I’m agnostic on the question of whether buying off the Emperor for gameplay purposes is okay or not, but if it isn’t then any CfJ to resolve the situation should address that question rather than acting purely as an unvetoable proxy for proposals.

The campsite rule applies here; if it’s broken then we need to fix it for future dynasties, not fixate on winning this one.

OK, CFJ made

for Josh’s reasons.

Because the Drone can’t veto a CFJ

Hard to buy this as anything remotely approaching “urgent.”

This is not urgent.

CfJ would have been the proper venue for my errant DoV, and I might have avoided a mess if we’d just gone this route from the start.

At this point, it’s probably better if we conclude the debate with the more direct route of passing/failing “...Status Quo Part 2”, but I won’t say no to just finishing the game, minus the VETOs.

I’d have said the Nomic route out of it (and the one I was expecting) was a straight CfJ of “the Imperial mantle-pass destabilises the game, so let’s turn it off” which a quorum would probably have gotten behind, each in their own interests. The same cabal makes the same proposals again and they go unvetoed, and I doubt anyone could have gotten in with a win or a blocking move in the meantime.

A CfJ of “we nearly won so please let us win” was riskier as it relied on four players casting votes against their own interest, or some well-placed buyoffs behind the scenes (and I have some guesses about how that probably went down). But it evidently worked.