Government in Lusternia

Maligorn

So this has been an underlying theme in revolts since...probably forever - at least as long as I've been playing, which is a while. It is clear that the government system in Lusternia is pretty much not a choice if you want to stay relevant in terms of village captures and upkeeping guards.

But what am I talking about? I mean the city government that's decided on by each org's respective council, in HELP GOVERNMENT. You can see everyone's government style by hitting POLITICS HALLIFAX, or POLITICS GLOMDORING.

Pretty quickly you're going to see that 5/6 of all orgs are Conquest, and every org is benign. Why? Because the conquest pool is intensely more valuable than the payout given by religious power gain or economic commodity gain. The more villages a conquest government has, the more positive village feelings they'll generate towards villages NOT under their control. It's a win-win-win-win.

Benign governments also generate positive feelings. One only needs to look at the recent Estelbar revolt and see how, JUST by simply winning Estelbar in the previous revolt, Hallifax was able to regain lost ground and eventually outplay Celest near the end - that simply wouldn't have been possible if we didn't max out village feelings ---entirely passively-- due to being benign conquest.

I hope people will stop by and offer solutions to this problem - I'd love to see other styles of governance in play; it really will enrich the game I think. I'll offer up some of my own thoughts.

1. Make the conquest pool available to all governments, and all villages will contribute conquest power - just conquest governments will get more than religious or economic.

2. Significantly increase the commodities (and/or also possibly create a passive gold generation) to economic governments. Make sure the village quests used to generate village feelings with those under economic governments actually work.

3. Significantly increase the amount of raw power religious governments generate...and something else to incentivize being religious.

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We need to adjust benign as well, because it's simply too good. I think a good way to re-balance instead of just straight nerf would be to allow villages to contribute more conquest/commodities/power but significantly lessen the passive feelings generation. I think an org should have to work at least a little bit to max out village feelings by the time the next revolt comes around.

Neutral governments should (get an adjective like Grand or Righteous as benign/despotic do) benefit from the previous changes, i.e. they'll have a normal, balanced amount of conquest, power and commodities coming in from their villages. They don't generate passive feelings, but they don't decay either.

Because of how important village feelings are to retake villages, despotic governments should probably not generate as much negative feelings as they do now, if it's a lot. Or if that's unacceptable, MAKE SURE that it's possible to keep in good standing with the village via influencing or village quests! Even if it's hard work. Although we would run into people just scripting through to get both despotic benefits and positive feelings...

My ideas need work. I hope you guys agree with my assessment and come up with some of your own ideas. Down to Benign Conquest!

Tylwyth

I was thinking about maybe religious governments making it  easier to increase a villages feelings to your org when you influence the villagers outside of a revolt.

Minkahmet

Tylwyth said:

I was thinking about maybe religious governments making it  easier to increase a villages feelings to your org when you influence the villagers outside of a revolt.

That would be ideal honestly. It's like I remember Ragniliff saying some years ago, that it takes SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much time, energy and having really no life to even do that. I doubt anyone in the org are willing to make a concerted effort to even try that nowadays no matter how much you try to encourage it.

Maligorn

Heyyy youuu guyyys. I wanted to go ahead and bunp this since Hallifax won Rockholm and Southgard, villages that are SUPPOSED to be opposing and therefore generate negative feelings passively.

The day before the revolt I checked and they were both positive feelings. Not MAX positive feelings, but positive feelings nonetheless. That's so wild to me. Yes, the revolt was literally at the worst time possible for the other side, but I'm still baffled that Benign Conquest just got to completely bypass an anti-monopoly mechanic.

Down with benign conquest!!!(?)

Aknarin

I couldn't agree any more with @Maligorn. This is why I've had to push to get Celest go move to a Political government style.

Ideally I'd like to have stayed Religious as it suits our RP better..

 I know it says " The above styles and political structures have nothing whatsoever to do with 'alignment' (good, evil otherwise) and should not be taken into account by city or commune leaders as limiting their selections."

However, the change in titles does change the RP of Celest. If anything I'd like to remove that cityrank titles, GL and CL titles are tied to the political structure. e.g. I think Celest should retain Peasant, Goodman, Nobleman, Lord, Baron, Earl. Council members should stay Duke/Duchess, and the Cl should be Grand Duke, Prince, King (based on villages held).

I also think there needs to be a serious look at how revolts work to stop one superpower and others missing out. At the moment revolts are happening at times where majority of people aren't playing. With Halli's current control, they only need two or three people to take a village in minutes. 

