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wapu for the 22nd congress

I am running for congress from the great state of Rhode Island. I have been a member of the 21st Congress for the past few weeks and it has been a tremendous learning experience. I have gained a greater respect for both the simple complexity of this game and the community that surronds it.

How I got into Congress

Game Mechanic, pure and simple. Last month we were losing states at just over one a day. On the 23rd my party president messaged me that I should sign up to run in Massachusetts. The state was few hours away from being conquered by PEACE. There was a PEACE sympathizer who was trying to run there as well. We were going to take up all the spots and prevent him from getting on the ballot. I moved there signed up and moved to Florida right before it was conquered. I eventually moved back to Alberta where I was running a grain company with my family. On Election Day, I showed up on the ballot. I moved back to Florida to vote and won a place in congress. My initial reaction was to resign. I had not “Earned” nor won my seat. I was in congress due to funky game mechanics. However, I quickly changed my mind when I learned more about how congress worked.

What I have learned as a member of the 21st Congress

Game Mechanics. Each member of Congress gets two proposals during their term. Each member of congress gets a number of citizenship approvals based on 10% of the total population divided by the number of congressional seats. The 21st Congress each got 32 approvals. At one point, we had over 1,000 Citizenship requests. These proposals and citizenship requests are an important part of the game and if I resigned, they would have been wasted.

We lose money each time a region is lost. During this war we have lost hundreds of gold due to payments made when one of our regions is conquered. We need the proposals of active congress members to suggest donations to the Congressional Budget Office or issue currency when we are about to lose a region. Solid coordination and a larger number of available proposals will minimize the gold going to our enemies.

The congress does not run the war. They do not even control the purse strings. The Economic Council makes recommendations for taxes. The Congressional Budget Office hands out the money. The Department of Defense and the President manages the war. The President buys and places defense systems and hospitals. I have opinions on these issues just the same as every other eAmerican, however since this is not in the realm of responsibility for the congress, I will focus on the areas I am responsible for.

What I want to accomplish going forward

Game Mechanics. We as a society need to do more in understanding the game mechanics. We have looked foolish in the past complaining to the admins over how we thought the game should work not how the game actually works. We need to learn the quirks and bugs, um, I mean Game Mechanics and features, and how to use them to our advantage. I propose we harness the skills of our citizens and expand the Department of Education with volunteers. We need Contests for the best tutorials with rewards being weapons or food donated for the cause. We need to raise the knowledge of every citizen of the eUS.

Citizen Retention. We have far too many dead citizens. We can do more to keep these people in the game. If we can get them into the forums or involved in the community, we can keep them in the game. There will always be people who leave, but if we can get them in the community, we stand a better chance of keeping their interest. As part of the AAP, I have been messaging players in game and congratulating them on reaching certain milestones in game. I would like to expand this to a national level. I would like to be able to message every citizen of the eUS when they reach a milestone and let them know the eUS appreciates their hard work.

Herding two-clickers. I think we can better educate our two-clickers. If we get them to set their eRep link to the DoD order, they will at least know where we want them to fight. We can train them how to fight and work at a high wellness. I know the money is tight, but I would like to get our party presidents to use some of that party gold on advertising for our country. We need to back the Department of Education with an increase in funding. We have a lot of talented citizens, we should pay them to help creating tutorials and advertising campaigns. There is a grass roots campaign started by long time citizen Publius he has called Shepherding the Misguided. I support this idea fully and would like to get official government backing for more programs like these.

Real World Ideologies

This is a game. When asked, I try to describe it as RISK combined with Monopoly and put in a Diplomacy box. I love all of those games. But I play each of them differently. They each have a different set of rules and require a different set of skills to play. They are rules that do not equate to real life and if we equate real life ideologies to those games, they become unplayable. eRep is a game that plays the same way. It is touted as a simulation, but I see it more as a fantasy world with it's own set of rules. So I play it that way. The war module is not remotely close to real life. Working and eating and housing are all linear without much variety. The government modlue is the closest, but is still not a true simulation of any government in use today.

Left or Right? Doesn't matter. We have no control over differences in eRep. We all make, buy, and use guns every day. That is how the game is designed. There is no eAbortion and we encourage every everyone to to seek out government programs when they first start out. In the same way that we can't bring real world left/right ideologies into RISK or Monopoly we should leave them out of eRep too. In eRep there is only Game Mechanics.

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The Wayward Monkey