Babylonian Statecraft

“Rome at the beginning was ruled by kings. Freedom and the consulship were established by Lucius Brutus. Dictatorships were held for a temporary crisis. The power of the decemvirs did not last beyond two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of the military tribunes of long duration. The despotisms of Cinna and Sulla were brief; the rule of Pompeius and Crassus soon yielded before Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus, who, when the world was wearied by civil strife, subjected it to empire under the title of ‘Prince’..”

~Tacitus, The Annals

It is said that in times long past civilization had risen across the face of the world, only to be struck down by the wrath of the gods for reasons unknown in a series of plagues, floods, and famines. One of the great cities that fell in this Great Purge is known today as the legendary Atlandiz, and it is from the ruins of this city that the Great King Nebuchadnezzar rode forth with the survivors of his once proud city, searching for a new land that his people could call their own. Thus was born Babylon, a village that grew to proudly dominate the hunter gatherer tribes that surrounded it, even absorbing them in time.

The gods were not done with the descendants of Atlandiz yet, however. After 1000 years of unbroken rule by the heirs of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon failed to produce an heir before he drowned in the ocean attempting to catch crabs. Babylon was unequipped to deal with such a crisis, and as such it provided a perfect opportunity for those ambitious few willing to seize power. Four men related to the late King rose as possible candidates, but none were willing to concede rule to the others.

War was waged between the Four Men Who Would Be King, leaving Babylon nearly destroyed in its aftermath. The city has been nearly leveled, and all of the old powerful families have been wiped out by war. The four claimants destroyed each other thoroughly, and now none can truly claim blood descent from Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon has no government, no ruler. How can Babylon survive this tragedy?

This is the question you must ask yourselves as you, what sad remnants of prominent Babylonian trader or lower noble families remain, begin to chart Babylon’s course into the future by selecting a new King. Answer it wisely.

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Why do I start a new IAAR now, you might ask? Primarily, because I've finally gotten around to creating a set of rules and behind-the-scenes formulas that I think I can faithfully recreate at least part of the experience of Governments and Politics. I start this now due to the recent dearth in activity in this subforum. I figure it's a good idea to remedy that, especially with a good, old IAAR instead of some LP.

I do think I'll actually have the time and motivation to see this project through this time around, as I've actually managed to create the formulas before beginning the project and don't have that much going on in my school/work life until May.

Regardless, by joining you accept the risk that the world may suddenly end without warning.

To join, simply post your Family Name and Character Name. I'll post Update 0 as soon as I've got at least 5 players, at which point the politics surrounding who gets to become the next King will begin.

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Table of Contents

RULES
Basic Rules
A Bit More Depth
Specifics About Actions Part 1
Specifics About Actions Part 2

UPDATES
Update 0
Beltashazzar I

Rules

You, the members of the Babylonian civilization, will collectively lead Babylon forward from the dawn of this new age to whenever the game ends, either due to an in-game victory or the suspension of the game by myself, the GM. You will compete against other civilizations as well as each other, however I will also be controlling those other civilizations through hot seat. This means diplomacy can be much more interesting and in-depth.

I will play in increments of 10 turns, stopping and posting a crisis update if something that requires attention pops up. Each turn will count as 1 year, meaning that, barring incident, each Update will cover a 10 year period.

Before going into the rules, I would like to thank Civleader and his Governments and Politics and Governments and Politics II for their inspiration. May he return someday!

At the most basic level, this game is about power. Your goal, should you accept the challenge, is to accumulate the most power out of all players. I’ll talk more about power later.

For now, let’s talk about:

The Basics

Each player will be playing as a character at the head of their family. Each character will have the following “stats,” recorded in a google document, the link to which will be distributed to each player when they join.

• Name
Your character’s name. It will be recorded in your official stats as Last Name, First Name.
• Positions Held
This statistic will tell you what positions and titles you hold.
• Age
Your character’s age. The very young and the old are more likely to die than those in the middle of the age spectrum. The age of characters also effects how they will fare in their actions and will also effect the power statistic. The longer they live, the more beneficial it is to your power, and the older you are the harder it will be to perform successful actions.
• Wealth
Measured in shekels, the wealth of your character will be very important. It is important to note that this wealth does not translate in-game (into the CiV game itself), and is meant to be used to perform actions, make trades, help calculate your power statistic, and whatever else you might think of to use it for. Players will receive a base salary of 2 shekels per turn. Imprisoned players will receive no such salary.
• National Influence
Your influence over the people at the national level.
• Local Influence
Your influence over the people at the local level.
• Strength
This stat is your personal physical strength. It will effect your success at actions requiring physical effort such as fighting another player.
• Diplomacy
This stat is your personal diplomacy and charisma. It will effect your success at actions requiring a tongue of silver and personal interaction such as speechmaking.
• Stealth
This stat is your personal stealthiness and skill at espionage. It will effect your success at actions requiring the art of stealth.
• Land Owned
A list of tiles you own, along with their output per turn.
• Family
A list of the members of your immediate family.

