You want to nerf councilmen even more? That is really hardly fair. We’ve been playing with the same rules for the whole game and now you want to say “Oh sorry, lets change it???”

per Clucky actually. Councilmen should not be suddenly lowered in value. That would be fine for the new public though.

I think Councilmen should be lowered somewhat in value - they have been a non-mechanic in the game for most of its duration so far, and it doesn’t seem ideal that the last couple of months of play can be swept away by something that has been essentially immutable since round 5 or so. I’d probably be happy with less of a straight nerf - so the bonus for councilmen is based on how many each player holds, so it’s not so much about winner taking all - but at the moment councilmen distort the game just a bit too much for what they are.

That’s not really good nomicing to me - the players who worked hard to get the councilmen acted in a strategic way. If you want to shake up the councilmen, that would be fine, but just weakening them seems not right to me.

I think it’s perfectly good nomicking. Strong investment in a rare game resource always carries the risk that the players who lack it will, if in a majority, take action to redistribute that resource. The trick is just to get in first and redistribute it on your own terms, or to launder your advantage as quickly as possible when you see the revolution coming.

With all respect to Clucky, saying “Oh sorry, lets change it???”, even towards the end of the game, is exactly what Nomic is supposed to be about.

Quite.

Clucky and Koen are the ones with the resource, and if either of them had proposed a mechanic that offered a reasonably fair, equitable reward for the effort they put into gaining it then I’d vote for it. Suggesting that the rest of us have a responsibility not to change a situation that is massively distortative because it’s been distortative from the beginning, and people were planning on it being distortative to the end, isn’t just bad nomic, it’s bad game design at any speed.

Sure its within the rules of Nomic Kevan, but it still falls under the whole “first they came for the people with the most councilmen…” problem. If you let this happen, maybe we’ll get a majority of people that want to nerf credits somehow. I’m all for strategically manipulating the rules in your favor, this just seems too extreme to me.

I’m not sure how you can say Koen put three credits worth of effort into getting the most councilmen. He had to influence the councilroom at points, maybe instead of the mine. Even if he got others from the rebels, its still at probably at least 10 power worth of “effort”.

I’d support something that let you kill off more councilmen or repel the 12 rule, but calling not wanting to radically change a key portion of the game at the tailend “bad game design” is silly.

When a clear leader emerges in any game, the other players will do what they can to slow that player down, balanced against the personal cost to them. There can be threats and politics and bribes to cloud that issue, but it’s how it goes. If we had a stronger Councilmen-killing Institution, it would have been used against you by now, by various players. Proposals are just another Councilmen-killing device, they just take more collaboration.

That the angry mob will come for the player who builds up too obvious a stockpile is just the built-in Nomic drawback for building up a stockpile, and it shouldn’t be forgotten.

The way I see it, Blognomic has never really been about truly changing the rules so that they are in your favour, but more about “building a game”.

I remember during coppro’s Taxicab Dynasty (when I first joined Blognomic), most Players were in favour of not changing the Highway Route, “because it wouldn’t be fair to the Players who understood what they were worth earlier”.
For the first few Cycles, no one tried to Influence the Council. I spent all my Resources getting the most Councilmen, and at the end of the game you want to suddenly change the Councilmen bonus to around 3 or 4 Power? You could as well not bother and just propose to reset all my Resources. Besides, I don’t think I have “too obvious a stockpile” - I only have 1 more Councilman than Clucky, and the Mob is an easy way to take Councilmen away. For whatever reasons nobody has yet used it against me.

Lastly, the total amount of Power is currently 106, which makes having the most Councilmen worth 13 Power only. With the Mine providing 5 Power a Cycle and probably 5 Cycles left, and given that I have so few Resources, I don’t think I am the clear leader you’re talking about.

I kinda wanna make a “reset all of Koen’s stats to zero” proposal now =)

The metagame is part of the game. If Kevan and Josh can convince people to side with them, score for them. If Koen and Clucky can swing things the other way, score for them. Both are equally valid ways to play the game, in my opinion.

Yonah, the claim is not that the move is invalid, but undesirable.

Koen - it would take two Mobs to hit your councilmen, as you have a Marine shield. Presumably that’s why you’re keeping it there.

Also Clucky - “I’d support something that let you kill off more councilmen” - I did - you voted against it! I have tried to make councilmen a more responsive resource and you have blocked it, greedily trying to make them even more powerful. This kind of proposal is the logical outcome to such play. I’m afraid Kevan is right - this is a nomic, and you have to be aware that if you persist in defending your excessive and unfair advantage too strong you will end up losing it.

You did it in a very uncreative way, duplicating another instiution.

I was the one who proposed a new way to kill off more councilmen and you voted against it =) (At least I think you were against the Altar… archives are being slow to low so I can’t actually check…)

I fully agree that this is nomic, and trying to convince people to change the rules in your favor is well within the spirit of the game, but to call Koen’s advantage “unfair” is silliness. You could’ve gotten councilmen early on if you wanted too…

I think you’re being a bit absurd here Clucky. Arguing that the Altar, which doubled the strength of your councilman stockpile, was anything other than an attempt to stack the deck in your own favour is an argument in shockingly bad faith.

Is the cost of overturning advantage Koen’s through conventional play reasonable? Was the effort he expended to gain that advantage proportionate to the size of the advantage is question? Do the other players of the nomic have a chance to win if this is not in some way amended? If not, then why wouldn’t we do so? You’re being very naive here, Clucky; this is a very predictable outcome that you could have prevented, but in your hubris and greed you opted not to.

The second altar was simply an attempt to add two more unpowered instiutions to make it easier to guess the public. The irony that it made the councilroom no more powerful than the mine yet you felt it was super over powered still isn’t lost on me. But my point was simply that you can’t critize me for not trying to do more with councilmen. Just because I was against duplicating an institution didn’t mean I was content to let councilmen sit. I offered a way to free up councilmen and you turned it down not because it was an uniteresting mechanic but simply because you don’t want councilmen to be worth anything because you don’t have any. So you’ve never wanted to try and fix the problem of councilmen being hard to get, you’ve just wanted to make the worthless so you have to less to worry about. The game for you can just become “get the most power” rather than “try to balance power collection with having the most councilmen” which is a far more interesting game.

I try to win most dynasties I play, but I almost never play to win. I play to experiment with interesting mechanics. I’ll often consider ending a dynasty early even if I don’t win simply because its interesting. The altar was interesting. Your duplicate mob was not.

Also what are you saying is a predictable outcome? The fact that at the end game people dislike that some people have an advantage? There is literally no way I could’ve prevented that. The fact that I have four councilmen is irrelevent to my dislike of this proposal. Or was I supposed to forsee that people would get sad over the fact that they didn’t have enough councilmen and add a proposal to balance them earlier?

Point remains, I see no difference between this proposal and a “Remove all of Josh’s power” proposal. Sure both favor the majority, but neither are fair and neither are interesting.