Politician Archive

Everyone should be responsible. If your citizens want more people to join, why are they not actively recruiting? Do you have city council? Maybe you can assign the resposiblity of recruiting to one or two people. I, personally, dont have the free time I used to, but we are still getting more and more people in. Discuss it with your citizens.

We are currently a level 4 city and some citizens want to get to level 5. With this in mind, some of the citizens are pushing me, the Mayor, to spend all of my time recruiting new citizens.

Here is the question....Who should be responsible for recruiting new citizens?

The responsibility is spread around in various ways, I feel:

Citizens who are pushing for recruitment should be actively seeking good candidates from their social and business contacts.

In addition to the above, the Mayor and militia are responsible for being on-hand to help the people move in, once they have been screened or cleared for citizenship.

Mayorsare responsible for establishing the community ties and showing a presence in the city, especially for people new to player city life. They should be visible and active, to show a good city presence. This duty can also be said of any council that a city has, but for most cities, the Mayor is seen as a community leader, and the social office carries heavy weight with all citizens.

With great power comes great responsibility

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Here's the problem. Nobody should be "recruiting". Recruitingto me means what most mayors do which is to sit in starports of major cities and spam how they need people to move in and offer them free homes and speeders if they will do so.

I never recruit like this. What I do is to get to know someone. I maybe go on some missions with them, have some conversations with them, and just generally get to know them, without ever a mention of my city or the thought of having them move there ever crossing my mind. When I do get to know them and have an inclination that they might benefit from living in my city then I extend the invitatioin.

"Recruiting" people to move into your town will most likely just end up making it more and more of a ghost town. Before I picked up polotician myself I had been recruited to move into several different towns. I never ended up staying in any of them very long, because after my initial recruitment that was usually the last I heard or saw of anyone in the town, except for the standard citizen form letters and seeing someone waiting for a shuttle on the odd occassion.

I make a point of telling all of my citizens to extend invitations to any of their friends or people that they meet that they think could both benefit and be benefitted by moving there. I always tell them that I don't want them recruiting just to get our citizen count up. My way of doing things takes longer for the city to advance, but in my opinion it wont do me any good to have a level 5 city where 75% of the people hardly ever set foot there. My level 3 city is much more vibrant and thriving with activity than just about every level 4 or 5 I have seen on my server. If you are just recruiting as many people as you can as fast as you can to get to the next level then I think you are taking the wrong approach to building a successful community. The goal of building a city and growing it should be to bring people together and get them interacting with each other. Just offering everyone that passes by a free house and speeder does not bring people to your town that will have an interest in helping the community develop.

Ditto what Rowgue said. That's how we doit in our city. And everyone helps find new people. People that will fit in and contribute to the overall community. We grow slow, but we are happier and healthier for it.

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I prefer to kidnap their families and hold them hostage unless they move to my city. But that's just me.

We have always had a fairly extensive screening process to allow new members into our city. Part of that is due to the fact that we are a role-playing city, and we like to see how a potential member fits in with our community. We are a very tight-knit group without the cliques and sub-groups that city I lived in before had. We work hard to make sure that we are one group rather than just a scattering of players who happen to live in the same general area.

It's worked well for us. Sure, we've had our share of "disappearing noob" syndrome, but I'd say we have over 90% success rate with our citizens. I can think of only about 3 houses in our rank 4 city that aren't owned by active (or in some cases semi-active as they have characters they play on two servers) citizens. Of the people we've lost, most are due to RL issues that can't be helped.

All of our citizens are encouraged to help "recruit", but our recruiting tactics aren't starport spamming. We walk around with helper tags on, role-play wherever we have the opportunity, and just generally try to be helpful to anyone we encounter. When someone expresses interest (and in general they ask us, we don't ask them), the city secretary sends them an informational letter about the city. The potential member has to put forth the effort to meet the "key" members of the city. We sponsor weekly socials which makes this process easier, but it is ultimately the responsibility of the potential citizen to meet the people of the city and learn what we are about through social interaction.

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Chaga Reegan
Mayor of Red Valley
Tatooine
FarStar
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I am a new mayor of a new city, and recently we elected a council. We have a recruitment officer on that council that is responsible primarily for recruitment. However we're not out begging for people. Mostly just striking conversations etc. However, even though we have a recruitment officer, i do feel that it is the responsibility of all citizens to help the city grow.

We are a level four city and I'm hoping we can advance to level 5, though we are in no hurry. I have had a town meeting and discussed recruitment and advancement. Also, our guild leader appointed a four member council who will be responsible for recruiting, events, and keeping the peace between guild members. The council will rotate every 3 months. I think this idea will work well, having a small focused group who does the recruiting etc, and having them change frequently enough so they don't burn out.

Minnie/Kettemoor/Crimson Flats

Khristen and Rowgue - great posts! I really liked both your thoughts on recruiting. I recently had to take over mayorship of a city on Kauri that has shrunk from 84 to 61 citizens over the recent rash of players jumping ship to other games. It's been hard lately to find people who still NEEDa place to live, but we are trying.

My only other suggestion comes from my other server - Tarquinas. On Tarq i live in a really great city that is very planned and organized. Houses laid out logically in "streets" with all matching architecture. But i think what keeps it a booming metropolis is the large number of crafters there that have merchant tents. If people come to your city to shop and then see it is vibrant and beautiful they will naturally inquire about living there and very little "recruiting" becomes necessary. What's that saying about it taking a village to raise a child? I think it takes a village to recruit a city as well!

Everyone a city is a COMMUNITY not thrown on the Mayor :-/

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