ANNOUNCE NEWS #533
Date: 3/5/2006 at 17:26
From: Estarra, the Eternal
To : Everyone
Subj: Village Revolts

Villages will now revolt in groups. The groups are
Rockholm/Southgard/Angkrag, Estelbar/Acknor, Stewartsville/Delport,
Shanthmark/Paavik, and Dairuchi (on its own). As some of you may be
aware from discussions on the forums, the hope is that this will add
more variety and more interesting dynamics. We will be monitoring how
this develops and I am sure you will let us know your reactions to it on
the forums! Notably, we are also implementing the following changes to
politics along with this new system:

Communes can now select politics from among commercial, religious and
conquer. However, unlike cities, titles of commune members and commune
ranks do not change. There is no longer a 'commune' political type and
the default for communes is 'religious'. Note that the length of time a
village is held no longer has any bearning upon politics or style.

There is a new ranking for the feelings that each village has for each
city and commune. The greater the feelings, the easier it will be for
that city or commune to influence that village. You can see a village's
feelings by entering POLITICS .

A commune or city's politics (commercial, religious, conquest) and
ruling style (benign, neutral, despotic) have been altered. The effects
are as follows:

BENIGN: Only impacts villages that the city or commune influences. The
villages of a benign government will produce less commodities and power,
but increase the village feelings towards that government.

NEUTRAL: No impact on anything.

DESPOTIC: Only impacts villages that the city or commune influences. The
villages of a despotic government will produce more commodities and
power, but decrease the village feelings towards that government.

COMMERCIAL: Citizens or commune members of a commercial government will
find that doing commodity quests in any village will improve relations
with that village. Villages under the sphere of influence of a
commercial government produce more commodities but less power.

RELIGIOUS: Citizens or commune members of a religious government will
find that influencing villagers in any village will improve relations
with that village. Villages under the sphere of influence of a religious
government produce more power but less commodities.

CONQUEST: Citizens or commune members of a conquest government will find
that killing villagers (of villages that are not under their city or
commune's control) will increase the respect that village has to that
government. Also, villages under the sphere of influence of a conquest
government will produce less commodities and less power but naturally
become more enthralled with that government. Further, any village that
is not under its sphere of control will begin to passively accrue
respect for that government, the amount of which depends on the number
of villages that government controls.

Please note that 'raiding' (i.e., killing villagers of enemy
cities/communes) only really benefit your city or commune if they are in
conquest mode. If you are in a city or commune who not conquest mode,
and you wish to be a murderous machine, then perhaps you should try
convincing your government to change or moving to a city or commune that
more matches your bloodthirsty proclivities.

Regarding conquest governments, there is no better system to hold and
maintain large numbers of villages. And the more you rule, the easier it
is to control others (in theory). Of course, you may have to compete
with other conquest governments!

The religious method to turn villagers to your side is any type of
influencing (charity, seduction, etc.). The point is that the more
successes you have, the more the villagers become accustomed to
following your emotional lead. This is a great stealth method of turning
village feelings towards a religious city or commune as there are no
messages over channels announcing that you are influencing villagers
(unlike killing them).

The commercial benefit to turn villagers is probably the poorest method
to expand to non-controlled villages, as commodity quests in rival
villages produce comms for a rival city or commune. However, the
commercial mode is great for those governments who only maintain one or
two villages and want to maximize production.

Finally, controlling villages that oppose other villages will have a
negative impact on the feelings of those opposing villages. For example,
controlling Acknor will provoke a negative reaction from Estelbar (over
time).

When villages do revolt, the strength of feeling that village has to a
city or commune impacts how easy it is to control that village. This is,
of course, no guaranty of influencing a village--but it certainly is a
leg up. Conversely, a village that has negative feelings towards a city
or commune will be that much harder to win control.

As influence battles draw on, the feelings of a village will gradually
improve towards a city or commune who win city/commune influencing, so
eventually the initial advantage of having a village with strong
feelings towards you will wear off (again, if the influence battle draws
on for a prolonged period).

As an added bonus, when a village is in-play, the new POLITICS
command will also reveal a very loose estimate on how a particular
village views individual cities and communes as a candidate for
following. Don't place too much importance on these scores, however, as
they are calculated partially on the relative strength they have to each
other and not necessarily on how close a city or commune is to 'winning'
the village.

Penned by My hand on the 22nd of Juliary, in the year 141 CE.

Let's put up a set of villages....