Actions

These will drive the game forward. This game is meant to be open to the imagination of the players, and as such the following list of actions is nowhere near exhaustive and players are encouraged to suggest actions to me. If I like them, I’ll make them official and put them on this list! Possible actions and who can perform them can also be effected by the government and the world you set up in general. It should be noted that actions are not a 100% chance.

Thanks again to Civleader for this list.

Players can:

There are several international actions a player can do (depending on government, etc):


Movements

Movements are like actions, but a player is limited to one per update. Again, suggestions for additions to the Movements list are welcomed.



Government and Religion

In the beginning of the game, the government will be an absolute monarchy under whomever you elect to be the first King. The first King will also be the first, absolute ruler. When we reach 5 population in-game or when the King calls for a reform, whichever comes first, we will hold a government council. It is then up to you, the players, to make a Constitution or other such set of rules for a government. The King at the time must agree to the new government, and the government must be ratified with a majority of votes. Each player holds one vote, except the King who holds a number of votes equal to half of the number of players in the game. Ah, the benefits of an absolute monarch.

A religious council will be called when we need to found a pantheon. This will be with the purpose of creating and managing the State Church. More specifics will be decided upon when this becomes necessary.

A Note on Social Groups

As GM, I MUST be added to all social groups made for and about this game in order to increase depth and make my job easier. Punishment will be severe for non-compliers as not doing so greatly unbalances the game.

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That’s it! In the following posts, I’ll go over certain sections of the rules in a bit more depth. Generally, though, if you’ve read this you’ve got a good enough grasp on what’s going on to play the game at a basic level.

Power

Again, the goal of the game is to get bucketloads of power. Power exists in two forms, character power and family power. Family power is simply the sum of the powers of all leading characters that the player has played in the family, as well as the number of characters (including NPCs) that have been in that family, while character power is determined through a formula including everything from wealth to influence, as might be expected.

Influence

Influence is essentially reputation and popularity all wrapped into one. Your influence, locally and nationally, determines how popular you are, how respected you are, and how much people are willing to listen to you.

Family

When you reach the age of 18, you may search for a spouse. You perform this as an action, I will give you a list of candidates, and you will choose from among them. The marriage itself takes a movement. When you have a spouse, you will automatically perform the “procreate” action each turn, with a 10% chance of success. If you succeed, you will have a child (50/50 chance male or female).

You will begin to control your firstborn male child (or female if no male heir is born) when your current character dies, although as their parent you’ll have significant influence over them before that.

When you die, your wealth will be divided equally among your children, including those that you no longer control. All land and hereditary titles, however, will go to your heir.

Wealth

Wealth is divided into 2 categories, “in-game”/gold and “in-character”/shekels. These two categories are entirely separate and ne’er the twain shall meet. “In-character” wealth, or shekels, can be used as currency in the game, and to purchase both the necessities as well as trade with other characters, pay people off, etc. It is highly important for the power calculation. If the rulers so desire they can likely place a tax/tithe on shekel income, either for their personal benefit or, more likely, a national treasury. Shekels are gained from the base salary, owned tiles, and any other actions which produce in-character wealth.

• Each in-game food, culture, or faith from tiles (or buildings) controlled provides 2 shekel per turn
• Each in-game production, science, or tourism from tiles (or buildings) controlled provides 4 shekels per turn
• Each in-game wealth from tiles (or buildings) controlled provides 6 shekels per turn

“In-game” wealth, or gold, on the other hand, is the in-game gold treasury of our great nation. In the beginning, the gold will be controlled by the King because we will have only one city, and thus the income of that city, which the King controls will, functionally, be the wealth of the nation.

As our civilization expands, it is highly encouraged (mandatory, even) that different provinces/administrative regions be carved out of our territory and given to a character to rule, either as a hereditary post or an appointed governor, or any other type of position that you may choose. For ease of GMing (and playing), I would suggest making each city a separate province.

When this happens, each province will get a share of the national treasury to do with as they please, be it purchase units, buildings, or whatever else the ruler desires.

Stability

Each city will have a Local Stability, and the national stability will be the average of these local stabilities. It is extremely hard to move the populace in between these stability levels, and will take large amounts of effort and a relatively long amount of time. The stability will start at Malleable.

Note: PPI is national influence, LPPI is local influence. Politicians refer to players with positions of authority, be it in government or religion.

