I resigned from the World Assembly on [nation]Altmoras[/nation] on June 14th, 2016 to go out into the wider world of NS military gameplay, intending to accrue a little military experience and be home in Lazarus in time for Christmas. Things don’t always go exactly as planned however, instead of hanging out and gaining a little experience I ended up becoming the de facto leader of both [region]The Order of the Grey Wardens[/region] and our own Lazarene Liberation Army; as well as becoming a Moderator of The Coalition Against the Ideology of Nazism and commanding several anti fascist liberations with them. Six months of experience might not seem like much in a fourteen year old game, but I can assure you that the security of our region will be ironclad under my watchful eye.


Before I was a military gameplayer, I was an endo tarter, it’s actually why I became a citizen in the first place. I wanted the higher endorsement cap that comes as a privilege of citizenship, and that somehow snowballed into me becoming Lazarus’ longest serving elected official since the 2015 coup. The point is that I believe in and understand the importance of a strong culture of high endorsement counts and prolific exchanging of those endorsements. To further that goal I plan on implementing a few things…

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• Awards!: I’ve been prodding at the idea of giving awards for a while. So one of the first things on my agenda will be to create an awards dispatch, recognizing nations that carry a high level of endorsements, and those who endorse our Delegate, Vice Delegate, and Guardians.
  
  
• Races!: Competitions will be held between nations of similar endo counts to see who can collect the most endorsements in a certain period of time.

Those are just a few things I have in mind, my other plans related to the WA will be covered in other sections of this campaign.


As mentioned briefly above, I started out as an endo tarter, and I’m fully prepared to go back to my roots. At the time of writing, Lazarus contains 362 World Assembly nations, and our delegate holds an endorsement count of 223. This constitutes a WA Engagement level of approximately 61.6%, 223 endorsements is actually a record for native endorsements in absolute terms, but I think we can do even better in terms of engagement. Historical data shows us that 61.6% is a much lower level of engagement then we are capable of. Our Sister Sinkers of Osiris and Balder have both shown us that it is possible for a sinker to reach WA Engagement levels in excess of 75%, with 362 WA nations that comes out to be 271 endorsements! A delegate endorsement count that high would make Lazarus the 9th most powerful World Assembly region in the world! It would also be a new modern record for our region, with the exception of a brief period after the 2015 coup when over 100 of our friends and allies moved into the region to secure Kazmr as the delegate. Perhaps 271 is a lofty goal, but if you shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.


But what will we do if we get all of those endorsements? What will we do with them? This is where I’d like to talk to you about “Stomping”, “Stomping” is a World Assembly voting policy wherein a delegate votes as early as possible on the resolution at vote, skewing the total votes in favor of one side or the other right out of the gate, the intended effect of this is to trigger a bandwagon effect of delegates and individual voters voting for the winning side. By stomping early and often, we will be able to maximize the value of Lazarus’ vote, and in the case of the Security Council, advance our foreign policy aims.


More endorsements also has more passive benefits to our region, specifically regarding the mid-level influence and endorsement counts of our native nations. More nations actively endorsing is a benefit to every single native World Assembly member in Lazarus, more endorsements, more influence, shiny badges, and a way to cement their foundation here.


Tldr:

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• Keep the region safe and secure.
  
• Tart hard.
  
• Encourage everyone else to tart hard.
  
• Utilize “Stomping” to maximize our say in the WA.

For as long as I’ve been a member of Lazarus our Internal Affairs department has been a mixed bag to say the least. We’ve had some moments of brilliance and productivity during Frankender and Yuno’s tenures, however under those same people the ministry has also had pronounced periods of inactivity where nothing gets done. So what’s the problem? It’s not incompetent Ministers given the proven quality of their work. The problem lies in a lack of clear direction, a lack of objectives to accomplish. That won’t be a problem under an Altmoras Administration, I know what I want done, and for the most part I know how I want it done.


So what do I want done?


Integration is one of the cornerstones of this platform and of my policy in general. Integration programs can be messy, unsuccessful, and generally lack the “sexiness” of big projects like Festivals or other major regional events. However, a good integration program can be indispensable, after all you can’t accomplish much at all if your region doesn’t have enough active people. That sentiment goes double for a Sinker like Lazarus where active individuals are already at a premium. So how do we go about it? Methodically, that’s how. NationStates already conveniently organizes a lot of groups of people who are more likely to be receptive to engagement and integration than the shotgun approach of region:lazarus telegrams.


So what do we want to target for? Well, I envision a few different categories of engagement messages being sent out. Manually or by api, not mass marketed.

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• Recruitment for the WA: Remember how I said WA policy would tie into Internal Affairs policy? I plan to frequently and strongly encourage anyone who will listen to join the WA and endorse their fellow Lazarenes. Some early examples of this can be found in my Welcome Telegram (Currently running for the region) and the “Join the World Assembly” dispatch. What’s different here is that the targeting of nations will be more narrow and personally tailored.
  
