If the flooding is done intentionally just to gamble that you would get a cultural bonus of 1,000 for the short term (i.e., next year), then you'd be accepting the fact that you'd suffer on the alternate year with bad critiques and thus abandon any hope of being cultural center on the alternate year. Thus, you could consider the loss a net -1050 per day on the following year.

Even if you think of it as a positive 950 gain, you will eventually lose as the libraries who submitted legitimate works will have their literary, scholarly and overall library size ranks go up while yours remains down (because you've only published bogus books). Library growth is ONLY ONE aspect of the cultural score of the library. If you rank number one at growth but are last in the other categories (which can only go up with legitimate publications), you will end up driving your library so far into the ground that it may never be able to have a chance again at becoming the cultural center.

I believe there are enough checks and balances to make publishing bogus works in order to game the system eventually work to the grave detriment of the library who tries that (even though there may appear to be a short term or transitory benefit).

That said, there's nothing wrong with publishing as many valid works as possible, and competent librarians should be going out of their way to find literary treasures from among their respective populations.

I guess the question is, do they gain the "cultural center" bonus every month for the whole year? If so... +12,000 power at a max loss of 50 power per day for the next year (so a loss of 600 power the following year after gaining 12,000) doesn't seem like that much of a disadvantage. I guess when the other things start coming into play there will be a bit more difference, but that doesn't seem to be the case now.

Isn't that how all libraries are?

Keep in mind that once we get the prestige contest off the ground, prestige books will have enormous cultural point awards for the year they win as well as permanently carrying greater weight for the collections they are in.

One thing interesting about the current scores is that Serenwilde can grab the cultural center award from Celest on a monthly basis just by collecting wandering scholars (though it would take a lot).

By the way, I do appreciate the fixing of scholars not giving power... was a bit frustrating when we noticed that.

Yay! Checkout has been fixed. I was wondering if it were possible for librarians to see a log of who checked out books, and how long until they will be returned.

My main problem continues to be that there is no incentive to publish anything larger than a scroll. The Aquamancers' novice essays are a case in point: they could have been published as a volume piece "The Collected Essays of the Aquamancers" or somesuch.

Why shouldn't I break down all multi-page works sent to me into parts I, II, II, etc. and publish them as separate works, so long as they are coherent enough to meet the guidelines for critiquing?

Because then we all hate you. So far, that's the only incentive.

There is incentive enough for me.


I don't want my library to look stupid.

Thought that that would be enough

*shrug*

Seems some are more worried about working the system than what effect it will have on the quality of their library.

*shrug*

It'll come back to bite em on the arse soon enough.

I love you as our Librarian. Keep some integrity in it, Ialie, and I will you long time.

I'm not so sure. Looks like it'll just get them power soon enough.

I can think of one incentive to put works into one book: if it's weak, then it's either one book that's critiqued or 10+ books that are all hit (and remember, you get hit for EVERY book that's critiqued).

I have a question: is it the Librarians from the other nations that critique a nation's books? If so, what happens if all of the other Librarians are enemied (and thus, can't reach the library)

I don't really know what you're talking about with the first bit, but as for the latter - the librarians from all other nations DO critique a nation's books. But when a book is published it's published EVERYWHERE, as opposed to just archived in the city/commune's library. So there's no problems with being enemied.

My favorite part about Rhysus publishing all of the novice essays we've ever had is the extremely positive view the general public has had on our guild's intelligence. Not

I'm not completely familiar with the ways libraries work yet, but I have a suggestion (if they don't already work like this).

Could the default BROWSE or CATALOGUE commands give only books published or submitted in that library? Then an extra input can list books from all libraries or one in particular.

Just to give a sense of locality to libraries.