Politician Archive

Can anybody give me any suggestions on how to deal with a small problem?

The first weekend after cities went live, I teamed up with a local novice politician because we both had a vision for where we wanted to put a new city, and why that would be so cool, and how we wanted to run it. He was far more willing than I was to tie up 62 skill points, so he became the mayor. We very rapidly grew to 21 residents ...

And then he vanished from the face of the earth. It's now been 18 days since anybody saw him or got a response from him to an email. And it seems that about half of those residents are people that he swapped lots with on other servers, because nobody has ever seen them and they don't respond to email.

I'm trying to recruit more people. I'm trying to get the existing people to come out and change their votes, although that's hard to do with no shuttleport and with vehicles not out until later this coming week. And in the mean time, we're bleeding residents because it's been three weeks and we still have no mission terminals, no name on the city map, no trainers, no nothing. I surrendered some skills, started inon politician - but because of our late mayor's permanent "graveyard vote," I just lost the first election 13 to 3. As best as I can tell, I can get those numbers up to about 8 to 8 - and still lose, because those other 8 people aren't real.

Now yeah, if I could persuade another dozen or twenty people to move out there and vote for me, that would all be a moot point, and don't think I'm not trying. But as I say, with no city services it's a non-trivial effort. And I can't install the city services without being the mayor. Catch 22.

He obviously stopped putting maintenance in the city treasury when he stopped logging in. As of Saturday morning, if I hadn't paid the 35k out of pocket, the city hall would have started decaying. I briefly considered letting it. How long does it take an outpost's city hall to vanish? If I could have gotten the city hall to vanish, I could have installed a new one. That would have automatically made me the only candidate registered to run for mayor, and should have gotten me the graveyard vote.

But the problem with that is two-fold. First of all, can anybody tell me how long it would take that city hall to vanish if I stopped maintaining it? And secondly, my own problem, but the cheapest quote I was given on a replacement city hall was about twice as much as I have in the bank.

Anybody have any helpful suggestions?

Yeah.. pick up your house and go join a real city. Cross server swapping sucks. It creates crap cities like what you're playing with here. Try joining a real group of players and having real player interractions.

Just leave it and let it fall. If you do try to replace the hall in the location, you'll find that all the cross server swap folks won't be on your citizen list any more. They must enter their house at least once to become citizens again. They'll just be a blight on your landscape.

if the most votes you could get was 3, and you think you might beable to push it to 8, you're probably better off letting that city fall. you need to remember, in order for you to drop a new city hall, you need 10 residents. those 10 residents have to actually declare citizenship when you drop the new hall. and from the sounds of it, you'd have a tough time getting 10.

you do have a few options.

1) find a fairly decent sized PA that wanted to place a city hall. then get them to join the city. let them put in thier own mayor if you don't really want to be one.

2) walk away and join an active city.

3) or keep fighting for those votes.

---

ZenMaster wrote:
Yeah.. pick up your house and go join a real city. Cross server swapping sucks. It creates crap cities like what you're playing with here. Try joining a real group of players and having real player interractions.

Just leave it and let it fall. If you do try to replace the hall in the location, you'll find that all the cross server swap folks won't be on your citizen list any more. They must enter their house at least once to become citizens again. They'll just be a blight on your landscape.

---

LOL amen! The while time reading the original post I couldn't help but think "you reap what you sow".. That's what you guys get for cross-server swapping. If that much of your town are 'zombies' then you don't need a shuttleport and, more importantly, you're using a slot that someone else could ACTUALLY* make use of with real players.

I hope your town burns.

---

Caliwyrm wrote:

The while time reading the original post I couldn't help but think "you reap what you sow"..

---

First of all, it wasn't my idea. If I'd known he was going to do it, I would have stopped him.

Second of all, I'm not "using up a city slot." I'm Rorian. On Rori/Kettemoor, a planet with what, about 25 city slots isn't it? There are four cities. My city isn't doing anything to hurt you.

I have a good idea for a city. I have an excellent location for a city. What I don't have, because of the weird hours available to me to play, is a large player association. I am an informal member of the second largest PA left on Rori/Kettemoor - but they won't move any farther from Narmle than they currently are because being mostly crafters, they're too dependent on their starport. So when SOE stopped even offering the potential of future player starports, they gave up on it altogether.

There are four other cities on Rori. One is large and successful, and has plenty of room, but is single-clan only. OK, I could go and plunk down a house, there's nothing to stop me. Except that I'd be as welcome as a skunk at a dinner party. One had the same idea I had, but picked an even more inconvenient spot to get to, so they're having some of the same problems we are. The other two are suburbs of Narmle, and I honestly don't see what the point is of spending hundreds of thousands of credits up front, plus tens or hundreds of thousands of credits per week, to build a suburb.

Can you point me to a thread that says that declared residences don't get added to a city until the player enters the house after it gets absorbed? That's an entirely new thing to me, I'd never heard that before.

I don't want to walk away from this spot. There are only two mostly-flat 1km-diameter dry surfaces on Rori. Only one of them is convenient to two named (and about to be badge-giving) POIs and Rori PvP Battlefield #1. This is a perfect spot to build a city, the kind of city that is perfect for the kind of people who play on Rori - people who aren't powergamers, who don't want to be surrounded by swarms of leet-speakers and griefers. We could build a city out here where neutrals, rebels, and imperials could all be friends and neighbors - a fairly common occurence on Rori/Kettemoor - and still have fun fighting each other over the nearby GCW dungeon and in the nearby GCW battlefield.

