I doubt ais523 has been voting with the purpose of giving Josh more Clearance. If anything, he’s been voting that way despite his belief that Josh is an Android and therefore his votes being less utilitarian for him.

When I said that, I didn’t see the recent Ghosts demand where ais523 changed his vote to Deferential… confused as to what to make of that.

The first two times were to see if Josh would avoid the Clearance bump, which he could have done easily both times. So it wasn’t so much “giving Josh Clearance” as “seeing if Josh is seeking to gain Clearance”, as a method of determining which faction he’s on.

The third time was a joke. I may well change it back again (and will if the proposal looks like it’s in any danger of passing).

I can accept that ais523.

Unlike Sylphrena, I actually like strategic voting. Especially in a dynasty such as this one, where we’re meant to figure out information based on how people act.

I’ve been thinking about what I’d do as a followup to this dynasty if I won this one. It’s difficult, because this dynasty seems to be hitting all the things I was considering using as themes: it has some sort of an economy, factions, behind-the-scenes teamwork, and the most tactical voting and proposing that I’ve seen outside a metadynasty.

I guess the main disadvantage of this theme is that it encourages a large number of DEFERENTIALs from the Emperor, because the vast majority of proposals are attempts at personal gain rather than an attempt to improve the ruleset. One of the unique features of BlogNomic is that the Emperor tends to shape a dynasty “naturally”, but Kevan couldn’t do that in this dynasty without being biased towards one side or the other.

The other problem is that BlogNomic is a winner-takes-all game, a playstyle which really isn’t suited to this dynasty theme, and I think it’s showing.

Next time we do a faction-based dynasty, perhaps there should be some rule created for randomly selecting the winner from the winning faction. Although this would minimize cross-factional alliances…

to keep things moving.

per Brendan (quorum-1)