Glory to the Emperor!

[CantrFreak]

So.. I've been brainstorming a little bit. And I came up with the hypothetical situation that somewhere on a big island a character tried to unify the whole island into an island-wide government. Anybody have any ideas on how this would be done? Obviously every town will practically die for their freedom or are completely idealistic so they won't take another town's freedom. So I figure the only logical way would be peacefully.

And also, once one government comes into creation. How would one organize such a thing? The problems? The benefits? Whether it would be a confederation or an empire or whatever else.

Discuss.

[Joshuamonkey]

So.. I've been brainstorming a little bit. And I came up with the hypothetical situation that somewhere on a big island a character tried to unify the whole island into an island-wide government. Anybody have any ideas on how this would be done? Obviously every town will practically die for their freedom or are completely idealistic so they won't take another town's freedom. So I figure the only logical way would be peacefully.

And also, once one government comes into creation. How would one organize such a thing? The problems? The benefits? Whether it would be a confederation or an empire or whatever else.

Discuss.

I had a character try that with Burgeo Island, and a similar idea was/is floating around on Noniwrok (same character, funnily enough), but it's no easy task. I also had another character try to unite a bunch of towns. That didn't go quite as bad, but she and others got inactive. In my opinion: Big active towns are generally confident and don't like the idea of their town being ruled by someone else. Small towns that really need the help would be more interested; even then, it depends on what type of town leader you're dealing with.
How to go about it: Get a bunch of towns to at least unite in some sort of way, even if it just means having the name of the town on a note and the town leader's approval. It would still mean you're allies, I assume. Somehow form a council between the different towns; if it's a big island, you'd likely need regional meetings and perhaps a regional representative, or easier: radios. Radio communication is very important for island wide cooperation.
Some small towns may even agree to share laws and building keys. From what I've seen, the Stone Knights have that kind of cooperation between towns.

[CantrFreak]

I would think that the bigger towns, you could skip over. Or offer them autonomy, a higher position in the hierarchy, give them governing power of the small nearby towns, etc. etc.

Or if you were strong enough, it would be simple to just out right conquer them or threaten them.

[Voltenion]

The lack of cooperation and unity I saw in Teregotha shows how hard it is to make this possible. I feel like, there's no way you can create a nation till you implement some form of currency. My town is not going to trade our carrots for your wood untill we've spent all the wood from the last trade, currency would change this. It would actually give more individual independence to people from the towns and more dependence on the nation, which is good and what's needed.

Another real problem I see when something like this is attempted in game is no one letting the one be the ruler. It always falls down to "3 leaders meeting in 3 towns" and that just means they are allied towns, not a nation.

[DylPickle]

So the island wide central power would be subdivided into provinces, fiefs, kingdoms, etc. organized around larger centers. Sounds like a confederation to me.

I'm always surprised that local regions aren't cooperating more often. I mean, the regions already have common names amongst them. It's just a matter of recognizing each other as a common people. There doesn't even need to be all that much cooperation, or unity under one rule. At least not at first.

[Snickie]

There's a long-standing attempt to do this on eastern Aki....so far there are five towns, and I haven't seen the king around in forever. Not to mention that the other towns are almost completely deserted anyway.

[CantrFreak]

A confederation I suppose. More like the early US. It was a confederation of smaller nations, but eventually after being together so long it become more unified.

And anyhow, I was hoping that one could apply to the Cantrian sense of idealism and make the towns give up the resources for nothing, if they had a surplus. After all, you're only helping your country. Of course if there were people, resources, etc. you needed, you would get it! Easily. At no direct cost. And hopefully people would realize the RP in having this sort of thing and would agree to it too.

And I had ruled that the leadership thing would be solved with each standing leader being given governing power of their region. However, the possibility of elections would be decided upon (depending on the former traditions of the region). The overall emperor position would be through election. A real election. Which could certainly cause A LOT of fun power struggles. >:D

[Doug R.]

The lack of cooperation and unity I saw in Teregotha shows how hard it is to make this possible. I feel like, there's no way you can create a nation till you implement some form of currency. My town is not going to trade our carrots for your wood untill we've spent all the wood from the last trade, currency would change this. It would actually give more individual independence to people from the towns and more dependence on the nation, which is good and what's needed.

