The Second Dynasty of Pokes
July 25, 2017 - September 8, 2017
Ascension Address
From the diaries of PM Wouters, 26 July 1966
It’s so difficult to be the Commander-in-chief. All I wanted to do was serve my Pays-Loups Nord by writing legislation to help the people, but then someone had to go and die, and I had to go and say ‘okay’ to becoming Prime Minister. This shouldn’t have been easy, but at least not this hard. Tensions since last week have been extremely high. Everyone’s got nukes, everyone suddenly seems more willing to use them, and it’s like the only way to get respect these days is to bully people around. I just need some sleep, but the pills are making it hard, and when it comes all I get are fever dreams about pacts and Seraphim.
Veto all pending Proposals. Change ‘Pactmaker’ to ‘CIC’; changing the first instance to “Commander-in-chief (abbreviated CIC)”. Change ‘Seraphim’ to ‘UNSG’; changing the first instance to “UN Secretary-General (abbreviated UNSG)”. Repeal all Dynastic Rules except for “Combos” and “Tags”.
Players
The following players were active at the start of this dynasty:
card*, Cuddlebeam, Dewaldo, orkboi, pokes*^, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, Thunder
And at the end of this dynasty:
card*, Cuddlebeam, Darknight*, derrick*, Kevan*, Maldor, pokes*^, Thunder, Sesquipedalian
* denotes admins, ^ denotes UNSG
Proposals of Interest
Gamebuilding (25th of July ⁓ 31st of July): The ground mechanics for the game were made.
- Armament: Established missiles, which would become a central theme for the Military stat.
- Crisis: Established Ticks (a rhythm for dynastic actions) and IEs (considered to be a measure of merit).
- Stats: Established Stats: Military, Charisma and Intel.
- How I Learned to Love the Bomb: Created units (Politicians, Scientists, Spies) which spawned from Stats.
- The War Chest: Allowed greater control over Stats.
- Launch Window: Created a way for Ticks to happen, as well as the definition of Command Actions.
- Duck and Recover: Added Recovery and Science as Stats.
- Perks: Added Perks, advantages to gain when your Stats were certain amounts.
- Cold War Stuff Again: Created Blocs, Western and Eastern. The Western Bloc, formed by Derrick, Cuddlebeam, Card and Dewaldo (and Pokes, although he wasn't involved in it) had a noteworthy amount of coordination, culminating in a heist to win the game later on.
- Underground Bases: Made Missle targets secret, introducing an element of secrecy to the game.
- Balance: Established how unidling players would be distributed into Blocs.
First Moves (31st of July ⁓ 9th of August): During this period, Proposals started to fail more often, as people started to make moves towards trying to increase their chances to win with leverage on the established mechanics and unequality. "Secret scams" started to arise, stemmed from that communicating actions to the Emperor were non-public. This was problematic, because the Emperor would need to reveal them in order to CFJ them, and therefore reveal the scam (when the advantage of "secret scams" was that others weren't aware of their existence).
- Fight Fire with Fire (Failed): Attempted to create another "Bloc" separation to become part of another, hopefully larger group. (Cuddlebeam, the proposer, was part of a smaller group, the West, at the time)
- Lonely Planet (Failed): Unequal distribution based on names (Eastern would've had more spread, West was notorious for having all names clumped up: Card, Cuddlebeam Dewaldo, Derrick)
- Don't you love Politics?: Added a mechanic which allowed to block off missile play and gain IEs.
- Iron Curtain: Allowed players to conceal their amounts of IEs.
- Less Clock Stoppage: Plugged a way via the which a single Player could stall Ticks indefinitely (and take several Command Actions). A plug to a "secret scam".
- Double Edge: Created Revolution, a perk which allowed players to gain double their gains, but lose double their losses.
- Intel needed to Decode: A CFJ to solve another "secret scam", related to Missile Targetting.
- Long Live the King: Repeal of the multi-winner/emperor reforms from the prior dynasty.
- Prisoner's Dilemma Wincon: A well-received wincon attempt, which failed due to requests to refine the proposal.
- Disloyal Techs: Another "secret scam", related to that CICs could unassign any Tech, not just their own.
- Tear Down this Wall: Removal of "Iron Curtain".
Iron Curtain Removed (9th of August ⁓ 28th of August): With that perk removed, it was revealed that Cuddlebeam had a large IE advantage over each other Player (40 IEs, while others at most had IEs in the 20s), formerly hidden by the Iron Curtain. IEs were devalued.
Quick and Painless: Attempt by Cuddlebeam to cash in their now-revealed IE lead to win. Failed.- The UN (failed): Initial endeavors for an IE-based voting system, which would later bloom into the UN Resolutions, instrumental to the Dynasty's finale.
Ready Set Go: Attempt to set everyone's IEs to 20. Failed (people preferred to keep the current numbers, despite Cuddlebeam's advantage).The UN (again): Further attempts for the previous UN theme.- Unequivocal: Created UN Resolutions, birthed from Thunder's previous efforts. They were a type of proposal, where IEs determined vote weight.
- Cuddlebeam Idles: Cuddlebeam Idles, taking their huge IE lead with them. A consequence of this is that their IEs can't be harmed by other players during this time.
- Finger on the Button: Allowed CICs to adopt a War Footing to guarantee a missile launch.
