Arrghism, a governing philosophy

[DragonK]

Without clear roles there is no unity. Take FA for example. The hear of FA generally decides the direction the alliances is going FA wise. The FA head then relays certain information to the people under them that support the general goals of FA. If everyone is doing their own thing, it'll be a mess.

 

Same goes with econ. Although for econ the general goal is grow, you should have a direction. Are you going to focus on cities or infra? Are you going to focus on helping people with stockpiles?

 

Even in war you have goals besides beating the other side. If you're fighting multiple alliances, you're going to have to allocate nations depending on where your allies need help. You need a head of military to be able to relay that to members.

 

Strong efficient alliances won't be random in their leadership.

 

Or you ask for sumamry on proggress so far and then pick upon it. Me and Keza have rotated negotiations in FA affairs by takign advantage of our opposite tiem zones. I give him summary of my daily work, and then leave him to deal with it while I sleep. Then i morning i get updated on his proggress and contineu the work. Same with econ. Ogaden more or less decides what's best, we argue and then agree on what is actually best, adn then enitre admirality leads in that direction. Besides, our FA is clear, treatyless and neutral. Econ is, raid, raid, then raid some more, build citys, have big warchest, adn dont' have too much infra. Simple as that.

[Lordship]

Or you ask for sumamry on proggress so far and then pick upon it. Me and Keza have rotated negotiations in FA affairs by takign advantage of our opposite tiem zones. I give him summary of my daily work, and then leave him to deal with it while I sleep. Then i morning i get updated on his proggress and contineu the work. Same with econ. Ogaden more or less decides what's best, we argue and then agree on what is actually best, adn then enitre admirality leads in that direction. Besides, our FA is clear, treatyless and neutral. Econ is, raid, raid, then raid some more, build citys, have big warchest, adn dont' have too much infra. Simple as that.

The problem with this is accountability. Who is held responsible when something goes wrong because of your disorganized system? Who do head of states go to for questions and problems that need resolving? Differing philosophies among you can also mean that there are different versions of the alliance depending on which person you're talking to.

[Ogaden]

The problem with this is accountability. Who is held responsible when something goes wrong because of your disorganized system? Who do head of states go to for questions and problems that need resolving? Differing philosophies among you can also mean that there are different versions of the alliance depending on which person you're talking to.

 

Chaos, or rather anarchy, is a feature and not a bug.  Generally speaking people act in their collective self interest and it works better than you would think.

[Insert Name Here]

In another lifetime I have been in bureaucratic alliances, both democratic and undemocratic, and there are four underlying features that most "traditional" alliances have:

 

Defined ministries (finance, war, internal affairs, foreign affairs)

Defined government roles and portfolio limiting ministers to a particular area.

Meritocratic promotion style governance where you work your way up via a particular ministry.

Orders-based mobilization of members, where independent action is prohibited or discouraged.

 

I will explain why all of these features are inefficient and damaging. In any given alliance, regardless of whether it is an elite alliance or a mass alliance, there are a limited number of people who are interested in alliance government. Within that limited number of people, there are an even more limited number of people who are competent and capable of being alliance government, and among those, a limited number who will be active in governing at any one time.

 

When I say active in governing I don't mean active as in they log in everyday, but are actively pursuing alliance goals (coming up with guides, planning wars, talking to other alliances about common interests, etc). Your best government people are probably not running your alliance right now, the smartest people in your alliance probably don't want to run the alliance, and just want to play and lurk in the background.  Alliance charters are written as though everyone is clamouring for a government position, whereas the reality is that getting people who are motivated to be actively governing are rare and precious commodities.

 

There are a number of reasons why people might not pursue government in your alliance, chief among them are:

- Defined government roles are unappealing, they want to do something else where there is no defined role

- Ruling clique inner circle situation where government is basically a closed aristocracy

- Uninterested in government

- RL too busy

- Can't be bothered to jump through all the hoops of a "meritocracy"

 

These people who are interested in governing the alliance but don't for one reason or another are unrealized alliance potential.  For some it is not possible to realize that potential, you can't write a charter granting people more free time IRL for instance, and you can bring a player to power but you can't make them care.  For the rest though, you CAN realize that potential, by having an Arrghist government.  What is an Arrghist government?

 

Our governing philosophy is essentially that if someone is interested in leadership, let them do whatever they want.  They want to start a whole new program where they pursue bounties?  Let's make one!  Someone has new banking ideas?  Let them try it out.  They want to start a mentoring program?  They're crazy, but if they want that headache then go for it.

 

The classic failure of the ministry system is a classic situation most alliances have encountered:  Here's the scenario, your alliance has just been attacked, your economic and foreign affairs ministers quickly gather to figure out what's going on, but where's the war minister?  Noone wanted to be the war minister last election, so they nominated the old war minister who doesn't care anymore and isn't even online.  Who will plan the counter-offensive?  The charter forbids anyone but the war minister from issuing orders!  In this situation many alliances end up de-facto embracing Arrghism on a temporary basis as the Economics minister ends up planning a war offensive and the FA minister helps him send out attack orders, days later, after the war has been run into the ground.

 

Imagine instead a decentralized system, war is declared and every gov available at the time discuss what aspect of the war, who wants to do what?  Ok you plan the counteroffensive I'll send out war aid, guy who isn't even in gov volunteers to train the noobs how to fight, awesome let's promote that guy to mid level government and see how they do.

 

You would think a system where random people are promoted and given responsibilities would lead to ineffective leadership, but sadly this is not at all the case.  Inactive leadership is actually worse than no leadership at all, since without a minister to wait for orders, people would just take individual initiative.  This gets back to the final aspect, individual initiative.

