HM Solomon I

Usually by forgetting how not to fall out of a window.

Hard to ruin a crater.

Bumping this. Would really like to see it implemented.

Sheepy, this just happened again with this nation. Transferred cash plus steel and aluminum. He got the cash but not the resources, had to send them via a trade. We've lost literally thousands of steel to this bug, not to mention aluminum. Seems to only be happening with newly created nations, after a while sending to them works just fine.

Cynic might, might, be technically violating the word of the agreement but you are without question violating the spirit of the agreement. 10 points to Cynicdor!

This seems to be happening largely with newly created nations. Just had the glitch affect this nation. I sent a test amount of 1 steel and 1 aluminum to make sure the glitch wouldn't strike again and waste resources, but it did. He got a notification to let him know the resources were sent to him, but he doesn't actually have the resources.

I would like this to be implemented. It's easy to say you just only give access to people you trust, but how many people in this world do you trust implicitly? Not many, and the way the mechanics work it's often necessary to spread the work load out. You sometimes have to trust people you trust a lot but not implicitly, I don't see any reason why the game shouldn't recognize this and work with you to mitigate risk. Given the importance of alliance banks to the game's economy, it only makes sense.

There aren't enough treasures for this to work as intended. There does need to be scarcity for it to work, but what we have right now isn't scarcity; treasures are effectively unicorns. It also doesn't simplify the system, there are more moving parts making it quite a bit more complex.

It would also be great if we could have graduated income taxes based on infra level. Perhaps 0-5000 is one rate, 5001-10000 is another, 10001-15000, 15001-20000, and finally 20001+. This way smaller nations could be taxed at different levels than the larger ones.

Exactly how is this better for the game? All I see happening is an update that's trying to push a minor, kind of nice feature to have, to the forefront for no good reason. I'd be ok sacrificing income if it was genuinely better, but no where in this update thread has it been explained precisely why this is the case or if it is at all. The only thing that's likely to be accomplished is that donations become more attractive, which is actually terrible for the game.

Can we get blogs back on the forums?

Yes it is fair because they're not even assumptions. The system has been hacked multiple times in the past few months alone. It is a fact that they're not well secured.

At this point, it seems the database is apparently unsecured against all but the meekest of attackers so I doubt releasing anything would matter much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

How in the hell does this keep happening!?

That's not what Saru was saying. The problem is whatever semantics you choose to apply, money is being given to you to support this game, which means that while no special treatment for those donating is expected, it is expected that you use that money to do basic things like back-up the game for situations like this. Simply saying "oh well" does not cut it. Even a bona fide charity would not be able to pull this crap and have people be fine with it, and this is no charity. Whatever you want to call them, when people pay money in exchange for anything of value, it is not a donation in any real sense (legal or otherwise).

Why are you posting a suggestion that others not make suggestions?

He's like you but really dumb. So he's really just you.

Yeah my Mensa opponents are really quite fun to tango with, no complaints from me. Shoutout to Molly Emma for being super classy.

Nation Name: Kingdom of the Truth Nation Link: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=15652

I find that being dismissed tends to erase that feeling of entitlement. If their quality is going down, they won't be receiving compensation for long. And if people are getting dismissed, others will take notice. While dismissing people left and right is a bad idea, those who don't perform won't remain or will be demoted. This should really already be the case, but compensation is as much an incentive for those employed as it is for managers. Those in charge don't have to care as much about officials who aren't performing to standards because it doesn't cost anything directly to keep them around.

Some people may be better brought into the fold with monetary compensation, and even those who enjoy their positions may be more likely to stay around and stay active. People can enjoy the game and even enjoy politics without an official position, this is an incentive to actually do work. Many will do it for free, but having more people helping out can only make things better. More people means work can get done, which means less goes undone. I read it. "If you do compensation it shouldn't be just for holding a position. It should be based on merit, and should only be a token amount. Establishing "salary" guidelines for government positions is a bad idea. Nobody is entitled to money just for holding a position." My point is that holding the position itself can be merit based which ensures that nobody is receiving compensation "just for holding a position". They're receiving compensation because they deserve to hold the position. It's clear you are against the idea of compensating alliance officials, in your last paragraph you do agree that positions should be held only for merit but my point is that if the positions are being held only for merit then the compensation is also for merit by the transitive property. Maybe you agree with this in your last paragraph but you clearly disagree with it in your first paragraph, so which is it? I hope you can see why I might be confused as to your meaning.