-3-Chaotic (There are riots in the streets and the public is searching for someone to lynch. Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 100% more likely to form and perform actions. It’s a bad day to be a politician, as all politicians get a 90% reduction in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))
-2-Unstable (The calm before the storm, as it were. Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 50% more likely to form and perform actions. Politicians get a 30% reduction in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))
-1-Oppressed (People are oppressed, but not really willing to do much about it. Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 25% more likely to form and perform actions. Politicians get a 10% reduction in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))
0-Malleable (People really have no opinions on the situation either way and are just going about their daily routine. 0% increase in the formation chance of negative groups
1-Stable (People are relatively happy about the nation and government. Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 25% less likely to form and perform actions. Politicians get a 10% reduction in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))
2-Conforming (People are quite happy with the government. Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 50% less likely to form and perform actions. Politicians get a 30% increase in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))
3-Celebrating (People love the government! Guerilla groups, crime rings, and all manner of bad groups are 100% less likely to form and perform actions. Politicians get a 100% increase in their LPPI (PPI if nat’l stability))

Negative Groups

Guerilla groups, crime rings, terrorist cells, etc. Each turn they have a base 30% chance of forming in a city, which is then modified by the Local Stability. National groups have a base 10% chance of forming, modified by the National Stability.

Age

The age of characters effects how they will fare in their actions and will also affect the power statistic. The longer the live, the more beneficial it is to your power, and the older you are the harder it will be to perform successful actions.

Each character also has a % death chance. From ages 0-2 the percent chance of death is 20% for citizen children, and from 3 onwards the percent chance of death is equal to the age of the character.

Warriors in battle have a chance of survival equal to (hp after battle/hp before battle).

Actions Specifics

Some specifics on the actions. Thanks again to Civleader for the majority of this list.

You don’t need to read these to play the game. You only need to read them when you are attempting to perform the action in question.

Also, again remember that this list is not exhaustive. I am open to suggestions for other actions, or creative ways in which these actions can be employed. Impress me!

Hire Bodyguards

Purpose:
To defend yourself against assassination attempts, espionage, and other threats to your life. Increases chances of surviving attempts at your life and foiling espionage plans on you.
Cost:
5 shekels per bodyguard per turn and will remain loyal to you as long as you can pay them. (This applies to Bodyguards and Mercenaries Group)
How to:
Once a bodyguard group appears, to hire bodyguards, you need to PM saying you want to hire them and how much you will pay. Then, they will automatically protect you. However, before that group exists, you must find ways to get people to protect you. Will you use the warriors, or will you scout for people among the tribe whom you can trust and will defend you? What will you offer in return?

Hiring Assassins

Purpose:
To eliminate political enemies or other assassins.
Cost:
100 shekels per contract and everyone will know it was an assassination. First Package
200 shekels per contract and everyone will think it was a natural death. Second Package

How to:
Send me a PM saying you want to hire assassins with the following information:

• Target(s)
• Assassin's Group being hired
• Payment
• Specification of package wanted

NOTE: The same goes to the assassins. Their group will not exist at the beginning of the game. If you want to assassinate that early in the game, you must do it, or you must find someone to do it for you. Second Package kills are not available until the classical era.

NOTE ON SECOND PACKAGE KILLS: If you order a Second Package kill on a person who is participating in a big event that turn before the kill order was sent, the kill wont occur until the next turn. Reason: It takes more time and effort to slip the poison to the target, and since it is unpredictable what the target will do, more planning and preparation is required.

Hiring Groups

Purpose:
To hire a group to achieve a task, be it to assassinate someone or to help with a protest.
Cost:
Depends on group.
How to:
Send me a PM saying you want to hire a group with the following information:

• Group being hired
• Payment
• Specification of requirements

NOTE: You must already know of a specific group before hiring one. Finding a group can be an action.

Political Coups

Purpose:
To remove a playerwho occupies a major position of power: ex: leader of a group, leader of entire civilization, leader of a creed, party or clan, governor of a city, etc.
Cost:
None for coup. 10 shekels per player to have a message about the coup distributed anonymously.
How to:
First, all participants of the coup must be in the same city and location of where the coup will occur.
To start a coup, one player must PM me saying that you want to start a coup, and telling me where, when, and against who the coup will be performed. Then, his supporters will PM me saying they will support the coup. This means that you will have to deal with telling the others of the coup, risking the chance that they don’t support you and betray you.

For this reason, there is a second way to start a coup. You can pay 10 shekels per player to have the message distributed anonymously to other players by me, sending them an anonymous letter of a possible political coup, and those who want to join PM me back. Then the leader of the political coup shall be PMed telling him who is supporting the coup. The leader will then decide if he wants to go forward with the coup or not.

If the leader goes forward the coup happens.

If not, the other members will be notified that the leader backed out and the number of people supporting the coup. They will also be asked if they still want to execute the coup. Whoever says no will also just back out and supporters of coup will proceed with the coup. The supporter with the most influence will be named leader of the coup.

If the coup succeeds, power will fall on the coup participators, with the leader of coup holding the reins. The defeated will be handled as the coup wishes.

