St AbbaddonBoard

I was invited to join this region via telegram, so I did!

Who is Saint Abbaddon?

The regional name originally came from a story thread on the IGN Sci-Fi boards. We built the region when NationStates first started. Sadly, folks lives became complicated, and pretty much everyone else faded off, including the guy who founded the region. I'm the only one left.

Sure, have a nice stay!

@Hawkswind: I've wondered if it was an alteration of abaddon which is in the bible, and could be the anticrist or the devil or the worst part of hell. Or is it just a random word?

Welcome! And welcome to all the others.

Nope, welcome. A very very old founderless region at that!

Hmm, it is a question with a long answer...

If you look at most the regions in the game, under the delegate on the regional page there is another nation listed as the 'founder'. In our case we do not have one because our region is very old. Founders were added to the game in 2003, so any region that doesn't have a founder listed on the region page is at least eight years old. There are less than 50 of those regions left in the game, most have died off over the years. The other founderless regions, are regular regions, and the founder has just left the game and his nation was deleted after 28 days of not logging in, these regions will have a founder listed but with black letters rather than a link to his nation (because the nation is gone).

A founder has permanent access to the regional controls, whether he/she is in the WA or not and even whether he/she is in the region or not. They were added to the game because back in 2003 the invasion aspect of the game was really picking up, a group of players will hit a region with a lot of WA nations to take over the delegate position. For a region like ours, that is a serious problem because then they can start kicking us out of the region one by one until the region is destroyed. Regions with founders are never invaded, because the founder can just kick out the delegate and all his foreign supporters.

Basically, it means our region isn't invincible, but that is okay with me, my outlook on the game has always been that it is pointless to play the game if you can't lose. We just need to make security a high priority and keep my endorsements as high as possible. (Because the higher endorsements I have, the more WA nations it takes to replace me as delegate, and it can be difficult to get that many players together.)

There is also the risk if you have a founder, that the founder will go rogue after years and fundamentally change the region. This happened in Gatesville recently, a very large and powerful region was completely emptied because the founder decided to close it, all of its members were ejected and the region was closed. Meanwhile a delegate has to spend regional influence to eject people (a founder doesn't, and can eject anyone and everyone), so it is rare for a delegate to be able to eject every member of the region.

A lot of people would rather be in regions with founders, not I, I've always avoided them as much as possible. It just depends how you wish to play the game. I think it is fun to protect a region from invasion, other people who find more fun in roleplaying (acting out wars by posting on the NS forums) or debating real-life issues in the General forum of the NS forums generally prefer regions with founders because then they can pretty well ignore the region page and go straight to the forums. Invasions of large regions (regions with 15 or more delegate endorsements) are fairly rare, and with the help of defenders (sort of like anti-raiders, they use the same tactics to put the right people back in the delegate seat) it all generally ends in a couple days or so. Generally, that is.

I've always enjoyed the regional politics and inter-regional politics of this game, in fact before I was delegate here, I was delegate of The South Pacific for the last couple months, and that was/is the second biggest region in the game. The politics of the raider/defender clashes are so old and in-depth after three years I'm still learning something new everyday. And regions without founders tend to have more interesting political histories and potential because with a founder, the founder's side always wins if there is any sort of disagreement. :P

As far as extra security, I could put a password on the region to protect from invasions, but, that's generally a bad idea because if new nations can't get in as old nations die we become smaller and smaller. Most of those less than fifty BFI or historical regions that are left are passworded without a delegate, so, no one will ever be able to enter them again since there is no way to take the password down (unless one of the nations left inside remembers what the password was). So I'm not going to do that, it is only safety in the short term, it creates much more long-term problems.

On a short term basis, my overall hope is that we get enough active people to get involved in global politics of the game. By that I mean, building alliances and supporting those regions we feel close to in times of crisis. But building up a group of 6-8 active players is much harder than it sounds, and takes time.

Hello Sparexilia. Welcome to St. Abbaddon.