Frontiers, Governors, Successors and Injunctions

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

@Peeps

Ultimately, There's not much that can be done to make manual recruitment more powerful as long as stamps exist, and stamps aren't going anywhere. Because even if Manual Recruitment gets favored better, nations are still going to get spammed by 20 TGs in relatively short order.

I did make a post a while back on a way to fix that. Make it so that in the first x minutes (5 or 10 perhaps) you only receive manual telegrams. Admins can clearly delay tgs (did it with the feeder welcome ones) so I don't think it would be particularly burdensome to do either.

[Kylia Quilor]

That's not going to change the underlying spammy problem.

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

That's not going to change the underlying spammy problem.

The first few minutes of a nations existence is when they will be reading recruitment tgs. If they aren't spammed with stamp tgs during that but instead get them from regions that do manual, I think that actually does solve a good bit of the spam issue.

[Bears Armed]

There's the possibility that I've already suggested somewhere in these recent discussions: Modify the game's 'Welcome' TG so that it tells players -- prominently -- that they don't have to remain in the region where they've been placed initially, and that methods for finding regions you might prefer include _
1. using [as linked-to & explained there] the 'Tag' cloud;
2. following a link from this TG to a Mod-maintained thread of regional adverts (regions would submit these by GHR; not so small that they probably wouldn't become "viable" even with this help, but perhaps not so large that they don't "need" this help either; not pass-worded; and giving reasons beyond "We're cool" or "You could become a Regional Officer quickly" or the like for why they might be suitable);
3. looking at the daily 'Featured Regions' & 'World Census Report';
4. looking at the recruitment TGs you've been sent.

[Lord Dominator]

I think it relevant to ask what the goal of these is going to be, in terms of relative conflict:

1. The needed WAs to become one necessarily imply an upper limit of viable ones at any given time (presuming for the moment no recruitment) - how many do we want to be possible?

2. How easy should they be to conquer?

3. Is it considered a goal to incentivize current R/D regions to be Democracies, in order to reduce the historical complaints about raiders being indestructible?

Note that the greater security is the prime incentive for 3 in all likelihood, and vice-versa, while 1 controls the minimum level of security.

---

Since I understand there’s around 4400 WAs in the Feeders right now, some figures on maximum number of spawners for a given WA minimum ( assuming 50% of spawns and ignoring recruitment):

10 WA: 220 spawners
20 WA: 110 spawners
30 WA: ~73 spawners
40 WA: 55 spawners
50: 44 spawners
75: 33 spawners
100 WA: 22 spawners

[Galiantus III]

@Bears Armed

I agree new players need to be properly directed, but #2 adds to moderator workload and is therefore a non-starter: If the site directs new players to this page, and it turns out to be an effective way to publicize your region, then most regions that want to grow will use it, and suddenly mods will have to wade through tons of submissions, most of which are going to be of poor quality. And to keep it effective, they will have to prune existing submissions. If anything like this happens, qualification needs to be done mechanically and automatically, so it doesn't just add to mod workload.

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I think it relevant to ask what the goal of these is going to be, in terms of relative conflict:

1. The needed WAs to become one necessarily imply an upper limit of viable ones at any given time (presuming for the moment no recruitment) - how many do we want to be possible?

2. How easy should they be to conquer?

3. Is it considered a goal to incentivize current R/D regions to be Democracies, in order to reduce the historical complaints about raiders being indestructible?

Note that the greater security is the prime incentive for 3 in all likelihood, and vice-versa, while 1 controls the minimum level of security.

1. I'd like to explore adding an age requirement (perhaps in the form of a longer switching period, if all regions start out as autocracies). This would help limit them without decreasing the number of WAs needed to create one. I personally think we should be shooting for 50-60 of these regions. This helps maintain their utility and means we err on the side of sending new players to places with more activity.

2. If one of these regions falls into inactivity, invasion needs to be lurking around the corner. I'm actually less worried about the ease of conquering than keeping the motive to invade high. The incentive for spawn regions to invade each other needs to be high enough that they actively look for ways to conquer one another. So there needs to be a practical benefit to invading one: for example, if the executive could direct spawns to another spawn region or a GCR (Incidentally, this would also give GCRs a concrete reason to take sides in the conflict.)

