Politician Archive

Baj had posted about this in another thread that has since been buried, and since the title didn't deal with the idea I thought the discussion might get lost, but was worth talking about. He said:

"Thanks a lot, Shaedar, nice post.

I think the list you have here is something that most politicians would agree with, and from what I see, most concerns fall somewhere in this list.

I think somewhere along with your future considerations we have to look at ways of making the politician skills attractive enough to get and hold onto after the placement abilities they grant have been used, ongoing gameplay for the politician, as well as some way for non-mayor politicians to play the game. Your council idea is a good one, we would just need to fill out what the gameplay of a "councilman" would be.

Here's something to play around with, I have my own idea here, but to generate some discussion I'll hold back until you all have a chance to chime in: "Diplomat". Discuss."

The original thread was here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=20392

So I don't have to type out my response again, I'll just do the old cut and paste . . .

"If Diplomat were to work, the entire Politician skill tree would need to be revisited. After all, what good is it to a non-Mayor to have the ability to place a small garden? The argument could be made that the future mayor would need those skills to be competative, but if the city is done, what good does it do them? Honestly, nothing more than it does for us.

Just from the term, I would see Diplomats as advisors and ambassadors within and between cities. It's still more of an RP job than anything, but what if there was actually a bonus to having them around? What if, say, the more Diplomats lived within your city, the more effective your city was?

Think of it this way:

1.) Scrap the Politician tree. It sucks. It's an XP hog and at least 1/3 of the boxes are useless to every one of us, because when and if we pick a specialization, we ignore the other ones. If you get stuck under the cap, you can't do half of the other things in the boxes on top of that.

2.) Move ALL percentage specializations to Master Politician. They are really only feasable for level 4 and 5 cities due to their cost anyways.

3.) Fill the other boxes with something useful, rather like the creature handler tree. If you get Military II, for example, you get "+2 to Militia Defense, -100 to Cloning Center Maintenance". In the decorations tree, put all the decorations in the first box (we can't use them unless the city grows anyways) and Make say, Decorating III "-100 for Small Gardens and Fountains Maintenance, +2 to Entertainer Healing".

4.) Here's the fun part: make those bonuses cumulative according to how many Politicians/Diplomats you have living in town. So if you have 3 Polis/Dips living in a town and all three of them have Military II, the town saves 300 a week on Cloning Center maintenance and gains +6 to militia defense (note, if say Military III gave you +3 to Militia defense, one Politician would not contribute 5 defense points, just the higher number).

This would encourage people to take the politician tree, give them a reason to keep it, give Mayors a reason to let other Politicians into town and thereby making elections more exciting (kick them out??? But they give us so many bonuses!), etc. Make winning an election still the best way to gain experience, but make other options as well. One thing that we mention often is we've got nothing to do between elections. Why not gain some XP for visiting other player cities? Not a huge amount, and only usable once every 24 hours to the same city, and thus fufilling the "Diplomat" idea. Or allow the Militia bonus to carry over to groups of hunting citizens from the resident if the Politician/Diplomat is in the group, thus encouraging them to participate in hunting parties? They could even gain a small Politician XP amount for every successful kill. Diplomacy missions could also be a way for us to make money, of course.

Just some thoughts."

So anyways, Baj had gotten me thinking, and I'm curious as to what others have to say about this.

~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
(Still looking for a good quote to replace my Charlie one)

Thanks Baj . . . I'm taking a bit of a break from the game, so I'll try to develop what I already did there into something more cohesive for discussion, along with everyone else.

~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
(Still looking for a good quote to replace my Charlie one)

I'm curious as well. The reason I chose to use the term, "diplomat", was that I envision getting the mayor or non-mayor politicians out of the city where they already spend all of their time, out to the other player cities to actually play politics with other politician players. I'm going to put together some conclusions based on the little poll I set up yesterday, but in general, I think it is safe to say that several of those conclusions are going to be contrary to what I would have thought, and contrary to what I think the general wisdom is.

I was thinking of starting a little thought activity for all of us: wipe the slate clean and lay out your own politician skill tree, along with a description of what the gameplay for a politician with your skill tree would be like.

You've already gotten it off to a nice start, I'd like to see what others would do for a completely re-imagined politician skill tree.

This is an excellent idea for the politican profession.

