System Time: 07:05 17 May 2008 - 9 Players Online
Tactical Voting
Tactical voting is the act of casting one or more votes on a blog in such a way as to gain an advantage in the game. Generally, such voting is linked to idea production, but it may also have to do with artefact usage. Tactical voting may involve casting votes for industries into which the blog was not yet voted, or casting duplicate votes for industries which the blog has already been voted into.
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Is tactical voting legal?
Yes. As long as your votes are accurate, tactical voting as outlined in detail below is entirely legal.
What are the reasons for casting a tactical vote?
Reasons for casting a tactical vote might include, but are not necessarily limited to:
- Casting only one vote on a blog: This technique might be used on blogs which belong in rare industries to ensure that the first idea productions after the vote is cast will be of maximum size. In some cases, a tactical voter will then go back and cast more accurate votes on the blog once he or she has collected enough ideas in the rare industry in question.
- Changing which industries produce ideas on a blog: Only the top five industries on each blog produce ideas when that blog is reindexed. Industries are ranked according to the total number of votes cast for each industry on a given blog. If a player wishes to alter the industries which produce ideas, he or she can do so by means of casting duplicate votes selectively. For instance, if a blog is already voted into Denver, but Denver is the sixth ranked industry on that blog, the tactical voter may choose to cast a vote for Denver but no other industries in order to bump it higher up the list and into the top five, so that the blog will start producing Denver ideas. Conversely, duplicate voting can be used to prevent a blog from producing ideas in a certain industry, by casting duplicate votes for enough other industries in order to bump a given industry out of the top five, so that the blog will no longer produce ideas in that industry. This might be done in order to prevent other players from harvesting ideas.
- Adding extra industries with artifacts: This technique might be used to aid share play, by making more artifacts available on a given blog. As long as the votes are accurate, this is perfectly acceptable game play.
Things to remember
When casting tactical votes, as long as you ensure your votes are accurate and that the blog is not dead, you will be fine. There are no penalties for casting duplicate votes (though you should bear in mind that you will not earn karma or chips for duplicate votes). You are free to cast as many or as few accurate votes on any blog in the index as you wish. Of course, the more accurate votes you cast, the more effective the index will become as a blog search tool.
A very common mistake is voting against valid industries. This is unacceptable practice, and will likely result in a BSEC case. Instead, if you are trying to get a blog to not produce for an industry, try voting for the other valid industries. Only the top 5 industries a blog is in will produce ideas.