Politician Archive

Problem #1 - Each player is restricted to 10 lots - though many have developed workarounds to deal with this game mechanic. These workarounds are "un-fun" for most involved, as only the true owner of a lot can move a building. Harvesters (which are clearly the reason why people try to gain control of 20+ lots) obviously have to move all the time. The owner must therefore run out to the middle of nowhere, pick up his harvester, run toa different middle of nowhere and drop, at least once a week. While the reason for the game mechanic is obviously to prevent structure bloat, all it really does is empower big PA resource operations.

Problem #2 - Politicians have no value to the player base APART from being mayor of acity. The devs presumably do not forsee thousands of functional player cities. With no saleable service or product, presumably a politician character is supposed to draw a salary from the city treasury as their primary support mechanism. However, unless the devs envision thousands of big cities, this means the amount of actual mayors able to support themselves through their Politician skills will be very, very small. This effect is mostly due to the huge support costs of a city. I see most mayors as putting money INTO smaller cities (monies raised through their other professions), not being able to extract a salary.

Problem #3 - As the incumbant of a large city stands very little chance of being replaced apart from month long campaigns, there isn't ANY method for a non-mayor politician to support themselves. While incumbancy is a realistic advantage, it isn't realistic for the non-incumbants to be able to do nothing with their political skills in the interim.

Solution - Politicians (even those non-incumbants) represent figures of influence within society, particularly in the invisible bureaucracy of government. Would it not make sense than that a politician could influence the ephemeral powers-that-be in regard to land usage? This influence can be demonstrated through lots.

For instance:

Novice Politician - able to transfer lots from one player to another

Civics I - able to license up to 10 lots to other players (in total, not 10 to each player)

Civics II - able to license up to 20 lots to other players

Civics III - able to license up to 50 lots to other players

Civics IV - able to license up to 75 lots to other players,

Master Politician - able to license up to 100 lots to other players

This would give all Politicians a limited support mechanism - license fees. It would allow larger harvesting operations to operate more efficiently by transferring the work from those not interested in the resource operation (lot "landlords") to those who are running the operation. The harvesters still have to be moved, just not by the "landlord". Since politicians have a built-in gate to XP, there's not much danger of hundreds of Master Politicians granting thousands of lots.