The flaw with your response is that nobody should be holding a position just to hold a position, being appointed to and remaining in a position should itself be merit based, and would have to be for a compensation system to work. If somebody isn't producing results, they should be fired, at which point they'd no longer receive compensation.

So in this world alliances have assets that they control directly. They also have individuals managing these assets and the alliance on their behalf. These officials are typically uncompensated for their efforts. However, does this make sense? Is there a better model we could be following? In real life, government officials draw wages from said government as compensation for their time and effort, for the same reasons employees of private enterprises draw wages. The principle reason is that this is how these organizations attract individuals to work for them, people have needs and wants that they wish to satisfy and they cannot do that without money which most get from working and drawing compensation. Of course, in this world individuals work for alliances for entirely different reasons. They don't do so to earn a living, they do it to help their fellow members or they do it for power or for enjoyment (politics can be intriguing). Whatever the reason though, compensation can still play a role and can perhaps encourage better work and more activity. In one potential mode, all officials in an alliance would draw a salary paid out bi-weekly (i.e., every other week). This wouldn't just be for those at the top, this would be for anyone doing work on the alliance's behalf (which means the work has to be sanctioned by someone with the authority to do so). Paying an elite group at the top and nobody else is bound to create resentment, for such a system to work well it must be the case that there are opportunities for just about anyone to get involved. Doesn't mean everyone has to be appointed or "hired" if they apply for a position but it cannot be the case that there is no possibility for anyone outside of the top leadership to get involved. An alliance would have to have someone designated as a paymaster who would have access to the alliance's bank and would dole out the payroll based on centrally coordinated records of who is employed by the alliance and at what rate. The paymaster need not be a new position and could serve concurrently as something else, but someone in the alliance has to serve this role because for people to be compensated someone has to actually cut the checks, so to speak. In addition to central records of who is employed and someone to manage the payroll, there must be a process to determine each official's compensation. The best way to do this is to have defined roles within the alliance and then assign specific compensation to those roles, so anyone fulfilling a role gets paid the salary assigned to that role. If someone is fulfilling multiple roles, alliances can either pay them the salary of the highest paid role or the combined salary of all their roles. The system may seem complex but it isn't really: define roles and their salaries, assign someone to pay them, and ensure you have a list of those employed to keep payroll accurate, which isn't really that difficult to put together. The benefit of such a system is it incentivizes good work and activity. To continue to receive compensation which directly benefits individuals, those individuals have to remain employed. To remain employed they must meet the standards those with the authority to dismiss them set, which would likely include such things as being active and completing quality work. The side benefit is that it pumps money back into the alliance which can then be used to develop nations which leads to more income which is then taxed netting the alliance more revenue down the line, not to mention the military benefits of better developed nations. Of course, this doesn't mean compensation of government officials is a substitute for proper economic policy, but it also isn't without its economic benefits either. There are, as always some downsides as well. The biggest one is that it makes running an alliance more expensive overall since it costs money to employ officials to run it. However, the goal is that this cost is offset partially by the economic side benefit described above and mostly by virtue of better quality work. If an alliance is better run in exchange for a financial cost, I'd say that's a good trade-off. The system could always be mismanaged via corruption (someone might use the payroll to hide embezzlement, for example) or via a lack of consistently enforced and well thought out standards for those employed. If the officials doing the hiring and firing are not ensuring their employees are actually performing well then the system won't lead to improvement in the quality of officials' work. It is important to remember that the cost of employing individuals and the pressure from others in the government and possibly other members to ensure the money isn't wasted will tend to correct for these issues. This system may very well lead to better standards than before; even without compensation, officials are still costing the alliance if they perform poorly in their roles as their work is what drives the success or failure of the alliance in an endeavor. The problem is it can be hard to measure an individual official's effect on the alliance as a whole, but it is easy to measure the cost of poor work if an alliance pays its officials: the cost is at least whatever that official is being paid. It is likely more (as above it costs the alliance in non-monetary ways as well) but it is at least a finite dollar amount that is readily quantified. This makes a rather nebulous concept more concrete and should therefore result in better and more consistently enforced standards. Compensation could be a powerful boon to alliances even with its short term costs.

Plus, so far as I can tell, land cannot be taken or destroyed by another nation.

Chris V - https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=17058