Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Proposal: Lacustrine Cities

Add the following as a subrule to the rule Announcements of Attainment, called Lacuna Protocols:

If the game is in Lacuna, and the Nomicer who posted the Announcement of Attainment no longer meets the criteria to make such a post, then as a Lacunaic Action any Nomicer may spend a Joker to make the following atomic action, called a Lacunaic De-escalation:

* Increase the numeral between the words “least” and “times” in the first sentence of the rule Announcements of Attainment by one
* Set the Jokers of all Nomicers to 3
* Make a post to the blog announcing that the game has exited Lacuna.

Once that action has been completed, the game is no longer in a state of Lacuna.

The dynasty is only a week old. I don’t have a strong view as to whether a week is enough for this one of if there’s more meet on the bones that people are interested in exploring, so I thought I’d give you the option.

Proposal: A Dark Night

To the first bullet point in “Announcements of Attainment”, add:-

(Nomicers with an Equity below zero are considered to have an Equity of zero for the purposes of these calculations.)

With Darknight at -3 Equity it’s not clear to me what “all Equity in the game” would total to, or what proportion that -3 would be of a larger positive number.

Proposal: Brick cloner

Add the following to the end of the top-level text in the Building Blocks section:

Whenever the text of a Building Block rule is changed in the ruleset, or a new Building Block rule is added to the ruleset, those changes are also made to the Building Blocks page of the wiki.

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Proposal: [Core] [Appendix] The Emperor’s New Style

In the core rule “Victory and Ascension”, change:

The Imperator’s Imperial Style, which if specified is a set of nonbinding guidelines that the Imperator is encouraged to follow, using the terms defined on the wiki page Imperial Styles.

to

The Imperator’s Imperial Style, which if specified is a set of nonbinding guidelines that the Imperator is encouraged to follow (possibly using terminology from the wiki page [[Imperial Styles]]).

(where the double square brackets represent a hyperlink to a wiki page).

In the definition of “Gamestate” in the subrule “Other” of the Appendix rule “Keywords”, change:

(except for the FAQ, the dynastic histories and discussion pages)

to

(except for the FAQ, the Imperial Styles page, the dynastic histories and discussion pages)

 

The limited set of Imperial Styles has been a problem for multiple Emperors recently – you might want a style that isn’t on the page, but the page is gamestate and so you can’t edit it. I can’t think of any exploits from editing the page, so this proposal makes the page in question non-gamestate, and also allows the specification of dynasty-specific styles that aren’t there and aren’t expected to be used in the future.

Story Post: Announcement of Attainment: A Lacuna

My Equity is 24, at least three times greater than the Float of 8.

Proposal: Saints and Sinners

In the rule “Actions”, add a subrule named “Peacekeeping” with the following text:

As Daily Action named Peacekeeping, a Nomicer who has exactly 1 Disc, and in the most recent 2 instances of performing an action that required spending a Disc that Nomicer did not reduce the Equity of another Nomicer as part those actions, may spend a Disc and immediately increase their Equity by the Standard Reward.

Encouraging Nomicers to not spend their last Disc before the refresh on Milling, but only if they haven’t been Milling recently.

Proposal: A proposal. full of sin

Failed, 1-4. Josh

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:35:21 UTC

Add a new subrule “Sinful Proposals” to “Actions”, placing it immediately after “Ladder Combo”:

The author of a proposal that was enacted within the previous 48 hours may spend 1 Disc to increase that author’s Equity by the number of Sins that appeared as words in that proposal minus 4. This action cannot be performed twice for the same proposal.

I wanted to make the Sins list matter more (currently its only purpose is blocking Ladder Combos). This mechanic should hopefully be safe now that we’ve fixed the bug that allows the addition of arbitrary Sins via EVC. The “enacted” here is to stop people overtly filling proposals full of Sins in order to make a profit – if you’re going to fill your proposal with Sins you only get a profit if it’s still good enough to enact (despite the potential risk of other Nomicers voting it down to deny the reward).

