I'm going to combine a suggestion I've seen recently and something I've been considering, so we'll see how palatable the combination becomes.

1) Godfathers. Only one Godfather for every city, otherwise we'll start looking like the Greeks with all of our 'gods.' 

• This change will give the rank much more respectability through its rarity, and provides a tad more realism in the sense of who's in charge.
• The Godfather Chairman rank should be *temporarily* removed until all of the Godfathers get together and pick one to rule them all, a process which would require coding and a small vote system, but that's less important at the current time.

2) Loose lips sink ships. This one will take a little bit more creativity and work, but hear me out.

• Godfathers (maybe crew leaders depending on public opinion) are effectively blocked from being shot at until one of their crew members is killed, (my first thought is someone of the rank of made man, but it could be either a) hands or b) made men). In theory, the individual who is killed has information on their person to aid assailants in reaching the leader in question, meaning the information is released to the world and the leader is henceforth able to be shot at. 
• Think TylerDurden, except you don't need to kill the whole army first, just a Colonel or Lieutenant (as decided). The person is still visible in accordance with their stealth/etc in local listing, still seen in 60 second list, but a shot is not allowed against them until one of their underlings dies. 

Now I realize this suggestion has game balance implications. Its intended purpose is to prolong wars, in short, through requiring a lot more information finding and killing of crew structure before hitting the big targets. However, I also see this as affecting the way rogues work. How you react to this suggestion will likely depend on your point of view, so I am certainly interested in seeing what people think, if this is too op/ if this is a worthless idea. 

I will note, the high-ranking member will not have the intended invincibility IF THEY SHOOT while hidden. Therefore, the hidden-ness should have a cooldown based on their shots, perhaps somewhat aligned with the typical shooting range 'cooldown.'

3) In addition to the previous suggestion, I will bring up the idea of a bodyguard re-scale. 

Another thing to prolong war, I would really like to see people BG waving like I think I saw Mixwell bring up in another thread. My experience during V-Day is those types of coordinated strikes really put to test group cohesion, leadership, and communication. Surely that adds some element of skill-based combat in the game that I believe I've seen people asking for. 

However, I think we've also all seen people making fun of the veritable 200+ person armies that some leaders walk around with in the streets. Perhaps instead of the bodyguard 'army' we swap for quality, being the individuals provide more protection per pop, although I would not volunteer to do that math.

A potential *other* idea for this is people are provided less protection (relatively speaking) when away from their HQ.

So, there would be a cap allowed for portable BGs, of which there would be a defense level relatively lower than the current BG cap, but a larger amount of relative defense from the home-town BGs when the individual is in town. The additional bodyguard army is added toward their home district defense when they are in town (in my experience, I have not seen HQ defense making a difference, ever). 

I believe this change would be balanced because offensive members of group A would be putting themselves further at risk from the defending members of group B who would have the benefit of BG and HQ defense when counter-attacking the offensive side. The addition of defense to members of the defending group makes the offensive group much more like a siege, and will have to coordinate efforts to wave defending BGs, but not in all cases of conflict only when attacking a city's members who are in their home district. 

Thoughts?

im all for anything that helps the game.

1) I am all for the change of one godfather per city, and possibly one Chairman in the game this rank would be managed by the admins once all the Godfathers decide who should take the rank, or a current Godfather kills the Chairman to take the rank from them. This would be looked at as the strongest GF or the GF who "runs" the game. 

2) I like the change but would like it taken a step further that possibly a hand can't be killed until there are less than 10 members left. Then once a hand is killed then the CL can be killed. Think it would make the wars need to be more strategically planned as well as make people think before they go to war with a city just because they can, now they would have to know that they will too take losses in the war.

I forgot to comment on the 3rd suggestion, I think it needs to be done as well I just don't know good numbers to re balance them to. I'm sure there's someone much smarter at math that would be able to run the numbers and let us know what would keep the game balanced and not tip the balance in either direction.

"if this is too op"

I agree - it would be too OP. The current regime is a purge regime. Why should anyone consider giving more power to people who abuse the power they currently hold?

Also, I may add - rogues appear because it's the only way for players who are repeatedly targeted to try to change the regime, and they become more and more common as the regime tightens it's grip. The spate of rogues of late is best attributed to the numerous dubious wipes, so to take the power from people who are being targeted for 'cleansing' is only ever going to drive players away.

-1.