If the coup fails, coup participators will be exposed and captured. They will be dealt with as the opposition of coup wish.

(Possible punishments include: execution, imprisonment, or banishment)

Leader of the coup must also PM me the plan of the coup, detailing what they are going to do and how they are going to gain and keep power.

Military Coups

Purpose:
Same as political coups except that in a military coup, only a player with a military position, like a minister of war, secretary of defense, general, or some similar position with military influence can start one. Usually, these coups are done without other player’s support.
Cost:
None. 10 shekels per player to have a message about the coup distributed anonymously.
How to:
To start a military coup, and if you are able to, you just have to send me a message telling me to start the coup, where, when (what turn), and against who. Normally, military coups are done against people with great power, like the leader of the nation. If you involve others, the process is exactly like that of a political coup.
Differences to Politician Coups:
If coup succeeds, the leader will have absolute power in what he just took power in. He can do whatever he wants with players in the city he is in. However, as more people are hurt, the higher the negative impact on stability gets. Rule in that city then becomes a dictatorship until the leader of the coup decides to recreate a government.

Espionage

Purpose:
To know what is going on behind closed doors or what your enemy is up to. To be on look out for opposition. To get information on other players.
Cost:
There are five packages with different purposes:
First Package: spy on the social group page, where you will receive some discussion that happened in the target's social group page. Cost: 50 shekels.
Second package: To spy on a player's stats where you will receive detailed stats about that person’s income, money in account, popularity, power status, local and national influence level, membership to any organization, etc. Cost: 180 shekels.
Third Package: intercept letters, where you will receive information of any action that the player is planning, or about to do, or did in last turn. Cost: 230 shekels
Fourth Package: to steal money from target. It costs 200 shekels and they will steal a random number of shekels above 350.
Fifth Package: you hire an informant that infiltrates any organization you want, and they will inform you for ten turns. Cost: 500 shekels
How to:
To hire a spy, you must PM me with the following information:

• Target
• Spy group being hired
• Package wanted
• Payment

You can spy on several targets at a time, for each target you need the previous information.
Counter: Body Guards. Counter espionage and see if they are spying on you.

NOTE: The same goes to the espionage missions, which are done by the same group as the assassins. Their group will not exist at the beginning of the game. If you want to spy that early in the game, you must do it, or you must find someone to do it for you. Third Package missions before writing is researched will only give you what that player did that turn.

Hire Agitators

Purpose:
When you need to agitate things to make people rebel, or when you need to make a politician look bad, you can always hire people to turn peaceful protests into something more.
Cost:
Agitators’ costs depend on how much impact you want to make on the popular stability. You can pay 1 shekel for a very small impact, or 200 for a huge impact. (200 is the maximum)
How to:
PM saying you want to hire agitators and payment.
Counter:
Unless you are spied on in the modern age, it is very hard to prove that someone hired agitators. However, if it is found, you will highly decrease in influence. (If you are spied on before the modern age, follow Frame a Politician action rules to try to prove that someone used agitators… or to frame them for doing so).

Bribe

Purpose:
Sometimes you may need to convince people to do something, and sometimes the only option is money. You can bribe any person, even AI.
How to:
To bribe a player, you must PM that person, and when both agree, both must send me a message telling me how much money will be transferred and from who to who. The person bribing must be careful, since the person you are trying to bribe may denounce you, and then there would be a battle of words and credibility (Frame a Politician rules).
To bribe an AI player, just PM me as if you were trying to convince a real person. You will risk failure with that person, since your PM might not be enough to convince that person to accept your offer.
Counter:
Espionage can see if a player is involved in corruption. If someone is found guilty of corruption, their popularity will highly decrease.

Terrorism

Purpose:
Create terror among the people and pressure on government.
How to:
To do a terrorist act, you must PM me with the following information:

• Cause
• Location
• Executioner (You, a group of people hired, a terrorist group)
• Payment (required if you alone are not the executioner)
• Operation and target(s)

Operations:
These are the types of terrorists acts you can do:

• Ethnic Attacks- you murder a civilian (or a group if executioner is many) and you put them as display and example, warning they are not wanted, or that this will continue if there is no change
• Assassination- (see assassination) Target, if killed, is displayed as an example to create fear.
• Kidnapping- you kidnap a civilian (or a group if executioner is many) and warn that they wont stop unless you get what you want.
• Sabotage- you destroy an improvement or road in a tile, and warn this will continue if you don't get what you want
• Bomb Attack- you blow up a bomb in a place specified in location, killing civilians. Only available when tech gunpowder is researched. Must pay 250 shekels to kill 100 civilians Special: Suicide bomber: you don't have to pay person committing suicide, kills 25 and has more chances of success then a regular bomb attack.
• Chemical weapon- you release a chemical weapon, killing civilians and decreasing food production. Must pay 500 shekels to kill 1000 civilians.
• Nuclear attack- very rare and usually only happens with terrorists attacking other countries. 10000 shekels for a nuclear weapon.

