Feature Request: Buy elections

[egamma]

That's beside the point, imo.

Not at all! An "elected once" election is the chance of a (character's) lifetime! Think about Sordnaz, as ruler of Makar for what, 8 years? If he were to pause because his computer crashed or he got banished or something, that would be a very unique opportunity to seize control of a realm! Everyone would be buying votes, and trying to bribe others into buying votes for them, etc.

Why bother spending 500 gold on a monthly election? It's a lot cheaper to simply campaign for the position--I've successfully held all 4 council positions in Giblot, with little opposition, based on this.

[Shenron]

Perhaps we should restrict this to only elections that happen more than once.

[fodder]

actually.. the best thing would be to not show the numbers in elections.

though obviously no one would be able to tell if it's bugged or not.

[vonGenf]

Perhaps we should restrict this to only elections that happen more than once.

Why?

[vonGenf]

How would you handle a situation where two or more people rig the election?

-If multiple people try to rig the election, the successful one (if any) should be randomly chosen and race conditions avoided.

[Shenron]

Why?

Because I think it's important we keep parts of the game fair that have very long lasting consequences... maybe by this criteria only the ruler (if elected once) must have fair elections.

Theres just something I find annoying about having a King's (or any equivalent title's) seat open to bribes... it just seems too big for that type of !@#$...

[vonGenf]

I think there are two important things to note with this feature:

1. I think that the amount of gold it costs to "rig" an election should be variable. One should be able to put as much gold as they want into rigging the election, and by placing more gold on it, they increase their chances of winning the election by rigging it. This would be on a percentage basis, with a standard minimum and maximum chance of failure.

Ex: The game gives you a "minimum required gold" level in order to bribe the election offices, and this would result in perhaps a 50% chance of failure. However, you could put more gold into the bribe in order to reduce the chance of failure down to a minimum threshold (let's say 10%?) chance of failure. This gold increase could operate on a logarithmic scale or some such where the more gold one puts in the less % deduction as the % chance of failure approaches the limit.

I see your point, but it looks more complicated to implement - I tried to keep it simple.

2. There should be a way to "insure" an election. In other words, place money on the election, not to change the results, but in order to counteract bribes and attempts to fix the election. This would operate by someone seeking to insure the election placing X amount of gold into the election pot in order to make sure the results run true. This increases the chance of failure of any attempt to "bribe" the officials by a % equal to the fraction (X/Y)*100 where Y is the amount used as a bribe. If X > Y, then there is a 100% chance of the person bribing the officials of being caught. Also, if (X/Y)*100 + Z > 100, where Z is the % chance of failure by method 1, then there is a 100% chance of the person bribing the officials of being caught.

In other words, I want a method whereby I can ensure that an election proceeds true. If we have a feature where people can use gold to buy things, I want a feature that helps others with gold stop it. If not, everyone can simply put 200 gold towards bribing into an election and its random chance who wins. The actual values, and percents, can be discussed and decided upon by the devs, but I think this is a decent method of setting it up.

The best way to insure your election is to stab your opponent. I wouldn't want this feature to have the end result of requiring constant investments to run a democracy.

If you're worried it would happen too often, increase the price and the probability to get caught.

It was never my intention to make a system where buying the election every month is a viable strategy. It should be a rare and risky event.

[vonGenf]

Because I think it's important we keep parts of the game fair that have very long lasting consequences... maybe by this criteria only the ruler (if elected once) must have fair elections.

Theres just something I find annoying about having a King's (or any equivalent title's) seat open to bribes... it just seems too big for that type of !@#$...

I see your point... yet it seems strange that a tyranny would turn into a perfect democracy once a character pauses.

Also, this would have no bearing at all on rebellions, which should be the standard way of changing rulers in tyrannies anyway.

[Kain]

Because I think it's important we keep parts of the game fair that have very long lasting consequences... maybe by this criteria only the ruler (if elected once) must have fair elections.

Theres just something I find annoying about having a King's (or any equivalent title's) seat open to bribes... it just seems too big for that type of !@#$...

Why is it too big for that !@#$?

You still have some sort of fairness guiding you to that. But there is no fairness in real life and where we would have rebellions and backstabbing, we now have elections so we should make the elections less reliable.

It is the elections that happens once where this would pay off for real, not the ones where it happens monthly.

[Chenier]

Not at all! An "elected once" election is the chance of a (character's) lifetime! Think about Sordnaz, as ruler of Makar for what, 8 years? If he were to pause because his computer crashed or he got banished or something, that would be a very unique opportunity to seize control of a realm! Everyone would be buying votes, and trying to bribe others into buying votes for them, etc.

Why bother spending 500 gold on a monthly election? It's a lot cheaper to simply campaign for the position--I've successfully held all 4 council positions in Giblot, with little opposition, based on this.

Because switching fro monthly to lifetime elections is just a click away if you get elected? And in some circumstances, if the elections are timed right, the other government titles can do quite significant things too.

Because I think it's important we keep parts of the game fair that have very long lasting consequences... maybe by this criteria only the ruler (if elected once) must have fair elections.

Theres just something I find annoying about having a King's (or any equivalent title's) seat open to bribes... it just seems too big for that type of !@#$...

I find it a little troubling that our medieval BM elections are more legitimate, just, and free of taint than our modern one with all their checks in place.

[Vellos]

I vastly prefer buying VOTES rather than buying ELECTIONS. It would make the resolution of multiple buying attempts theoretically simple: you just add both peoples' purchases.

And it would be fun to buy a vast amount of votes for a person you want to smear, and then claim they tried to buy the election. It might be more complex to code, but this seems like the most balanced way. The more votes you buy, the more expensive, and the more likely you win... but also the more likely people are able to "do the math" and catch you.

Frankly, just swapping winners seems really, really lame to me.

MOREOVER, there is a serious thing to consider: this might just kill the referendum system and lead to a return to manual message-based voice voting. Many realms did this frequently before the current referendum system. It could return. We might be fine with that but, as I remember, it was a huge hassle.

In sum: buying individual votes in elections, good. Buying winner-slot, bad. Either way, unintended consequence could be to increase player burdens.

[fodder]

what does buying votes mean?

you pick a noble and flip his votes your way? ... so basically you aren't buying his votes, but bribing some pesky official to change someone else' votes?

[vonGenf]

what does buying votes mean?

you pick a noble and flip his votes your way? ... so basically you aren't buying his votes, but bribing some pesky official to change someone else' votes?

Considering the amount of votes that end up in abstention.... it could make sense to simply add votes. i.e. everyone's vote get counted, plus some extra. And if there are too many extras, then people will notice.

[Heq]

You can effectively buy votes now though.  Nothing stops someone from straight out bribing others to vote for them.

[Shenron]

Why is it too big for that !@#$?

You still have some sort of fairness guiding you to that. But there is no fairness in real life and where we would have rebellions and backstabbing, we now have elections so we should make the elections less reliable.

It is the elections that happens once where this would pay off for real, not the ones where it happens monthly.

I'm not speaking from a gameplay point of view rather than "what would be medieval." I don't care what happens in real life, whats important is does it keep the game fun for a decent number of people (not just the rich ones.)

This is why I think it's important to have an elected once ruler be transparent not because it's realistic but so the game still has a minimal layer of transparency. I'm all for this buying votes thing but I think we need to seriously consider the impact this will have on the game; especially for the "noobs"