Non-Alliance Politicking (Big Idea Thread)

[Alex]

First, let me preface this: I will add embargoes on a national level, as well as an alliance level. Embargoes will prevent your offers from showing up on the global market to those you've embargoed, and you wouldn't see their offers. You would still be able to deliberately trade with anyone embargoed through a private trade.

 

Now, here is my actual suggestion post that I wanted to hear some feedback on. I've been brainstorming ways to bring more politics to the game, and namely through "economic" warfare. I originally had this idea: http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2485-continental-congress-idea/ and have since expanded upon it and thought it warranted a new topic. Let me try and lay out my idea:

 

We organize a sort of "United Nations" type world 'government' structure. It doesn't have much real power, but the people elected can make announcements and impose sanctions on nations, alliances, colors, or continents.

 

This "United Nations" type government is made up of two 'houses', the Rainbow Council and the Continental Congress.

 

The Rainbow Council would be composed of 20 nations, 2 from each of the 10 colors (not including Beige/Gray). Every nation on each color would get two votes for their reps, and the two nations with the most votes would be the representatives from their color to the council. The council members would have the ability to push out announcements to all of the nations in the game (they could denounce someone, or whatever they wanted to announce about) and they would also have the ability to impose sanctions. Sanctions would require a 12/20 majority to be enforced. All sanctions would work like I began this post about embargoes working, they don't prevent all trade just only that on the global market.

 

The Continental Congress would be composed of 18 nations, 3 from each of the 6 continents. It would work just like the Rainbow Council, each nation on each continent getting three votes for their reps, and the 3 nations from each continent with the most votes being the reps. The members of the Continental Congress would have the same powers as that of the Rainbow Council, except they would only need 11/18 nations to impose a sanction.

 

What I think we'd see is alliances being forced to work together or against each other to fight for control of both 'houses'. I don't think people would be sanctioning anyone and everyone all willy-nilly, but for example if an alliance attacked another alliance that was declared Neutral you might see one or both houses impose a sanction on that alliance, etc.

 

This might not be the most game advancing or amazing suggestion ever, but I don't think it would hurt the game at all and would only add to the political aspect of it. I wanted to hear opinions on the idea though before I made any changes.

[Shellhound]

Normally I'm against stuff like this (and a part of me is against this idea) but personally I'd like to give it a chance and see how it goes, if no one uses it or we just realize it's a bad idea we can always remove it later.

[Brooklyn666]

I like the concept of the Rainbow Council, but I still stick by my previous statement that I'm not in favor of the Continental Congress idea. I think we could do away with that, keep the Rainbow Council, and still have the desired outcome.

[Alex]

I like the concept of the Rainbow Council, but I still stick by my previous statement that I'm not in favor of the Continental Congress idea. I think we could do away with that, keep the Rainbow Council, and still have the desired outcome.

 

You're probably correct, and it would be easier that way. I'm not opposed to this.

[BoxcarJim]

I agree with Brooklyn666, I think to have both would be unnecessary and would just make everything more complicated. I think the Rainbow Council idea is pretty cool and would like to see that happen. 

[Atzuya]

Rainbow Council? That's actually a great idea. It would make alliances wanting to spread out into different colors in hopes that they'll get a chance to sit in there, though it opens for the possibilities of a huge alliance to make a colony in a different color just for this purpose.

 

I foresee a lot of beiging and color-switching will occur by the time of voting seasons

[Grillick]

I still think that alliances shouldn't have the ability to create embargoes on their own. Like war, it should be something declared by alliances, but implemented by the individual nations.

[Vincent]

no harm to try on this idea. I mean lets see how the player will react , if the response is not as expected...then remove the feature. simple

[Kerbollo]

Neutral on this matter, but there's one thing for sure: in both cases each color/continent has equal representation.

[Ayayay]

So long as nations and alliances do not have to obey the councils I am fine with it. 

[Alex]

I still think that alliances shouldn't have the ability to create embargoes on their own. Like war, it should be something declared by alliances, but implemented by the individual nations.

 

I addressed this here: http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2485-continental-congress-idea/?p=29448

 

Rainbow Council? That's actually a great idea. It would make alliances wanting to spread out into different colors in hopes that they'll get a chance to sit in there, though it opens for the possibilities of a huge alliance to make a colony in a different color just for this purpose.

 

I foresee a lot of beiging and color-switching will occur by the time of voting seasons

 

 I considered it encouraging alliances to spread out amongst the colors, but I hadn't thought of the colonies happening again. It would take a pretty big alliance to be able to split across two colors and still have enough members (enough votes) on both colors to make it worthwhile, though. Having colonies would put your main color at risk.

 

So long as nations and alliances do not have to obey the councils I am fine with it. 

