Quote from rayNimagi

Yr 6 Bills

Quote from Proposition PIP

PASSED
"Only players who vote yes on this proposition can win."

Azrael.Wrath: YES
poison_us: FINAL NO
payne: FINAL NO
Lanthanide: FINAL YES
Raitaki: FINAL YES
TiKels: YES
FaRTy1billion: YES
OlimarandLouie: YES
6/8

There's a difference between "final yes" and "yes". Kthxbai.

"Final" is a prefix to "yes" and merely means that if 50% of the full congress vote in favour of the bill it will immediately be moved to the president to sign, that's all.

It doesn't really mean anything for a rules proposition, and you'll see that it passed as 6/8 not 4/8 as would be the case if "final yes" didn't mean "yes".

Congress has a 50% YES vote on Raitaki's Bill, so it has failed. Scores will be tallied and posted shortly.



Year 1's failed bills on this page
Congress couldn't vote in Year 1 because there was no veto. The veto on Raitaki's Bill is actually the first veto used in this game. Seeing that Raitaki's Bill has a 50% vote now. it doesn't matter.

If you interpret the law by the framer's original intent, I think he would have assumed "FINAL YES" means a vote "YES".

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 1 2012, 4:22 am by rayNimagi.

Ah, you're right! You know where the confusion came from? I actually had a large reply in which I did veto Payne's bill, it was right about here. That's why I remembered vetoing it.

Then I noticed that Payne's bill didn't need to be vetoed since it didn't receive the right number of votes, and promptly deleted the post


True, although I would like to see that changed in future games. It's really counterproductive to strategy to allow people to override vetoes automatically just by showing they might have intended to do so previously.

Maybe a compromised system would be to make it so actively vetoing requires active votes to override, but a pocket veto lets the previous votes carry over. I think that makes the most sense of anything.


If you interpret the law by the framer's original intent, I think he would have assumed "FINAL YES" means a vote "YES".[/quote]

Yeah, I wouldn't have wanted to win on a technicality like that, I just wanted to make sure none of the players who were AFK all game ended up winning.


I'd like to thank the other members of the SRP for helping one another without any backstabbing or trickery.

You know who they are because they're the ones with positive scores.

I suppose I should thank Payne too, I would have lost without your contributions to Defense.

Also, I'd like to point out that the odds of all five SRP members having randomly received different policies during the halfway point was only 1 in 945, but that's what happened. Truth be told, one of the SRP members (who can name themselves if they want to) said ahead of time "I bet Ray is just going to give us all different policies instead of using fair distribution, watch and see". It may have just been incredibly unlucky, who knows. We never knew what Farty's policy was as he went AFK before Year 5, but after seeing that the four active members had different policies (which was already a very unlikely 1 in 315 chance), we just operated on the assumption he had Education.

I figured I would mention that since it was a rather peculiar outcome, and really, the last four years would have been much more interesting had that not been the case. It was already down to just the SRP being able to win, plus one other unknown player without Technology, the other players were no longer considered a threat. A less even distribution of policies among us would have almost certainly resulted in us increasing new policies, and TiKels and Lanthanide would have almost certainly ended up higher than me.


I thought you had +2 Technology to be honest, but +4? Damn

Anyways, anyone in the SRP should consider this their victory too. It ended up being pretty close. Good game

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 1 2012, 6:11 am by Azrael.Wrath.

Bah, you got there in the end because we voted for payne's bills. Still I would have only been a close second.

Also I must say I pretty much disagree with everything Azrael said in the various posts about this game being "fine as it is" and just needing small tweaks. The game is fundamentally broken and needs to be reworked; I thought phasing of policies was how the game was supposed to work in the first place. Dishing out new policies every 2 years and banking the points would prevent boring blocs from developing as we had with the SRP.

But it's a realistic simulation of politics! Are you suggesting that real-life politics are boring?

I think the entire appeal of the game is the fact it mirrors real politics so well. It's the one thing it does do well, and it does it very well. To compromise that in the hopes of making it more dynamic seems foolish; yes, you could do that, but then it'll just be some generic crappy game that has no real appeal to set it apart from stuff like Mafia. Right now it has a certain charm in its uniqueness.

I'd certainly say the game is in its infancy, but instead of aborting it and popping out a retarded sibling to replace it, I think it would be better to nurture it and raise it into a healthy, productive adult that you'd like to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with. That analogy may have been stretched thin but you get the idea.

