Recruitment Guide
Recruitment is the life blood of any region in NationStates. With the proliferation of new regions every day, regions that want to survive must recruit new nations to come join them. When you started NS, you definitely saw the dozens of recruitment telegrams that every new nation receives. We in the Young Carcassonne League must make a quick impression and let new nations know why they should choose Carcassonne over all the other options they will be given.
There are three different types of recruitment telegrams that regions send. The first are stamp telegrams. These are the lowest effort. Regions will buy stamps from the NationStates store, 1000 for one US Dollar. Recruiters can buy stamps - let’s say 1000 - and then send 1000 telegrams automatically, without further input. The vast majority of recruit TGs sent in NationStates are sent via stamps.
The second type of recruitment TG are API telegrams. These are sent using a bot that recruiters run. Carcassonne sends these - I have a home server I use for a variety of things, and it was relatively simple to add an API script. Before Ysengrim left, he ran a similar script on his Discord bot Dame Carcas. To prevent recruiters from flooding the game servers constantly, there is a strict time limit of one API telegram every two minutes. These are low-effort and free, but comparatively slow.
The third type of recruitment, which we will cover here, is manual recruitment. In the old days, regions would send a telegram template to each new nation the old-fashioned way - having NationStates open, copy-pasting a telegram template, and picking new nations to send it to. Nowadays, there are tools to make it easier, but it remains labor-intensive. The upside is that manual telegrams arrive more quickly than stamp or API telegrams. Each type of recruitment TG has a “queue” it must sit in, until it is delivered to the target nation. Since manual recruitment requires human input, there are far fewer regions doing it, so manual telegrams arrive much more quickly. This makes manual telegrams the most efficient in the sense that they usually have the highest success rate.
Our server has a tool, called Daughter of Carcas, which we will use to perform manual recruitment. Pinned in this channel is a message containing the recruitment template we will use. Copy the entire template and go to NationStates. Begin a new telegram. Paste the recruitment template in the telegram body, put the name of your nation in the concluding part, and address it to “tag:template”, without the quotes. Click the arrow to the right of the “to” field and make sure the box for “This is a recruitment telegram for Carcassonne” is checked. This is important! We could get in trouble if it is not marked as a recruitment telegram. Hit “send”, and you will get a message in a green box at the top of the screen telling you the name of the template. It should look like this: %TEMPLATE-12345678%. Copy this number down - you’ll need it later!
When you’ve done this, we are ready to begin recruiting using our recruitment tool. We will communicate with it here in the #growth channel using commands, like any other Discord bot. To begin, run the command ?setagent [your nation]. For instance, I would run ?setagent pauline_bonaparte. You will need to use _ in place of spaces if you have any in your nation name. Next, run ?template add [TEMPLATE] https://www.nationstates.net/region=carcassonne . Use the template number you got when you sent your initial telegram. You should get a message saying that your template has been saved.
You can run ?template list to see all the templates you have saved; if it’s your first, there will just be one. You only need to add your template the first time you recruit; after that, it should be saved.
We can now begin recruiting. Run ?queuestart . This will fill up a “queue” of new nations. We will be sending telegrams to eight nations at a time. After a minute or two, the queue should be ready. You can now run ?rec start 1 . (At least initially, you will only have the one template to send. If you add more for some reason, run ?template list to see the numbers of other templates you have.)
You will get a message from Daughter of Carcas with a link. Click the link. You will see you are logged into your nation, with your template pasted in the telegram body and eight nations in the “to” field. Click “send”. After a minute or so (there is a delay to avoid spamming people), the bot will give you another bunch of nations to do. Do this as long as you would like.
When you are done, run ?rec stop .
I hope this was helpful! If you run into problems, ask Pauline Bonaparte. Thank you for your service to the Young Carcassonne League!