Hub.mn

We live in an age of, well, empires.

Not since the Grand Commonwealth have we seen what we now see.

Some can and very well through cleverness or sheer brute force (and popularity) extend their reach across the majority of Micras.

This has not happened yet. But if it did, it would impede the gameplay for the vast majority of smaller groups.

Therefore, I propose a new rule, that no individual nation may hold more than 1/2 of the land area of Micras at any given time.

Has anyone ever even come close to owning that much land at once?

Nations haven't come close; individuals have.

The map of Micras is, by essence, a patchwork of different nation states. To have such states mopped up like Pokemon under a single hand rather cheapens and mocks the concept, in my opinion. It reflects real-world history to a degree, but with a crucial difference; in the real world, the bloating of empires tends to meet a natural end by the accumulation of diminishing returns and internal schisms a la the Hegelian antithesis, causing them to collapse into a state of synthesis before it morphs into the thesis of the next empire. But on Micras, anyone with a sufficiently narcissistic approach to the narrative development of their subject realms is free to bloat their holdings across the planet without reference to the inherently finite or cyclical nature of colonial power. What is acquired is acquired forever, subject to the ruler's activity level, and can be neglected or oppressed at will with no consequences. This becomes a problem when, to pick an example entirely at random, someone pursues the visceral dopamine hit of territorial expansion as their chief pleasure in this hobby and cannot moderate their impulses for the sake of the vibrancy and diversity of the community overall. In such cases when the amount of land holdings per person becomes hideously lopsided, or the amount of claimable land itself runs short, restrictions would need to be imposed to keep things viable for smaller members and newcomers.

I wouldn't say the time for such restrictions has arrived just yet, but it may not be far off.

Not as an individual nation as far as I am aware. I'd have to look back to the MCS maps of the old days of the Grand Commonwealth maps to see. But if that included Babkha, Antica, and some other of the big ones at that time, if not 1/2, maybe close to it, or at least 1/4.

But it's not really these alliances, YAMOs, etc. I'm concerned about. It is about individual lands, although maybe we should be concerned about the alliances too. We haven't reached that point yet, but in any case, it just wouldn't be fair to allow one single land to have too much area/size, like 1/2 of Micras.

Yastreb makes some interesting comments, some deeper than I would usually prefer to make, but nonetheless potentially relevant as to the potential for unfettered expansion and "domination" to occur of regions of Micras in absence of restrictions.

Yastreb wrote:Nations haven't come close; individuals have.

The map of Micras is, by essence, a patchwork of different nation states. To have such states mopped up like Pokemon under a single hand rather cheapens and mocks the concept, in my opinion. It reflects real-world history to a degree, but with a crucial difference; in the real world, the bloating of empires tends to meet a natural end by the accumulation of diminishing returns and internal schisms a la the Hegelian antithesis, causing them to collapse into a state of synthesis before it morphs into the thesis of the next empire. But on Micras, anyone with a sufficiently narcissistic approach to the narrative development of their subject realms is free to bloat their holdings across the planet without reference to the inherently finite or cyclical nature of colonial power. What is acquired is acquired forever, subject to the ruler's activity level, and can be neglected or oppressed at will with no consequences. This becomes a problem when, to pick an example entirely at random, someone pursues the visceral dopamine hit of territorial expansion as their chief pleasure in this hobby and cannot moderate their impulses for the sake of the vibrancy and diversity of the community overall. In such cases when the amount of land holdings per person becomes hideously lopsided, or the amount of claimable land itself runs short, restrictions would need to be imposed to keep things viable for smaller members and newcomers.

I wouldn't say the time for such restrictions has arrived just yet, but it may not be far off.

I don't disagree, but if we're going to limit things based on how much territory any particular individual controls, it would be wise to modify the process to allow larger claims. Otherwise, with the relatively small real population in the community, you're going to be seeing a lot of green, more than will ever be claimable under current rules.

