by Haron » Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:56 am
I will nominate a very special event for this Category: PulPop's population boost in Tokelau's ports.
I played a significant part in the planning and preparation for this, but that is why no one else would nominate this move - I am perhaps the only one who understands how grand this was. Although certain elements are still classified, I will try to give you a small understanding of what this required.
Boosting population may seem like a trivial matter to most. Let me assure you: It is not. Well, boosting it TEMPORARILY is easy enough, but one needs to keep the population high over time, and profiting from it. Temporary boosting has been done several times. Many may remember BigTea doing so in Psaral over a year ago. And that's actually when it all started. I saw what he attempted to do, but I also saw several flaws in how he did it. So I started thinking about how it could be done properly. Eventually, I started discussing this with PulPop.
Both PulPop and I are relatively active players. I was much more active before this summer (way TOO active, which is why I had to leave for a while). And a substantial part of our time went into planning and preparing for this action. This was no "spur of the moment" thing. It was over half a year of planning. We thought of several possible scenarios. We examined how population rised and fell in various ports. We found out who tried to increase population, who liked to drop it down, and why. We looked into several possible nations for such a move. How would the money be paid out. We also spent much time considering the political situation. We built relations with players we considered important to be on good standing with for this to work. PulPop also spent a lot of time in the market, understanding movements there, and slowly aquiring the neccessary voodoo, without having to pay too high a cost for it. He also got a good understanding of who else had large amounts of such voodoo, and how and why that mattered.
We also discussed options with several potential partners. But despite all this, we never found a suitable solution. One that would work and actually be profitable. We knew the pitfalls, and saw that actually making a profit out of this would be very difficult. And then I left the game. Shortly after, PulPop actually managed to get the last pieces in place, and really found a solution which worked. This is, in my opinion, a great achievement.
Admin later nerfed NPC taxes. This is in my opinion the administrator's worst move since I started playing (this is, of course, because they otherwise do such an excellent job). I was not around at the time, or I would have explained to the admins how much planning, testing and resources which actually went into this. I would also have told about all the pitfalls involved, and why no one previously had succeeded. I would also have explained that even now that it actually worked, the margins were, in fact, not THAT great. Ah, well. This nerfing is why it didn't last longer. PulPop had a setup and a plan for keeping this up for a looong time. And actually making this work - profitable - is in my opinion a tremendous move, equalled by none. Well done, PulPop!
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