For all terrorist acts, they will have to defeat security forces, body guards and/or military units to achieve their goal. The operations are listed from least impact to most impact on population and from chances of success to least.

Boycotts and Embargoes

Purpose:
Punish a country or province economically and create pressure for that country or province to change.
How to:
To issue the order, it depends on the government you created to see who can and when. But however you decide it can be done, you can either post on the main thread or PM me saying:

• Target of boycott (what cities)
• Reason why

The effect it has depends on the foreign leader's AI decisions regarding the situation.

Reporters and Investigation

Purpose:
To investigate about a person or issue and show the world what really is happening behind closed doors without breaking the law using espionage. This method it is more difficult to get the information and some information may not be found.
How to:
There are two ways you can do this:

• Hire a reporter
• Investigate yourself (this would be considered a movement)

Hire an informant
An informant costs 20 shekels and you would have to trust him to do a good job, and get the information you want. There exists a possibility that the informant gives you false information or gives you information you were not looking for. If you are in the modern era, pictures and video can be taken by paying 10 more shekels.

Investigate yourself
You can investigate yourself, perhaps in order to check for any nasty rumors circulating about yourself, by doing movements (explained below). You must talk to people, go places, and obtain information through documents and speculation. In the modern era, you may take pictures and video.

Counter:
To counter informants and nosy players, you can create diversions and false information to mislead them. This would mean creating documents with false information, telling people wrong rumors, and framing people to divert the attention. You can also take an illegal path and assassinate them.

Imprison Players

Purpose:
Normally happens when a player is found guilty of committing a crime (coup, assassination, espionage, illegal business, corruption) or when a player is framed of committing a crime.
Consequences:
When a player is imprisoned, he:

• loses any positions, titles, and lands unless otherwise specified.
• He is in jail, so he will not gain any money from jobs.
• Tiles owned by that player will be returned to the government of the province, unless otherwise specified.
• They cannot give any speeches to the population directly, although they might be able to spread a pamphlet through espionage.
• They may be visited by any one person at any time, unless government specifies against this.
• Government will decide what happens to your other possessions, be they companies or your shekels.

Imprisoned players can still however control any group he created or is leader of, and will gain shekels (if applicable) from the group.

Counter:
The way you get out of prison depends on the government laws and punishments. If law permits, politician can pay a certain amount of money specified by law to be free civilian. You can wait your sentence in prison. Amount of time can sometimes be until death, so you can either hope a revolution happens and you are liberated by people who support you and took control of city, or you can bribe an official that can let you out, or if popular pressure on government is too much and they must let you free to keep civilians at bay. Any group you or others created can try to break you out. If you do escape, you will become an outlaw and must stay hidden in your group’s headquarters.

A person in jail can still be assassinated. They can also naturally die in jail.

Frame Politicians

Purpose:
Sometimes, a player may have so much popularity and power, that you need to ruin their popularity to either remove them as threats or stop them from becoming untouchable.
How to:
To frame a player, you have to post on the main thread denouncing/accusing them of something. I will read the post and calculate an influence change with the target. Then I will read other responses, and calculate their impact on the target. After this, a credibility stat will grow for both the accuser and the target. Those who have more influence and more popularity will have more credibility. Supporters on both sides can help by posting their responses in favor or against either player.
Outcome:
Whoever has the most credibility at the end of two days will be the winner of this credibility battle. Winner will result slightly negatively affected if anything, and the looser will be negatively affected. Supporters of losing players are also negatively affected. Supporters of winners gain influence.
The effects on influence will depend on crime committed. There can also be stability consequences. The effect on the influence of an accuser if he lost is negative, and as the politician accused has more influence, the negative effect will increase. If he won, he will slightly gain influence.
Credibility Help:
If you can show evidence, you will get more argument bonus. If in modern, digital era, videos and photos taken by spies or informants can be used.

Frame Elections

Purpose:
Win elections, if there even is elections in government.
How to:
To frame elections, you must hire the fourth package of espionage. (See Espionage: Fourth Package)

Create Propaganda

Purpose:
When you need to sway people’s support to an idea, law, war or to change stability or popularity of something, you can create Propaganda.
How to:
To do this, you must PM me with the following information:

• Tiles you will be distributing this
• What you want it to cause
• Payment
• Name of Propaganda

After you have sent me the message, you must post in the main thread a post with the propaganda’s name as the title. In the post you will tell what you want to promote. You may also PM me the propaganda and I will post it, avoiding you and your ideas being exposed to enemies.
Counter:
Propaganda can be fought with counter propaganda, or by groups destroying the propaganda. Counter propaganda is done exactly the same as propaganda.
For groups to take down propaganda, they have to have a presence in that tile. To order your group to do this, you must PM me saying you want to take down the propaganda and specifying which one by saying the name. To have orders ready, leader should tell me what to do with propaganda before hand. (See queuing actions).

