Thought about the issues that there are with the xenoparakletor party system as it stands. I do like the party system and it provokes interesting options for players, but I also feel that it has become a little too constraining. Players no longer have the same freedom as they did in the past despite Eretria Eskhata ostensibly being a democracy where the assembly of voters holds the most sway. At the same time, I like forcing difficult choices on people that they might not have otherwise, and so I wanted to think of a compromise to this that doesn't overly impugn on one principle (a degree of flexibility) or the other (having meaningful and difficult choices). This is especially urgent in a situation with so many things happening; players shouldn't feel like they absolutely have to let pirates ravage Illyria. I could do this by making each party platform more comprehensive, but there are a limited number of things I can think of and it would way increase the workload.
For domestic politics there is already a solution: namely, the political offices. When a party wins a lower office, even if it doesn't win the office of proboulos, it is able to put forward some of its policies that might be relevant to that office. Since the result of the proboulos election influences but does not determine whether a deme will win one of the minor offices, there is a degree of variety and randomness here. In the foreign policy realm, this is less evident, but I also don't want as much mixing and matching. At the same time, responding to a crisis is important, and players should be able to, especially given I've curtailed the power of user motions so much.
With that in mind, next year, when the ekklesia meets again for the new year after the election, players will have the option to pick one of the six missions of the losing platforms. What this means is that, if Demos Drakonia wins, they will implement all of their foreign policy objectives, but players will also have the option of selecting one of the six missions presented by the Demos Antipatria or the Demos Exoria, and the same if either of the other two parties win. However, of course, players should weigh the expense and cost of these missions in conjunction with the successful boule's own missions. It could be quite expensive, for example, or synergize poorly with that xenoparakletor's skillset.
This should slightly reduce the schizophrenic nature of Eretrian politics without making it too easy to go in every direction at once; after all, at a certain point, there will just be too many things to be done in a single term, no matter how much it is wished for. But there is room for one additional mission on top of the three chosen by the election of a xenoparakletor.
