Continuing death of democracy

[Jets Nation]

Is it me or have people stopped trying to build democratic alliances? You would think there would be another strong attempt. Maybe there will be soon?

¿!?

 

[Prefontaine]

Try running a democratic alliance. People need information to make informed decisions. It’s hard to have the level of secrecy you need on a lot of things while keeping your members informed enough to make proper decisions. 

 

Games like these here I find it important to find an alliance you like with a leader(s) you trust. Can’t find one? Make your own. 

[Mitsuru]

The Commonwealth is a democratic alliance.

[Thalmor]

3 hours ago, Mitsuru said:

The Commonwealth is a democratic alliance.

Rose and I think UPN has democratic elements too. Cornerstone did as well, but they disbanded a few months ago.

To OP: Alliances in this game that have lots of democracy tends to be trash. Even the most successful 'democratic' alliances in this game tend to be garbage compared to other alliances. Alliances have to be fairly authoritarian to get shit done (unless they're smaller and more 'elite', like TEst or tC).

[Dynamic]

38 minutes ago, Thalmor said:

Rose and I think UPN has democratic elements too. Cornerstone did as well, but they disbanded a few months ago.

To OP: Alliances in this game that have lots of democracy tends to be trash. Even the most successful 'democratic' alliances in this game tend to be garbage compared to other alliances. Alliances have to be fairly authoritarian to get shit done (unless they're smaller and more 'elite', like TEst or tC).

Yep, Rose has some slight democratic elements. We hold elections for the leader every 6 months, and they are limited to 2 terms. The leader can do pretty much whatever, except change the election procedure. The leader picks the cabinet and sets the direction of policy.

This model works and you'll find it in a few other alliances, but voting on every policy or trying to build a consensus on everything will just waste time. Never hurts to ask your members for input, though!

[Justin076]

TCW is same as Rose pretty much. Leader is elected every 4 months, unlimited terms and has unlimited power. Just call it an elective dictatorship. 

[Insert Name Here]

Rose is best democracy because every term, a new Abbas gets elected. 

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

Democracy only works in an alliance where everyone comes in with the same goal in mind. For mass recruitment, it's a no-go.

 

[Kurdanak]

Extensive democracies worked great when I was in the GPA, mostly because it was the most/only exciting thing to do.

Other than that, it's so painfully inefficient. Mensa had a good balance, though, from what I observed.

[Sketchy]

Its been tried, its just you don't notice because they implode before they ever become remotely successful.

A benevolent dictatorship with a strong, smart and decisive leader who surrounds themselves with other smart people who are experts in their respective areas of alliance administration is the ideal system.

Unfortunately, in most cases, eventually those people retire, and they lack talented replacements, and that alliance falls to shit. Very few players with talent have the patience to stick with an alliance long enough to move up the ranks.

[Aksel]

The Island just does what it wants.

Community based, we just chat and are like sure or nahh.

[Buorhann]

Follow The Great Hippo Khan and I’ll make your decisions for you.  No need for this wasted time of “voting”.  Such inefficiency transfers of power get in the way of more important things.

[Blitz]

Hah, Democracy.

you know whats better?

#HitlerMode

[Radoje]

See, I agree with Shifty and some other people on this one.

You could theoretically build a solid enough democratic alliance if the alliance is elite and everybody is coming in with the same goal in mind. But doing that is very difficult, at least from what I've seen.

Mass recruitment alliances will never work properly as a democracy. The TCW/Rose model works, but it only has certain democratic elements and isn't a "true" democracy.

I think what the guy refers to is full on democratic alliances that simply vote on everything with the help of the membership. And when you have an alliance of 50+ or even 100+ that mass recruits, that model will absolutely never work. In those circumstances it's simply better to surround yourself with guys that are smart and then decide on things together in that group of a handful people. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Radoje

[Felkey]

12 hours ago, Justin076 said:

TCW is same as Rose pretty much. Leader is elected every 4 months, unlimited terms and has unlimited power. Just call it an elective dictatorship. 

Pretty much this, you elect me to do whatever the hell I want. 

One day I'm gonna see if we can just "forget" about elections and become dictator by indifference.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Working with democratic alliances is also the worst.  Try planning a war, and then having to wait for one of your alliances to vote on if they want to help or not.  not only does it take forever, but sometimes the membership and leadership are not on the same page, and someone you thought you could count on is now out.

As an alliance leader myself, I value the input from my membership, but at the end of the day any and all decisions go thru me.

[Kurdanak]

16 hours ago, Felkey said:

One day I'm gonna see if we can just "forget" about elections and become dictator by indifference.

Maybe TCW is the GPA 2.0 after all.

[Blitz]

25 minutes ago, Kurdanak said:

Maybe TCW is the GPA 2.0 after all.

LMAO

 

[Jets Nation]

Thank you all for your input 

[Raphael]

On 5/28/2018 at 2:43 PM, Prefontaine said:

Try running a democratic alliance. People need information to make informed decisions. It’s hard to have the level of secrecy you need on a lot of things while keeping your members informed enough to make proper decisions. 

 

Games like these here I find it important to find an alliance you like with a leader(s) you trust. Can’t find one? Make your own. 

I would but I have to mindlessly grind up to 1000 score first.

 

There are a few cool systems I've wanted to try and see how they go. I personally think more democracy = more involvement = more activity = more competency ad infinitum in that cycle. It actually doesn't make sense when you really think about how the overwhelming majority of this game has willingly surrendered nearly all ratified "say" in their own fate in order to secure themselves from a fight. This is a *nation* sim but the idea of sovereignty of the individual is essentially non-existent and that strikes me as odd.