3. I think so. Although R/D could continue unchanged, there would be potential benefits to holding a spawn region as territory. So TGW or Lily could keep their flagship regions totally safe, executive founder and all, but also claim one of these regions as a territory and attempt using it to further expand their power. Of course this resource would be totally open to takeover via military gameplay, but that's exactly what makes this so compelling for gameplay purposes.

[Sedgistan]

Aside from what I've mentioned here, recruitment changes are beyond the scope of this change, and should be discussed in a thread of their own.

[Galiantus III]

Aside from what I've mentioned here, recruitment changes are beyond the scope of this change, and should be discussed in a thread of their own.

I think we're getting ahead of ourselves with any discussion about letting new nations choose where to start, at least in connection with this main proposal. That said, we should be careful of details of this proposal that might affect future changes to recruitment. Relative to your comment about "What decides which region nations spawn in?", I agree any start-in-region page would have to be exclusive to democracies and feeders.

[Bears Armed]

@Bears Armed

Discussion continued, as Sedge has requested, in a new thread.

[Ofiussia]

Hello, I am from Portugal, an historical Non-English Founderless and mostly stable region throughout the last 16 years.

I don’t think our region could survive as it is if this proposal was to be put in place.

Our region has no founder, so we elect our WA Delegate as basically a dictator for the next 6 months, in a very unique election process in this game.

For what I’ve understood, Portugal would have to be a democracy, since our founder CTE more than 15 years ago. That would not give us the stability we had before, and would make us a playground for other players looking to grab new regions (some reformed kind of raiders), which would strip Portugal away from it’s non-English lusophone environment, that is what makes our region unique and beautiful.

How would our region be able to keep itself in a way that we wouldn’t have to refound (and destroy it’s 16 years old history) this region?

[Flanderlion]

Hello, I am from Portugal, an historical Non-English Founderless and mostly stable region throughout the last 16 years.

I don’t think our region could survive as it is if this proposal was to be put in place.

Our region has no founder, so we elect our WA Delegate as basically a dictator for the next 6 months, in a very unique election process in this game.

For what I’ve understood, Portugal would have to be a democracy, since our founder CTE more than 15 years ago. That would not give us the stability we had before, and would make us a playground for other players looking to grab new regions (some reformed kind of raiders), which would strip Portugal away from it’s non-English lusophone environment, that is what makes our region unique and beautiful.

How would our region be able to keep itself in a way that we wouldn’t have to refound (and destroy it’s 16 years old history) this region?

I was kind of viewing it as regions would remain the same as current, just founders would have the ability to appoint successors. And founders would also be able to irreversibly after a timer turn their regions into 'democracies' - but none of that would change anything for your region of Portugal.

[Doge Land]

There should be a big requirement to have a democracy. Maybe 100 nations? Of course that probably wouldn't do much because people could just inflate their regions Chicken Overlords-style. I don't like this idea anyways.

What if a group of mods pick a couple large and influential UCRs to become ponds/spawners/democracies/whatever once a year? Then it will allow for more high quality regions for newcomers to spawn in so newcomers don't immediately leave the game because they got put in the inactive and spammy shovel/puppet storage region.

[The Blaatschapen]

Hello, I am from Portugal, an historical Non-English Founderless and mostly stable region throughout the last 16 years.

I don’t think our region could survive as it is if this proposal was to be put in place.

Our region has no founder, so we elect our WA Delegate as basically a dictator for the next 6 months, in a very unique election process in this game.

For what I’ve understood, Portugal would have to be a democracy, since our founder CTE more than 15 years ago. That would not give us the stability we had before, and would make us a playground for other players looking to grab new regions (some reformed kind of raiders), which would strip Portugal away from it’s non-English lusophone environment, that is what makes our region unique and beautiful.

How would our region be able to keep itself in a way that we wouldn’t have to refound (and destroy it’s 16 years old history) this region?

I was kind of viewing it as regions would remain the same as current, just founders would have the ability to appoint successors. And founders would also be able to irreversibly after a timer turn their regions into 'democracies' - but none of that would change anything for your region of Portugal.

Maybe a 'Democracy' should be able to turn off the spawn setting. Most new anglophone players would just be confused when entering Belgium, Portugal or other non-English regions. Of course, the 6 month influence cap would then still hurt those regions. So the threat of being conquered and refounded becomes bigger (but Liberation proposals might play a bigger key role then again).

