I've played every round of Strategus seriously except it's latest iteration. It's a game that very accurately mimics the highs and lows of political competition I'm certain it wasn't supposed to be that way, though I'm sure we all enjoy aspects of the diplomacy game. In the last month or so, several players have mentioned Strategus' problems, and Canary pointed out the issue of internet friendship and what Strategus can do to it.
A lot of what leaves a bad taste in the mouth for players, I believe, is the constant propaganda attacks that tends to color every round of Strategus. It wasn't quite there in the beginning, and it's not as bad as it's been now, but it's still out there. Every time I read the forums or play cRPG, there's at least one ill-informed comment or outright lie about another clan, and sometimes, we believe them.
That's fine. It's a natural part of any competition that involves social groups. However, it's things like this that make Strategus a big deal. So much so that generally speaking, you won't go to war with another faction unless you're willing to have your relationship with the people within it strained, if not entirely severed.
I believe I've got the solution, and unlike other improvements to Strategus, this is something that involves no coding. No developer time. Just the willingness of a community to re-shape itself.
THE SOLUTION
Every major clan elects one leader, preferably their resident role-player or innocuous fun times troll. The leaders have to pick their faction one player at a time, like it's a pick-up ball game. Or a professional draft, however you want to see it. The caveat?
The leader has to pick members of every other clan participating in the draft before he can pick someone from his own clan. For example: Hospitaller_Frogger is elected as a leader. He now has to take his turn to pick members of his Strat team. The clans involved are Occitan, TkoV, Hospitallers, CHAOS, Ravens, LLJK, FCC, Fallen, and Manscouts. Frogger will have to choose someone from Occitan, TkoV, CHAOS, Ravens, LLJK, FCC, Fallen, and Manscouts before he can choose someone from Hospitaller. He keeps on picking people through this cycle on his turn until there's no one left to pick.
The clans involved would then set a time for a Strategus sub-round and a win condition, agreed upon by all. Say, three months with 'Own Veluca and the surrounding environs' as the win condition. At the end of three months, the Strat team that owns that area would win the sub-round and the clans would start another one.
In this system, you wouldn't have to sacrifice gametime with your regular clan or anything like that- teams could just go to a TS for their Strat battles and nothing else- continuing to play with their clans in cRPG while organizing with their teams on irc or steam, etc.
PARTING WORDS
This is just an idea. I feel that this might invigorate Strategus for a lot of people, because everyone would fight everyone else, and I believe it would bring the community closer together. If anyone likes the idea and is serious about it, well, then great. We can talk about the finer details of how we'll implement it and who's participation we'll need.