Create/Reform Laws

This will depend almost entirely on how the government you created is, which will address how laws will be made and by who.
Secede

Purpose:
Create a new nation with your own rules, policies and sovereignty.
Cost:
None. 10 shekels per player for anonymous distribution of messages about secession.
How to:
To secede, leader of the city must PM saying you want to break away from the empire. After I reply, you can post on the main thread announcing your break away from the empire. Many different things will then happen. First, players will have to decide if they support this or not. A smart thing would be to first contact the players, anonymously or not (anonymously is PM me first, then I will PM who you tell me with your message, but they wont know who it is.) and see who they support. When you announce it, the players supporting you will post their support in the main thread. Those opposing you can declare it, or take an action to stop this. Be careful when opposing, because the leader seceding may take you out. Then, the population of the city will have to decide who they support. Players can openly declare their support, or they can oppose it. The rest of the population and the military will then decide. The government will then have to respond with some action to the reaction of the population.

If government manages to remove any threat of the opposition, or control them, or there isn’t any, government has managed to pass through the first stage of secession. Now, they have to deal with the government they are trying to secede from. This will depend on how they react. They might let you secede, they might send troops, they might try to assassinate leader of city, they might do anything. However they react, leader of secession must decide how to fight back.
If the secession fails, politicians supporting secession will suffer consequences and the national government comes in to take control of the city. They may do whatever they wish to the supporters of the secession.

If you manage secession, through negotiations or force, you will make your own nation. You will make your own government, own laws, and will be separate from the mother nation. The leader of the secession becomes the leader of the new nation.

Hire Security Forces

Purpose:
To specifically combat crime in a city. (Shekels spent)/(# of citizens in the city*100) = % reduction to crime rate with a maximum reduction of 99%. Anyone in the city can help to pay for more security forces by paying from their money. This would be an expense every turn, but it will give them a boost in influence.
How to:
To hire Security Forces, the leader of the city just has to announce it in the main thread. If any player wants to hire extra Security Forces, they must announce it in the main thread and post or PM me the money they will be paying every turn.



Government Crackdowns

Purpose:
Keep the people at bay, put down protests and other popular oppositions
How to:
Any leader with authority over the military can issue the order. To do so, PM me with the following information:

• Army Unit ordered
• To what protest/event

Consequences:
This will cause a drop in influence to who ordered the issue. All higher leaders’ influences will also go down even if they did not give the order, unless they punishes the one who gave the order. Stability will be negatively effected, although by how much depends on the severity of the crackdown and the popularity of what is being cracked down on.

Create Groups, Clans, Parties, Creeds

Note: You must find and hire people to join your groups.

Create Assassin Groups

Purpose:
There will be assassin groups not owned by any player. It is actually run by an AI civilian, and they will always just make contracts, never take initiative by themselves. However, a player can create an Assassin group. It can be used for personal use or for profit.
How to:

• You must PM me with the following information:
• Name of the group
• Where you are setting the group's headquarters (City, Tile, District [if available], building, etc)
• Vision of group. Its purpose and mission. (This can sometimes bring assassins to your group to work for free)
• Kind of group: Private or Public (Public will be announced in the thread, private must contact potential customers on its own)
• If public, you must set the costs for assassinations.

Create Guerrilla Groups

Purpose:
Sometimes, the people themselves will strongly oppose a decision, a government, or a leader. You can take advantage of this in many ways. If you oppose the same things, one of the actions you can do is to crate a guerrilla group. You will finance them, arm them, and privately support their cause.
How to:
To create a guerrilla group, you must PM me with the following information:

• Payment
• Name of Guerrilla Group
• Headquarters location (City, Tile, District [if available], building, etc)
• Private Support or Open support
• Cause of guerrilla

If private support, you must look for a person to lead and recruit people for the guerrilla group. Only this person would know you are financing this. If open support, then you may rally up the masses and recruit people into the group.
Costs:
This is really up to you. Will you hire a man to lead this militia? How much will the militiamen be payed? How much are you willing to pay to arm these men? See The Guide and the Recruits section for more details.