Edit: Because I have a fancy colour now: my opinion/thought process here is my own and not necessarily staff aligned/approved.

[Land Without Shrimp]

I am most certainly not an expert in this area, but reading through this thread...this is definitely a change and definitely going to shake things up! Couple questions and a suggestion.

Questions:
1) What's the primary purpose of this change?
2) Is it to increase UCR viability and size at the expense of feeders?
3) Is it to invigorate R/D activity?
4) Or is it to improve the experience of the new player?

Story Time:
It's been a long time since I've been a new player, but I still remember my experience. I joined because I read about this site on another website, joined, and got a couple friends to join me. I had no idea what "regions" were, promptly ignored all the spammy telegrams and just sat in the region I spawned in. (TWP, I believe?) My friends both ended up in TSP, so I moved there to join them. And...I never found any reason to change. The new user has no idea what R/D is, no idea what WA is, no idea what endos are, no idea how your region affects your experience, no idea really what they want from the game, usually. Spawning in an active region helps them test the waters of this game by witnessing the activity around them. If I'd spawned in a small, RP-focused region (for example), I would be confused and probably not still here today. We need to improve the newbie experience.

Suggestion:
1) I would think at least 20 endos is needed to qualify for a "Democracy" region. But also, I would suggest if you are part of the 50% to be spawned in a "Democracy" region, that you get a choice of what region you end up in. More coding work required, but if a new member is given to a "Democracy" region, then give them a random list of say, 10 Democracies to choose from, with both population size of region and a region's chosen "description/tags". As someone who doesn't know anything about NS, that would give the info needed to a new player. They can choose a smaller or larger region and can choose one that matches up with their interests. This ameliorates the issue of a newbie being spawned into a region that would turn them off to the game or overly confuse them.

Also - I think Autocracy and Democracy are good names. *thumbs up*

[Unibot III]

I think the question here to ask is what is the best way to reduce the size of feeders? Create new feeders (or who knows, venters! Or zooozdles! Or orange-thingy-xles!), or shift excess nations into UCRs. Sedge has continually shot down the idea of creating new GCRs in favour of this plan.

Personally, I think the proposal is just ineffectual and a bit misplaced over other options

It doesn’t take many regions to choose “Democracy” before you’re spreading the new nations thinly across too big of a slice of bread — these regions aren’t going to be gaining much of anything from the program. This is a problem, because the GCRs — due to their size and stature and port of call status — play an important point of interaction and interregional activity. We shouldn’t be taking half of our new nations and hiding them like vegetables in chocolate cake.

Essentially this proposal creates a very minimal “nation” stipend for accepting all the risks we want regions to accept that are necessary for the game to survive and flourish (e.g., we need founderless regions, we need open recruitment), while allowing regions to completely opt out of founderlessness entirely.

Now, if this proposal had a “fixed” number of regions that could qualify for the problem it would be even worse, because the more nations you’re giving UCRs, the less need they have to actually carry out basic functions and operations to grow and sustain themselves. The open-ended eligibility that this proposal uses is better than a “fixed” eligibility, because it essentially renders the stipend too low to be useful — regions won’t be able to become dependent on that small of a stipend.

I think ultimately the proposal is trying to kill too many birds with one stone — the better answer is the simple one, more GCRs. I’m not against Sedge’s proposal, I don’t think it will do a lot of damage to NS. But I also don’t think it will be very successful — the most new activity you’re going to get is on the margins/fringes of eligibility — smaller UCRs that minimally qualify for the stipend but have too few of endorsements to be fully protected from invasions. Which is problematic, in that the source of most of the proposal’s new GP activity comes from regions that might be better off not accepting the stipend in the first place.

[Kylia Quilor]

If a lot of regions become Democracies, the gain to any of them will be small, and while it may increase vulnerability, it's probably going to see most of them hollow out and die sooner or later anyway since they got vulnerable for nearly nothing. Sure, some founderless regions have survived and thrived for long periods of time (but most don't), and of course GCRs, but since the Democracies will be getting less nations than GCRs do...

And if only a few democracies get made, or only a few survive, the actual impact on available targets and the R/D game will be small, so kind of limits the value on that end.

