Politician Archive
Thread: This week in politics 3/1/04
This is weeksevenof "This Week in Politics."
I'll make a new thread each Monday for use throughout the week for youto let me and the rest of the Politician community hear how things are going in your city, events planned, tips you might have learnedlike ways ofusing specializations efficiently, new facilities being placed, any interesting dynamics like mergers with new partners to grow your cities or issues of disagreement between your citizens, anything having to do with your politician skills, new skills, skills sold back, newissues, frustrating bugs, or just a quick status report. It will be easy for me to keep up with a digest version ofthe goings-on of the community this way, and perhaps a way for you all to get to know each other as players dedicated to the concept of building communities in the Star Wars universe.
This week our city recovered from its recent downward population trend and grew back to upwards of 95 citizens. We had been flirting with losing Metropolis status the previous week, going as low at one point as 82 citizens, I believe. From sending out an in-gamemail to all citizens, to contacting the leaders of the PAs that make up our city to make sure they had all of their members moved in and declared, to going directly to PA members who I saw were not listed on the citizen list, we made every effort to build our numbers back to a safe level without going out and begging for citizens in Coronet city. We discussed attempting to bring in another entire PA, one which would be a good fit with the three that already call our city home, but in the short term needed to avert our city status loss, it was deemed too difficult to identify and negotiate with another whole PA.
The worst consequence of losing metropolis status would have been the reduction in city size from 450m to 400m, as many citizens have moved their houses out into that outer range and we would have lost many more citizens or would have had to convince them to move again had we lost that area. Luckily all of that was avoided, and hopefully, we can maintain a stable population at approximately 100.
I've reduced my own Politician skills to 0,1, 2, 4: enough to manage the militia, place skill trainers, and place all city decoration types. My TC mayor should be able to fill in for the gap in my ability to test the higher level skills, as he continues to gain politician XP and skills.
I had a report that the city hall had shifted by some 50m early in the week. When I logged back in the next day, I expected to see a large number of "citizen lost" messages, as the city borders moved and left some houses outside city limits. I'm still not sure if the city really didn't shift, or if our layout was just so lucky that there were no houses in the border that moved 50m, but eventually it came out that no citizens were lost, and there was no effect from the movement of the city hall, if it had actually moved at all or if it was just some kind of glitch with drawing the hall in the right place on one player's client, or what it was.
My one small frustration of the week as mayor came as I tried to organize a meeting of the city council. Our city is run by the cooperation of three PAs, each of which has a member on the city council. After the population scare earlier, I wanted to discuss the direction of things, make sure everyone was happy with how things were going, see how they felt about the tax policy we had recently begun. But getting together with just two other players for an in-game meeting proved to be more than we could manange. We continue to do most of our business by game mail, so thank the Force for that feature. Although I often meet one-on-one with the other two council members, it would be nice to get the three of us in a room together more often. With so much of this profession's gameplay being social, playing politics with two other PAs and their representatives adds a lot of interesting dynamics to my job as mayor.
What has your city done to grow or stablize population as ineveitable some citizens leave the city orleave the game? Directly recruit individual players? Rely on high traffic in your city to attract new citizens? Bring in new PA partners? Recruit for your PA and depend on that to fill your citizenship needs?
Rauha, Naboo (2323, 4655)
Starsider
City population seems to be growing. We had 3 more people join us for a general total of about 65 active citizens.
City party preparations are going well. We now have our nightclub (Club Supern0va) set up and ready for people. Our city party scheduled for March 7th is going well (we are having a city+friends mixer party on Saturday just for social stuff). The big server-invited party is Sunday.
Starsider Player Events, Rauha City Party
We hope the shoutcast can give us a little better music than in-game musicians. Not knocking musicians, but ya gotta admit song variety is lacking somewhat. Also, trying for a high-tech club feel with cantina-band-style music is hard.
We are also looking to revamp our city councila little due to some vacancies.
Also, the Rauha Public Library (and Chess Tournament Hall) will be open by Saturday. I'll post pictures as soon as it's ready.
Bajeezus wrote:
What has your city done to grow or stablize population as ineveitable some citizens leave the city orleave the game? Directly recruit individual players? Rely on high traffic in your city to attract new citizens? Bring in new PA partners? Recruit for your PA and depend on that to fill your citizenship needs?