 

In general, alliances look down on individual initiative, and consider government to be a much better judge of action.  Often this is true, however this assumes that government has unlimited time to determine the best course of action.  Consider the target list.  Every war, most alliances draw up a target list of enemy nations, painstakingly crafted considering every last detail.  The problem is that target lists are pointless.  You could have just left that to individual initiative, where your own players could get together and pick their own targets, and coordinate their own attacks.  Unlike target lists, this individual initiative has no expiry date (targets lists are worthless immediately following the first offensive, when score ranges no longer even resemble the old ones) and individuals spend much longer on each matchup.  If you tell your alliance to pick a target, they have all day to plan out an attack against the targets they chose.  Target lists, your poor milcom guys probably spent 3 seconds on each matchup.  Even if your milcom guy is a genius and your members are retards, you'll probably end up with about the same quality of matchups.  It isn't just this though, individual initiative also means your alliance is never waiting for orders.  Waiting for inactive government to respond to crises is crippling, especially to memberships who have grown to rely on orders and cannot act independently.  Individual initiative allows for swift action and reaction.

 

Your members are smarter and more capable than you give them credit for.

 

 

Ogaden, you should join t$ - your walls of text are mighty impressive!

[TheNG]

OktoberFest- When UPN/DEIC pre-empted us, none of our government (milcom, FA, econ) was online. Members mounted a small counter of their own and arguably didn't do bad. Numerical differences were too big on this one: The DEIC/UPN mass managed to fill most of us up.

 

C'mon Partisan, don't lie.

We all know you enjoyed being filled up by DEIC's big mass.   ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Buorhann]

C'mon Partisan, don't lie.

We all know you enjoyed being filled up by DEIC's big mass mast. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

 

Fixed it for you, made it more appropriate with your theme.

[Prefonteen]

C'mon Partisan, don't lie.

We all know you enjoyed being filled up by DEIC's big mass.   ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

The world has never been the same for me since.

[Don Juan]

This is how P&W Beta GPA govt. worked (as described in the OP), it was surprisingly effective at the time, although it also relied on communication to not be completely anarchic, which I think is the central theme for good governance and unity. But it's an interesting system/philosophy, and I think it does depend how rigidly governments/charters are laid out.

[Foltest]

Smart post, Ogaden. I like it.

 

 

It's sad that due to the general inactivity (comparatively to any given governing body) of the general membership paired with the utter stupidity of a handful of members, many/most groups think that the individual is an outdated concept in our world.

 

They think that only a collective acting in complete unison can be an effective force, the only debate arising between absolute control over every aspect of play (NPO) or absolute control over the course of one's destiny (most other alliances).

 

It's good to see some paradigms shifting. I think it bodes well for our world at-large, but time will tell if we can embrace the new or die with the old.

[SoS]

I strongly believe in individual initiative. That's the style I've always played these games. Doing what I can where I see the demand and opportunity. It's great individually. But, not everyone's like that. Most people feel the need for permission, titles, authority being granted.

 

Anarchy is great for a band of pirates, with not a lot going on politically. An alliance with goals beyond rum and booty needs more defined organization. They need programs, department heads, benefits, and obligations to attract members who will act with discipline to achieve a goal. The alliance goals and individual goals must find common ground. An alliance that doesn't accommodate its members' goals is doomed.

 

I have always admired Arrgh's style. There's some aspects of it I'd like to imitate. But, it's not complete anarchy. There's a pirate king with the final say and authority over FA. We all have kings who rely on the charter to maintain their control of that ultimate spot that can edit all gov. That and their possession of that unassailable spot. Ultimately, all gov exists at the pleasure of the king.

[Karrde]

In this, as in all browser games, and indeed the world, stuff is really run by the shadowy elite behind the scenes where titles matter little. As it should be.

[Memph]

Guardian's taken a few different approaches throughout the years in this game and others, but we've generally been pretty flexible. For a long time we had a triumvirate without any defined roles, so the 3 triumvirs would just split duties depending on who was available, what needed to be done and what they liked to do. I've been triumvir many times and usually focussed on econ during peace and war during war. Major decisions required a majority vote.

 

There was at one point (4-5 years ago in another game) where some newer leaders that rose through the ranks, esp Longbowe, wanted a very long and bureaucratic charter that seemed based on the assumption that leaders would abuse their power and could not be trusted, which was part of a feud with Prefontaine. I was with Pre on that issue but not very active at the time.

 

During the start of Beta, Guardian switched to just having a President (Prefontaine) and Vice-Presidents (Malone and me). We didn't have a charter (still don't), it was just the President that had the keys to the alliance and everything went from there. The way it worked was Pre had the final call on big decisions like war and peace, and for that reason most of the FA wound up going through him. Malone and I just split up the rest of the work in a similar way to when we had a triumvirate. We did a fair bit on our own initiative although I ran big decisions by Pre if action wasn't urgently required and it was a pretty big decision.

 

My approach, and I would say Pre's too when he was Guardian, was that if a member wanted to start some initiative, and it seemed like a good idea to us, we'd give them the authority to do it.

 

Regarding OPSEC and stuff, it's varied quite a lot throughout Guardian's history. In previous games especially, we had around 100 members which was too much to know if we could trust all of them, so we just had an inner circle (gov and non-gov) of trusted, long-time members we shared important stuff with.

 

In PW Beta, especially more recently, most of our members have earned the trust to be kept in the loop about a lot of stuff. It's fairly informal in terms of who I trust with what, but there's a good chunk of our membership I feel can be trusted with just about anything.

 

As for target lists, I'd say it depends. Flexibility can be valuable, but you might have to compromise on flexibility if you're a big alliance trying to run a massive blitz right at update. For the last two wars, I've organized targeting somewhat on the fly, depending on which of our members were online and who needed to be hit, and that's worked out quite well, but we also only had 15-20 members during the last two wars.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Memph