Plus, as regions like Portugal or Belgium suggest, they would *have* to become Democracies under some versions of suggestions as to what happens to already founderless regions, and that would be bad for both those regions, and new players.

---

Also, I would appreciate Sedge addressing some of the suggestions and notions raised around the Succession issue, including the serious problems posed to R/D if succession chains are a thing.

[Sedgistan]

Also, I would appreciate Sedge addressing some of the suggestions and notions raised around the Succession issue, including the serious problems posed to R/D if succession chains are a thing.

I think that's yourself that's raised it, not anyone else in this thread yet?

It's acknowledged that Succession will reduce the pool of founderless regions available to invade. I think particularly this will apply to more "desirable" targets such as once high-profile regions, as those more gameplay-aware regions will know to use the Successor feature. There will likely still be plenty of noob regions that don't use the feature (or pick a Successor who also CTEs), so I don't feel the reduction in targets will be massive - the problem is the profile of the targets lost.

The intention is that "Democracies" more than make up for this by providing a strong incentive for players to create and develop vulnerable, founderless regions -- which also have influence decay to make destruction of them easier.

On the details of Succession, those are still to be hammered out. I remain open to whether a Founder appoints a single Successor or a chain of them, and want player feedback on the questions of how Successors work.

Given the reaction so far to the OP, I'm looking at dropping "Password cannot be set." from the restrictions on Democracies. Instead they would be allowed to set passwords, but would not have nations spawned in them while one is in effect. This allows for a way to permanently conquer them (SC Liberations aside).

[Sailiopia]

I think that people are forgetting the important thing here - democracies require at least 10 endorsements on their delegate to start gaining newly-founded nations. This acts as a barrier to new, tiny regions spreading new nations too thinly across the site. We could always up this to 15, or 20 endorsements. It takes quite a bit of effort to get a region with 20 active WAs in it, so it's unlikely that these new 'feeder-like' regions are going to be super-unstable and led by inexperienced players.

I also think that regions could have 'democratisation' and 'autocratisation' processes. Namely, an autocracy can become a democracy if the founder decides to (a founder might do this once the region has a large, stable population), and a democracy can become an autocracy, if the delegate has a huge amount of influence (possibly more than what it takes to password a region at the moment), and the motive for this would be stability over an increased population.

We need to find a way for the power of GCRs to be reduced, yes I'd love it to be player-driven but I know that Sedge and several of the mod team are onboard with technical changes to do this, and at the end of the day, if the balance of power between UCRs and GCRs is evened more, then that's a result. This method would probably work at least to an extent, although I would be fine with the creation of more feeders or some other method of reducing the power of GCRs.

[Unibot III]

I think that people are forgetting the important thing here - democracies require at least 10 endorsements on their delegate to start gaining newly-founded nations. This acts as a barrier to new, tiny regions spreading new nations too thinly across the site. We could always up this to 15, or 20 endorsements. It takes quite a bit of effort to get a region with 20 active WAs in it, so it's unlikely that these new 'feeder-like' regions are going to be super-unstable and led by inexperienced players.

I also think that regions could have 'democratisation' and 'autocratisation' processes. Namely, an autocracy can become a democracy if the founder decides to (a founder might do this once the region has a large, stable population), and a democracy can become an autocracy, if the delegate has a huge amount of influence (possibly more than what it takes to password a region at the moment), and the motive for this would be stability over an increased population.

We need to find a way for the power of GCRs to be reduced, yes I'd love it to be player-driven but I know that Sedge and several of the mod team are onboard with technical changes to do this, and at the end of the day, if the balance of power between UCRs and GCRs is evened more, then that's a result. This method would probably work at least to an extent, although I would be fine with the creation of more feeders or some other method of reducing the power of GCRs.

But we’re talking about 500 nations a day here being spread across … what..? 30 regions? A 100? What do we think will be the interest & scope?

25 nations a day would create a relatively large UCR, but I think we’re anticipating a much small stipend — maybe 10 a day? Maybe less. Maybe there’d be not enough nations to distribute evenly even.

The butter is a constant, the only question here logistically is how big the slice of bread is going to be. If it’s too big, the butter is too thin. If it’s too small of a slice, then military GP as we know it is being marginalized to a handful of regions that will be too large to invade anyways.

