Villages will now revolt in groups. The groups are
Rockholm/Southgard/Angkrag, Estelbar/Acknor, Stewartsville/Delport,
Shanthmark/Paavik, and Dairuchi (on its own). As some of you may be
aware from discussions on the forums, the hope is that this will add
more variety and more interesting dynamics. We will be monitoring how
this develops and I am sure you will let us know your reactions to it on
the forums! Notably, we are also implementing the following changes to
politics along with this new system:

Communes can now select politics from among commercial, religious and
conquer. However, unlike cities, titles of commune members and commune
ranks do not change. There is no longer a 'commune' political type and
the default for communes is 'religious'. Note that the length of time a
village is held no longer has any bearning upon politics or style.

There is a new ranking for the feelings that each village has for each
city and commune. The greater the feelings, the easier it will be for
that city or commune to influence that village. You can see a village's
feelings by entering POLITICS <village>.

A commune or city's politics (commercial, religious, conquest) and
ruling style (benign, neutral, despotic) have been altered. The effects
are as follows:

BENIGN: Only impacts villages that the city or commune influences. The
villages of a benign government will produce less commodities and power,
but increase the village feelings towards that government.

NEUTRAL: No impact on anything.

DESPOTIC: Only impacts villages that the city or commune influences. The
villages of a despotic government will produce more commodities and
power, but decrease the village feelings towards that government.

COMMERCIAL: Citizens or commune members of a commercial government will
find that doing commodity quests in any village will improve relations
with that village. Villages under the sphere of influence of a
commercial government produce more commodities but less power.

RELIGIOUS: Citizens or commune members of a religious government will
find that influencing villagers in any village will improve relations
with that village. Villages under the sphere of influence of a religious
government produce more power but less commodities.

CONQUEST: Citizens or commune members of a conquest government will find
that killing villagers (of villages that are not under their city or
commune's control) will increase the respect that village has to that
government. Also, villages under the sphere of influence of a conquest
government will produce less commodities and less power but naturally
become more enthralled with that government. Further, any village that
is not under its sphere of control will begin to passively accrue
respect for that government, the amount of which depends on the number
of villages that government controls.

Please note that 'raiding' (i.e., killing villagers of enemy
cities/communes) only really benefit your city or commune if they are in
conquest mode. If you are in a city or commune who not conquest mode,
and you wish to be a murderous machine, then perhaps you should try
convincing your government to change or moving to a city or commune that
more matches your bloodthirsty proclivities.

Regarding conquest governments, there is no better system to hold and
maintain large numbers of villages. And the more you rule, the easier it
is to control others (in theory). Of course, you may have to compete
with other conquest governments!

The religious method to turn villagers to your side is any type of
influencing (charity, seduction, etc.). The point is that the more
successes you have, the more the villagers become accustomed to
following your emotional lead. This is a great stealth method of turning
village feelings towards a religious city or commune as there are no
messages over channels announcing that you are influencing villagers
(unlike killing them).

The commercial benefit to turn villagers is probably the poorest method
to expand to non-controlled villages, as commodity quests in rival
villages produce comms for a rival city or commune. However, the
commercial mode is great for those governments who only maintain one or
two villages and want to maximize production.

Finally, controlling villages that oppose other villages will have a
negative impact on the feelings of those opposing villages. For example,
controlling Acknor will provoke a negative reaction from Estelbar (over
time).

When villages do revolt, the strength of feeling that village has to a
city or commune impacts how easy it is to control that village. This is,
of course, no guaranty of influencing a village--but it certainly is a
leg up. Conversely, a village that has negative feelings towards a city
or commune will be that much harder to win control.

As influence battles draw on, the feelings of a village will gradually
improve towards a city or commune who win city/commune influencing, so
eventually the initial advantage of having a village with strong
feelings towards you will wear off (again, if the influence battle draws
on for a prolonged period).

As an added bonus, when a village is in-play, the new POLITICS <village>
command will also reveal a very loose estimate on how a particular
village views individual cities and communes as a candidate for
following. Don't place too much importance on these scores, however, as
they are calculated partially on the relative strength they have to each
other and not necessarily on how close a city or commune is to 'winning'
the village.

Penned by My hand on the 22nd of Juliary, in the year 141 CE.