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Visit one of the Dyanimedes States

a starter Dyanamedes-specific page    

Aurora Atlas Dyanimedes page - try an "open in new browser window" if you want to refer back and forth between the maps and this visit page

Dyanimedes Forum on the Aurora v3.0 discussion board.

[tech] info on Dyanimedes is below the visit table for now

Material to go *somewhere* on an info/rules page...

Dyanimedes States
(vs. ISAAC's Dyamedos Islands - nearby and similar names, but worlds apart. ISAAC's host land is a model of stability. Dyanimedes has stable & unstable entities both.)

North to South, roughly, the generally recognized political entities of the DS Isles in April 2107 are

Dyanimedes is not a nation or a federation, it is fifty (this month) separate entities and who knows how many feuding relationships, attachments by marriage, commerce, or conquest, and civil wars incipent and actual. Not a particularly large territory, it is an illustration of what many of our nations would look like without some unifying force to hold subgroups together. Much like the barbary states, only perhaps a bit more backward, the Dyanimedes states are fertile ground for development projects and aid. Investment there is risky. Payoff can be good though. Some places draw tourists like flies, some are havens for finance - both banks and baccarat.

Why has the territory remained fragmented? In the past more than one outside power has thought of taking it over in part or in full, but it has always proved not worth the effort. No huge deposits of gold or valuable spices or even rich cities to plunder have drawn the effort it would require to pacify the island. Several periods of depredation by slave-takers resulted in locals being spread across the globe - the return of descendants of some of those generations later has brought more customs, languages, and cultures. The few reasonably prosperous cities and principalities have tended to band together temporarily to repulse outsiders, before falling right back into feuding afterwards. The unsuccessful invasions *have* left a patchwork of differing languages, governing systems, and cultural heritages in place. Indeed, an Ingliz expression arose from the island - something versatile enough to work in any circumstances, or of wide enough appeal to be acceptable to all of a diverse group is said to "work in Dyanimedes". A second connotation is when something is not *expected* to work, folks say with suprise, "well, THAT works in Dyanimedes!"

[tech]
A truism in the USA at least, is that "all politics is local". All the little conflicts, loyalties, and payoffs are what adds up to states and nations and their political realities. On Aurora, the nations tend to be large - partly forced so by the hex-layout (necessary to keep the planetmaster from overload, considering the simulation aspects), but also partly from a tendency of players to want more - more people, resources, territory, influence. That's the way of the real world too - so many are convinced "more is better".

Dyanimedes is set up as a way for Aurorans to play around with "smallpolitik". The states there will likely never be major world powers - that's not a goal, even! Instead, it's a place to participate in the back-and forth interaction we saw in the Barbary States, as Venantia was pacifying that area prior to annexation. Or think of earth's Germany, Italy, India before unification - or looking farther back, *most* of the european nations, or how the US would have been without a central authority --- many parts, different goals, different systems.

A couple of ground rules will keep the place set up roughly this way. I'll number them just for reference. Yeah, yeah, I know - in a real world somebody that wanted to badly enough could roll right over such a backward, splintered collection and conquer the whole mess. To keep a playground for the little stuff on Aurora, let's forbid that.

1) Nobody can succeed in taking the whole thing over, neither outsiders nor states on the island.

Mike is seting up a way to handle fractional-hex resource and/or build point allocation. That'll allow Dyanimedian states to actively participate in the simulation aspects of Aurora. Or you can just dive into the web-site and interaction part of the game and forget the simulation for now. Like I noted already - this is a small island, and even smaller fragments on it - the economies are *little*.

Do enter your Dyanimedian state into the sim when Mike gets the fractional-hex ownership settled. I can't make this visit page fully functional without the nations being "real".

The states are small and pretty much stay that way. For the sake of simplicity, I've divided the political units up into 1, 2, 3, and so forth 'unit' states. Add it all up, you get a bit over a hundred 'units' (115). I've put the sizes right on the visit list, next to the state names The ones sized like just a city are ones, up to the largest two, Etrosia or Vinniccia, which we'll call a collections of three three-unit parts, for a total of nine. Mike will use these relative sizes for dividing up the hex's BPs, if and when that capability arises. For right now, we'll use those units as guidelines as to what is a reasonable population for a Dyanimedian state. The whole of Dyanimedes is about 66,000 square km (hey, I told you this is small !). A really high value for population density here might be 100-150 people per square km - call it 6.5 to 10 million total. See <link yet to be completed> for a table of nominal sizes of the states - a suggested value would be 30,000 - 50,000 people per unit; call 80,000 a maximum to keep the whole island from getting unrealistic. A realistic low end would be a few thousand per unit - take a look at the CIA World Factbook population rankings page - there's a number of Really Little States that we on earth consider separate political units. So simply stated;

2) Population stays within the those guidelines.