At the end of the day, the real problem with Micras is that most nations are one-man projects, albeit with multiple characters fluffing the numbers. Back in the old days, to which Giles refers, most every nation had half a dozen or more real people involved. Maybe we all need to bite the bullet and consolidate our projects into a smaller core, but population-strong, group of micronations. This might require something revolutionary, such as accepting that we need to kill off certain historic micronations in name/constitution in order to start with a clean state to bring things together. i.e. A Tymaria or GC approach, except lose the historic former national identities and make fresh new subnational entities to minimize the chances of old warring camps tearing everything apart ...

I don't think killing off one man nations is a good idea. I've worked on Senya for seven years and we've been part of Micras for five years. Yes, there are a lot of one man nations out there, but I don't think it's a problem and I think the community is fairly balanced. There are only a half-dozen nations or so with large swathes of land and most of these nations do a lot of good work. I think we're starting to move into an era of co-operation between states rather than co-operation within states, and I don't think that is a bad thing.

If someone was starting to dominate the map, I think it would be reasonable for the council to say, "hey, leave some room", but we're far from reaching that problem yet in my opinion.

I recall a time when one-man nations were a laughing stock - then examples started appearing that outclassed nations of higher membership (as ever I cite Passio-Corum as the salient example) and the dynamic changed. I don't think the old idea that a lone actor can't flesh out a top-tier sovereign state holds much weight any more (that I've just embarked on my own one-man effort is entirely coincidental to this observation ).

I do think scope exists for a certain consolidation of borders to realign the map with the religious conversions, ethnic migrations and royal marriages that individuals carry around with them - like in the Civilization games where cities can switch masters by sheer cultural power alone. Certainly that's the only way I can think to undertake a lasting consolidation of territories and return the nation state to being the prime manifestation of Micran power, as opposed to a trinket in the portfolio of some royal house or other. Cultural commonality would be the key - whacking random territories together in a Tymarian model would only consign them to Tymaria's fate.

It wouldn't necessarily matter if this created more territories rather than less - as Barnaby says, our interactions would merely switch from the internal to the diplomatic. The latter arrangement might even be more interesting.

I agree a cap on individual holdings could be balanced by a more relaxed attitude to claimants below the cap - unless Scott makes another SSC post about us, I don't see Micras being inundated with new arrivals any time soon.

Yastreb wrote:I recall a time when one-man nations were a laughing stock

I believe at the same time we also had rules in place which meant Shireroth wasn't allowed to expand nor was any other nation permitted to claim more land than Shireroth - as far as I can recall during my time on Micras, those are the only specific rules we've had pertaining to limiting the size of nations and both have been repealed and subsequently defied.

I think this conversation is well-meaning, and could become relevant at some point in the future, but with no current members even being close to claiming a quarter of the map to themselves as it stands, setting an official limit of owning 50% of the map right now could become more of a target to aim for than an hindrance, to some

Yastreb wrote: I do think scope exists for a certain consolidation of borders to realign the map with the religious conversions, ethnic migrations and royal marriages that individuals carry around with them - like in the Civilization games where cities can switch masters by sheer cultural power alone. Certainly that's the only way I can think to undertake a lasting consolidation of territories and return the nation state to being the prime manifestation of Micran power, as opposed to a trinket in the portfolio of some royal house or other. Cultural commonality would be the key - whacking random territories together in a Tymarian model would only consign them to Tymaria's fate.

I must say, that on a certain level, I rather like this idea. Perhaps some cities could also, instead of being wiped from the map entirely, become NPC city states that could either be recovered by the original ruling power or else become up for grabs by a neighbouring state, providing that state's metropolitan core/capital is on the same continent.

If there was a half-decent conflict mechanism that people could be encouraged or co-opted into abiding by, most of the sillier overseas territories of the big empires would be eliminated by virtue of being indefensible. However I suspect that would require more work than anyone can be arsed with, and people can get terribly precious about their pixels in any event.

Ultimately these "empires" consist of words and pixels so people should be a bit more relaxed about winning, losing and stealing territories from the neighbours. It would make it more interesting than merely being collections of titles preserved in aspic.

War never changes.