Bringing Civil War to eRep

Day 736, 12:39 • Published in USA USA • by Lieutenant Scheisskopf

After a few busy days, I finally have some time to lay out the Civil War proposal. My goals in making this presentation were to make sure that 1) starting a civil war (CW) is too complex to just be for the lulz, 2) ‘sincere’ enough to prevent CWs from basically being a PTO tool, and 3) advanced enough that a newcomer would not be able to launch one of their own. TruthinessHurts showed me an excellent proposal he had posted here so most of the hard work was done for me. The rest follows:

Minimum Requirements
In real life (RL), civil wars are far from a commonality and, for the most part, do not emerge as a result of one person waking up and thinking a civil war would be fun to do. So these simple guidelines would be in place to make sure that a CW is a serious undertaking and that only a handful of ‘respected’ individuals could start one
- Citizen must be level 17 or higher. Presidency can be achieved at level 14, but a civil war runs so against the status quo that I consider it necessary for a more experienced gamer to be eligible to start one.
- Citizen must be in the country’s Congress/parliament, and must start the CW from their region they represent.
- Citizen cannot propose a CW between the 15th and 25th of a month. This would be in place to prevent a politician from attempting a coup d’etat just because they were leaving office soon.
- Citizen must have 10 gold in their possession. This will be explained later.

One Twist
I will continue with the proposal without this one idea, but the introduction of Governors to the game, elected officials who purely manage the affairs of their region, would be something worth considering. These Governors would be elected on the same day as Party Presidents (the 15th of each month) and would be able to modify business taxes in their state, initiate hospital and defense system constructions in their state, and could replace Congressmen/women who seemed to be inactive. A “Governor” would also factor prominently in a CW, but the rest of my CW proposal will continue without this one twist to the game. Lastly, Governors would give more opportunity for people to remain active in-game and involved in politics. Something to think about...

Congressional Steps
As mentioned in the “Minimum Requirements,” the region’s representative in the country’s government would submit a bill of secession from the country and pay 10 gold. The gold payment is to make CWs somewhat costly to propose (although I know many people are taking advantage of the surveys to make gold), and as TruthinessHurts said, the bill would demonstrate that CWs are just as much political and “civil” as they are about fighting a war. The gold payment is 10 as opposed to 5 gold because each citizen gets a 5 gold bonus for leveling up between levels 16-20, so the higher price for a CW discourages someone from proposing a CW once they leveled up.

Once the bill for secession was proposed, the elected officials would have a chance to vote on the bill. To make the bill different from a president’s impeachment trial, only ⅓ of the vote would be necessary for the CW bill to be passed to the states whose representatives voted for the bill, where the states’ citizens could vote. At the same time, a ⅓ vote still suggests that the proposal is pretty serious and far from one person acting alone. “Partisanship” should be considered, so that all the members of one party don’t just propose to secede because the President is of another, but I am not sure what mechanism could assure this since it is very easy to change parties. Any failed vote would result in the Congressman who proposed secession to be removed from office and fined 2 gold by the government, again, discouraging CWs for the lulz.

Voting would only be open in the state for citizens who were in the state when the bill was passed, so that moving ticket campaigns would not be as effective. If the host country wanted to vote down the proposal domestically, then they should move citizens to the state the congressman represented. Similar to country citizenship, this would effectively make sure that there is a ‘region citizenship’ to keep competing forces from sending people to the state just to vote on the proposal.

New State?
For any state whose people voted for secession, a CW would open. I differ from TruthinessHurts’ proposal here, so that the home country has a full chance to reign in their rebellious regions. To invade a rebellious state, the country’s leader would need to pay to invade the state as would a foreign power. Damage calculations would start at 0-0; there would be no wall to consider. Instead, the host country would need to defeat the rebellious state by a 10:1 ratio (I am open to other suggestions on ratios or tallying) in order to suppress the rebellion. Fighting would only be limited to the country’s citizens, but any citizen could fight on either side in the battle, similar to how Northern citizens fought for the Confederacy and Southerners fought for the Union in the American Civil War.

If the attempt to retake a seceded region failed, the rebellious state would become a country with the representative who proposed/voted for the bill as President until the next Presidential election day. Congressional elections would be held within 24 hours, and only people in the state could seek office; 10 representatives would be elected, with the President casting the tie-breaking vote. The old country could next attempt to retake the rebellious state 7 days after their previous attempt, an increment that gives the rebellious state a chance to establish itself, and also one which allows for multiple attempts to take place between various Pres, party, and Congressional elections.

The seceded state could vote to return to the host country by a simple majority through votes which could also be held every 7 days. This concept would allow for a secession that took place for ‘legitimate grievances’ against the host country to negotiate on whatever issues were most important to the secessionists. Or on an opposite extreme, the seceded state could attempt to invade its neighbors to extend its new country, or to provide geographic continuity with other states who may have also seceded. States which seceded but shared borders would be given the option to merge if both acting presidents approved, with the president of the more populous state becoming President of a combined country that took the larger state's name. In the event that the rebellion’s new state took every region of the old country, then the rebellion would assume the country’s title and role in international affairs.

Uses and Closing
My goal was to keep CWs from becoming an idea that would just be used for kicks and giggles, and I think the ideas offered here and supported by TruthinessHurts do a fairly good job of preventing a lulz war from happening.

CWs would be useful for any situation where a president is simply acting irresponsibly, such as when Israel’s president recently invaded Turkey and previously depleted the country’s treasury. It could also be useful for smaller countries who were PTO’ed in a previous election; as long as one representative remained loyal to the country, then they could attempt an organized insurgency against the PTOers. Presumably, they would enjoy the average citizen’s support in this instance.

Thanks to TruthinessHurts for an excellent idea and thanks to all of you for reading. If you enjoyed this proposal, then vote it up and spread the word. Not sure what my next topic might cover; I am beginning to look at economic aspects of the game and wondering what I could do there, but am always open to your suggestions. I may also follow the upcoming Presidential elections if those appear to be interesting-- it is too soon to tell at this point what the Stars and Stripes Journal (SnSJ) will cover.

God Bless America,

Lt. Scheisskopf