Future improvements and balances should expand on the unique gameplay already present. This could be done by adding new mechanics and tweaking the current mechanics as necessary. Of course, dismantling the core gameplay and just completely changing everything that was perceived as problematic would be easier, but it sure as hell wouldn't be better for the end result. Any problems present can be fixed without annihilating the fundamental elements of gameplay.

tl;dr: There isn't any issues with the current core mechanics in terms of balance or strategy, and those are the most important things. As was said, it's simply "boring". That can be easily rectified with well-planned additions that help diversify strategy, keep the players engaged, and add game content in general.

And yeah, when payne submitted +Defense and everyone was giving it to him, I was like

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 1 2012, 7:52 am by Azrael.Wrath.

I had +4 Defense. :3

If it weren't for payne and his defense...

I manually selected the SRP's new policies at that point to see what would happen.

I like how Azrael (1st place) says, "ITS GREAT" and poison_us (last place) says "ITS BROKEN." I think the game is somewhere inbetween those two extremes. Many problems can be solved if everyone was active--I wonder how the game would have been if the players consisted of Azrael, Lanthanide, payne, Raitaki, TiKels, and Farty (when he was active)? If I ever host this again (which probably won't be for several months, if at all), I would be make some tweaks to the core mechanics, but no drastic changes. Of course, if anyone else wants to host the game in the future and try out different mechanics, feel free.

I'm trying to keep it simple as possible while still making the game fun. I would rather not add on a bunch of features to confuse people, unless there were to be a second version of the game (like original DnD and advanced DnD).

Quote from rayNimagi

Quote from Lanthanide

"Final" is a prefix to "yes" and merely means that if 50% of the full congress vote in favour of the bill it will immediately be moved to the president to sign, that's all.

If you interpret the law by the framer's original intent, I think he would have assumed "FINAL YES" means a vote "YES".

Intent is not the letter of the law. See the argument about the second amendment to the United States Constitution for an example of intent vs. letter.

The game is by no means broken. It's just boring as shit in its current state. The reason it worked in our favor is because azrael organized us to our own benefit. The other people just dicked around and complained when they lost. It's like screaming "terran imba" after losing a match. It has nothing to do with the game being broken, but the way you played.

Why removing old policies won't work:
I voted "yes" to certain bills that I'm pretty sure had little or no positive effect for me, and in the end I benefited from that, as you can tell. The people who did NOT do this ended up failing, through no fault of the game. Theoretically, the other players could have worked together to push things against us, but realistically our group was too solid and well connected in our policies and we had too many people. This is just a luck of the draw, in both policies and in successfully established connections. When you reset the policies, you force the players to reconsider all previous interactions. Nothing in the past has any meaning. This might fix balance, or it might make it too hectic. I mean, try and organize a new SRP every new cycle? That'd be hard.

Yes, but now you're faced with the "do I continue to be loyal to my old friends even though they share nothing in common with me now, or do I go my own separate way and try and forge new alliances?".

I know, but some justices on the Supreme Court argue that the Constitution should be argued by the Framer's intent. Since I am the judicial and executive branches, I got to decide that "FINAL YES" is a subclass of "YES" and then enforce that rule. Plus, Azrael voted "YES", so it doesn't really matter.

If only there was a way to play it in real time, like EpicMafia...

That's exactly the purpose. It would make the game dynamic, rather than having the same alliance created at the beginning of the game dominate every year. You could still ally with the same people (half of your policies would still be the same) but you might work together with new friends. Plus, if there was a two-party system, the parties would campaign for support, like real political parties.

IIRC someone said phased policies would make the game unrealistic. I would say that the issues are ever-changing. In 1860 slavery was an issue, but five years later, the institution was abolished. The environment wasn't cared about until the 20th century and abortion didn't become a center of debate until Roe v. Wade. In fact, I think phased policies would make the game more realistic.

Quote from rayNimagi

Plus, Azrael voted "YES", so it doesn't really matter.

Exactly. A few others either saw what I saw, or simply didn't put "Final". I'm not arguing that the game should be over; in fact I'm arguing that it should be over...simply with more losers than you want to make losers ;P

When I saw "Your new secret policy: +4 Defense", I was pretty much 100% sure you did not assign the new policies randomly.

@Azrael: Were you honestly thinking the way the SRP worked in this game was democratic?

Uh, how do you think politics work in AMERIKA?

Clearly it's not a real democracy.

STRAWMAN

If you want to ruin the gameplay for the purposes of making it more generic with as little effort as possible, by all means. Don't make up ridiculous rationalizations to justify it though. You threw out a handful of examples that by no means reflect how modern politics work (aka, Congress), and have absolutely zero relevance to the game or how it's played.