Note that Mike's simulation is using a slightly different set of numbers, since it needs to divide the hex into 100 percent, by onesies and twosies. No 3.17% states, right Mike? :-)

3) Names - can we just keep the ones that Seth came up with, at least for what the rest of the world calls the places? I don't want him to have to maintain the Dyanimedes maps weekly, nor should things like the population guidelines have to change. And people will make their own maps of their own statelet; it shouldn't have to be updated every time a neighbor changes names. How about if you *really* don't like a territory's assigned name, you can feel free to use its peoples' *local* name on your own web page, noting something like "BUSTAMENTE - called the Kala Principality up to 2102". The map and tables and visit page show the short names, by the way. Etru can be the Grand Imperial Subheptate of the Valley of Etru, if you want an impressive name :-).

4) Anybody already having a nation on Aurora may ask for one or more Dyanimedian states to play. New players are welcome to start with a Dyanimedian nation if you don't want something bigger - you'll just lack a few of the simulation's capabilities.

5) For purposes of ownership, the main visit page lists the planetmaster as Dyanimedes' owner. Since there are so many states on Dyanimedes, selecting it on the main visit page brings up this subsidiary visit page, listing all Dyanimedian states and their players. Seth, Jake, and Christopher (Wyndham) provide sub-administration of the territory; Mike Phyle assigns territory upon request (and passes requests to the three subadmins for them to handle meeting, greeting, and setup assistance).

6) All the normal requirements of Auroran startup apply - these are still real nations, just small ones. You've got to put up some kind of web page for *each* selected territory - a good reason to start one at a time. The page has to have at a minimum a link back to Aurora, a national flag, a description of the government, and some kind of map. The map need not be complex, but folks are going to want to know where this place is, in order to interact with it. More info is better, of course - many of us get a large part of our enjoyment in Aurora from creating and presenting our nations on the web.

7) The Dyanimedian visit page will show players' names and allow the same blind-email contact as the main visit page, only there will be an indication as to whether the player is provisional or fully entered into play. Mike Phyle will do the formal acceptance and announcement of new players. If you want to know if a new site is acceptable, email any of the three subadmins and ask - they could tell you.

8) You have read the rest of Aurora's rules and understood them, yes?

9) The bit about scripted conflict vs. unscripted? There's no way (yet) for a Dyanimedian state to fully participate in the military simulation, and even when that becomes possible, they'll all be pretty small armed forces. So let's say *all* conflict needs to be scripted for these states, OK? Don't worry - somebody will be willing to fight if you must, though it's even more creative to go in for all the other possible intrigues short of warfare.

10) Version 3 of Aurora allows for one or more forum areas just for Dyanimedian interaction. Let's follow a stricter subject-line protocol to allow sorting of topics - Dyanimedian states' topics shall have the nation name somewhere in the topic title. The more informative a topic title the better. Of course if you want your own specific national forum, just ask Mike to set one up, but it's OK to have general Dyanimedian interaction in the Dyanimedes forum.

11) Dyanimedes is a small place, without a lot of room for wildly variant climate and ecosystems. The master climate maps show it just as being forested - that's before the effects of people, so there's farmland cleared, pastures open, forest-fire denuded areas, and the like. Its middle latitude location means the foliage is more temperate-forest than jungle, though picking 'denser' or 'thinner' would be fine. The northern islets could be a bit more jungle-y. Summer's (January's) prevailing winds tend to be from the northeast, and a bit drier (typical is a high pressure area there and east of there). The altitudes don't go high enough for a true rain-shadow effect, but the NE coast would be a bit wetter than the SW. Winter's prevailing winds might be out of the WNW - oscillation between typical high and low would bring some more variable, wetter weather. Big storms might be possible, which brings up:

12) Dyanimedes is subject to the random events that Mike's going to implement. Hurricanes, drought, and the like. Feel free to mitigate or worsen the actual effect, but acknowlege the events - don't report on the bumper crop of tomatoes and watermelons in the summer of the great drought, unless you are doing some serious irrigation :-). A Dyanimedian forum or a just-Dyanimedian-neighbors email list (not Yahoo - just "the list of recipients" you can do with almost any email package) will enable coordination of these and other island-wide or multi-country effects. Even if Mike's random generator *doesn't* generate a storm, we can feel free to write one up ourselves!

13) Any other guidelines that seem necessary to ease play of Dyanimedian States can be decided by vote of the inhabitants (the players, I mean).

So: your main nation is a nice stable democracy, yet you have an occasional wish to play a tin-hat dicatator or Grand Duke? You don't have to have a revolution - just start up and play a Dyanimedian State too! Stuck yourself with a land of icy tundra and your VIP's need a sunny paradise to spend their ill-gotten taxes in? Build yourself a Monaco or Fiji or Aegean coast resort right on Dyanimedes. Finding way too many appealing castle pictures and not enough staid proper blocky governmental buildings, to illustrate your main web site? Plant you a Mad Ludwig and a slew of bankrupting castles right on Dyanimedes (skip Neuchwanstein - Solo's already got that for his Czar's home :-) ). Your own people too sensible for wierd superstitions or cliffdiving or bagpipes? Start a pocket-sized offbeat society among the States of Dyanimedes (or just move to Szerelo, if bagpipes alone would suffice).
[tech]