Game & Community Rules
Standard Moderation Guidelines
Each player starts with 0 Moderation Points. Violations of the rules may result in the issuing of Moderation Points to the player as outlined below. If a player reaches 100 Moderation Points, they will be banned from the game.
The number of Moderation Points issued per rule violation will be dependent upon the guidelines set forth below. Each rule will list a moderation guideline for the number of points to be issued, which is determined at the moderator’s discretion.
Moderation Points will expire over time. The length of time before expiration will vary based on the nature of the violation, and will be listed with the rule below.
While we attempt to make these rules as comprehensive as possible, they may not sufficiently address every possible situation. Moderators reserve the right to supersede the scope of these rules in special situations.
All moderation actions will need to be approved by at least two moderators to prevent any individual moderator from abusing their power.
Game Rules
The game rules outlined below are specifically in regard to limits on gameplay. Please continue reading to the “Community Rules” section for comprehensive rules on what type of content and communication are allowed within the Politics and War community.
1. Creating Multiple Nations
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 1 Year
No individual player is allowed to have more than one nation for any reason.
“Nation-sitting” whereby one player temporarily controls another player’s nation is not allowed, and we advise the use of Vacation Mode for extended absences from the game.
2. Multiple Nations on the Same Network - Restrictions Violations
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-50
Expiration: 1 Year
There is no limit on the number of nations that can play per network, so long as each nation is owned and controlled by a separate individual. Some restrictions will be imposed automatically on nations on the same network to prevent cheating.
Using Alliance Banks to evade trade restrictions imposed on nations on the same network is a bannable offense.
Two nations on the same network are allowed to be in the same alliance, but they are not allowed to declare wars on the same nations.
3. Fairness in Trading and Banking
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 1 Year
New nations are not allowed to send all or most of their money and resources to other nations. Even if we are unable to find proof that one player is controlling both nations, the existence of nations being created for the sole purpose of sending money and resources to another nation is a serious violation of the rules.
In general, players are allowed to trade and send aid to one another at their discretion. This rule essentially exists to prevent players from using VPNs to make a bunch of nations to send money to themselves.
4. War Slot Filling
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years
Declaring war on a nation without the intention of fighting them is punishable by a nation strike and additional punishment for multiple violations. You are not allowed to declare war on nations to prevent them from being attacked by other nations. This same rule applies with spies and espionage operations. Knowingly participating in having your war or spy slots filled is also considered a violation of this rule.
Declaring war on your allies is generally considered war slot filling and against the rules. In cases where relationships between nations or alliances are not clear, moderators will use their best determination to decide if nations are allied and therefore war slot filling or not. One example of this type of rule-breaking behavior would be leaving your alliance to declare on someone in your alliance or a nation in an alliance allied to your alliance, and then rejoining your alliance.
Moderation discretion must be applied when interpreting and enforcing this rule. One example of behavior violating the rules would be declaring war on a nation and sending attacks with minimal units, or using 'Fortify', to appear to be fighting a war, when in reality the attacker has no intention to engage in a real war and is attacking with the purpose of preventing other players from being able to attack the target or to otherwise benefit the target nation.
War Slot Filling violations will generally result in the war in question being manually peaced out by a moderator.
5. Espionage Slot Filling
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years
Also called Spy Slot Filling, this rule is similar to War Slot Filling. Coordinating with an opponent to do espionage operations against them with minimal damage is against the rules. Even if there is no direct coordination, espionage against allies that is clearly not intended to do maximum or a reasonable amount of damage is a violation of this rule.
Example: Doing an espionage operation to Target Soldiers against an allied nation that is trying to protect their Nuclear Weapons from an opponent’s spies.
6. Bounty Coordination
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years
Coordinating with an opponent to remove bounties on their nation or your nation is against the rules. While bounty-hunting is legal and encouraged, coordinating with allies or mercenaries to remove a bounty while doing minimal damage would be a violation of this rule.
7. Treasure Transfer Coordination
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years
Coordinating with an opponent to transfer Treasures through wars with minimal damage.
8. Automated Trading
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 2 Years
The use of any script, bot, macro, or other form of automated trading is strictly prohibited.
Scripts that pull up-to-date trade information through the API and notify players about potentially advantageous trades are allowed, so long as the player is still manually completing the trade.
9. Automated Banking
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 2 Years
The use of any script, bot, macro, or other form of automated trading is strictly prohibited.
The use of any script, bot, macro, or other form of automated banking wherein the script is deciding and automatically transferring money or resources is strictly prohibited.
