[Implemented] Nation Control/Law System

[Captain Jack]

Greetings,

We have finalized our design for banks (see relative post by clicking here). However, inevitably, for banks to work, some nation features are required first. Here are the current mandatory ones that are put up for revision.

Right away, here are all needed proposed changes:

A)Nation Treasury

Every nation will have its treasury which will be used for a lot of game mechanisms. As development continues, the treasury will be involved more in game to game life (ie, paying for its nation's players plunder bounties ).

B)TAXATION

Every nation will TAX its citizens. The TAX rates will be proposed (voting start) by the nation officials (DUKE or ABOVE) and will be decided by everyone (Vote power) within a set period of time (probably 72hours).

Eventually, taxes will affect greatly the nation each player will choose. You will be able to make your country to be a tax heaven and watch merchants flock to you or choose to make strong taxation, driving away all those you do not want and making your nation a closed club. The choice will be yours.

There will be the following mandatory taxes:
1)Tax paying citizen (npc inhabitants of kingdom ports)
A fixed amount of 10 Gold coin per citizen per 365 days, paid daily in installments. This amount will not be tweakable till we end up in some delighting mechanism that will affect citizens growth rate (and possibly will be linked with the deprecation of Black Death/Transport Immigrant cards - these are ideas for future though).
Example: For 100 million citizens the nation will have an income of (100.000.000 Citizens * 10 Gold coins) / 365 = 2.750.000 gold coins a day.

2)Tax ships of each player
Every player will pay a tax for every ship he owns. Payment will be included during upkeep. Default value will be 36500.
It will work as the example above. Nations will decide the minimum and maximum amount (it can be 0 and maximum amount is set to 500.000 gold coins per ship).

EXAMPLE
Suppose that a nation decides to tax every ship with 50 000 gold coins. Then a player with 200 ships will have to pay: 50 000 * 200 / 365 = 27.397 Gold Coins per day which will go directly in nation treasury.

Here are rules/laws for this tax that will affect players:

The country tax will be applied last during upkeep and will not have any penalties for the player if there is not enough gold to pay. However, this will be carried over (added up) for next upkeep. A players debts will be cleared either by voting or by deportation (forced or voluntary). Nations will get to define when automatic deportation will happen (for which amount of debt, ie 20 millions - nations will be able to vote no automatic deportation law) and when a nation official will be able to deport someone with debt (again, it can be a gold coins amount or no manual deportation allowed).

Nations will be also able to define the minimum amount of money where debt will start adding up (ie limit to 1 million which means that if a player has less than 1 million in his treasury, no nation will be collected - it will instead be added up to the players debts). There will be no limits on this amount.

Newcomers will exempt from this tax. (About a week old players is meant here).

C)BANK SYSTEM

Read this post here for details

More features (such as treaties/etc) will have to wait for now.

[Captain Jack]

Law System and voting procedure explained in detail

Firstly, every citizen already has a declared voting power which is relative to its current title. For example, citizens have a voting power of 1, Admirals a voting power of 5 while a King has a voting power of 20.

Every nation, has its officials which are those of DUKE title and ABOVE.



Any nation decision will be depicted through a law. IE, taxation for ships will be a separate law which nation officials will be able to revise.

-Any nation official may propose a voting for a new law at anytime. (select through a list of laws)
-Any nation official may propose a voting for a law revision once at least 72 hours has passed since the end of last voting for the particular law.
-All laws will be scripted in game and will be created through requests towards game developers. These requests will be suggested in the forums. According to popularity (sole criteria for fast delivery - your game, your laws) we will try our best to deliver as fast as possible. Non popular laws will still be developed but not on priority. Once a law is ready and scripted, it will be available for selection for all nations.


Limits:
-A majority of votes will be needed in order for a law to become active for first time.