Operations:
A guerrilla group will begin their operations by taking control of the tile where they chose their headquarters. They would have to fight a military unit there. (If none, guerrilla wins). If guerrilla wins without a fight, they are completely hidden from government. If they had to fight, then government only knows what tile they are in, but they still have to find them within that tile.
If they lost, then depending on how bad they lost will tell how many died, and if leader survived to tell government who supported them.
Operations can happen in three different types of terrains: Rural, Suburban and Urban. Rural being the easiest places to succeed, and urban being the most difficult. Rural is a tile with a farm, workshop, or no improvement. Suburban is a tile with Trading posts, or a tile adjacent to a city. Urban is a tile with a city.
The types of Operations a guerrilla can do is:

• Take down Propaganda.
• Terrorism
• Harass military units
• Sabotage improvements
• Block roads
• Kidnap politicians or important civilians
• Actions that would create pressure on politicians

To do these, just give orders by PM to me and they will be done. You can also queue orders (see queue orders)

Create Terrorist Groups

How to:
To create, you must PM me with the following information:

• Cause
• Location of headquarters

Terrorist groups are specific groups of small number of people (Not masses of people like guerrilla groups) who only do terrorist acts. A terrorist group can turn into a guerrilla group if they have enough people and power. To recruit people into the group you must talk to players and AI, and take walks around the city, scouting for possible recruits. (Recruiting Movement)

Create Ideal groups

These groups are just ways to get players who think like you to come together in a way. To create one, PM me with the following information:

• Name of group/creed/clan/party/brotherhood
• Main ideals

Then you can announce this new group in the main thread and offer anyone who agrees with your ideals to join you.

Remember, any Social Group pertaining to this game must have me invited.

Banishment

Purpose:
A punishment to politicians and civilians who have committed a crime.
How to:
This all depends on the laws your government creates. A banished person will not live in city or empire (depending on what he is exiled from) and can not return lawfully.

Send Missionaries

Purpose:
Spread the nation's religion to cities with in the empire, or to other empires.
How to:
Once there is an organized religion, leaders of the religion can send missionaries to spread the religion. For this, the leaders will have to pay faith from the accumulated faith in the empire.

• Payment
• Destination(s) (one missionary can go to three different locations during his lifetime)

Minor Faiths
Want to create your own religion? Once we adopt a Pantheon, you may begin preaching your beliefs, deities, and ideals. Just send me your faith's "manifesto" and the ideas will begin to spread. If you want your faith to spread faster, you may send a missionary for 20 shekels with the information above. However, remember that it is unlikely that your religion will ever challenge the major, organized ones promulgated by the government.

Aid insurgents or Governments

Purpose:
Help a government/insurgent win a war and have them in your favor.
How to:
This will also depend on how you create your government, but the main thing is:
If you are aiding a government, it will be carried out by just gifting shekels through regular in-game diplomacy.
If you are aiding insurgents, it will be the the same as aiding a government except the money giving will be used to immediately buy a military unit that will fight the government and enemies.

Create Agreements with Foreign Leaders

Purpose:
Besides the regular in-game agreements, using hot seat and controlling other civs will allow for different types of agreements resolving issues created by this game and other things.
How to:
This also depends on the government you create. However, when foreign leaders meet, leaders will actually be moving locations (see movements). When a foreign leader contacts us, he comes to our city. When our leader contacts a foreign leader, our leader moves to the other leader's city no matter how far apart the cities are.

Create Protests

Purpose:
Oppose a decision and create pressure to change it.
How to:
Anyone can create protests. To start one, you must PM me with the following information:

• Cause of protest
• location of protest
• Operation of protest

Operations:
When you protest, these are the following things you can do to create pressure:

• March through the streets- people who agree with you will come to the streets and walk with banners. Gets your ideas out to the world, very little pressure is created, but the more people join you, the more pressure you create.
• Road blocking- people who agree with you will join you with banners and will block roads. You get your ideas out to the world, more pressure is created since no unit will be able to pass through. More pressure is created
• Strike- people who have bad working conditions will stop working. That Tile's improvement will stop producing anything. A lot of pressure is created
• Hunger strikes- people who agree with you will join you and not eat until you get what you want. Creates a lot of media attention and pressure on government.

Strikes and Road blocking cause people affected to oppose you, decreasing popularity among supporters of the protest. Having low popular stability can cause your protests to turn violent.

Queue Actions and Orders

Purpose:
To be ready and do an action or order when a certain thing happens.
How to:

Queue actions

Queuing actions doesn't necessarily mean giving a lot of action orders in a way you would queue production orders. Queuing orders means having a stand by order ready for when and event occurs and you cant order it right away. By doing this your action would happen before anyone else (if someone's queued order also triggers, the most powerful person's order happens first)
To queue and action:
You must PM me with the following format:

Trigger action and details if: circumstance
or if circumstance
or if circumstance
or if circumstance then do action and details

For example:
Trigger Assassination, on Player 1, hiring Assassin group, 200 Gold, Second package if: he becomes supreme general of the Royal division
or if he becomes leader of capital then trigger assassination, on Player 1, hiring Assassin group, 100 Gold, First package.

Queue orders

Military units must have queued orders when they move or attack to become more useful. When needed I will specifically ask for this information. Normally, they would be things like terrain preferences, direction of travel, what to do with certain enemy units, when to attack, etc.