Scripts or Discord Bots that offer an alternative interface for trading, but still require manual inputs are generally allowed. An example of an allowed banking script would be a Discord bot that lets you withdraw funds to another nation with a command like “!withdraw [nation id] 100iron”. So long as a player is still manually triggering the action, the use of such scripts that simply make transfers more convenient is generally allowed.
Ultimately, the scope of allowed scripts is at Alex’s discretion, and if you have a question please send him a message in-game.
10. Other Game Automation
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-100
Expiration: 2 Years
The use of any script, bot, macro, or other form of automated gameplay is generally prohibited. Examples include automating play of baseball games, war declarations, war attacks, and espionage operations.
As a general exception, we do allow the use of automated scripts for the purpose of sending alliance recruitment messages to nations not in alliances.
11. Account Selling
Moderation Points Guideline: 100
Expiration: Never
Buying and Selling of Politics & War accounts or nations is strictly prohibited. Each player is allowed to create one account that cannot be sold or transferred to another user.
12. Real-World Transactions for In-Game Materials
Moderation Points Guideline: 75-100
Expiration: Never
Politics & War has a limited donation system to prevent the game from being "pay-to-win." In addition to limits on Credit usage, it is against the rules for players to make exchanges of real-life money or goods for in-game materials, including but not limited to: in-game money, and in-game resources. Examples of this type of behavior would include: sending someone real-life money for in-game money or in-game resources, purchasing someone a Steam game for in-game money or in-game resources, sending someone a gift-card for in-game money or in-game resources, and any other sort of real-world trade for in-game goods.
13. Custom Content on Nation and Alliance Pages
Moderation Points Guideline: 10-20
Expiration: 6 Months
There are limits on what custom content is allowed to be posted in-game, including but not limited to on nation and alliance pages.
Custom content shall not include imagery with excessive flashing or changing colors which could be deemed as potentially seizure-inducing for epileptic users, or otherwise cause visual strain for users.
Custom content shall not be excessively long so as to disrupt the normal flow of pages. Excessively tall images and "filler" text are not allowed.
Content posted with the intent to deceive other players about the game mechanics is strictly prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, plain text statements such as "This nation is in Vacation Mode for X turns."
14. Screenshot Abuse
Moderation Points Guideline: 20-40
Expiration: 1 Year
Using (or attempting to use) images on your nation or alliance page in an attempt to deceive other players is against the rules and punishable by a nation strike.
Example: Placing an image mimicking the Vacation Mode designation displayed on nation pages to deceive nation page visitors.
Example: Using an edited or old screenshot of your nation page to attempt to deceive other players by hiding your actual nation page information.
15. Coerced City Deletion
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 2 Years
Players have the ability to destroy their own cities. Coercing others to destroy cities is strictly against the rules. This includes, but is not limited to requiring city deletion as part of peace terms (for any war, individual or alliance).
16. Protecting Alliance Banks with Vacation Mode or a New Nation
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years
In general, it is allowed to use Vacation Mode for any reason, including to avoid wars.
However, the specific use of Vacation Mode in protecting the contents of an alliance bank from being raided is against the rules. If you are caught doing so, the bank will be promptly returned, with 20% of the contents deleted. If you suspect this is happening, please PM Alex in-game and he will investigate.
Alternatively, using a brand new nation (less than 14 days old) to protect an alliance bank using their starting beige protection time (from new war declarations) is also against the rules. If you are caught doing so, the bank will be promptly returned, with 20% of the contents deleted. If you suspect this is happening, please PM Alex in-game and he will investigate.
17. Exploit Abuse
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 2 Years
Should a bug, glitch, or other exploit in the game exist, players have an obligation not to abuse them and an obligation to report these to Alex or other game staff so that they can be fixed. Players also have an obligation to report the known use by other players of any exploits.
Alex is known to cause bugs in the game somewhat frequently, and Alex reserves the right to not punish players for any exploits that he deems are his fault / caused by him and easily resolved. The spirit of this rule is intended to prevent the very serious, gamebreaking abuse of any major bugs or exploits.
The community rules outlined below set bounds on what is acceptable behavior within the Politics and War community. Generally, this refers to player behavior in-game, on the Politics and War Forum, and in the official Politics and War Discord Server. Generally, moderation action will occur on the platform where the offense occurred. The Politics and War Forum as well as the official Politics and War Discord Server have their own set of rules generally in-line with the rules below.