We are lucky in the fact that Safe Haven was a strong PA before the city patch hit. We have just over 100 members and our citizen count has always hovered in the 90's since we first hit rank 5 with just ourselves.
I am surprised that you decided to drop Master Politician. I have been considering it myself more and more recently, I think the only thing holding me back really is the App points it would take for me to master it again. That and there is just something cool about being a Master Politician. If I were to drop it I would probley stay at 4200 so we could keep Research Center and be able to manage the militia and clone center if needed.
Would be great if they brought back those 2in1 Master level specializations so I would actually have a reason to keep master besides being attached to the title it gives me.
Laeren wrote:
I usually inquire of guilded people, too, and see if their PA has found a place to settle yet, but I'm pretty sure most PAs do. We did manage to invite 2 who were looking for a new place to live, last month, so I haven't given up on asking.
I'm currently struggling to keep our shuttleport. We are losing lots of citizenswho went to other small cities, or just stopped playing and are going to get removed soon. I got elected last week as a mayor, the financial situation of my city is great, we havea mall that bring enough money with the sale taxes and the shuttleport fee to pay for the maintenance of the city. So I decreased taxes, posted on the forums that we are looking for new citizens etc. But it doesn't seem to be helping, and I'm not so sure what more I can do really.
There are a few PAs in the city, just some break up and we lose half the people who are starting another city somewhere else... With the new city caps it's pretty hard to keep citizens because it's just so easy for everyone to go start their own city instead of just staying in one and make it grow.
Message Edited by Songe on 03-01-2004 12:09 PM
Bajeezus wrote:
Laeren wrote:
I usually inquire of guilded people, too, and see if their PA has found a place to settle yet, but I'm pretty sure most PAs do. We did manage to invite 2 who were looking for a new place to live, last month, so I haven't given up on asking.
One facet of SWG politics that has surprised me very much is the degree to which small groups and individual PAs seem to desire to go it alone out there in the galaxy...
Bajeezus wrote:
I had a report that the city hall had shifted by some 50m early in the week. When I logged back in the next day, I expected to see a large number of "citizen lost" messages, as the city borders moved and left some houses outside city limits. I'm still not sure if the city really didn't shift, or if our layout was just so lucky that there were no houses in the border that moved 50m, but eventually it came out that no citizens were lost, and there was no effect from the movement of the city hall, if it had actually moved at all or if it was just some kind of glitch with drawing the hall in the right place on one player's client, or what it was.
What has your city done to grow or stablize population as ineveitable some citizens leave the city orleave the game? Directly recruit individual players? Rely on high traffic in your city to attract new citizens? Bring in new PA partners? Recruit for your PA and depend on that to fill your citizenship needs?
The city shift bug is still in full force, it just resets each time the server is rebooted. So if you have a fairly active day of placing/removing structures, you will shift a good bit until reboot time resets it.
To stabalize our population, I have found it is better to stay away from reliance on PAs. At least the ones we have had in our city tend to have much higher turnover than independant citizens. We do accept new PAs of course, but we don't recruit them. We typically recruit only a few people individually - mostly friends and business partners, but mostly it is the high traffic in the city and our reputation that ends up doing most of the recruiting for us. We have always had astrong focus on attracting visitors and end up with many, manytransient 'residents' who basically operate in the city and live there without actually having a declared residence there. Many people are commited to having a declared residence in thierPA's city, but it is more convenient and profitable for them to work out of Brenn so we let them setup a shop or a residence here. Others use all their lots for harvesters and factories while selling out of someone else's shop and doing practically all their business in the city. Others just don't want to maintain a house but do a lot of businessor shopping in the city. All of that is something that we encourage. Eventually, a lot of these people end up in a position where they have extra lots or their old city dissolves or whatever... the natural step is for them to setup a residence in the city they already basically live in. This is really how our population has "stabalized" in that a lot of the people that loose citizenship actually still practically live in the city, while other non-declared residents occassionally join the city. We have close to 140 citizens at this time, but probably that many more that pretty much call Brenn home for all practical purposes.
