There’s a dichotomy here as to what an Endgame Lockdown actually is. Is it something that we invoke when we want to pause the game and negotiate a difficult chop? Or is it (as was originally intended) something that we invoke when we want to play a dynasty out straight with catchup proposals squarely off the table? These are similar concepts, and both useful, but there’s a big difference in whether dynastic actions are permitted.

Perhaps it’d be enough to have an “Endgame Lockdown” for the second, and subtype of “Full Endgame Lockdown” which also bars actions. Or we could roll in Hiatus so that there’s a single noun keyword which can be run at three or four different adjective levels.

Keywording this is a good idea if, as it now seems, a minority of idle players consider a declared endgame to be fair game for hijacking, if its players forget to explicitly include a clause preventing that. I don’t think the machinery needs to be any more complex than Hiatus, though, which is just a single-sentence keyword that we know we can use.

I’m not against this, but it would be good to have a set duration so that it can’t be used to somehow lock out idle players forever, and I’d be interested in seeing it as a special case rule first.

I thought about making it a Special Case rule, but then the problem becomes that an Emperor can set it active as part of an AA, which would be weird way to start a dynasty and would take a Proposal to de-activate it, so it didn’t feel like the right fit.

I’m giving Kevan’s idea of expanded levels of Hiatus some thought. I might be able to significantly revise this before the 4-hour edit window is up. If not, I’ll re-propose the idea when a slot frees up.

I think I agree with Kevan that a one-line keyword entry is probably sufficient.

I don’t think we need to worry about emperors intentionally setting us into endgame right off the bat. It just doesn’t feel likely that someone would set about destroying their own dynasty on day 1 instead of just renouncing their position.

The line about not being able to use the phrase “endgame lockdown” feels a bit iffy, since it would prevent you from doing conditional endgames, or intentionally carving out exceptions into existing rules.

After a little bit of thought, I think I’d rather not touch Hiatus, as the term is coupled with Seasonal Downtime and DoV, and it feels like a heavier lift to have to touch those as well just for this purpose. I’ll try the keyword route instead.

The reason that I’m not using Josh’s original wording from the Tick Tick proposal is that, as someone recently pointed out, “When the Dynastic Rules are described as being under an Endgame Lockdown” could be a blog post comment, which is not the intention.

Looking over the core and dynastic mechanics we’ve got or recently used which lock the game down in some way:

* Endgame Lockdown, Blizzard: Can take dynastic actions. Can’t enact proposals which amend dynastic rules or dynastic gamestate.
* Endgame Lockdown, Chop: Can’t take dynastic actions. Can’t submit proposals which amend dynastic rules (except the chop rule).
* Hiatus: Can’t take dynastic actions. Can’t submit, enact or fail any proposals.
* Victory Hiatus: Can’t take dynastic actions. Can’t submit, enact or fail any proposals. New players cannot join/unidle.
* Interregnum Hiatus: Can’t take dynastic actions. Can’t submit, enact or fail any proposals. Can’t DoV.

To some extent that suggests that our recent chop lockdown could have been (and maybe would even have been better as) a Victory Hiatus that used CfJs for its chops.

That suggests to me that we should perhaps formalise what I’m calling Victory Hiatus here to some appendix keyword like “Full Hiatus” (defined as “like regular Hiatus but also”), and update the Victory & Ascension rule to “If there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Full Hiatus.”

And then add an unrelated keyword for “Endgame Lockdown” that covers the Blizzard one above.

Ok, I’ve taken another stab at this using the Keyword idea. I know that the Full Endgame Lockdown is a bit wordy, but I wanted to cover Brendan’s concerns.

Dang, seconds before I posted my update, you posted yours, Kevan.

I’m not sure if your idea would work mechanically. So, a player posts a DoV stating that they have achieved some notion of victory, which is not actually enshrined in the current ruleset but which will be worked out through CfJs? I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around that concept, probably because the DoVs that I’ve seen reference specific rules or CfJ outcomes. I suppose that’s not a hard requirement, but it seems weird to me.

To further clarify: I don’t quite understand how a player posts a DoV if the chop hasn’t even been decided yet. My understanding of a DoV is that the player is declaring the victory, but in this case of chop decision, victory is far from certain.

I mean we define “Full Hiatus” as a keyword that means “like regular Hiatus but new/idle players can’t join”. Then, if we wanted to 100% pause the game and take the time to discuss a chop on it, we’d just vote “game is now under Full Hiatus” into the ruleset, have whatever discussion threads we feel we need, and start posting CfJs to see if any chops got quorum.

It’s that, per the above bullet list, both the Chop Lockdown and Victory Hiatus would be more or less equivalent, so we could use the same keyworded term in both places.

(Tangentially, I think the “must include an expiration date and time” is one of those solutions that fixes a specific problem but, by adding complexity, risks introducing new and unexpected ones. Accidentally or deliberately locking out idle players “forever” seems like something a CfJ would be able to resolve.)

Got it, and changed to use this idea of Full Hiatus.

I ran out of time before being able to add the text to modify Victory & Ascension, so there’s some redundant language if this were enacted, but that could be easily fixed later. I think the important parts are represented here.

I also removed the expiration date and time language.

Full Hiatus does feel dangerous to me, because we would potentially end up in a situation where even a CFJ can’t fix it. If we’re in full hiatus, but then go down to just two players, blognomic literally becomes permanently locked down due to never being able to find votable matters popular.

As for endgame lockdown, it feels like one of those tricky rules to define since every dynasty would want to lock it down in a different way. I know I’ve voted in favour of it in the past, but it’s starting to feel like one of those concepts where it has to be created to fit the dynasty itself rather than being one size fits all.

Pending future tweaks.

I think the “except for the following two cases” stuff is redundant here (we can use CfJs), and maybe undermines it (if I really want a catchup mechanic during Lockdown, I can just add it to the Lockdown rule?).

Per the Blizzard Lockdown, I think that lockdown should be extended to proposals that directly amend gamestate. If the intention of a Lockdown is to play the game out without proposals once it hits the final lap, a proposal that directly changes some variables (perhaps with a best-will-in-the-world argument that doing so would fairly rebalance something or other from earlier in the dynasty) should also be ruled out. New and unidling players also, I think: if we’re playing a dynasty out, that shouldn’t be affected by how much difference some new players with default values could make to it.

since the general direction seems sound, and neither of these keywords is plugged into anything yet.

[SingularByte] Fair concern, although Full Hiatus is a state that can already be reached under the current core, just not by that name: “If there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Hiatus, no Idle City Architect may be made unidle, and no new player joining requests may be administered.” A more general emergency escape hatch in the appendices (“if no proposals or CfJs have been made for two weeks…”) might be a good idea.

I think different dynasties would switch lockdown on and off in very different ways, if they used it at all, but the state itself would probably be the same, so is worth a keyword.

Per singularbyte

Kevan, at least a pending DoV will time out and can be failed by an idle admin, eventually.

While I see the concerns it doesn’t seem to me like any of them are so bad that we can’t fast follow with some fixes. In addition based on the discussion here and recent events I feel this would help future dynasties end in a smoother way than the last two have, which given all the complaints, seems like a step in the right direction.