Fauxia wrote:Unibot III wrote:TNI happened, sure. But Greece also happened. Founders do go inactive and there are quite a few regional hawkers who make use of scripts to the extent that I’m not sure they even play the game anymore. Mediation is applicable on a case by case basis and it requires a patient community of people — essentially you need a group of people motivated enough to outlive their region hawkers. The strange thing about NationStates is.. this does happen. The game is almost two decades old.
In Greece the founder never existed in the first place, if I'm not mistaken (having been on the disastrous NSIDC mission myself, I remember some details, but I have done myself the favor of purging most of them), so this resolution has little to do with it. In cases where the founder ceases to exist, the Delegate is executive anyway, and mediation doesn't work. I don't think a specific type of resolution just to target Macedon (without actually having any assurance that it won't be undone very easily) is fair, and in the future it will only make hawkers more careful. Additionally, it just seems weird to me to have a resolution that can be undone with the simple click of a button from a founder.
If influence did not exist, there would be a use here, but it just seems like asking for a lot of wasted legislation.
So... incidentially, WA Liberations
were created to respond to Macedon. (The France & Belgium occupations were the motivation behind WA Liberations - no one else really practiced Macedonian tactics as ruthlessly as Macedon, except maybe the Persian Empire.)
The Greek founder was Yauna, he was a bad faith actor connected with the Persian Empire - he continued to resurrect his account over a period of many years only to block refound bids. What happened in Greece is rather confusing. Essentially, Yauna switched executive powers on the account just prior to a planned Persian Empire invasion and then CTE'd. Persian Empire continued to occupy Greece behind a password, so a WA Liberation was necessary to open the region up.
'Mediation' would not apply in the case of Greece specifically because Yauna was CTE'd, but Greece is an example of an ongoing, long term covert effort to refound a region that was facilitated by the WA Security Council.
I think the thing about cases like Macedon (and there are other hawkers out there) is that they often impact dozens of UCRs for each group - so even a few bad faith actors can more than justify the creation of a WA Category.
Yes, but why waste the SC's space passing things that only pretend to have effect? That's the GA's job. C&C's don't have any effect, but the shiny badge is nice, and C&C's don't really purport to have any purpose in the first place. As for record-keeping, it doesn't fit with the theme of the WA, which is a legislative body, at all, and the actual end result of this would be not writing accounts of important events because "oh, the Security Council is going to do it!" As for the encouragement of adopting international laws... no. You have been far too long in GP (and the GA, for that matter) if you think the vast majority of regions are going to care. "Oh, this international law passed". It doesn't effect them at all. Instead, they just stop caring about the Security Council at all.
As you've acknowledged: the SC spends
the vast majority of its time discussing, proposing, and vetting cosmetic resolutions (C&Cs). It clearly is within the SC's mandate to pass things that do not have a substantive in-game impact, since that is already what the SC spends
most of its time considering.
I think the idea that gameplay regions will care
less about the SC than they do now because of the introduction of international laws and conventions is not sound. There will, of course, be regions that deliberately refuse to acknowledge the authority or the legitimacy of the WASC (there already are); but many more regions care about their international reputation and will have some level of investment in the legislative outcome.
I think what we should actually expect is that major regions will promote international laws they like (for whatever reason that may be), and their support for those laws and conventions will make it difficult for them to ignore or dismiss international laws that they're not satisfied with. Regions are rarely cut and dry ideological sovereigntists like Gatesville Inc. - and their support for some intiatives introduces new entanglements and the risk of hypocrisy.
I think this ultimately is because nobody except a few GCR politicians actually cares about international law. Those are best handled by individual regions making agreements with each other. If you enjoy the RP of it, there's a General Assembly for you. Most of this stuff is not going to apply to most regions.
I strongly disagree with this sentiment. Most of the major areas of discussion for international law and conventions often impact smaller UCRs even more than major GCRs - they're more vulernable security-wise, more dependent on recruitment etc.
I think one of the main reasons why we've see international lawmaking stuck in an embroytic state over the years is because the conventions are never promulgated beyond major regions. When you're only involving a small circle in the drafting and adoption of a law, you cannot expect that the law or convention will metastasize through the wider international community that have no foothold in these circles.
I think you are fundamentally ignoring the fact that it takes four days to pass a SC resolution, plus time to draft, plus time waiting for other things in the queue to get to vote.
Let's say raiders invade a region. Most of the pilers are going to be there within two or three updates (or else the defenders will liberate the region and it won't be needed in the first place). Defenders continue to not be able to liberate the region, so the embargo passes. Now, the raiders are accruing influence almost as quickly as before - faster, even because defenders can't make any attrition runs. So guess what has to be passed to actually get the job done? A liberation. I challenge you to come up with a circumstance where an embargo actually helps the natives.
This isn't your fault, but I think you missed an important part of the proposal (and was discussed more in depth in the original Embargo thread): once passed, the embargo removes WA membership from those nations that moved into the region after the time of the proposal's
submission, everything is grandfathered to that specific point in time.
This is why Embargoes often would be more helpful for defenders than WA Liberations in the case of pile raids: while WA Liberations can act as a buffer to obstruct region destruction, WA Liberations do not actually give you an opportunity to actually free a piled invasion - you're essentially forced to watch the region be griefed to the ground.
Now you may ask... what's stopping defenders submiting rush/template drafts for WA Embargoes all of the time? I think this an important question, but the answer is there are a number of genuine countervailing factors at play here:
- Rushing the submission of the resolution risks embarassing the proposers or casting doubts on the legitimacy of the category, because you cannot substantiate the claims in your resolution.
- If an embargo isn't necessary, no sane defender would want an embargo where it isn't needed because it would make a non-pile raid significantly more difficult to liberate not less.
Invaders will also adapt to the category, no doubt. I would expect them to increase the size of their intial invasions and either time-delay piling (so it's a slow burn) or go extremely fast and heavy on the piling to build up extra influence during the grace period before the resolution's passage. I would also expect invaders to adopt reverse siege tactics, by using updaters to pump up their lead's endorsements at update.
Restriction isn't so bad, I suppose, but ultimately I think you will still need a liberation. Very often, what happens anyway in raids is that they switch Delegates all the time anyway.
I think the long term implication of WA Restrictions would be increased value in subversion and intelligence, and an increased risk for lead invader abstenteeism. It's most helpful as a category in high-octave situations where the occupation is occuring for a long period of time or the target itself is worth blowing a spy's cover.