per your comment on Phase One, i think this is worth a greentick! however, i do think that it should still restrict discussion of Agendas if there are 5+ active Machinists.

This should probably be a lever and a klaxon rather than something that happens silently and automatically. Would be annoying to have to reveal a couple of days’ worth of private comms because nobody had noticed that a fifth player had fallen asleep.

(“Voted on a proposal” is also a slightly fiddly metric to check - a player’s ExpressionEngine profile will tell you when they last commented, but not when they last voted.)

Thanks both - have made an edit

If this passes, we’ll have to amend it to allow the disclosure of Agendas in the DoV, per the Initialisation rule:

A Declaration of Victory based on this rule should include the text of each of the Agendas that contributed to the victory.

Also, is it reasonable to assume that “disclose” doesn’t apply to communications with the Great Machine since they will already know the Agendas of each Machinist and thus there is no “disclosure” occurring?

As Brendan highlights on Discord by winking and inviting people to discuss strategy privately with him before this proposal enacts, it’s probably already too late to switch off private comms like this, when some players could have had time to discuss tactics and loopholes. We even have a victory condition on the books already!

i still think this is worthwhile :0

The “fewer than five Machinists” rule makes sense for heading off another 2-vs-1 endgame, but switching off No Collaboration right now upon enactment seems unrelated. Why is it a good idea to do that?

but would like to propose a limited private communication system to address Kevan’s concerns.

That’s already there in one form in Alliances. If you and I want to talk privately, we just raise the big flag to show everyone that we’re talking to each other.

My concern is just that anyone who’d already teamed up and discussed tactics and brokered deals before this was proposed and enacted won’t have had to raise that flag.

I have to be honest - on day two of the dynasty, that’s of limited concern to me, even notwithstanding Brendan’s theatrics.

There was a victory condition in the first proposal, we could be looking at a two-day dynasty. Plenty to talk about and plan there.