Proposal: Power of Love

Failed, 1-4. Josh

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:34:37 UTC

In rule “Discs and Jokers”, add a subrule called “Love Perspex” with the following text:

As a daily action, a Nomicer may remove 1 of their white perspex Discs and 1 of their red perspex Jokers from their Spendables, and then add 1 pink perspex Heart to their Spendables. As a weekly action, a Nomicer may remove may remove 5 pink perspex Hearts form Spendables to increase their Equity by 1.

Proposal: The Short Short

Reached Quorum, 5-1. Josh

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:33:40 UTC

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called The Troll:

At any time, up to one Nomicer may be a Troll, with the existence and identity of the Troll being privately tracked by the Imperator. If there is no Troll then the Imperator may randomly select a Nomicer to be the Troll and commuicate that fact privately to the selected Nomicer.

The Troll’s objective is to generate negative Equity. Whenever a Nomicer ceases to be the Troll through any means other than an Accusation, any negative Equity they earned while they were the Troll is both reverted and then added to their Equity.

As a Daily Communal Action, provided that they have not done so within the preceding 72 hours, any Nomicer who is not the Troll may post an Accusation, which is a post with a title comprised of the [Accusation] tag and the name of a single other Nomicer, and optionally body text setting out their reasons for believing that the named Nomicer is the Troll. All Nomicers may vote on an Accusation; if the number of FOR votes exceed the number of AGAINST votes on the Accusation after 48 hours, or if the number of FOR votes on the Accusation exceed Quorum at any time, then it is Enacted, may be marked as Enacted by any Admin, and the named Nomicer, if they were the Troll, ceases so to be so without their Equity being adjusted as per the second paragraph of this rule. If an Accusation has been open for 48 hours and has not been Enacted then it is Failed and may be marked as such by any Admin.

Proposal: [Appendix] False Until Proven True

Reached quorum, 5-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:32:02 UTC

In the rule “Numbers and Variables” in the Appendix section, after the text “blank (for a text string or list that may be blank),” insert the following text:

false (for variables or states that may only be either true or false),

Addressing a Laundry List item that’s marked High.

Proposal: Your Call Is Very Important To Us [Building Blocks]

Reached quorum and enacted, 5-1. Josh

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:29:25 UTC

Reword “Precondition Unidling” (both in the ruleset and in Building Blocks) to:-

Idle Nomicers may submit Calls for Judgement as if they were not idle; such CfJs are known as Precondition Calls, and should suggest terms (in the form of amendments to the ruleset and/or gamestate) on which the proposer would be willing to join the current dynasty. The proposer of a Precondition Call is not considered to have a vote on that CfJ while they remain idle.

If a Precondition Call enacts, the enacting admin must unidle its raiser before applying the Call’s effects. As an exception, this requirement does not apply where such an unidling would be impossible.

Changing these from proposals to CfJs means that they can be made during Hiatus, can be processed at a speed closer to regular unidle requests, and - perhaps most importantly - can’t be confused with Recusant Proposals. As things stand, the ruleset will interpret all Recusant Proposals as also being Precondition Unidling proposals.

Proposal: The Big Short

Arrow-Withdrawn. Josh

Adminned at 01 Apr 2025 15:55:37 UTC

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called The Troll:

At any time, up to one Nomicer may be a Troll. If there is no Troll then the Imperator may randomly select a Nomicer to be the Troll and commuicate that fact privately to the selected Nomicer.

The Troll’s objective is to generate negative Equity. Whenever a Nomicer ceases to be the Troll through any means other than an Accusation, any negative Equity they earned while they were the Troll is both reverted and then added to their Equity.

As a Daily Communal Action, provided that they have not done so within the preceding 72 hours, any Nomicer who is not the Troll may post an Accusation, which is a post with a title comprised of the [Accusation] tag and the name of a single other Nomicer, and optionally body text setting out their reasons for believing that the named Nomicer is the Troll. All Nomicers may vote on an Accusation; if the number of FOR votes exceed the number of AGAINST votes on the Accusation after 48 hours, or if the number of FOR votes on the Accusation exceed Quorum at any time, then it is Enacted, may be marked as Enacted by any Admin, and the named Nomicer, if they were the Troll, ceases so to be so without their Equity being adjusted as per the second paragraph of this rule. If an Accusation has been open for 48 hours and has not been Enacted then it is Failed and may be marked as such by any Admin.