My expectation is that uptake will probably be on the larger end and the stipend won’t be very much — enough to justify the security risk for large regions that are extremely difficult to invade, not enough to justify the security risk for the smaller regions that marginally qualify. So the proposal will essentially be padding already fairly large UCRs with a chunk of nations that can risk taking on the new security challenges — it’s rent-seeking with little tangible spin-offs to NSGP.

There are unknowns here that impact uptake — for instance, how risk adverse are players? If players are too risk adverse or too risk tolerant, you will end up with a system that won’t function well. And the issue is, it’s such a fundamental change that once you make it, it’s difficult to unwind or course correct. You could effectively take a part of the game that is already struggling, military gameplay, and dry it up completely (I don’t think that will happen, but it’s a possibility if uptake goes in a different direction.) It’ll be difficult to close the barn doors on the stable once the horses are already out on this.

[Lord Dominator]

Since I understand there’s around 4400 WAs in the Feeders right now, some figures on maximum number of spawners for a given WA minimum ( assuming 50% of spawns and ignoring recruitment):

10 WA: 220 spawners
20 WA: 110 spawners
30 WA: ~73 spawners
40 WA: 55 spawners
50: 44 spawners
75: 33 spawners
100 WA: 22 spawners

Note: This also presumes some kind of delay in losing the status, if that’s an option.

As to large UCRs padding their numbers, that’s principally why I suggested restricting or banning recruitment for democracies (at least of the new/refound kind).

[Kylia Quilor]

Also, I would appreciate Sedge addressing some of the suggestions and notions raised around the Succession issue, including the serious problems posed to R/D if succession chains are a thing.

I think that's yourself that's raised it, not anyone else in this thread yet?

Other people have raised other things about succession, I'm just the only one that raised the R/D concern

It's acknowledged that Succession will reduce the pool of founderless regions available to invade. I think particularly this will apply to more "desirable" targets such as once high-profile regions, as those more gameplay-aware regions will know to use the Successor feature. There will likely still be plenty of noob regions that don't use the feature (or pick a Successor who also CTEs), so I don't feel the reduction in targets will be massive - the problem is the profile of the targets lost.

So you want to make R/D focus even more on tag sprees of tiny nothing regions, in other words?

I like succession. But allowing someone to chain succession makes a region entirely or nearly bulletproof.

The intention is that "Democracies" more than make up for this by providing a strong incentive for players to create and develop vulnerable, founderless regions -- which also have influence decay to make destruction of them easier.

Well, 1, Influence Decay hasn't done a lot to improve GCR coupability or invadeability. And the most likely outcome is either too many democracies, in which case the value of taking one is going to be minimal, or there's going to be too few, and they'll be too powerful to invade or turn into actual footballs in R/D with enough regularity to make up for all the other targets you're yanking.

This entire idea is absurd from the top to the bottom.

On the details of Succession, those are still to be hammered out. I remain open to whether a Founder appoints a single Successor or a chain of them, and want player feedback on the questions of how Successors work.

Well, there has been some, and you hadn't been addressing it.

Given the reaction so far to the OP, I'm looking at dropping "Password cannot be set." from the restrictions on Democracies. Instead they would be allowed to set passwords, but would not have nations spawned in them while one is in effect. This allows for a way to permanently conquer them (SC Liberations aside).

Finally, a good suggestion.

[Unibot III]

Since I understand there’s around 4400 WAs in the Feeders right now, some figures on maximum number of spawners for a given WA minimum ( assuming 50% of spawns and ignoring recruitment):

10 WA: 220 spawners
20 WA: 110 spawners
30 WA: ~73 spawners
40 WA: 55 spawners
50: 44 spawners
75: 33 spawners
100 WA: 22 spawners

Note: This also presumes some kind of delay in losing the status, if that’s an option.

As to large UCRs padding their numbers, that’s principally why I suggested restricting or banning recruitment for democracies (at least of the new/refound kind).

Good work on the math!

Might be able to engineer a dynamic projection of uptake over time, if we had a rough sense of how risk impacted the choice to pursue democratic status.

For instance, once you’re above 80 in terms of delegate endorsements, your risk level gets exponentially lower for any region because an invasion becomes less and less feasible.

So if we can use a risk formula to translate ‘WA Size’ into ‘Risk’ then feed ‘Risk’ into ‘Uptake,’ you could see how uptake would impact WA sizes and risk overall long term for a period of time.

