Politician Archive

I have a city close to 70 residents. I get maybe 1 email a day and place a house 2 or 3 times a week. What else is there to do? I hear poeple saying that it takes 70% of their gameplay. I'm just wondering what they are doing?

ps.I got tierd of changing out trainers soi worked out a deal with another city to cover the trainersI don't have. This works out nice and it saves the city cash. I will place a trainer but only for a fee now.

Here is what people do

1. Try and recruit citizens. Talk to people who are in town using vendors using the shuttleport....

2. Talk to neighboring towns or groups of people. Conflict resolution. So and so from your town spammed messages in my town.

3. Zoning rights, adding to militia, getting donations and depositing them....

4. Special requests for decorations. Decorating a square for a PA with gardens, statues, fountains....

5. Plan city events to get people to come to town.

6. Mostly dealing with people who just want to chat about the town. Either be it trainers, the layout, other politicians asking for help, other mayors asking questions.

For me the time has gone down a bit, but it used to be 30-40% of my gameplay.

I can only speak for myself on those questions, but the short answer is that I am being the Mayor. I have a township on Talus of about 50 citizens.

An example of a typical day would be logging in around 5:00pm and going through the 30 or so emails and juggle the 4 or 5 different /tells I get as I log in. The emails and tells are a mixed bag of questions about the city ('when are you going to put in a starport' being a favorite, with the macro'd answer of 'when you find me another 5 citizens so we qualify for one'), about my tailor business, and guild communiques. That usually is cleaned up in about an hour or so, with a steady stream of additional communications once every 10 minutes or so. If I have not already I check in with the architect and get the status on whatever project I have hired her to work on that week.Usually bythen I collect my email messages from residents with new resource waypoints and send out a citizens email with the latest waypoints. Also, I try to send out a general email to the citizens regarding whateverthe issues of the day are.As I am doing this I am usually performing harvester runs as my water sales heavily subsidize the city taxes. At some point during the day I try to swing through Dearic or Nashal (and a random Corellian city, time permitting) to look for potential residents. Finding a potential resident can be time consuming, particularly on Talus. About once a day someone needs zoning rights for a factory and I have to haul myself back to town if the militia are not in the area. Usually once a day there is a request for assistance from a neighboring town about an Imperial attack on their bases and I have to coordinate a response and aguard or twoto remain behind at our own base. I also get tells about what who to talk to about services (i.e. 'where can I buy furniture?' 'Are there any doctors on line, I'm banged up' etc.), and what I like to refer to as General SWG Trivia Games (getting a tell that says 'What kind of damage does a tower turret do, how is it different from a dish turret, and why do we have one of each?' being an example). The above usually keeps me busy until about 10pm when I log off.

So being Politician is, for a lot of folks, about a lot more than just placing a structure or granting rights from time to time. For many of us Mayor is not just an informal title of the profession, it is who we actually function as. We're the hub of the community, in service to our residents.

- Acroyear

I created a vehicle bussiness on my Mayor account and use my original account strickly for PVP.

Mos Mesric , Tatooine has about 68 Citizens now. I spend a lot of time in town but I also just took over as Mayor a few weeks ago so there is a lot on my plate at the moment. I recently renovated City Hall and added a lot of decorations to the city (Everyone seems to love that). I just planned out 3 events for the upcoming weeks and fixed a month and half long shuttle port problem (although I still want to know why I had to move the shuttle port around to get it to work). I would say I spend about 50% of game time doing Mayor duties and the rest doing other stuff not related to the city. I enjoy it but I guess I am a rare bird, from what I gather reading a lot of these posts, there are a bunch of people around who can't stand the position.

When our city first started all I did way mayoral duties for about 3 weeks strait. Now the time has backed off and so have requsets and everything. Of course, I have others who handle the smaller matters for me, and I tackle the biggests conflicts. I just delegate and it allows me time to do what I want. Also I usually crate a chat channel for me to communicate with those people.

Recruiting, planning and meeting take up the majority of my time. We have an extensive marketplace and one of the few, if not only, major neutral marketplaces on all of Lok on Eclipse (City of Utopia). This means a LOT of time working deals, taking vendor applications, negotiating prices etc. Marketplaces are a big job if they are a big market.

Aside from recruiting and settling new citizens, decorating, recruiters etc. Most of my most enjoyable politician time is spent handling the communication between the citizens and looking for ways to keep citizens interested in being in the city and/or getting visitors to come to the city. Trying to createa senseof community and citypride isfull time job. If only there were city chat, my job would be easier.

Hmmm City Chat. What a spectacular idea.

Dealing with people can be time intensive, especially if you act as go between for two conflicting parties who disagree on what color the city hall toilet paint should be.

HiroBlack

You are busy, but the only thing that pertains to being a mayor were some emails and looking for you next 5 residents.

All the other task pertain to duties a crafter, guild leader or officer in a guild would have to do.

I'm not asking to to take anything away from being a mayor, just wondering if i'm missing anything that would heighten my experience as being a mayor.

wrote

Recruiting, planning and meeting take up the majority of my time. We have an extensive marketplace and one of the few, if not only, major neutral marketplaces on all of Lok on Eclipse (City of Utopia). This means a LOT of time working deals, taking vendor applications, negotiating prices etc. Marketplaces are a big job if they are a big market.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I like this, I can see where this could add some time to my duties. Great Post!!!

You are busy, but the only thing that pertains to being a mayor were some emails and looking for you next 5 residents.

All the other task pertain to duties a crafter, guild leader or officer in a guild would have to do.

I'm not asking to to take anything away from being a mayor, just wondering if i'm missing anything that would heighten my experience as being a mayor.

---

Gribble put it better than I did in the post above.

Yes, a guild leader and a crafter (both of which I am in addition to mayor) could do much of these things. These items on my plate do not come exclusively from my guild members though. The whole town comes to the mayor for their concerns and needs, as well as advice and questions. As the mayor I have committed to using all the means available to me to help the citizens, and thereby the city as a whole, succeed.

Are these items hard functions of the Politician class, like Headshot3 is a hard function of Rifleman? No. None the less, the great majority of these matters would not be brought to me if I did not hold the mayor's office.

As far as heightening your experience as mayor there are a lot of things one could do that has nothing to do with your Politician skill tree. I'm not sure how much of this you will find interesting or appropriate given your apparent position on what constitutes a mayor's role, but here are a few suggestions:

Organize events to bring business to your town. Enlist new players and help them get their start in the galaxy, and help them get to know and network among the residents. Negotiate trades of goods and services with other towns on your planet or others. Start a war with player cities of opposing factions. Set goals for your residents (i.e. setting up a factional base nearby) and guide them through the steps required to achieve that goal. Hire newbie artisans to locate resource waypoints. Assign patrolsfor militia members to clear out aggro MOB spawns in your radius. Assess the product needs of the citizens (ex. your town has no Weaponsmith) and try to locate one to join you, or find a newbie who wants to fill that role and give them a leg up. Find diplomatic solutions to problems.

Above all, lead. As mayor you set the tone for all interactions in the city. When people look to you for direction or answers, do your best to provide those things without over commiting yourself or your city.

If none of that grabs you, well, I do not know what to say, other than perhaps you should consider either waiting for developers to implement changes in the next 3 to 4 months, or enlist a suitable replacement. In the end Politician is either a series of functions granted throughits correspondingskills (which I agree could use some meat added), or what you make of it.

- Acroyear