 

This is something important that needs to be discussed, the power of any sort of feature like this. Obviously, a few "elite" players (the ones voted) should not have crazy power over everyone else, that kind of ruins the game for everyone who isn't a member of the council. I thought sanctions could be fair, so long as their not binding (preventing all trade). Being able to push out announcements isn't anything huge either. Are there any other interesting powers that they could have that wouldn't be gamebreaking? I thought perhaps the ability to remove a nation from it's color, but I'm not sure how often that would even be used.

[Hereno]

Players will be beholden to alliances in order to have a solid vote base, although it could be interesting to see Representatives play politics with the alliances. If you're going to implement the idea, go all out and make it worth our while to participate in. Allow us to embargo entire alliances and continents for our colors. Let us ban people from global trade and give them extra defensive war slots while on our color. Not only that, but allow our sanctions to reset their color change and force them to stay for a week.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Hereno

[Atzuya]

By the way color stock bonus works, it is inevitable that we have one color that is the least popular, and big alliances will have a brief fistfight to claim that color as theirs just so they can get two more seats in the rainbow council. It's tad unlikely, but not impossible

*looks at Bloc Party

 

Also, what would happen if, say, I got voted for the Rainbow Council, but some raiders knocked me off to beige as the voting period ends?

[Alex]

Players will be beholden to alliances in order to have a solid vote base, although it could be interesting to see Representatives play politics with the alliances. If you're going to implement the idea, go all out and make it worth our while to participate in. Allow us to embargo entire alliances and continents for our colors. Let us ban people from global trade and give them extra defensive war slots while on our color. Not only that, but allow our sanctions to reset their color change and force them to stay for a week.

 

These powers are interesting, but I'm not sure how appropriate they'd be for a Rainbow Council made up of nations from many colors. Perhaps a smaller group of representatives (each color elects maybe 5 nations) that would have a lot of those powers like giving them extra defensive slots, or embargoing entire alliances/continents/colors for your color. That way you'd have 5 nations all on your color making decisions and what they do on say, Yellow, doesn't affect what happens on Red.

 

These two things wouldn't have to be mutually exclusive, however, we could have smaller congresses for each color as well as a larger Rainbow Council with members from all colors.

By the way color stock bonus works, it is inevitable that we have one color that is the least popular, and big alliances will have a brief fistfight to claim that color as theirs just so they can get two more seats in the rainbow council. It's tad unlikely, but not impossible

*looks at Bloc Party

 

Also, what would happen if, say, I got voted for the Rainbow Council, but some raiders knocked me off to beige as the voting period ends?

 

That last bit is a good question, I don't know. Maybe if you're elected you can't get knocked to beige or change color for the duration of your term without forfeiting your seat?

[Shellhound]

Personally I think color reps should be in complete control of their own colors. The 2 reps from the color can ban certain alliances from joining the color (should be a max on the amount that you can ban for obv. reasons), which should make things fairly interesting with colors that have multiple alliances on them. Reps should also be able to embargo nations/alliances but only on their color, meaning people on that color won't see the embargoed nations/alliances trade offers on the global market (I think this should also be how the alliances/personal embargoes should work). Reps should also be able to send out messages to their respective colors.

 

As for the actual council I think just about everything looks fine, of course the majority for embargoes wouldn't be needed with this. It would generate some politics for representatives to have to negotiate with other representatives to embargo certain alliances and what not.

 

I think this way gives enough power to representatives to actually make it worthwhile for alliances to hold rep. spots, but it doesn't give them overwhelming power.

[Atzuya]

That last bit is a good question, I don't know. Maybe if you're elected you can't get knocked to beige or change color for the duration of your term without forfeiting your seat?

That's a good idea. Not being able to change color at all would be a good limitation, though that would mean elected councils would always be open for attacks even if he's getting rolled fifteen times over. I think it's a good pay-off, tho.

[Hereno]

Let the continents have referendums through which we can issue all-color sanctions on sitting Senators from our continent. This would be !@#$ing awesome, and it would allow you to keep the continental idea with the Rainbow Senate.

[WireItUp]

This sounds awesome!

[Vincent]

If I get voted in , then I like this idea, if I don't then I hate it

[WireItUp]

#votewire2k14

[Vincent]

hey this is not a thread for election campaign

[WISD0MTREE]

That last bit is a good question, I don't know. Maybe if you're elected you can't get knocked to beige or change color for the duration of your term without forfeiting your seat?

I like the idea of being able to kick out a RC Council member. It would be able to cause a lot of great wars. 

[Aisha Greyjoy]

Could we start slow...perhaps have each color elect 2 Senators and each continent elect 2, and as long as the elected guys stay on their color(ie, not beiged), its a 1% income increase.  So we all vote our 4 best military nations to try and get a 4% bonus.

 

Then we can add actual power later.  SLOW is how I want to see big things implemented.

 

Being beiged kills the seat for that election cycle, so if yellow africa gets pwned hard, I get a 0% bonus for the rest of the cycle.  It does provide some incentives to elect active, strong nations from well-connected alliances.