What we’re looking for is whether there’s an undesirable trend for uptake.

The other thing to consider is “leeches” — regions that begin as democracies, get a nice crop of WAs from the program, but decide they don’t like the insecurity of a democracy and decide to collectively move their community to a new autocracy. As a whole, NSGP loses out here because there’s nothing really stopping a community that highly benefits from the stipend to just… move to an autocracy… if they don’t want to take on the risks.

[Brox Reple]

Though I'm not really sure the introduction of democracies will properly solve the issues UCR's face, if we are going forward with this decision, why exactly would 50% of nations spawning still be reserved for feeders? Why not simply make feeders also count as democracies and just have the spawning be split between all democracy regions?
Feeders already have a pretty notable size advantage, so this wouldn't ruin them or anything like that.

[Wymondham]

Note: This also presumes some kind of delay in losing the status, if that’s an option.

As to large UCRs padding their numbers, that’s principally why I suggested restricting or banning recruitment for democracies (at least of the new/refound kind).

Good work on the math!

Might be able to engineer a dynamic projection of uptake over time, if we had a rough sense of how risk impacted the choice to pursue democratic status.

For instance, once you’re above 80 in terms of delegate endorsements, your risk level gets exponentially lower for any region because an invasion becomes less and less feasible.

So if we can use a risk formula to translate ‘WA Size’ into ‘Risk’ then feed ‘Risk’ into ‘Uptake,’ you could see how uptake would impact WA sizes and risk overall long term for a period of time.

What we’re looking for is whether there’s an undesirable trend for uptake.

The other thing to consider is “leeches” — regions that begin as democracies, get a nice crop of WAs from the program, but decide they don’t like the insecurity of a democracy and decide to collectively move their community to a new autocracy. As a whole, NSGP loses out here because there’s nothing really stopping a community that highly benefits from the stipend to just… move to an autocracy… if they don’t want to take on the risks.

To be honest, I foresee this being a major problem because it is a very easy way to cheat the system and have ones cake and eat it. And, people quite often like to do that if its easier than having to put the effort in to do it properly? And I don't really see a way to fix it.

[Kylia Quilor]

Note: This also presumes some kind of delay in losing the status, if that’s an option.

As to large UCRs padding their numbers, that’s principally why I suggested restricting or banning recruitment for democracies (at least of the new/refound kind).

Good work on the math!

Might be able to engineer a dynamic projection of uptake over time, if we had a rough sense of how risk impacted the choice to pursue democratic status.

For instance, once you’re above 80 in terms of delegate endorsements, your risk level gets exponentially lower for any region because an invasion becomes less and less feasible.

So if we can use a risk formula to translate ‘WA Size’ into ‘Risk’ then feed ‘Risk’ into ‘Uptake,’ you could see how uptake would impact WA sizes and risk overall long term for a period of time.

What we’re looking for is whether there’s an undesirable trend for uptake.

The other thing to consider is “leeches” — regions that begin as democracies, get a nice crop of WAs from the program, but decide they don’t like the insecurity of a democracy and decide to collectively move their community to a new autocracy. As a whole, NSGP loses out here because there’s nothing really stopping a community that highly benefits from the stipend to just… move to an autocracy… if they don’t want to take on the risks.

Last time I checked, when raiders pointed out how easy it was for nations to move if their region was destroyed, Defenders and 'Native Advocates' like yourself pointed out how frequently losing people along the way was a result of any such moves. You can't have it both ways. Either people can be moved en masse easily, or they can't.

In other words, a democracy's leadership isn't going to be able to convince everyone to move, even WA nations (any more than a feeder could suddenly convince everyone to move somewhere, or any more that recruit tgs are good at getting people to leave whatever feeder they spawn in), and if only the people that can be moved, move, it'll be a much smaller region that will have to start all over in terms of getting numbers, manually, if they want to be something more than a tiny social club (which presumably they'd be or they wouldn't have become a Democracy in the first place).

If a democracies leadership moves, either they take enough WAs to kill it, or someone else takes over. The latter especially if there's a delay before undemocracy-ing

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I think, before we go on with discussion about endo thresholds and their likely impact on the number of Democracies... how many nations are being made a day? Just what is the 50% of New Nations that Democracies will be competing over?