*******************POLITICS OF THE DOMINION OF MAGNAGORA*******************
Warlord: Daevos
Divine Patron: Fain
Iron Council: Nokraenom, Navaryn, and Aiakon
Political Structure: Conquest
Governance Style: Neutral
Spheres of influence: Acknor, Angkrag, and Paavik (3)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*******************POLITICS OF THE FOREST OF GLOMDORING********************
Dark Marshall: Xenthos
Divine Patron: Viravain
Shadow Court: Emar, Adracunin, and Shayle
Political Structure: Religious
Governance Style: Neutral
Spheres of influence: None
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

******************POLITICS OF THE ALLIANCE OF SERENWILDE*******************
Regent: Nejii
Divine Patron: Lisaera
Moonhart Circle: Niara, Klia, and Tsuki
Political Structure: Religious
Governance Style: Neutral
Spheres of influence: Stewartsville, Estelbar, Delport, Southgard,
Dairuchi, and Shanthmark (6)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************POLITICS OF THE GRAND PROVINCE OF NEW CELEST****************
Magistrate: Catarin
Divine Patron: Terentia
Star Council: Vesar, Kelly, and Ayita
Political Structure: Conquest
Governance Style: Benign
Spheres of influence: Rockholm (1)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Behold! Celest is an organization of Conquest!

Oh, and:
********************POLITICS OF THE VILLAGE OF ESTELBAR********************
Sphere of Influence: the Alliance of Serenwilde
Village Leader: Yojimbo Buntz, the alchemist
Serenwilde: Neutral
Glomdoring: Neutral
Celest: Neutral
Magnagora: Neutral
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, we've had that change for several game years now. The original idea of our new politics was to keep villages longer....heh...that wont help now. Will it?

Conquest... ick. Like we really kill villagers...

Just as a note, you don't have to kill villagers in conquest mode to be successful. So long as you have a lot of villages, you can just sit back and passively watch the other villages gradually show some respect to you.

These big things always happen while I'm asleep. I need to move to Australia.

That was the most boring revolt EVER.

It happened EXACTLY how I predicted it in the other thread a while ago. Serenwilde and Celest, instead of having a fun conflict, divided the villages among them. Seren takes Rockholm, Celest takes Southgard. Glomdoring choose to go for Southgard too. Magnagora influenced Angkrag for a bit, then came and killed all the miners in both villages. Seren gets Rockholm in 24 minutes with no opposition, Magnagora gets Angkrag in 28 minutes with minimal opposition, and then Seren goes to help Celest in Southgard. Southgard revolts for a total of 37 minutes, with Glomdoring not even having a chance due to the doubleteam of Seren and Celest.

Most boring influencing I've seen in a VERY long time.

I am sorely disappointed.

Meh. It's uncool to die right after it switches.

To be honest, I don't think we had the numbers to beat Celest even if Seren hadn't shown up at the end. There were quite a few of them and not enough of us... this time.

I am too. I thought maybe this would help Glom out a bit but, we didn't stand a chance.

In addition to forcing alliances to form, making fourway influencings never happen except in Dairuchi, making influencings fewer and farther between (assuming they revolt as often as they used to), making it matter so much more who happens to be online at the time, and making the revolts take much less time (1/16th what they used to), I don't see how this change is a good one.

I do LOVE the non-revolt village feelings though - it's the only nice part of the change. But if village influencing is this trivial, where's the fun in it? It's all pre-determined now, and forumlaic. Meh.

Well, maybe next year.

Still, the change means that, instead of Glom having a chance at a village, it means that unless Magnagora gives them direct aid, they physically cannot take a village. The Seren-Celest conflict is just going to fade away, and it'll be Celenwilde vs Glomdoring vs Magnagora, and Glom isn't going to win that.

Unless a new city comes into play.. or new villages come out.. *drool* new villages.


We need a new mountain village mined by igasho

We can call it Rainbow mountain

The way I see it, in any of the 3-way conflicts, Mag will get one, Celest will get one, Seren will get one. Dairuchi is the only point of conflict.

Actually this time, I wasn't sure how this would turn out and I wanted Rockholm. Rockholm and Estelbar are "Serenwilde's villages." Of all villages, we have always valued them the most.

I told Catarin if she wanted, her people could leave Rockholm, we'd leave Southgard... and so essentially, we switched.

After we were finished, some persons headed over to Southgard to fight Glomdoring.

5 people to be exact. I really don't think 5 people people constitute a formal alliance, when only 3/5 were even attacking. I likewise have 2 high disfavors. I thing I got to transfix 1 person. That's it. That was my entire impact in Southgard. Whoo.

And Glomdoring has been seriously trying to break the reliance on Magnagora. No Mags showed up today!

Serenwilde was in rockholm, Celest ran to rockholm, killed the king and then went to southgard .

Mag influenced in angkrag, and killed miners aplenty, which happens all the time anyway.

It was Glomdoring Vs. Celest in southgard mostly, untill the end, where serenwilde/mag poured in, it was pretty much already over at that point however.

It depends a lot on who gets there first, or, at the moment it still does, once these feelings build up it should prove interesting.


and as for boring? hmm, I'm not sure yet, but it was a WELCOME CHANGE from three 8ish hours influencings in a row.

And Glom was with 7 people there.
And that person you transfixed was me after Southgard went to Celest...All others should be thrown to their nexus when it ends.