To do:
* How to stop being the Troll
* More ways of generating negative Equity
* Probably making it so that the Troll can’t cash in during a Lacuna

Story Post: Bounty Notice: Equity Laundering

Adminned at 02 Apr 2025 09:40:11 UTC

I will pay out bounties for proposals that successfully resolve any High Priority matters on the Laundry List, as it stands at 08h42 on 1 April 2025.

Call for Judgment: A Page Is Not A List

Popular, 5-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 01 Apr 2025 20:01:38 UTC

For each attempt to claim a Ladder Combo this dynasty whose target did not appear on the EFF Wordlist wiki page with 5 digits preceding it on the same line of that page, revert any gain of Equity and any addition to the list of Sins that resulted from the claim, and revert the reduction in Discs that occurred when spending a Disc to make that claim attempt.

The “Ladder Combo” rule requires the target to be a Ladder Word, and one of the conditions to be a Ladder Word is that it must be “on the EFF Word List”. This wording seems to refer to the list itself – not to the page containing it. (The text of the rule has “list” as a separate word, implying that it’s the list itself that matters, not anything that might be around it – further evidence that it refers to the list, not the page, is that the name of the page (“EFF Wordlist”) is slightly different. The text in the rule is not a link to the page, and if it were formatted as a link, it would be a broken link; if not for the fact that the page is mentioned in other rules, it would not appear from the rule’s current wording that it even could refer to a wiki page rather than a list.)

This is worded like it is to ensure that it doesn’t revert the proposals which were made as part of the claim attempt.

Proposal: A moodier proposal queue

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 01 Apr 2025 23:41:49 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule, “The Tally”:

The Enactment Tally and Failure Tally are each publicly tracked numbers defaulting to 0.

Whenever a proposal is enacted, the Enactment Tally is increased by 1. Whenever a legal proposal is failed, the Failure Tally is increased by 1, unless the proposal was withdrawn using an arrow AGAINST icon.

The Nomicer Count is a number equal to the number of Nomicers (not including the Imperator), which is continuously calculated (rather than being publicly tracked).
Whenever the Enactment Tally is equal to or greater than the Nomicer Count, any Nomicer can reduce the Enactment Tally by the Nomicer Count and increase every Nomicer’s Equity by 1.
Whenever the Failure Tally is equal to or greater than the Nomicer Count, any Nomicer can reduce the Failure Tally by the Nomicer Count and reduce every Nomicer’s Equity by 1.

Reorder the ruleset by moving “Wording Fixes” to a location immediately after “The Tally”.

Another idea for global variables – it’s designed as a self-contained mechanic but I’m hoping that other things will start hooking into it, eventually. This also moves Wording Fixes to the end of the dynastic ruleset, because it feels like it belongs there (perhaps the normal Edit Window rule normally goes there), but it doesn’t feel like it’s worth using an entire proposal to move it.

Proposal: Variable Rewards

Popular, 5-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 01 Apr 2025 19:53:06 UTC

Add the following text to the (currently empty) dynastic rule “Actions”:

The Standard Reward is a publicly tracked number that can only be 1, 2, 3 or 4, and defaults to 2.

Add a new subrule, “Reward Manipulation”, to the dynastic rule “Actions”:

As a weekly action, a Nomicer can spend 1 Joker to increase or decrease the Standard Reward by 1.

In each of the dynastic rules “Golden Rule”, “Heightened Mill” and “Bounties”, replace all uses of the number “2” with “the Standard Reward”.

The dynasty disallows Nomicer-specific variables, but it’s quite light on mechanics at the moment, so I decided to add a global variable instead. “Dynastic rule” is specified explicitly because there are two rules named “bounties” (in case you were wondering, “dynastic” is not an EFF word).