region with a live soldier instead of a zombie awaiting a brain transplant. If raiders want to infiltrate a region, they'll have to commit a player's one and only WA to do so. That would deprive them of the practice of planting puppets in 10-12 regions and just letting them sit there, taking up space until the Magic Moment. That should offset the Defender disadvantage because _they_ haven't similarly planted puppets in those same regions.