I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, some of Teregotha's leaders are too narrow-minded to see this (it's been tried).

[Doug R.]

My one character's plan was to take advantage of the reality of town-desertion to extend his Empire's influence over these locations in the form of protection. Anyone settling there would need to provide to the Empire to help support their protection, and not accepting the protection wouldn't be an option.

Unfortunately, that vision wasn't shared, so that all went to the wayside when he resigned.

On my last account, my character Lond Arminius attempted to forge an empire under the guise of a confederation. The towns appeared free, but in reality were not. It was my first autocratic character, and I thought that control through the illusion of freedom was fairly ingenious. Unfortunately, that semi-died with him. Eurytion seems to have adopted Lond's lies as truth and is forging that Republic in an truly free manner (at least, it appears so to my skeptical character). Unless, of course, there is another illusion that I haven't yet seen through

Ultimately, rule of more than one location requires active characters that are willing to isolate themselves in town governance, and they're just too hard to come by.

[CrashBlizz]

I got an idea about how to unify towns and keep them together from playing an RPG once. I was walking around one of the towns in the game and had to wait while the town port area loaded.

So I thought if you could get a few towns together and change their names into one town. Each is its own district of one town. You can have the harbour (the town by the coast), the market (the town with the most roads), the governmental district (the town in the centre), etc. The current leader would need to be very persuasive or have total control to implement this though.

I guess it also kinda like back when you couldnt change the towns name in game and everywhere was named east or west somewhere.

My character was randomly murdered before I could try it.... pitty.

[DylPickle]

I got an idea about how to unify towns and keep them together from playing an RPG once. I was walking around one of the towns in the game and had to wait while the town port area loaded.

So I thought if you could get a few towns together and change their names into one town. Each is its own district of one town. You can have the harbour (the town by the coast), the market (the town with the most roads), the governmental district (the town in the centre), etc. The current leader would need to be very persuasive or have total control to implement this though.

I guess it also kinda like back when you couldnt change the towns name in game and everywhere was named east or west somewhere.

My character was randomly murdered before I could try it.... pitty.

I always thought something like that would could work in a region with a very close clump of towns. If you can get to the next town in around a day on a bike, or something.

[CantrFreak]

I got an idea about how to unify towns and keep them together from playing an RPG once. I was walking around one of the towns in the game and had to wait while the town port area loaded.

So I thought if you could get a few towns together and change their names into one town. Each is its own district of one town. You can have the harbour (the town by the coast), the market (the town with the most roads), the governmental district (the town in the centre), etc. The current leader would need to be very persuasive or have total control to implement this though.

I guess it also kinda like back when you couldnt change the towns name in game and everywhere was named east or west somewhere.

My character was randomly murdered before I could try it.... pitty.

The game was meant to be played like that. According to Jos.

[SekoETC]

On my last account, my character Lond Arminius attempted to forge an empire under the guise of a confederation. The towns appeared free, but in reality were not. It was my first autocratic character, and I thought that control through the illusion of freedom was fairly ingenious. Unfortunately, that semi-died with him. Eurytion seems to have adopted Lond's lies as truth and is forging that Republic in an truly free manner (at least, it appears so to my skeptical character). Unless, of course, there is another illusion that I haven't yet seen through

Fun fact, Eurytion took over Naron by murdering my character. But he seems like a nice guy nowadays, although a bit sleepy.

[Doug R.]

That was your character? I'm glad he did. From what I heard, your character was undoing everything Lond spent his life building up

[etece]

I had a character a while back on Noniwrok who pondered on this problem. Although rather than working from a concept of unity he worked from the basis of competition.

It seemed to him that a) Towns were always more active when under threat
and b) In order to have to create a proper group (or national) spirit, there needs to be a group to compare yourselves to.

This lead to a kind of 1984 sort of concept, whereby the island could be divided into three nations, each controlling one of the three resources needed for iron, meaning each nation would at once be dependant on each other, but also in direct competition.

Unfortunately the implementation would have been almost impossible, and it wouldn't take much to upset the balance. However it was fun working on the concept, I even got as far as drawing up a map dividing territories and listing basic rules for each nation That note is probably buried in the bottom of a trash envelope or at the back of a forgotten library by now.