Politician Archive
Thread: This Week in Politics 1/19/04
I'd like to introduce a new weekly feature, "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.
I'll start... 
Lastweek was not a big one for city growth or new politician skills, and was marred a bit for me by the XP-loss bug. A couple of weeks ago I'd hit Master Politician, and before the election last week I decided to sell-back the Master skill until they implement some abilities into that box, and I also wanted to use some of my excess politician XP to do some testing. I wanted to have some first hand experience with the effect of giving up politician skills and how that impacts the related facilities or specializations since this is one of the most-asked questions on this forum, and since I'm working on updating the FAQ with good live-version information. So, before the election I gave up a few skills, and planned to buy them back with the XP from the next election.
So, I did finally get some first hand experience, but in this case, it was with the XP-loss bug. I didn't receive the 9600xp that I was due to get on the election. And just to show that correspondents get no preferential treatment from CSRs, the response I got was that their logs show that I did receive the XP, so I can not be reimbursed. I sent in my own bug report on it, and hopefully I'll be able to buy back my skills this week.
Our city is very nearly complete. We had a designed city plan, which made the first few weeks very busy, with the need to move houses in close to city hall prior to the elections, and then move them out into more permanent locations once the city radius expanded. But now things are quite slow. The last gardens and some merchant huts still need placement, but we've been delayed by what I think is an architect bug that mistakenly creates the wrong kind of garden deed. We've been getting "arrangements" instead of "pathways" and are still working on the final decoration of the city due to that bug.
There is always some business with placement of NPC trainers. In our city, I've required that each NPC trainer be sponsored by one individual citizen, and that the sponsoring citizen pay all the maintenance for that NPC trainer for as long as he wants to use it. If someone wants to stop paying for a trainer and there is no one who wants to take it over, I remove it. Just a good way to keep the city budget in line without having to set taxes any higher.
So, what's going on in your week in politics?
we are prepping for a friendly transfer of power in 2 weeks, prepping, but not sure it will happen as we cant get enough of the 110 citizens to vote to get the new person in... :/ such is life otherwise city is up to 16 gardens, 1 endor, 1 dantooine, 2 larges, 5 meduims and 7 smalls. probably will be adding another 2 meduims and maybe 4 or 5 more smalls, cant fit any more larges, for those breezing by we are located 1k due north of wayfar and 700m NE of jabba's.
Vicimus Naboo (Wanderhome) is a thriving metropolis of 104 citizens and usually increasing 1 or 2 citizens a week now. We are comprised of 3 guilds (VVV, KEG, BSO) and some unguilded players. Members of our city hang out together, go on hunts together, help each other (we have quite a few hologrinders) and all and all be good to each other. We have all of the civic structures in place and all except the theater see regular use. There is always someone home when the 200+ visitors a day come to see us. Our shuttle is taking a beating from all the use.
On Sunday January 18, 2004, I reached Master Politician with little fanfare as would be expected because my becoming master added nothing to the city 
We have many vendors for many different types of merchants in the city, which allows us to be more or less self sufficient. Please come and visit. You may enjoy it so much you'll want to stay...
Hey esteemed Colleagues.
Avian City this week got its first medium garden. I'm currently working on assessing what lots are used and aren't, in order to make sure there's no available house slots unaccounted for. Once we're clear, we'll have to redesign a city block in order to have our first large garden. On a related topic, we now have a full complement of 12 trainers.
When this is done, Avian City will start opening its gates and will accept people from outside the PA who would want to live there. Our purpose is not to live in ivory towers, but starting solo was needed to make things manageable. Expect a new Avian City forum and website soon.
We have all the buildings setup now, hospital, cloning, shuttleport, and cantina. Maybe we'll have a theater too in the future but its usefulness still has to be demonstrated.
Sales have been good, and the sales tax is enough to maintain the city, and then some. I'm going slowly toward Master Politician, but there's no real hurry now that we have all the accomodations.
Our city got off to a rocky start having to wait until December to get founded becasue of the Cap situation on Tatooine. We have quickly grown to a township though and have been busy creating a pleasent relaxed atmosphere. Our Cantina, The Dew Drop Inn, is a frequent hangout for citizens and visitors. Just down the street is the cloning center which I see far too often.. (blast those Imperial thugs!) and the Hospital. There are a couple of banks and some statues and fountains.
On day we will have trainers and gardens but it is slow for a small township. We don't have a shuttle port but we are less than 3k from 3 major cities (which makes the cloning center a nice benefit in some nearby hot spots)
All in all we must be doing something right I get frequent tells and emails from people who have come through our city and feel motivated to tell me they enjoyed their visit. That is a very nice feeling.
Just another week. Nothing new to place, I want to do an exotic garden but trying to get the resources for it right now. Next update I hit master. At the momen I plan on dropping almost all my skills. I want my points back for other things, and since there is no reason to keep them, I don't plan to.
City is hovering in population. We lose 2-3 people to week who are quitting the game, and we get 2-3 new people.
Incredibly bored with politician right now.
Hmm...an odd week
i hit master politician this week and got....nothing.
Mos Elsewhere dropped to 104 citizens but the people who left the city (all four of em ) still had houses there, when i spoke to one of them he said he was using someone elses lots so he could plant more harvesters, i think what upset me most was the fact that he didnt even bother talking to me about it , didnt give me the opportunity to screen the new citizen and didnt even get the new citizen to declare ...in short despite all my hard work on creating this Metropolis he didnt give me a second thought...very disheartening especially when the jobs pretty thankless anyway and half the stuff doesnt work.....oh well moan over for now but my retirement to a naboo'an city on TC is definitly coming closer i think.