What about if it went like Domoths - you can only control so many as there are opposites.

Also Aetherflares, Halli currently controls 7/8 Bubbles. This is actually pointless as a start, for the pure fact that Halli can only build 4 Constructs (one permanent in the Nexus world). So the other 4 bubbles are useless to them.

Tridemon

Well, there's a couple of proposals I've been kicking around in my head... Randomization would probably help with the situation. Designate a weave for the event to happen (Flares, revolts, wildnodes) and make it happen randomly sometime in that weave, with a bias against happening in the same 3-hour period. Say a revolt kicks off at 12:30pm GMT, the next event would have a bias against happening from 12pm-3pm GMT.

And as for the bubbles... unless there's some event planned for someone getting all eight, have a penalty of some sort for having bubbles with no constructs. After the end of the first full weave of control, all bubbles without a construct either constructed or under construction can drain power to keep overlordship, like 2500 power per bubble. You're not maintaining your connection to the bubble with a construct, so you must be maintaining it with SOMETHING, right?

Ayisdra

Tridemon said:

Well, there's a couple of proposals I've been kicking around in my head... Randomization would probably help with the situation. Designate a weave for the event to happen (Flares, revolts, wildnodes) and make it happen randomly sometime in that weave, with a bias against happening in the same 3-hour period. Say a revolt kicks off at 12:30pm GMT, the next event would have a bias against happening from 12pm-3pm GMT.

And as for the bubbles... unless there's some event planned for someone getting all eight, have a penalty of some sort for having bubbles with no constructs. After the end of the first full weave of control, all bubbles without a construct either constructed or under construction can drain power to keep overlordship, like 2500 power per bubble. You're not maintaining your connection to the bubble with a construct, so you must be maintaining it with SOMETHING, right?

HELP CONSTRUCTS suggests an org can get more constructs via research (Patron Rquests). No one has ever used this, but in theory claiming more than 4 bubbles can be useful if someone went and looked into having more than 4 constructs to build.

Tridemon

That's likely outdated. HELP ARENAS says to contact your patron to see about purchasing an arena for your org.

Mboagn

Bump. Also, I finally found this thread after ages of hearing it be alluded to in Discord.

An idea I have for Commercial government is that, if you are Commercial, you can also do comm quests during a revolt to help sway the village to you. This has the potential side effect of everyone just sitting on piles of comm quest items (cows, chickens, rockeaters) during a revolt window, and I am still working on solutions to that. Maybe all comm quest items poof when a revolt starts, because magic?

Conquest governments will have their villages produce no commodities, just power. 

Religious governments' CAMPAIGN CRUSADE boost is doubled (?). Maybe. I dunno.

Toshiko

Another alternative is just to remove the majority of the system. I can't tell you how many RL years most Orgs have been Benign Conquest, I spent a few solid months trying to get Celest to swap from Religious before leaving as well. Let them mostly disappear and pick a political structure for titles so that people can have their preferred RP. Make the actual governing styles either removed or simplistic in effect:

1) Ownership of a village or bubble generates x static conquest pool
2) Standardized tithes of commodities and power
3) Modify values and functions of how governing styles work

Suggested:
Benign - Passively generate village feelings at half the current rate it is. This is a way for Orgs that aren't active or motivated to passively generate feelings with minimal effort, but not much to gain.

Neutral - Follows the new standardized functions, has increased village feelings from political structure method.

Despotic - Passively lose village feelings, keeping the superior tithes.

Reasonings:

Benign as it currently stands is just too good, and makes no sense NOT to take it. It enables your two-man squad that happens to be awake to knock down a village or spread your forces thin to tackle multiple at once.

Neutral is just non-existent and doesn't offer any good reason to even look at it, much less remember it as a choice. The suggestion emphasizes those casual people doing commodity quests for daily credits or even just trying to help in the process of generating more commodities.

Despotic, in my head, is trying to push the envelope and maintaining a constant presence in the village. You rule with an iron fist, thus you send your overseers to monitor their output, giving 'encouragement' as needed following whichever political structure you choose.

This entire thing can now open different flavors and combinations. Celest can go back to being Religious and send out evangelists to influence if they went Despotic. They could be Benign and allow those people to govern themselves, showing Mercy through the Light etc. Or if they went Neutral, then they are just an acquisition that gains a mutual benefit, protection from heretics in exchange for their services. Orgs would have an incentive to find which political structure really suits them and roll with it, rather than play the min/max game.

Toshiko

Bump in hopes to revive this topic and get some traction.