  
• Recruitment for Citizenship/The Forum: A common complaint has been the inactivity of our forumside community, outside of spam of course which is lively as ever. This one is pretty standard, once more using specific targeting we bring more people into the fold on Zetaboards, even if they don’t become citizens more roleplayers/spammers/WA Resolution debaters is always nice.
  
  
• Recruitment for the Army: Of all the regions tagged “Invader or Defender” Lazarus is the largest of them all. This is a tremendous opportunity to get new people involved in military gameplay. As I can personally attest it is one of the most exciting and intriguing aspects of NationStates and we should be bringing as many interested nations in on it as possible.
  
  
• Recruitment for Anything!: Once we have an established process for engagement we can utilize the same tactics for whatever project or exciting opportunity we see fit. That might seem overly general, but it is really a cornerstone of what I want to do; I don’t want Lazarus to have a 3-6 month golden age while I’m in office and then regress after I’m gone. I want to establish clear ways for future governments to emulate our (hopefully) good work and make Lazarus the juggernaut it deserves to be.

Now who are we going to recruit? As I said earlier NationStates already conveniently sorts a lot of groups so let’s go through those.

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• WA Members: Obviously these nations can’t be recruited to the WA since they’re already in it, but those who chose to join the WA and have their WA nation in Lazarus are already tad more reliable than your average mass tg audience. Regional WA members are prime candidates to try and recruit for anything you can think of.
  
  
• Stat Leaders: Nations who are in the top 1% of our region for one of the many national statistics that NationStates tracks ie; Scientific Advancement. These are people who have put not insignificant amounts of time and effort into their nation.
  
  
• Dispatch Posters: Pretty self explanatory, people who create factbooks for their nations are clearly willing to go the extra mile.
  
  
• The Future: This is in its infancy still, but recently I’ve been talking with some of the NationStates community’s resident tech wizards about utilizing the api and data dumps to spit out even more lists of viable candidates.
  
  

Culture has never been a particularly strong suit of mine. I’m competent enough, I roleplay, write, and host games on occasion. However, I don’t have any particularly strong specific inspirations for regional culture. My plan for the most part is to ensure that the more culturally minded members of our populace have whatever they need in order to make our regional culture flourish. It is my hope that by encouraging a general increase in regional activity and availability of information that Lazarus will create a far more sustainable cultural base instead of one reliant on the activity of a few. I do still love the idea of a non-military “Invader” army that “attacks” our friends and allies and generally shows them a good time though.

Lazarus has been in a state of not-altogether-splendid isolation from the rest of the world for most of the time I’ve been here. The last message that went out to our embassies abroad was in early September, and that was only a festival invite. The last real foreign update we put out was in July, if we weren’t a GCR we probably would have had several of our embassies closed on us by now for inactivity. My intention is to light a fire under our asses in that department and get a proper foreign update produced ASAP if I am elected. Beyond that it is my intention to reach back out into the wider world and seek bi or multilateral agreements with like minded regions. The Coalition Against the Ideology of Nazism was a good step back into the world, and I’d like for us to continue expanding our purview of cooperation on all matters from military GP to the WA.


As I said earlier, our WA policy can and should be a tool to advance our foreign affairs aims, the delegates of Lazarus routinely have over 200 endorsements nowadays (and I intend to have much more). These endorsements give us the potential to be major power players in the World Assembly, particularly the Security Council, Be it commendations of friends, condemnation of enemies, liberation of occupied regions, Lazarus’s vote when applied early and often can be a major deciding tool.


I’d like for Lazarus to establish or join at least one interregional treaty or accord during my tenure, but at the same time I won’t be seeking out treaties or accords that don’t provide significant benefit to Lazarus so if nothing good is available then I’m perfectly fine with not establishing any.

Since I joined the Lazarene Liberation Army a few months back I’ve been it’s most and sometimes only active member. However if elected I do get to select the next Grand Commandant and I will be certain to pick a candidate who shares my vision for the army.


I would like the LLA to become a real power player in the world of military gameplay, with a regular presence at update and a strong policy of transparency. Ideally, when the operation is not classified the people of Lazarus should always know what their military is doing and why. The new Grand Commandant should make regular public reports of the LLA’s activity on the forum and the rmb. This topic is hard for me to discuss in depth because frankly what the LLA needs more than anything is people, we’ll acquire those people via the aforementioned advertisement along with our integration program.

Citizenship: The policy Amerion has towards citizenship was adopted at my suggestion, so overall I’m quite happy with it. However I would like to implement proper admin checks for new citizens, along with adding a bit of “adspace” letting people know what they can do in Lazarus at the bottom of citizenship applications.


Deputies and Assistants:


One change I will be making to the structure of the executive government is creating the position of “Assistant Minister”. Assistant Ministers will essentially be members of a Ministry’s staff and require no special masking. This will allow for wider involvement in our government by anyone who wants to help.


Deputies on the other hand will be similar to the Deputy Directors of Ceremonies, Individuals charged with specific and important duties and responsibilities at the behest of their minister. Given the greater authority and importance of these offices I and the Ministers will be holding deputies accountable as if the deputies were ministers themselves.


Polls: I don’t have a long ass paragraph to stick this in, but I would like for us to be running regional polls 24/7/365.