Having reached Master Politician last week this update came and went with no fanfare. My opponent in the mayoral race dropped out of the race for the coming week after he recieved the 200xp for the 2 votes he recieved. The victory on my part was a tad lopsided at 153 to 2.
Friday night saw a flurry of activity for me as I was recalled from Tatooine back to Nabubu City to help 6 new residents get settled in. All in all it took two hours of walking them through the placement process and getting it just right. Nabubu City's population is hovering right at around 158 and I hope to break the 160 mark soon. For a few minutes we were at 159 and were sure to break 160 when I had two citizens decide to leave to live nearer their PA Hall. No problem. These things happen.
Ispent the remainder of Friday evening re-entering all the group and comment info into my Friends List as those mysteriously disappeared. This task took me 2 hours Friday and another 2-3 hours spread over the weekend to get all the info I need about the citizens of Nabubu and my outside conatacts entered. My friends list has now reached 227 all sorted by city , player association, and profession. If I lose the info again a CSR will get an earful.
Nabubu City is the largest Player City on Wanderhome and has the most "city-like" layout with named streets and addresses. If you want to see what a large metropolis, well thought out, and meticulously arranged looks like come to Wanderhome and check out Nabubu City on Naboo. the "no-wait" shuttle from Theed gets you there immediately.
Jaxian Bay's growth has stabalized at less than a hundred currently. Everyone seems to be happy with the way things are, and I know I will not be able to handle a larger population without some more tools from the Devs. So I am not actively recruiting. I figure in a couple months when we *might* see some changes, I'll buy back some of my skills (as I'm gonna drop many of the wasted points we use now) and get a little more active. I've tried hard to avoid the urban blight style of layout. I wanted lots of open avenues, and scenic views. We're on a pennisula north of Theed, and have water on 3 sides, so lots of great spots. I expect the layout to remain mostly the same, but with the infux of non-Guild members, it cannot be considered a Guild City any longer, so I expect lots of changes in the near future. I spend my time working on a possible new Guild, and putting together a "cultural center" for the city consisting of a museum, library, newspaper.
Our citizens all agree that it isn't worth me killing myself fighting against the lack of tools granted to us. They have been suprisingly content with the way things are. I hope to see some changes this week.
At around 100 citizens, Valshara on Naboo (in Valcyn Galaxy) is the largest Imperial city on the big three planets. A guild that lived with us fell apart but another moved in. We eagerly await Industrial Society, but still enjoy Research Center status for the time being. Our city maintenance is around 500k and rising.
We may be offering statues to be named after people for a large cash donation to the treasury (in the high millions). Frankly, property taxes and income taxes and shuttle fees just don't cut it, and we're not willing to jack up sales tax, because that will lose us merchants big time. It remains and will always remain at one percent. We're living off generous donations from rich folk like me.
Our big thing is the open air swap meet this coming sunda the 25th. All factions are invited (covert rebels only, no troublemakers of course). That ought to brign a ton of business to the city and some new residents as well. We have ten tents around the shuttle area and plan on adding more. Of course, the area right in front of the shuttle is reserved for a medium garden (so nobody gets that preferential treatment of having the first shop you see).
Other than that, the life of the Mayor is basically me runnning back and forth from the city hall and the structure factory. Sigh.
- Pash Aylor, Valshara
Aureus on Starsider is growing at a slow but steady pace. We reached city level about 2 weeks ago. What ticks me off is that my city is delayed in updating each week. We planted the city on a Thurs and as of last week our update day was Sunday. *knock on wood* I haven't had any exp lost yet but I just want my city to update at the same time every week. We are at about 58 citizens right now. Looking to redo the area behind our cantina to set up a merchant tent square so people odn't have to run to the edges of town. Also looking into moving our industrial section to the other side of the river now that we have expanded our city limts. I think that's all I have to report right now.
Howdy
The citizens of Villa Sura came up with an idea in sponsoring a city event for the galaxy. We are in the process of coming up with unique ideas (other then the standard firework show, food ect..)that will make it fun for all those who come by. Some ideas so far are: A "Live" auction, fishing tourney, player events with credits and prizes.
A new structure I implemented in the cityis the "Millionaires Club" which is a private PA HALL that I placed next to the Shuttle port. The club has a 125K membership due to join and members recieve many perks from each other. Im a Master Arch so Im making only elite furniture and creative decorations like slot machines and soon a Pool Table thanks to Psychotic Chipmunk who shared how to make one. The Club will also sponsor many events for the city. Also, 25K from each members one-time dues is going into an investment slush fund to see if we can grow the credits.. Also, we get to sit on the Porch and heckle all the poor folks as they mosey on by...LOL...we may even sponsor a food kitchen one day for them...LOL
Ba'aar (On Talus, Bloodfin) has seen a lot of changes in the past week. Our Rebel brethren of Q continue to slowly move in after relocating their PA Hall on the banks of the west river. (Two rivers AND an ocean beach! What a great place to live!) We've hit Metropolis as ofearly this morning,although I came up short 800 points to get master politician.
We're still holding back on placing gardens, as the bugs about them and re-deeding scare the Bajeezus out of me! I'm pretty good at placement, but I want to have things just so for the enjoyment of our citizens, and so re-deeding gardens with that bug still around is a deal breaker for me.
Even at close to 500,000 credits per week in maintenance, Ba'aar continues to be a thriving shopping community and the low 5% sales tax covers it well.