The only problem I see is that the secretary is free to cheat on the randomness
with no accountability. It’s possible to generate verifiable randomness (hash
of the Bitcoin block mined immediately after the timestamp of this message); we
might want to incorporate that. I see four ways to do this:
State in Tax Haven that the method of randomness must be verifiable, without
specifying a method.
Write the bitcoin-based system directly into the Tax Haven rule.
Create a new rule that defines a term such as “Verifiably Random,” which is
then used in the Tax Haven rule. This rule would specify the Bitcoin system,
and have the advantage of being reusable.
Create a new rule that defines a term such as “Verifiably Random,” which is
then used in the Tax Haven rule. This rule would not specify any specific
system, just define the criteria for “verifiable”
Gaelan
> On May 17, 2017, at 8:17 PM, Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> One widely noticed problem with our current Shiny system is that they
> tend to accumulate in the hands of players, because there's not much
> reason to spend them. Finding more things to spend them on is one fix
> that we should definitely be looking at long-term. However, I think
> there's scope here to make /not/ spending them more interesting.
>
> I care about being able to accumulate economic assets long-term and
> eventually use them for a win. However, that doesn't necessarily mean
> that I care that doing so is easy; working to hold onto what I have is
> currently trivial, but taking effort will likely lead to a better game
> long-term. I also had an idea I really like for it.
>
> So here's the proto-proposal (which would work best at AI 1.2, I
> believe):
> {{{{
> Amend rule 2482 ("Payday") to read as follows, then retitle it to "The
> Financial Month", then increase its power to 1.2:
> {{{
> Payrate is an office switch, tracked by the ADoP, with a
> default value of 10 and possible values of positive integers.
>
> At the start of each month, the following steps occur in order:
>
> a) Each player pays Agora 20% of their Shinies, rounded down.
>
> b) Each Organization pays Agora 20% of its Shinies, rounded
> down, unless that Organization is a Tax Haven.
>
> c) Each Organization's Tax Status is flipped to its default
> value.
>
> d) Agora pays each player 10 Shinies, unless its Balance is
> 0 or lower.
>
> e) Agora pays each office, in ascending order of Payrate
> (breaking ties alphabetically by the name of the office),
> a number of Shinies equal to its Payrate. However, any such
> payment which would be made while Agora's Balance is 0 or
> lower is skipped and does not occur.
> }}}
>
> Create a new rule, "Tax Havens", at power 1.2:
> {{{
> Tax Status is an Organization switch, tracked by the
> Secretary, with possible values "taxable" (the default), and
> "nontaxable". A nontaxable Organization is known as a Tax
> Haven.
>
> In a timely manner after the start of each month, the
> Secretary SHALL randomly choose two distinct Organizations
> (or as many as possible if fewer than two exist), with the
> probability of each Organization being chosen being
> proportional to its Income, and CAN and SHALL then make
> those Organizations into Tax Havens.
> }}}
> }}}}
>
> The basic idea here is that there's a tax rate which helps prevent
> inactive players accumulating too many Shinies just for existing, but
> which can be dodged entirely with some effort. We have a fairly diverse
> set of Organizations out there already; I imagine that if an
> Organization were randomly selected to be a Tax Haven, its members
> would at least consider amending it to work as a Shiny store in a way
> that fit the spirit of that Organization as a whole (and other players
> would consider joining it). So, people who want to accumulate economic
> power long term might well have to jump from Organization to
> Organization (and fund Organizations that aligned with their goals
> long-term in the hope of increasing the chance that they're selected as
> a Tax Haven).
>
> Of course, this is likely to lead to a lot of Shinies stockpiled in one
> place, and I don't want this to become some sort of standard grind in
> which every Organization puts some generic "you can store Shinies here"
> boilerplate in and leaves it at that. So as a companion proposal, let's
> do something that's a) going to leave a bunch of people missing Shinies
> and b) actually gives an incentive to play the economy game:
>
> {{{{
> Create a new rule, "Medals":
> {{{
> Medal Ownership is an Organization switch, whose possible
> values are the non-negative integers, defaulting to 0.
>
> If at any time more than half the Shinies owned by entities
> other than Agora are owned by a single Organization, it pays
> half its Shinies to Agora, and its Medal Ownership is increased
> by 1.
>
> When a person Claims a Medal from an Organization, as described
> in other rules, that person wins the game.
> }}}
> In rule 2460 ("Organizational Restructuring"), replace
> {{{
> Budget or Charter switch
> }}}
> with
> {{{
> Budget, Charter, or Medal Ownership switch
> }}}
> and append the following to the lettered list at the end:
> {{{
> d) A member of an Organization CAN Claim a Medal from that
> Organization, if doing so is Appropriate and the Organization's
> Medal Ownership is nonzero. Doing so decreases the
> Organization's Medal Ownership by 1.
> }}}
> }}}}
>
> --
> ais523
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