Especially for revisions that take place within 30 days since last revision, an extra requirement of marginal votes in compare to last voting will be required.
Example:
Let's say players decide to tax ships for 5000 gold coins with a total vote power of 100 saying yes and a total vote power of 50 saying no.
Then some officials decide to revise it after 10 days. The result after 10 days is 10 saying yes and 60 saying no. By the time that 60 is less than 100, the voting will fail.

[Captain dungeness]

What are all the planned ways that a nation can spend their treasury?
So far I have heard:
-place and pay bounties on players
-give gold to banks when they loan to players
-Suggestion: paying for nation port influence with the treasury (voodoo immune?)**

List of ways to add to national treasury:
-tax port populations: 27,500 gold per day per million population
-tax player ships
-fees on banks loaning gold to players
-1% (or more) taxing on each bank deposit***
-donations from players?

EDIT: **Black Sparrow's next post proposes this so I added it to this list.
EDIT: ***Added this to the list

[Black sparrow]

Perhaps the nation itself can pay for influence on a port? Citizens will vote for it, port selection and for the amount to spend. Only that this influence cannot be affected by voodoo at all.

[Mohammed]

Perhaps the nation itself can pay for influence on a port? Citizens will vote for it, port selection and for the amount to spend. Only that this influence cannot be affected by voodoo at all.

this well be easily exploited if we were able to donate to our nations treasury instead of using the gold on influence the nation uses it and its immune to voodoo

[Shaydo]

Have to agree with Mohammed, having voodoo proof influence could be bad, the strongest nations would effectively be able to seal up the ports and continually pump more money in than any other nation to keep control. That happens now but at least we can voodoo and people have to coordinate to take multiple ports.

[Captain Jack]

Treasury
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Again, treasury is not going to be that wealthy in practice. Don't think that other players are going to let you tax billions of citizens. There is going to be a real struggle for population control even before this feature is added. , Black Death/Transport immigrants affect should also be redesigned. I do not know in which way.

Therefore, treasury's incomes are going to be parallel with citizens wealth in this nation. If you got a huge players who earns great interest, then taxing them is going ot bring some considerable income. Or controlling many ports with many citizens. Still all will be directly opposed by other players, so it is only fair.

Remember NATION treasury could well be YOUR treasury, if you are manage to control a single nation all by yourself (or with your close friends). Of course, the more players in the nation you are controlling in some way, the greater the power of the officials. Obviously, King is going to play the greatest role due to his excessive vote power.

Treasury Spending
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Black Sparrow's idea is good. Propaganda and Charity Donation will not affect it, agreed. However, Conspiracy will. I think with this change, all should agree. No? After all, a nation without a port would want a port so it should be able to do whatever possible towards this direction.

We are open to suggestion for further uses. I already suggested that the nation could pay for the plunder costs of specific citizens (or titles). We have no problem scripting this either. So throw this in the mix as well.

(Btw.)

Generally, we are open to script whatever requests you like for this feature. Even if 1 person is going to use a country law, we are going to implement it.


Treasury Income
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Again, throw whatever ideas you want.

Donation can be an option, sure why not?
And also, Cpt Dungeness, you forgot to include the mandatory 1% taxing on each deposit (it can be greater if the nation wishes) which is going to be a great source of income for the treasury.


Prospects
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The treasury is going to sky-rocket the game strategies in the future. For example, if countries start raising their own armies at some point (or fleets) these are going to be paid by the country treasury. However, let's not get into more details about this, at this point.

[Mohammed]

okay here is an idea tax on sales nations can take an amount of what every player sells in there ports
example:
selling 600 crates of tools in tzogos
600x20=12000
wales well take 12000x3%=360
into its treasury

[Captain Jack]

Sure why not. It can be created as a law and whichever nations want, can use it.

[Sir Henry Morgan]

I like that - an option to tax warehouses would also be a consideration - say a warehouse holds 10500, an annual tax of 10% would cost 1050 a year, or whatever the country decides.

I like the idea as well that a country could chose to cover part or all of the plunder bounties lost when plundered - will help to protect smaller/newer traders.