- Action Stations: Sped the game up from "one action per day" to "six actions per Tick"
Safety Measures: A test of the UN Resolutions system that failed 59-90.UNUN-Sponsored Intervention: A proposal to assist Card that failed 0-116.UN- Espionage: Allowed Spies to learn political assignments.
Western Non-Aggression Pact: Proposed an IE penalty for Western Blocs that attacked each other. Failed 20-90, with Western CIC Derrick threatening to "target the next person to vote up on this".UNSecond Western Non-Aggression Pact: Proposed an IE reward for Western Blocs that weren't targeting each other. Failed 20-81.UN- Fluid Blocs: Allowed CICs to defect to the other Bloc, at a 2 IE cost. Later amended to require a public blog post.
UN Resolutions (28th of August ⁓ ): CICs began to make more aggressive UN resolutions to directly amend gamestate, Bloc membership and victory status.
International Sanctions: "We cannot allow card’s unprovoked nuclear aggression to go unpunished!" Proposed to decrease Card's IE. Failed 35-58.UN- Players discussed what to do about Cuddlebeam being idle with a high IE, prompting Cuddlebeam to unidle.
- UN Return Dues UN: A vote on how many IEs to deduct from Cuddlebeam, which settled on 13. Passed with totals unrecorded.
- Collaboration Treaty UN: Proposed to reward CICs who supported the proposal. Passed with totals unrecorded.
Western Takeover: Proposed to move Cuddlebeam to the Western Bloc and permanently zero the IE of the Eastern Bloc. Vetoed by the UN Secretary-General with concerns that the Western Bloc could amend and destabilise Core in subsequent UN resolutions.UN- Security Council: Restricted UN Resolutions from amending Core.
UN Borders: Proposed to limit UN Resolutions to changing numerical values, but failed.Western Reply: Proposed to move Cuddlebeam to the Western Bloc and idle all CICs in the Eastern Bloc. Failed 95-126.UNKing in Exile: Proposed to zero Cuddlebeam's IE and move them back to the Eastern Bloc, if either of their UN resolutions had passed, as an incentive for them to withdraw their resolutions.- Western Coup UN: A roll-off for victory between card, Cuddlebeam, derrick, and Sesquipedalian Passed 140-34, with UN Quorum at 132.
Hegemony for Nothing: A last-ditch attempt to persuade admin members of the Western Coup to nullify its outcome if they hadn't won its die roll. It failed.
Core rules
- Rule Consolidation created the Special Case rules section
Game events
- Tick 1
- Tick 2: "Some esteem flows westward as the Eastern bloc gets cowed by nuclear threats."
- Tick 3
- Tick 4
- Tick 5
- Tick 6
- Tick 7
- Tick 8: "Smoothing politicians give way to calls for war. [...] derrick’s brave astronauts Land on the Moon, ending the Space Race."
- Tick 9: "Agitating politicians again call for war. One pair with mutually-targeted missiles avoids a catastrophe this round. A near-defenseless Dewaldo is particularly hard-hit, as revolutions currently underway take up most of the focus of the country’s leadership."
- Tick 10
- Tick 11
- Tick 12
- Tick 13: "four pairs of CICs all exchange missiles mostly thanks to card’s war footing"
- Tick 14
- Tick 15: "The Western bloc, packed with Progressive CICs, again gains significant IE."
- Tick 16: "PEACE DECLARED"
- Tick 17: "Calls for UN dissolution"
Ascension
Cuddlebeam, Card, Sesquipedalian and Derrick arranged a proposal which would made one of them four win (via a diceroll which would choose one of them), forcing it to pass via them having more voting power in a UN Resolution (a type of Proposal) than the rest of players.
The dice landed on Cuddlebeam, and they declared victory.
Final Ruleset
Commentary
card
One of those secret scams that I failed to capitalize on was the targeting one. The only rule that changed the number of targets was when you targeted a new CIC. So if you targeted people and then went to 0 military, you'd still be targeting them. During this dynasty I tried for a "no proposals" strategy but instead made a few of them anyway. I got a 25% chance of winning all things considered.
Cuddlebeam
Lottery winner is me, woo! I regret misplaying in not cashing in my IEs into a win before the Iron Curtain removal, because I was too lazy to make another proposal to continue the "Prisoner's Dilemma" wincon thing.
I remember mentioning how the game could be insta-won by a cabal with a majority of votes at the start of any dynasty, and a variant on that happened this dynasty (happened at the end instead of the start and our IEs emulated us having another co-conspirator voting with us).
It felt pretty bullshit, even if it did let me win. As mentioned, the rest of the dynasty's mechanics pretty much didn't matter, all we needed was enough votes to secure victory. I would've preferred to have won another way, because there isn't much interesting in "outvote everyone with a cabal, diceroll a winner among those in that cabal", but oh well.
Kevan
I enjoyed this one, there was a lot of good negotiatory Nomicking going on, with UN Resolution proposals giving voting weights based on International Esteem stats, which fluctuated according to gameplay and saw a lot of straightforward diplomatic and punishment proposals. The die-roll endgame was a bit of a cop-out when the four-nation cabal could have split itself with the support of outside nations, but if four people all think they have a less than 25% chance of winning personally were the game to continue, I guess that's how it goes - it was at least fun to see it foregrounded, in the endgame.