To ensure that our community rules are practically enforceable and fair, we will generally limit the scope of our moderation to the official channels outlined above. However, in rare and uniquely egregious situations we may expand the scope of our Community Rules to what we consider the entire Politics and War Community, including, but not limited to, private Discord servers affiliated with Politics and War, Discord DMs between Politics and War players, other websites affiliated with Politics and War such as alliance forums, and other real world communications such as text messages.
Because it is difficult to independently verify reports from these expanded scope sources, we will only consider them in uniquely egregious situations, such as:
- A grand scandal (Example: A large alliance that exists solely as a tax-farm trade for real-life goods, an enormous multi-ring, or other unprecedented major rules violation related to competitive gameplay.)
- Sharing Private Personal Information / Doxxing
- Personal Threats
- Predatory Behavior
- Nazism, Terrorism, and Other Hate Groups
- Coerced Quitting
Additionally, we may expand the scope of moderation for specific Game Rules violations, such as:
- War Slot Filling
- Espionage Slot Filling
- Automated Trading
- Automated Banking
- Account Selling
- Real-World Transactions for In-Game Materials
- Coerced City Deletion
Generally, screenshots alone will not be considered sufficient evidence. Moderators will do their best to independently verify information where possible through various means for expanded community scope moderation.
1. Flaming, Baiting, Trolling, and Name Calling
Moderation Points Guideline: 5-20
Expiration: 6 Months
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Flaming
Using language targeted at a player in an effort to anger, hurt, insult, harass, or provoke them.
Example: Attacking another player personally with insults, hatred, or comments that do not pertain to roleplay or in-game activities.
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Baiting
Coercing another player into breaking the rules.
Example: Intentionally making a comment or action that would force another player to break the rules in reply.
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Trolling
Similar to baiting; deliberately provocative communication with the aim of inciting an angry response.
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Name Calling
Abusive or insulting language referring to a person or group.
Note: We do permit light name calling to the extent that it may be used in a respectfully competitive nature. Name calling may also be permitted in reference to specific roleplay between players.
Example: Calling another player a derogatory name, especially when in reference to the player’s lifestyle or religion outside of the game.
2. Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and Transphobia
Moderation Points Guideline: 20-50
Expiration: 1 Year
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Racism
Having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another.
Example: Calling another player a racial slur or claiming racial superiority over another player or group of people.
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Sexism
Having or showing the belief that a particular gender is superior to another.
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Homophobia
Having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against of homosexual people.
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Transphobia
Having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people.
3. Spam Messages
Moderation Points Guideline: 20-50
Expiration: 6 Months
Sending unrequested solicitation messages to other players or repetitive or nonsensical messages.
Example: Sending another player an apple pie recipe three times for no reason.
Example: Sending out an invitation to your Discord server to all players in the game.
Note: We do permit unsolicited alliance recruitment messages to players not in alliances for the purpose of better engaging new players. However, such alliance recruitment messages are subject to the following restrictions:
- You may not send the same message to the same player more than once per 60 days.
- You may not message the same player any alliance recruiting message more than once every 60 hours.
- The same alliance may not have different alliance members message a given player more than once per day.
4. Inappropriate Language
Moderation Points Guideline: 10-20
Expiration: 6 Months
The use of vulgar or offensive language, generally the use of words and phrases that would not be used in polite company. There is a built-in bad word filter that attempts to filter out all inappropriate language. Attempting to evade this filter by replacing characters, using images, etc. is a violation of this rule.
Note: Determining what is inappropriate language is always subjective, and moderators will take this into account when making decisions.
Example: Using the ‘f-word’.
5. Inappropriate Imagery
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-100
Expiration: 1 Year
Posting or using images including, but not limited to, pornography, sexual imagery, blood and gore, defecation and vomiting, real life images of other players, images depicting war crimes or other illegal activity, images or symbols representing nazism, terrorism, Ku Klux Klan, Confederate States of America, and other hate groups.
Example: Using the Nazi flag as your nation flag.
Example: Posting a picture of another player in your nation description.
6. Nazism, Terrorism, and Other Hate Groups
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 3 Years
It is strictly against the rules to promote hateful ideologies such as nazism, terorrism, white supremacy, and others not listed here. Using images, historical figures, titles, propaganda, or other references to hateful organizations and ideologies is prohibited. This includes “fan fiction”, for example creating a “4th Reich” would be against the rules.
Terrorism is considered anything referencing a real-world organization that is generally deemed a terrorist organization. Examples include: ISIS/ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, Ku Klux Klan, etc.
References or roleplay of the Confederacy/Confederate States of America is likewise forbidden.
Example: Naming your nation the Confederate States of America or using the confederate flag.
