Funny. I swore that I read somewhere when signing up on how Tom once ran a country on a few minutes a day and this was presented as a "This game is cool because you can do so much while having a real life" advertisement. I think I will seek that out now. If BattleMaster is meant to be as Anaris describes then please say so clearly and up front so new players know what they are getting themselves into. As it stands most people coming into the game are likely to have what, from your responses indicate, a very wrong impression of how much time they will have to dedicate to the game to accomplish something beyond blindly following orders...
First of all, when Tom did that, it was about 9 years ago. The game was different back then; I don't even know offhand what all the differences are, because a lot of them are cultural, not in the code. Could he do the same now? I don't know. Maybe he's just smarter than me (he did build this game mostly by himself, after all!). Or maybe he'd find that it doesn't work that way anymore.
Second of all, yes, it
is possible to be a successful ruler in a few minutes a day. I've done it myself for significant stretches of time.
However, there are problems with it.
- It's hard to remain ruler if you're not following up on lots of things, and making sure people see how effective you are (especially in a Republic or Democracy).
- If you're not putting in the time to make the big plans and communicate them to the realm, someone else has to be doing so.
- Closely related to #1, it's hard to become a ruler if you're just logging in once a day for 20 minutes or so.
So basically,
someone's got to keep the people in the realm moving in the right direction, and if it's not you, you're likely to be replaced by the person who it is.
