On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 09:41 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > It depends on how you define lasting monument, given that anything could > be removed if we really wanted to. I mean, I expected at the time that > the Town Fountain might become the target of each successive scammer, its > text showing the most recent scam and its amendment #s counting the scams. > But now it's part of tradition like R104 I suppose (and of course, Murphy > as the next scammer with the Fantasy Rule Scam also wanted to keep the > fountain, so just did patent titles). Well, yes, I'm in favour of a minor permanent award in addition to the win. That's why I'm H. ais523, for instance.
> I'm actually not a big fan of the Junta rule; I'd prefer it if winning > scammers just gave themselves a unique patent title of their own, it > makes for a more colorful Herald's report and might be a good balance > between "lasting" and "frozen in the Rules"; I'm more apt to recall > Murphy's scam because I see the "Fantasy Rules" titles then I would > recall "the Nth Junta Champion". Agreed for truly dominant dicatorships, Junta seems a bit weak for those. The real reason behind win by Junta was to let a power-1 dictatorship win without completely wrecking the gamestate (wins were secured at 2 when it came in); one of the best ways to stop scams causing real damage is to give them a non-damaging outlet for their scamminess (such as the win). > It's worth nothing that Maud intended the Map of Agora to be a power-1 > equivalent of the graffiti wall as well; the embedded names were put > in through a few "power 1 proposal victories" (mostly commemorating the > existence of an Ordinary coalition with enough votes to deface it > by vote rather than outright scams, the equivalent of team wins by > clout) but that's also fallen out of fashion too so it commemorates a > list of names from another time as well. I had wondered about that for a while. I was wondering if it was maybe based on B's tradition of honouring famous players of the past by naming ndays after them. I sort-of regret that the days of Ordinary coalitions are over (we have Support Democracy nowadays); on the other hand, Support Democracy makes ordinary-proposal scams a lot more interesting because in addition to just forcing through the proposal, you have to either disguise it so it isn't democratised, muddy the waters sufficiently that a democratisation attempt fails due to ambiguity, or rely on apathy (which is how you got Cassandra, IIRC). > Well my bet with comex was a good test of whether power 1 could lead > to omnipotence... the answer being "it did but it wasn't trivial to > find a way" but that sure doesn't mean it's good to get complacent and > vote in a power-1 junta out of apathy! comex and I have spent /months/ in the past looking for escalations from low powers up to high powers (not continuously, I might add). They're very hard to find, although I still think there are a few tricks for that sort of thing left in the ruleset. I'd advise any would-be dictators to have one (or several) up their sleeve before going for the intermediate power-1 dictatorship that so many of those scams rely on. (As per my usual stock disclaimer to avoid violating rule 2215 when I try a controversial scam, "[although I think this works, ]note that scams of this kind have historically tended to fail, so please do not be mislead into necessarily thinking it works without checking for yourself!") -- ais523