Reserved just in case

Reserved just in case 2

Reserved just in case 3

With that, you may post.

@PortugalPower: No biggie, with any luck the table of contents at the top will be what people use to navigate the rules so it won't matter. Even so, its not a big deal.

Personal Name: Beltashazzar
Family Name: Damman

Well, that is a lot of text. Seems very complicated, lots of death, destruction, succession, blasphemy, tyranny, coups, terrorism, espionage, and basically every other bad thing about organized state structures. Count me in!

My name will be Carl with a family name of Gustavman.

Personal name: Jezebel
Family name: Phoenicia

This looks so great I just subscribed to the thread.
I would love to get in on this early, but.... I joined an IAAR before, and actually forgot about it when winter break ended. This was very embarrassing, and dishonorable, so... I won't do that again.

Personal name: Adrahasis
Family name: Shamash

Personal name: Hammurabi
Family name: Sin-Muballit

Welp, if the game creator insists, I must join!

Christmas eve is the one day my family spends in celebration, so I will be away today right after this, pretty much.
Hmm... seems no one has taken the name Sargon yet...

Name: Bulludhu
Family Name: Kislimu

Suddenly we're getting a lot of IAARs on this forum (wait - this means people are actually visiting it!)

Here's a highly inaccurate but vaguely correct-sounding name:

Personal Name: Daryus

Family Name: Hazaraspid

Update 0​

The sun has begun to set as the representatives of Babylon gather in the last building of any political significance left, the ancient and tiny Village Council Hall. The council fire is lit for the first time in a millennium as the last of you walk into the room and takes their seat on the benches surrounding the fire. Uncertain, none of you speak until a young shaman, the last survivor of what little religious order had existed before the War of Four Kings, steps forward to address the crowd.

"My fellow Babylonian people, we all know why we gather here today. With no ruler, no King, how can Babylon hope to survive? Thus, we must select the new King of Babylon from among ourselves, the last of the families that can claim the throne, even if barely."

Grunts and nods of agreement flow around the room, giving the shaman the needed confidence to continue his speech.

"But how, might I ask, could we possibly know who to select? Before the War, we barely knew each other. Before the casualties of the War reduced our people and city so, we had no reason to. Now, however, we must learn of each other very quickly. I propose that we open the floor to a debate on plans for the future, personal worthiness, and any other topics of relevance that those of us wishing to know our candidates better before we vote might learn something of them."

Again, nods and grunts of approval circled the room. With that, the shaman bowed to the crowd and walked backwards, throwing his hand outwards, plam up, pointing to the center of the room.

"I open the floor to you then, Babylonians..."

What do we do now?

Its quite simple, really. For the next three days, or until debate dies down and I make an executive decision to call for a vote, you'll be debating plans for the future and who to elect as the first new King of Babylon. When that time is up, you'll vote for King. Whomever gets the most votes wins the election, and is crowned as our King. He will then give me orders, which I will carry out over the course of the next 10 turns in-game.

You can still make actions, movements, etc during this time.

If you want to start making more than your base salary, I would suggest looking into (through actions) getting a job, creating a business (something that our technology can handle right now), or trying to get the King we elect to grant you a tile to get the income from. In terms of jobs, you could attempt to get a job with the warriors or whatever other units we train, or you could look into being a construction worker if we end up building something.

Again, this is not an exhaustive list. If you can think of something else, please shoot me a PM.

EDIT: It is important to note that all tiles not granted specifically to someone or something (ie the government) will provide their shekel income to the ether. In other word, no players get any of their income from them

Also, to any new people reading this, it is never too late to join! Newcomers are always welcome. In this game, the more the merrier! Plus, you can still join without any penalties as the game still has yet to truly start. This is, after all, still the formative turn.

In-game Issues
What shall our Warriors do?
What shall we build?
What shall we research?

Decisions
Who shall we elect as King?

Relevant Images

Although I have no interest in power, I would like to nominate myself for the position of King. The reason for this is that we need someone to lead our nation, someone who is wise and prudent. I may sound arrogant, but I do indeed have those traits. You may call this arrogance, but I call it knowledge of my self.

If I become King, I will secure Babylonia a peaceful future, by researching mining, and develop a strong army, based on archers. I will create a Body of Advisers to make sure that the wise men of our state can have a say on state policies and can give me wise advises. I will explore our surroundings and try to discover new lands. Finally, I will try to maintain peaceful relations with any other tribes so we can all live in peace and cooperate together.

Nominating oneself is a sign of hubris unbefitting in a monarch. That aside your plan to focus Babylon's efforts primarily on military concerns disconcertingly ignores the fact that we are surrounded by jungle. Our primary focus should be on clearing the wastes around us so they can be made productive, with initial research and construction being oriented towards this end.

Personal Name: Nabonidus
Family Name: Larazid