Continuing this thought for the diplomat I would suggest that starting at Militia II, mayors and diplomats would get a +2 NPC guard (again culmulative for each mayor, so with 1 mayor and 3 diplomats you could get +8 NPC guards). This goes along with one of my past suggestions to allow the mayor to purchase NPC guards that will patrol the city and obey the commands of the militia within the city limits. Now the mayor would have the choice of actually "purchasing" or "hiring" NPC guards (to be deducted from the city treasury) but they would max out at whatever their limit was.

NPC guards would seem useful for cities that are actually remote and have dangerous spawns within or near city limits. And eventually I'm hoping that we will be able to "war" another town. IE. the mayor can declare war on another city, and that city's mayor will need to accept the declaration of war. From that point on, members of each cities militia will be flagged as enemy while in their respective cities only. Has some great RP aspects to it. Diplomats could certainly add to the bonuses of defense and even offense down the Militia branch (defense for fighting within your city limits, offense for fighting in your enemy's).

Further,a diplomat could gain certain bonuses and abilities benefit of their city for the crafting and trade aspects as well via the Civic Policies. Say for instance to allow placement of bazaar terminals and link them with existing cities (player and NPC cities) with each city you link to adding an additional weekly maintenance cost. However; diplomats could further reduce that cost because of "trade negotations".

I hope I've been clear in what I've expressed here and I welcome discussion of advancing the politican profession so that it becomes more than an urban planner profession, becomes more encompassing and engaging,and is useful to non-mayors as well.

In order for the NPC guards to work, they'd have to have a way to attack . . . ie. reimplementing the badly needed /citywarn.

~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
"The reason I don't PvP in this game is because no matter what side I picked, I'd be guaranteed to be fighting alongside at least one idiot. And I don't defend idiots."

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BlindTyldak wrote:

In order for the NPC guards to work, they'd have to have a way to attack . . . ie. reimplementing the badly needed /citywarn.

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Sorry, thought I posted some reasoning with that one.

Yes having /citywarn back would be definetly beone method (of which I am in favour of), but as long as the NPCs respond to the commands of the militia (have them act like faction pets to some extent). Or just come to the aid of any citizen who is under attack will also work. This can work for PvE and PvP. Possibly give the mayor an option to set the aggressiveness level of the city guards via some command so that either a) the guards simply respond automatically to any citizen being attacked, or even attack pre-emptively given a valid target of the militia or any agressive or enemy flagged creature or NPC that might spawn (sort of an auto-clear for troublesome spawns in your city) or b) the militia must first order them to aid them.

I have had an old idea when I first read about the politician occupation. Why not make a monthly gathering of all the Mayors of eg. Naboo AND all the politicians living on naboo in a large planetary council meeting where a couple of pre-set things should be voted for(theese things are set by the devs.) and then depending on the outcome of the votes things could change on naboo on a planetary scale example: The devs. put in a voting for a higher Trasportation fee so we could get funds to have a major celibration in theed.. if the majority says yes the Trasportation fee for all shuttleports and spaceports are a bit higher the following month and some day during that month Theed has a developer controlled celibration day with fireworks etc. taken from the money from the increase in trasportation ticke fee. And offcourse all participants Mayors and non-Mayor politicians would get xp from it. And the besides from getting a second way of getting xp you would also get all the mayors together to speak on co-operation city to city and so on.

Well my 2 cents anyway

An Elite profession to Politician should be Senator

And a title to Civic 4 should be Diplomat

Do ya like?

Absolutely agree with the progression of the Politician skill tree. Love the diplomat and Senator idea. As I posted earlier in the week, my idea is similar and I have tried to put it into a cohesive format to be developed now INSTEAD of waiting on the DEV's to fix it for us. However, I do believe this should be temporary and the DEV's should address this issue in short order. Thanks to all for all the feedback thus far. I echo the sentiments in this thread whole heartedly.

My idea to expound on others of this thread http://alliancecity.homestead.com

Yours,

Well if we're coming up with names for it I'll throw in my 2 decicreds. Pundit. I would love to have that intead of Master Politician however since they haven't fixed the rifleman/scout title blunder I doubt that would happen so why not have that be a part of this new elite idea.

I also have an idea for how the skill tree should be set up that more or less allows this profession without wasted skills. I mean the guys in washington are all right but I doubt they know how to install a streetlamp. I'll post it in Baj's soon to be thread though so I don't waste space here.