Join the new world

Hey everyone,

today I'm presenting you a new idea I just had. Yes, I know that our beloved game administration is unlikely to adopt it. But bear with me.

Currently, MPPs are signed by congress (or the dictator, in the unlucky cases of countries who need one or are stuck with it). The process is as follows:
a) A member of congress, a president, or a dictator proposes the law of the MPP.
b) There is a voting process for 24 hours.
c) If the MPP is signed, a fixed amount of currency is deducted from both countries treasuries, and they are now befriended for a month*. (* unless they break it, etc.)

My proposition is to change that approach, by changing MPPs to "battles negotiations".

a) A member of congress/president/dictator proposes the MPP.
b) There is a voting process for 24 hours whether both countries want to get the MPP.
c) No money is deducted. Instead, a Negotiation (war/camapaign) starts. Players of each country need to participate by clicking the '''Support''' (Fight) button. This clicking will deduce energy from the players account, will earn players experience, and will use up their weapons. In fact, it's just like a battle, and clicking the "support" button is like clicking the "fight". That's the rough idea, see the image below.

Supporting an MPP, on both sides, is possible for all citizens of both countries (so in a hypothetical MPP Negotiation between the US and the UK, US citizens could anytime support the UK side, if needed). Supporting is also possible for citizens of both countries' MPP partners, BUT with a 50% penalty or more. Support is not possible for foreigners who just have their current location within a country (because enemies of the countries could disrupt the negotiations).

How could that work?
Okay, the game mechanics could make this tricky. But here are some rules I just sketched out for the idea.
1.) Both countries start with a military strength offset that they need to rush down to zero. In an arbitrary example, the offset is "military strength" (MiS) divided by 10. So, in a hypothetical MPP between USA and UK, the USA currently starts the negotiation campaign (battle campaign) with 105.1 points, the UK starts with 64.9 points. Both those amounts need to be reduced to zero for the MPP to succeed.
2.) Both countries start each negotiation round (minibattle) with 0%. They need to clear the 50% threshold, which is again defined by the MiS of the countries: They need a certain amount of friendship (damage). Maybe in Div4: the MiS x 1 Million = 1.051.000.000 friendship for USA, 649.000.000 friendship for UK. This threshold is lower in the other Divs. I guess there could be some sort of formula that the admins figure out to make it reasonably balanced.
Friendship needs effort, so failing to clear the threshold will increase the starting offset by 1,2,3 and 5 points for each division. If the military strength offset ever increases to 150% of the campaign starting offset, the MPP has failed because there was no harmony to balance the MPP.
3.) Points are decreasing for the dominating partner. If the USA hold their negotiation domination at 55% in div4, their starting offset is decreased by 5 points. If both MPP partners have the same strength, ideally both sides should win a negotiation round in turn, until they both are down to zero. Of course, there are medals to win on both sides, so there is still competition to be expected. Egotistical players could be a problem...
4.) The MPP campaign will end when both countries have decreased their military strength offset down to lower than 0. However, if one side is below zero and the other side has more than 25 points more than them, the MPP has ALSO failed - again, there wasn't enough harmony between the countries.

Too complicated? Here is a sketch-example, using the hypothetical MPP between USA and UK:

Currently, the USA are down to 2 points, which is very dangerous for this entire negotiation campaign - in fact this means not a very balanced negotiation position. The UK needs to win in all divisions to go down with their military offset from 55 to 44.

In this screenshot, things are looking good for the negotiations, though: the USA have deliberately only supported 7% of their friendship (damage) threshold in this division. If they fail this negotiation round in all divisions, their offset will be up to 13 (1+2+3+5 + 2) are could still fail this negotiation round. As a result, they will gain additional offset points. Let's assume, things continue like this:
USA - vs - UK
2 points vs 55 points (start of this round)
13 points vs 44 points (start of next round, the USA failed in all divisions, UK won in the rest)
12 points vs 34 points (start of the round after that; the USA have won in Div 1 once, but not failed in any division)
14 points vs 23 points (round after that; the USA failed in div 2, lost in all others)
9 points vs 17 points (USA won in div4, UK in div 1/2/3)
6 points vs 9 points (USA won in div1/2, UK failed in div1, UK won div3/4)
0 points vs 4 points (USA won in div1/2/3, UK won div4)
-11 points vs 5 points (USA won in all divs, UK failed in div1)
-12 points vs -5 points (USA won in div1, UK won in div2/3/4
Negotiation campaign was successful. Of course, this example was pretty tight at the start.
The example just underlines that it is important for both countries to give their best to negotiate the MPP and try to actively balance things out. Note that I don't expect the game mechanics to be just like I described above. How it is developed is entirely up to Plato's crew!

In my opinion, this idea won't disrupt the game balance, introduces a new aspect to the game, isn't too unrealistic to program for the game developers, allows for a new type of medals (negotiatior hero medal for the top negotiation supporter; allianceforger medal for the top campaign supporter), and even fills the coffers of Plato.

All the best,
and as always curious about your reactions,
Enya