But we're 6.5km west of Restuss and 7.5km north of Narmle. That's a half an hour by foot, fifteen to twenty minutes by kaadu, and six to seven minutes by speeder. I'm having no trouble finding people who agree with me that this is a good idea for a city and a good place for one. Getting them to spend an entire day's playing time to come out and change their vote, or to put in a house if they haven't already, is a hard uphill climb. If we can ever somehow get to the point where we can put in a shuttleport, we'll be in like Flynn, it'll all be easy after that.

Now given that I'm stuck, through no fault of my own, with a zombie for a mayor and maybe as many as eight zombie citizens, does anybody have any constructive advice for me?

Let it burn, when it gets destroyed and all the craptacular zombie houses get destroyed rebuild on that spot, its the only available recourse you have short of CSR intervention. And somewhere, somehow you had to know he did a cross-server swap since you told us he did. You had a choice in the matter to completely drop it right then and there when you found out. Boo hoo, your plans didn't work the way you wanted and now you're stuck. You have no sympathy from me, sorry. Maybe I'm being harsh, but cross-server swapping was flamed when it was brought up and things like this was mentioned time and time again to try to avoid. No mayor has a LEGITIMATE chance because he and you exploited the system. Good for you, you got what you want.

In your words this 'prime' piece of ground is taken up because of the very zombies you decry now yet loved when they helped your city reach level II and III status. You'll get no pity here.

I thought my advice was quite constructive. Having a neat idea for a town isn't enough. You need people that are willing to commit. I've got a town with 38 citizens (ALL are from our server and actively play the game). All are in the same PA. we are a 4km run from the nearest starport.

We've made the city such that we can just hang there and have a great time using the local facilities to adventure and interract. If your city is such a great idea and in such a great place, then why aren't people out there spending time at the city and able to vote for you while they're in and around town? Towns aren't just places to say you live in and spend the majority of your time elsewhere. It's like in the real world. Residents of states/cities spend their time in and around their home.

Again.. Having a good idea isn't enough. If it was really that great, cross server swapping would be irrelevant.

Try player interraction eh? I'm sure there are plenty of bustling cities with lots of cool facilities and whatnot. Go there. Become a leader in the community over time. Get to know people. Share your idea and form a good core that's willing to start it if it's a good idea.

You've clearly failed at that with your first attempt at a city.

My constructive advice was to try again.....

---

Caliwyrm wrote:

Blah Blah ....... craptacular ........ Blah Blah Blah

---

/applauds use of the word "Craptacular" in a post.

It seems if you're an outpost with nothing to lose, just start again. The hall will vanish the first update it can't pay for itself, so encourage the other citizens to stop donating, and let it vanish. The zombie houses should disappear on their own in time, and you can replace them with real people. Though I'd suggest sending out a mail to the current citizens, saying that any server swap deals with the previous mayor no longer apply, incase such people do log in.

You're likely going to have to come up with a great recruitment campaign to recover the reputation of the city though.

---

ZenMaster wrote:
I've got a town with 38 citizens ... All are in the same PA.

---

Your advice wasn't the one that ticked me off. I'm getting tired of Calliwyrm calling me an exploiter because of something someone else did without my knowledge or consent. (No, I didn't know. I don't know now. All I know is that of the people he recruited for the city, a bit more than half never answer emails and are never seen logged on. They could have all quit the game, I suppose. It seems more likely to me that he recruited them illicitly, and didn't tell me because he knew I wouldn't approve.)

But the excerpt above cuts straight to the heart of one of my problems with this - namely, that it looks like as it now stands, with the requirement of 40 people (or is it 55? I forget) to get a shuttle port, that the only way to build a full-function city is to start with a huge PA. Want a neutral town? Tough. Want a multi-PA town? Tough. Want a town that isn't beholden to the PAs, that accepts people who aren't in a PA? Tough.

Is that what you're telling me?

If the city hall will poof next Saturday morning, then I've got nothing to lose by trying to scrape enough cash to buy a replacement. Then we'll see if the zombies - himself included now, I guess - have to redeclare or use their house or whatever for me to get the incumbent vote. I doubt it - because 24 hours after the last election, he had 100% of the votes in the next race - including supposedly mine.

"Build a city that people will want to use." Well, yeah, I could do that if I were the mayor. It's rather hard to do that when it's impossible to grant zoning rights, customize the city hall, or install civic facilities.

hmm I don't know about the idea about burning it down. If you do want to keep it then try to get a few more people. you said you might be able to get it to 8-8. Well that means you get one more person to join the city and that is 9-8. you win and the city is set up and you dont have to get all the money or resouces for the new city hall.

As the others have said your only real option is likely make sure you have 10 active folks and let it burn. The problem will be the zombie houses will serve to limit growth pretty badly and one can only hope not to much cash was spent in their upkeep. The only other chance would be to email everybody who has a house there about the situation and recruit heavily and try to get enough people to join to give you a majority of votes.

Kaide

Be careful if you replace the hall. If you are carrying around 10 "dead-weight" houses, depending on positioning you might have a hard time getting the 20 residents within 150m of city hall to advance to rank 2.

You might try looking for a very small "PA" to join you, one of those 3-5 people groups. There's an awful lot of them out there. Having PAs in a city does not make you a PA city as long as you're strong enough to be independant of them.

- Sydira