by Max Barry

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Region: Markarth

The understone keep

Tertia wrote:If they did the region would collapse. I saw exactly what happened. Our numbers shot up from slightly over 100 to 250. Then they shot down lower than our original numbers. The fall of le barras (bob) propelled the speed of the collapse. Markarth couldn't handle the numbers. Which eventually ended in gael's inactivity plague and the great migration.

Not exactly.

Markarth, at least old Markarth, was actually designed to become better as the population increased. The government structure was created with the assumption of positive regional growth; the incoming waves of immigrants provided by recruitment would in turn fill the many vacant spots of the governing body. As more people joined, we could open up more branches of the government, and therefore have a greater diversity of ministries through which we could divide the workload.

The problem was not that we did lacked a surplus of nations, but that we lacked a surplus of contributing individuals. A lot of the nations who joined Markarth ended up CTEing a month later due to inactivity. Basically, only a handful actually posted on the RMB, and even fewer joined our forums. This was a problem, as the ambitious government structure of Markarth relied heavily on a continuous influx of active residents, especially the legislative assembly. Without the heads to fill such a massive body of government, a lot of pressure was put on the Trinity to provide the necessary administrative finesse that was necessary to keep the region afloat. More than on one occasion, this ended in an Emergency Government being called, which obviously limited the scope of our governmental focus.

In the end, our problems did not stem from the departure of Le Barras, nor the inactivity of Gael, nor the shortcomings of any other government member. Our problems lay at the failure of the government to accommodate for that primarily fatal Nationstates truth: this is a game and nothing more. People will come and go, more often the latter than the former. Nations are not always new, inspired people who want to contribute by joining forums and posting on RMBs. Players lose interest, and go off to do things in the real world. Most importantly, this game doesn't matter in the grand scheme of life; I can be a total troll and live a perfect life outside. Our government, always based on the assumption that we were running an actual country, simply could not bridge the gap between real government and fictional gameplay. It is for this same reason that I caution people against trying to heavily apply RL thought to NS logic, because the same principles don't hold.

Eh, rather long winded answer to a more succinct statement. But I do hope that nobody here thinks that a large region is doomed to fail automatically. The failure of a NS region lies not so much in its size, but it's style of government rule. The minute a system begins to rely too much on an active populace, the region will begin demonstrating signs of decay.

-Decimus

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