Well, I'm at a bit of loose ends trying to figure out how to get -un elected- lol.
There is no resign, and we did try to arrange for a easy transition of power.
- I do give the Devs Credit when they Do things Right...
Bajeezus wrote:
One facet of SWG politics that has surprised me very much is the degree to which small groups and individual PAs seem to desire to go it alone out there in the galaxy, preferring the control and manageability of running their own cities and having to put up with - and continually complain about - the city caps rather than merge with larger cities who have already made metropolis.
This suprises me as well. When vodo had one of its founding guilds move out I had to start a large recruitment effort. I was able to bring in persone who was starting a guild that brought in about 1 dozen residents. Then later that week I was hangin out in my cantina and came across an resident of another city who was looking for a more active city. I also came across another mayor who didn't want to use the skill points; however they did not want to move to Dantooine.
The average city size in the poll I did back in January was something around 65, as I recall, less than the requirement for a metropolis, and yet if that really is the average, that means there are a lot of cities out there that would qualify as a level-4 city that are settling for being level-3 cities due to the cap. The largest city in the poll was something like 165, and I am surprised that there were not more 150-175 population cities, perhaps made up from two or three smaller cities that each missed out on making the cap.
Im suprised at this also. I only know of 2 cities of that size on Eclipse that will survive the new 6 week rule. I wish i could get a city that size. Hell I have flirted with the 85 mark before. I guess i got to try to recruit another guild.
Clearly, one remedy to the problem that many sub-level-4 cities have available to them for thier city cap problems would be to dissolve their own city and merge with an existing level 4 city, which would allow them to grow to level five. I am always surprised that a capped level 3 city would choose to go on for the foreseeable future with no shuttleport, no opportunity for city status growth rather than make a merger.
The problem with this is moving and motivating your citizen base to move. Its to difficult to move a guild with all the stuff they have in their guild halls and storage houses. Pluss if they have a large mall with hundreds of stuff on thier vendors. If there were some easy way to move *cough* Binary Load Lifter *cough* it could be easier.
I know for my PA, the decision to partner with another PA, and eventually a third was one with much debate, and not a decision easily reached. There was great sentiment to see how well we could do on our own, without partners, and some degree of fear surrounding the potential loss of control over the city. I suppose the same kind of things go on in every PA, and that accounts for much of this, but when faced with the choice of being capped versus having to merge, I am surprised not to read more accounts of city mergers.
I give every guild 2 members on the city council, plus 2 members at large for unguilded residents and other residents in more active guilds. The problem is I can't give them any extra power or anything. Most guilds like to hold on to thier own power it gives them claim to thier own plot of land. I have never heard any accounts of cities meging, I would love to walk into any player city and see the streets teaming with life.
Many of my residents did participate in this weekend scavenger hunt. I'll give SOE credit, it was a good game. I need to figure out a way to inspire some city Nationalim in some way which would hopefuly increase participation future events.
Good work Bajeezus cya around
The daily struggles with trying to convince other players to move off of the more populated planets to a backwater like Talus continues, but as the city enters another update period we find that we have dropped slightly from a week high of 60 back to 57 (with 2 more new residents moving in shortly).
We do seem to be able to enroll new citizens to replace those who have left (for various reasons, the predominant one being they are leaving the game completely) so all is not lost. We do find it very hard to convince other PA's to move in (they all want their own cities and don't wish to share - even with other PAs of the same faction), and more often than not, most want us to move to them.....like there is any point in moving a Tier 4 city with 57 residents and all the amenities to a Tier 2 city with 20 residents and a couple of structures!!
One thing that does happen on an almost weekly basis is that we are approached by cities on other servers to share residents. Whilst it is enticing, we can see that it would cause more problems longterm than it would solve short-term.
In looking at the bouncing of our numbers, and the high chance that a drop in level will suddenly move a quarter of our residents outside of the city boundary, the city eldershave decided that the Shuttleport, whilst a nice "to have" structure, is not really all that vital. With Dearic being only 4 minutes away by bike (and Nashal even closer again),a to drop to Tier 3 is not the city killer we had all feared. The general concensus is that with shuttle wait times the way they are, a Garage will be of much more use to the residents than the shuttle currently is.
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