[Guest Epi]

596

Edited February 16, 2021 by Epi

[Raphael]

On 5/31/2018 at 8:07 PM, Epi said:

At some point the individual was valued, but that was much earlier in the game, now with so many people able to be on and do what's required. To remain competitive you need to have a clone army that can act as directed.

As for democracy, there have been quite a few democratic alliances with varying levels of success. There are quite a few that classify as partially 'democratic' even now. So i wouldn't worry about it dying out or needing a resurgence.

One might argue that casting a single vote every four, six, eight, twelve, etc. months does not constitute democracy.

The closest thing I've witnessed is Arrgh's anarchy or smaller alliances that try to keep members "in the loop". Even then, it's more a courtesy than a democratic method.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Bartholomew Roberts

[Thalmor]

On 5/31/2018 at 5:51 PM, Bartholomew Roberts said:

There are a few cool systems I've wanted to try and see how they go. I personally think more democracy = more involvement = more activity = more competency ad infinitum in that cycle. It actually doesn't make sense when you really think about how the overwhelming majority of this game has willingly surrendered nearly all ratified "say" in their own fate in order to secure themselves from a fight. This is a *nation* sim but the idea of sovereignty of the individual is essentially non-existent and that strikes me as odd.

1

More democracy does not equal more involvement. A P&W player will have a base level of activity in the game, which will usually only go down if IRL things come up. You might have a member who has a high level of activity (logs in every day), but that could go down as IRL things happen or as they get bored of the game. You might have somebody who has a low level of activity (only logs in 1 time a week), and so they're barely playing and could just stop entirely any time. A person's level of activity usually either stays the same or goes down, and never really goes up.

New Pacific Order is an alliance that perfectly takes advantage of this. A lot of their members aren't very active, so they tax them 100/100 to get the full amount out of them and they re-distribute as necessary. Now, NPO does have very active members, but NPO's leaders know the reality of the situation and so they based their system accordingly.

Democracies also have a lot of problems that non-democratic alliances don't have. It's very easy for outside influences that don't have the alliance's best interest in mind to affect elections. Elections could mean that a person not qualified but popular gets elected, which could hurt the alliance as they have a bad time in their position. If you get really democratic, and put merges, war, and other FA decisions to a vote, then you can say goodbye to OPSEC and you could have a really autistic FA direction.

It's not like members in non-democratic alliances don't have a voice. Only stupid people ignore their members completely and chronically. If you as an autocratic leader do a lot of unpopular things for long enough, your members will !@#$ and you will usually have to step down. Additionally, if an alliance was making a big, secret move and the members eventually found out (like a merge), then if they all raise enough hell over it, it won't happen. Just because an alliance doesn't have elections, doesn't mean the members of an alliance have no sovereignty.

Also, don't look at nations in P&W as being nations. Instead, look at them as people. Nations are individuals and alliances are nations comprised of individuals. I've found that imagining things that way is helpful.

[Insert Name Here]

Thalmor makes quite a few good points.

It essentially boils down to communication imo. In the sense that leadership should be aware of what the membership wants. In some aspects of alliance management, sometimes an in-game alliance announcement is enough to get a good idea of what the members want regarding the direction the alliance is gonna take. Naturally there will always be several different opinions among the membership, and it's up to the leadership to make the final call, ideally one that will keep everyone at least somewhat happy.

I also agree with Thalmor on the involvement part. Democracy has many flaws, one of them being (as he rightly pointed out) the chance of someone not as competent being elected just because they're more competent than the opposition. For autocratic alliances to work, you gotta bet on meritocracy - finding out which members have potential and are willing to put the necessary time and effort into the job.

For me, the gist of it is having a gov that knows what they're doing and trying to cater to the membership as much as possible. Sometimes it's hard to balance these things out, but it's up to the leadership to take care of that. And if you know your members are game for pretty much everything, that gives you more freedom to do your job. There are many nuances, but surrounding yourself with the right people (both in terms of leadership and membership) is half the battle imo.

It's pretty interesting when you think about it. One might assume that the various departments of an alliance (FA, IA, MA and Econ) have very little in common. For instance, most people might think IA is easy, but if you wanna be a good alliance it can be quite tricky. Mass recruiting alliances have it especially hard from my point of view. It must take a lot of observation to find out, as quickly as possible, which members are fluff and which ones are good (the ones who prioritize warchest over infra, those who won't jump ship when the alliance is attacked, etc). Just here you can see how IA interferes with MA and will also with Econ, because you don't wanna invest in dead weight, you wanna cut out the fat as soon as possible to invest in good members. It also interferes with FA because, if you do try to cater to the membership, knowing you have mostly war minded or growth minded members will necessarily alter your FA direction.

I believe democracy in this game is kind of a waste of time. It drives attention from the essential (like the stuff mentioned above) to something that doesn't really benefit the alliance, but it's interesting that there are democratic alliances out there,and some of them actually make it work, so there's obviously no exact recipe for a successful alliance.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Insert Name Here

[Buorhann]

A proper IA isn't easy, lol.  That or MA are probably the most demanding areas of the game.

FA is by far the easiest.  You don't even have to try at that unless you're doing a big plot.

 

I guess to me, IA handles Recruitment and making sure everybody has optimal builds - depending on the size of the alliance, that can be pretty stressful.  Econ tracks down taxes/production, creates budgets, etc.  MA, obviously, handles organizing targets during war or raiding, makes sure people are on at a specific time to hit, etc.  FA is like...  just bullshitting around with people and be friendly, information just comes naturally after that.