Proposal: Fake Friends
Enacted 8-0. TDS
Adminned at 27 Jan 2023 04:09:49 UTC
In the rule “Factions”, append the following bullet point to the list of required conditions for a Settler to change their Faction:
The current Visitor is not a King or the Pirate Captain
As it stands now, the second a King comes up as the Visitor everyone is immediately encouraged to pledge their loyalty just so they can perform a raid, and the first Settler to do so not only gets to choose whoever they want to raid but also becomes immune to being raided themselves. This attempts to mitigate the rather large first-mover advantage.
JonathanDark: he/him
This might have the opposite effect of no one joining any Factions if there is no benefit other than the Pirates being able to halve their Target value and likely avoid the Corsair. On the other hand, your Proposal is a very simple change.
The other way to mitigate the first-mover advantage would be to change the raiding rules such that the King / Pirate Captain sets some new variable that lasts after the following Production of Resources, then tie Raiding to that variable rather than the Visitor variable. This would give an entire “turn” for everyone to decide whether or not to join the Faction of the King / Pirate Captain. It would also be slightly more complicated, and would not solve the issue of everyone likely joining the same Faction and possibly having no one to raid.