WILD LIFE - August 2022

In breaking news, NationStates is back on TikTok! Good luck to you all.

But the focus for this edition is that Balder, The West Pacific, The Pacific, The North Pacific, and Europeia recently signed the Modern Gameplay Compact. I had to laugh at the use of the word "Modern". It dates so quickly. Anyhow, the press release was informative, but I was lucky enough to get some extra scoop from a modern Major-General.
(For those of you unfamiliar with Act I of Gullible and Silliman's comic operetta The Pirates of Pacific, you may want to give this a quick listen before reading on.)

But if you're just thinking, "I don't care about any of this. Why did I get a notification?", then this section is for you.

The premise for Repeal or No Repeal is pretty simple. A recently passed piece of legislation gets named, and you have to guess correctly as to whether it will be repealed before the end of the month.

Barfleur's Addressing Domestic Abuse passed with 83.3% of the vote on 16 February. You were asked if this would take a battering, and be repealed before 1 April. Astoundingly, none of you were April Fools, and you all correctly called that this one would stay on the books.

Thanks to our voters

The North Polish Union, Voljundok, All Wild Things, Aleixandria, Morover, Wapistan, Life empire, Mauryavarsha, Sky point, Large Ladz, Giraffeton, Pathoal

Daarwyrth's legislation, Protections During Territorial Transitions passed with 64.9% in favour. But will it be protected from repeal? Or will it transition to being struck down by 1 October? Place your bets!

"This is a major model of a Modern Gameplay Compact
We spoke for many hours and then found these words that we all backed
In light of current circumstance we signed up to this contract
It describes what we would do if one of us was now attacked

"With raiders in many orgs acting quite suspicious
Watched like hawks, we're in a sec met with actions quite seditious
Faced by wolves with bites that are well known to be so vicious
We need to prepare ourselves 'gainst actions most malicious

"In recent times there have been shifts in the Gameplay community
There's polarisation and the growing threat of Raider Unity
Combined with introduction of these strongholds and these frontiers
We have got many worries regarding the coming years

"To defend our mutual interests, our values, and security
We'll collaborate and work closer to help build some immunity
We all persue pragmatic paths. We all have storied history
We don't believe the dogma of trad gameplay dichotomy

"So in those times that we do find that we need reinforcement
We'll call upon each other to provide some more endorsement
In short, we thought it would be wise to sign up to this contract
We all agreed to sign up to this major Modern Gameplay Compact."

Based on your reading you may also like:

What can I say?

We're not going to St Saratoga for dinner.

Thanks to our voters

Graag brom, Explodeingtnt, Deacarsia, Evelpia, Kordavail, Ambrossa, Holy Hawaiian Empire, Charallia, Zizocia,St Saratoga

Balder, The West Pacific, The Pacific, The North Pacific, and Europeia recently signed the Modern Gameplay Compact. This treaty has the usual GP treaty stuff: mutual recognition of each others' governments as the legitimate ones; a pledge to provide assistance if a signatory region gets attacked; and an agreement to share relevant intelligence. The unexpected part is that the agreement extends to any Frontiers these regions found in the future (when Admin finally add these to the game). The implication being that one or more of these regions intend to establish Frontier regions.

What are Frontiers? If you don't know, take a quick peep at this before the rest of this article.

The Feeder regions (the Pacifics) currently get 100% of all new nations between them. When Frontiers become a thing, they will get 50% of all new nations, and Feeders the other 50%. So as time goes by, you'd reasonably expect the Pacifics to trend towards 50% of their current populations, and towards 50% of the current number of nations endorsing their delegates. TNP would be down to about 550 endorsements, and TP and TWP down to about 250 each. That lower number of endorsements should make it easier to coup the Pacifics.

Balder is a Sinker region, and so their flow of reactivated nations is unaffected by the coming Frontiers change. They're not at an increased risk of coup (despite the recent Ragnarok fiasco). And their 300 endos is higher than the projected post-frontier-introduction 250 for TP and TWP.

Europeia is a User Created Region. It has an executive founder. Realistically, they're not going to get couped. There is nothing in this treaty which makes them safer - they're already untouchable, because they have an executive founder.

About six weeks back, The Pacific, The North Pacific, and the West Pacific signed a similar treaty, the Pax Polaris Occidens. With this additional new treaty, they now benefit from Balder and Europeia's assistance too (if it's ever needed). Similarly Balder benefits with assurance against coups. But what does Europeia get?

When Frontiers were first proposed, Europeia spoke out strongly against them, leaving the impression that they would choose to remain a Stronghold. It's possible that they changed their minds. Being a Frontier would bring them new nations, in return for losing the security of an executive founder. But what if instead they made one or more colony Frontiers? Then they could tap into that flow of new nations, and guide them to the Europeian forums and Discord. Endorsements could be used to secure the colonies, the Stronghold home region would still be secure, and the offsite activity would be centralised. Without being / owning a Frontier, I don't see what Europeia gains from the treaty (though it wouldn't be the first time I missed the obvious), so I'm predicting that they set up colonies.

Could Balder do something similar? And add a flow of new nations to their flow of reactivated ones? Of course Balder doesn't have the security of an executive founder like Europeia does. And the Pacifics? Colony Frontiers could be a way of getting back some of the flow of new nations that they are about to lose. So maybe.

So which of the signatories will be establishing Frontier reasons? Well, I could always ask, but that would take away the fun of idle speculation.

We played another round of this terrible game where I write an incomplete sentence, and you have to guess what the missing word or phrase is.

That card farmer is so obsessed. He even...

*Drum roll*

...keeps twisting in Blackjack games just to get more cards! It was fun thinking up potential answers for this one. I used to run casino games over at The Sands. That gambling option was the obvious choice to me.

Thanks to our voters

The Hurricane, Past beans, Wapistan, Graag brom, Explodeingtnt, Veilacia, Satanic athiests, The North Polish Union, Aleixandria

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Of Altonianic Islands, Sky point, Aleixandria, Jeeves Land, Indusse, Pathoal, Davelands