7. Drug References and Illegal Activity
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-50
Expiration: 2 Years
Images or text depicting or promoting illegal drugs or illegal activity is against the rules. We allow references to, but not the promotion or depicted use of marijuana.
8. Death Wishes
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 1 Year
Telling another player to kill themselves or wishing that they would die or other similar communications are strictly prohibited. This includes the phrase “kys” which will be assumed to mean “kill yourself”. “Jokes” are not an exception to this rule.
Note: There is some grounds for exception when it comes to roleplay. However it is very important not to stray away from your nation based roleplay into anything that can be perceived as a real-life death wish.
9. Sharing Private Personal Information / Doxxing
Moderation Points Guideline: 85 - 100
Expiration: Never
Sharing another player’s private personal information is not acceptable and may result in a permanent ban from Politics and War.
Example: Saying, “Hey look, I found so-and-so lives at [insert address here].”
Example: Finding and sharing pictures or information from another player's social media account without consent of the affected player.
10. Personal Threats
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 3 Years
Making personal threats against another player is never acceptable, and will generally result in a permanent ban from Politics and War, depending on the deemed severity or intent behind the threat.
Example: Saying, “Watch your back. I’m going to find you and get you.”
11. Predatory Behavior
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 3 Years
Making repeated unwanted comments or advances about another player’s age, sex, sexual orientation, or other private personal matters that are unrelated to the game. In particular such behavior towards players under the age of 18 years old and women.
12. Impersonation of Players or Moderation Staff
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-50
Expiration: 2 Years
Attempting to impersonate another player or member of the moderation staff is strictly against the rules. This includes, but is not limited to, using leader names, nation names, in-game messages, etc. to try and deceive others that you are a moderator or admin.
Note: We consider parody distinct from impersonation and generally acceptable, so long as the intention is not to deceive other players.
Example: Sending a message to another player telling them that you are an admin/moderator and that you will ban them.
13. Moderation as a Weapon
Moderation Points Guideline: 50-100
Expiration: 2 Years
Threatening to report another player to moderators unless they comply with some actions (such as paying money, peacing out of a war, etc.) is strictly against the rules.
Reporting another player, even excessively, is NOT using moderation as a weapon. Moderation as a weapon is defined here as blackmailing or extorting another player with the threat of moderation action.
Example: Messaging another player “Pay me $10,000,000 or I will report you for having an inappropriate flag.”
14. Coerced Quitting
Moderation Points Guideline: 25-50
Expiration: 2 Years
Bullying, harassing, or otherwise coercing or encouraging players to quit the game is against the rules.
Example: Saying, “Delete your nation.”
Appeals
Each rule violation comes with an attached time to expiration which should largely negate the need for any appeals process. All Moderation Points are to be issued with the consent of at least two (2) game moderators to limit bias and emotion.
If a player does want to appeal Moderation Points issued for a rules violation, they should open a ticket in the #support channel of the Politics & War Discord Server stating as much and it will be reviewed by Alex.
Inactivity Deletion Schedule
Nation deletion is an irreversible process. If a nation has been deleted for inactivity, it is not possible to restore it. For this reason, we recommend that you login to your account at least once per week.
Inactivity deletion is subject to change and moderator discretion, however, our current automatic inactivity deletion schedule is as follows:
- At 31 days of inactivity, any nation with only 1 city and no active wars will be automatically deleted.
- At 60 days of inactivity, any nation with less than 3 cities and no active wars will be automatically deleted.
- At 90 days of inactivity, any nation with 1-5 cities will be placed into automatic Vacation Mode for 60 days. During this time, if the player logs in their nation will be automatically removed from Vacation Mode.
- At 90 days of inactivity, any nation with 6-9 cities will be placed into automatic Vacation Mode for 90 days. During this time, if the player logs in their nation will be automatically removed from Vacation Mode.
- At 90 days of inactivity, any nation with 10-14 cities will be placed into automatic Vacation Mode for 120 days. During this time, if the player logs in their nation will be automatically removed from Vacation Mode.
- At 90 days of inactivity, any nation with 15-19 cities will be placed into automatic Vacation Mode for 150 days. During this time, if the player logs in their nation will be automatically removed from Vacation Mode.
- At 90 days of inactivity, any nation with 20 or more cities will be placed into automatic Vacation Mode for 365 days. During this time, if the player logs in their nation will be automatically removed from Vacation Mode.
- At 97 days of inactivity or greater, any nation that is not in Vacation Mode (automatic or manually entered) will be deleted for inactivity. Automatic deletion is not reversible.
