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Dear friends,

Today I want to talk about politics again, but this time with a more governmental focus. For the past year or so (has it been so long?) I’ve been involved with citizenship in the UK in one form or another. For a long time that has been as the citizenship “minister” or basically the person who vets and approves foreign citizens for entry into the UK. This article might come as a bit of a surprise considering my previous writing about PTOs. I just want to reiterate this is about a government role, and is more about the preventative nature of that role. Anti-Take Over measures are still abhorrent, this is hopefully about stopping things getting that far.

Today I want to talk about the importance of citizenship as a means of safeguarding the community. This article again has a slight UK slant because of my experience, but is applicable to all nations worldwide, some of which face the threats I will be talking about every day.

So first of all, what do I do? Like many of my counterparts throughout the world, I am the person who “officially” approves citizenship prior to a congress member pushing actual ingame buttons to give you citizenship of the UK. Why is my job needed? To prevent hostile or unwelcome individuals gaining access to our local media and politics. Why can’t congress do it? Simply put, they can- but we’ve found over time that having someone with a great deal of experience providing a vetting stage prior to acceptance results in less mistakes being made. In a country as small as the UK even a few mistakes can be devastating.



To flesh out my explanation a little, let me give a brief overview of the history of citizenship. This might be boring to older players, but to newer citizens it’ll probably be new since people rarely explain the history of the game. Back in beta and for most of V1 the game had no citizenship at all. Basically each citizen was a citizen of the new world and each election you got a vote in whichever country your citizen happened to be occupying at the time. Coupled with this was the fact that congressmen and Presidents couldn’t physically remove themselves from the country they were elected in.

I suppose that the implications of this are immediately obvious. Countries were like ships, you could literally swing across from a neighbouring ship and overpower the crew, and then steer it where you liked. Taking over a country was as easy as buying enough moving tickets (in V1 these allowed you to move regions) and organising enough people. This became known as a “PTO” or Political Take Over, and hostile PTOs were the constant problem that alliances faced. In one epic battle between world alliances PEACE GC and ATLANTIS over the future of Russia (nominally aligned with PEACE) over 2000 votes were cast by opposing sides- actual Russians being a minority in the election.


Only coup d'etat related picture I could find that didn't offend someone

Eventually the admins introduced the citizenship module to try and protect small countries from PTO. In the past smaller countries, especially those newly added to the game, were obvious targets because of small population and the free currency and gold the admins gave a new country. With citizenship, the idea was that it would be much harder for people to move in large numbers to quickly take a country from the “native” people.

Now the way the module works is that each congress member can grant a certain amount of citizenships (the formula relates to the total population and the number of elected congress members). These passes give someone the right to vote and participate in national politics.

Although this does help in that it makes PTO more difficult, they still happen regularly. This is because although it is a long term goal, the benefits of PTO can be enormous for those making the attempt. The way it happens is simple- a handful of people are granted citizenship by congress members. Unknown to them, these citizens are hostile and organised. Working together, they can secure the 6-10 votes needed to get one of their members elected in an out-of-the-way region. Once elected to congress that member can then grant citizenship to anything up to 20 other members, which will secure another 3-4 seats the next month. Six or seven months down the line, it is possible to seize the Presidency, and a majority of congress. This is why it’s so dangerous- and if you doubt the danger there are a half dozen countries either currently or recently under PTO, and the threat is large even in major nations like the USA where a PTO candidate got over 500 votes in the last election.

I’d like to point out that my goal here isn’t to fear monger, but to educate. The threat being so real, it’s desperately important to nip it in the bud. Without those initial citizenship acceptances, it’s impossible to perform a PTO. Congress making silly mistakes and parties being too weak to block poor congressmen are at the heart of the problem. Once a hostile force has taken root in a country, it’s necessary to start introducing draconian measures which directly restrict democracy to stop them. Things like having “official” congress candidates, parties of national unity and so on. The cost of ignorance is your whole political module.



To try and prevent this I was appointed to vet and measure candidates for citizenship in the UK. But every day rogue congressmen and people who don’t understand this grant citizenship to people who either PM them asking, offer bribes or are just their friends. Not everyone who is nice to you in a PM is a nice person. PTOers will do anything to get into a country, and believe me a 5g bribe is nothing compared to the amount of money they can be sure to strip from your treasuries later. For this reason it is ALWAYS better to not use citizenship passes than to use them. If you are feeling trigger happy, check the official forums (if you’re British) or your CP for other countries.

The flip side of this is the MoLA. In the UK the MoLA is Minister of Legislative Affairs. In other countries it might be called the “Speaker” or similar- basically it’s an appointed leadership role for congress which is responsible for enforcing the law, managing the congress forums and advising on current votes and so on. It’s never been a busy position but the idea is to put some tough character into a position where they can attempt to make sure that the law (including citizenship law) is in place. The role of the MoLA should be to make sure primarily that every congressman knows their job, knows the procedures for citizenship and doesn’t make a silly mistake out of ignorance. This is also the job of the parties who elect congressmen, but they’re often lax in their duty.

This role is equally important to that of citizenship minister/guru. But at the end of the day the most important role in this is that of the congress members themselves. It’s their duty to learn their job, to read through the few laws and regulations we live under, and to uphold them as best as they can. At the end of the day, the responsibility must lie with them.


Hope you’ve enjoyed the article

Iain