Englishtown Candidates for Mayor: Platforms

[TheBoomer]

The thread is only candidates offical platforms.  There will be a 2nd thread that will used for a discussion of the candidates.  Please limit posts in this thread to your offical announcement that you are a candidate.  Any other posts here, will be moved to the appropriate thread.

[TheBoomer]

Today I wish to announce that I am a Candidate for mayor of Englsihtown.

I see Englishtown at a crossroads and drifting aimlessly.  The following 6 step platform outlines my plan for the next several months.  A plan designed to make Englishtown a better place.

1) Single User games.  For a town of over 300 people and over 60 game rooms, we have an almost total lack of Single user games.  We have the ability to build 3 SU game rooms for a moderate cost.  We current have 3 SU games(sologammon, fivedice and mogelpat) that people in ET play a lot. If elected, my first order of business will to build these 3 SU games.  I have proposed this in the past, sadly no action was taken.

2) Organization of "Western Hemisphere games"  The recent olympics were less than well attended my players from North America, due to the euro-centric times.  I have recently proposed having a similiar, albeit smaller event, with Western Hemisphere centric times.  I have proposed to host these game jointly with the 4 other NA-centric towns(Burgundy Ridge, Emerald City, Pirate's Cove and Terra Brasilis). I envision such games to all have times on either weekends, or evenings in North America.  Players from all over the world would be welcome, but the times would be designed to be friendly to the North American Player.  This event is not designed to replace the olympics, but rather provide a tournament event more suitable to the North American player.  I am thinking that 15 different over a 2 week period would be a good idea.  Furthermore, I propose a committee with one representative of each of the 5 towns be set up to work out details.

3) Formation of a Strategic wool reserve.  When I became Botschafter the first thing I did was create a large stockpile of food.  At the time, food was the towns largest long time worry.  Currently, our food reserves are almost 10 times larger than they were when I became Botschafter.  This reserve has allowed the town to not worry during the recent price rise of food.  In order to establish a similiar reserve for wool we would need to have a building stop for one month.  I proposed doing this for Feb 2004, this idea was rejected.  If elected mayor I will establish a large strategic wool reserve.

4) A castle.  We all know Englishtown is the largest town in BSW.  As such we deserve to have a castle.  Call it a status symbol if you wish.  Yes , it is not the most cost effective building , but it an impressive structure that a town of our size should have.  If we create the strategic wool reserve and building stop, we can build one in Feb or March.  If elected mayor we will build a castle.

5) Foreign Aid Fund.  I have proposed several times in the past that Englishtown Establish a foreign aid program for guilds and towns, and fund this with 2% of our revenue.  A town our size can certainly afford to spend 2% on such an enterprise.  But why should we?  Frankly, because it's the right things to do.  Any funds we provide to the smaller guilds will be used to fund lotteries.  Lotteries generate more game play and thus generate more resources for the town.  One 8 player game of attribut would generate for Englishtown enough for a 1250 taler lottery.  Guild donations more than pay for themselves.  As for donations to other towns, this is just good long term relations.  We help build an alliance of towns that are supportive of us.  Small towns have very few game rooms.  Their people therefore play many games outside of their town.  If we provide assistance to these towns, they will encourage their people to play in ET, they will be more willing to trade with us when they grow into larger towns.  Doing this makes us better citizens in the world community.  It is the right thing to do.
Let's have all of BSW admire Englishtown, not because of our  size, but what we do with that size.

6) More aggressive blacklisting of rude players.  I feel that Englishtown has been too reluctant to ban players that a rude, offensive , and bad sports(doing things like consistantly leaving games that they are losing).  If elected I will work with our chief of security to establish and publish guideliness for this.  We need to be tougher with these types of people.  Let keep Englishtown as fun place to play.

I look forward to your support,
TheBoomer

[Nikita]

I am still running for Mayor.

That someone can find EnglishTown drifting aimlessly I find ... odd.
The aim of EnglishTown has always been to help English speaking players find their way and create a pleasant gaming community for them.
I think we have been successful in that regard. The meta-game itself has never been the main focus for EnglishTown, nor should it be. The plan was never for EnglishTown to "win" the meta-game.

EnglishTown has always been a city for the citizens. My "platform" is for EnglishTown to continue to stay this way. The mayor shouldn't dictate what EnglishTown should do.  I have always tried to seek a consensus from all those who care about the well-being of the town. It is important that we don't make decisions that are unpopular among a big group of citizens. There is no need for this. We are here to play games and have fun.

EnglishTown has always built the game rooms needed. This should be the strategy for the future also. My dream is to have a lively town with a lot of gaming going on. So much gaming that /manager eng will be the natural choice when people are looking for a game and want to play with an English speaking group of players regardless of the town they come from.

The Olympic stadium has caused some delays acquiring the newest games. (For those who don't know, the stadium will eventually hold six games, but this ability has to be specially coded.  It hasn't happened yet.)
We expected to be able to use this space for several new additions to ET after the Olympics, but have had to continue waiting.
That the game rooms are not implemented yet was totally unexpected and out of our control. If we knew then what we know now I think we would have planned a bit differently, but hindsight is 20/20.

A castle in EnglishTown has been discussed, and before we got the Olympics we announced that we planned to build it. Having the Olympic stadium in town I think this has changed a bit. At least it should, as the stadium is an even “cooler” building than the castle. In my opinion building a castle just shows that a town don’t care too much about how they spend the resources.
It is such a bad value for money. But it should be for the town to decide, not the mayor.  Anyone who feels strongly about this or any other topic should post in the forum, or talk to the mayor.

What I’m totally against is trying to exploit the system and make actions that will be looked upon badly by other cities. This will just make EnglishTown an unpopular actor in the meta-game and it won't happen while I’m mayor.

I don’t even like to discuss build stops but Boomer has brought it up. (A build stop involves intentionally avoiding paying the required clothing maintenance on each member of ET.  This saves the town wool, but we are penalized by not being allowed to build the next month.)
Doing a build stop to save a lot of wool is not really how the meta-game was intended to be played. As the most populous town we have the most to gain from doing it. Knowing it is a possibility in an emergency some day is good. Exploiting it might take the possibility away from us.
A build stop also stops all change of private game rooms and
building of private housing in the town. EnglishTown doesn't have a resource problem. We can build the game rooms we need. It is of course nice to make the future more relaxed by building up a resource reserve, but this should be done the “natural” way, by playing the meta-game like the meta-game was intended to be played.

A foreign aid fund will not happen with me as a mayor either. This subject has been discussed earlier and just didn't gather support:
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/cgi-bin/yabb4/YaBB.pl?board=EnglishTown;action=display;num=1065211559

Regarding blacklisting EnglishTown has signed the Fairness Agreement and cooperates with the other towns that have signed this agreement about banning players that deserve such a treatment. If you have a problem with a player, please let a town administrator know, preferably bliss, the Stadtvogt (Chief of security).

Boomer has done an excellent job as ambassador. It's the most important job in town I would say, at the same time, invisible to most of our residents.  I hope he will continue his hard work if I'm re-elected, even if we don't always agree about everything :-)

When mregamr and I first discussed founding ET, we never dreamt it would be this successful. We've grown from 4 founding members to the more than 300 we have today.  That growth has made us strong.  United, we've left our hardscrabble past behind us and become rich and powerful compared to most of the other towns.
ET is great because all of us, from the casual gamers to the fanatics work together to make it great. While I have been mayor we've weathered many changes, grown stronger and more successful. EnglishTown have become the big, peaceful, happy town. I hope that can continue.

I will appreciate your support!
-Nikita :-)