The perpetuation of these states are a problem that was around when Pax Cynica was being drafted and a thorn in the side of legislating long before it; perhaps the oldest IC/OOC issue Particracy ever had.
The game rules permitted it, as well as treaty lockdowns to further prevent visibility, but a party with total control of legislature and ability to do it would probably attempt it in real life. The game system permits these things and, as ever, "The System [Came] First".
This was always totally unfair in an OOC regard, as players new to the game get put off, as we've seen. However, if the practice was banned even though possible in the game mechanics - it is effectively a total victory in the game nation and perhaps an aim for some players - the intervention would be a precedent for moderation going against game mechanics; moderation would end fighting the system they volunteer to police, based on the opinions of the time. It is a cruel consequence of dictatorships that only one other party is present and so the nation looks very enticing to newcomers on paper.
The only hard solution that ever crossed my mind in the day, within existing mechanics, was for treaty-locked nations to have something written in the nation name ([DICTATOR] or something in the heading). However, new players could be actually
enticed into the nation to fight off the dictator due to a lack of system awareness, it would ruin the nation's name in news articles and almost seem a total slur on the party in question that might be construed as base name-calling.
Even soft options, such as adding a courtesy requirement for dictators to PM new parties to explain their stranglehold, would be far removed from perfect. First, the dictator would have to know the rule to follow it. Secondly, a dictator who didn't would have to be spotted by moderation
to even be informed of the rule, by which time the new player would already have given up. Finally, it's a sad fact that most new players who try to fight dictatorships rarely ended up on the forum back in the time of Pax Cynica, so wouldn't know how to defend themselves and probably leave confused.
Short of Wouter coding in a new "flagging" feature into the Classic Game when he's focussed on the sequel or ridiculously intense vigilance on the part of the moderation team, I'm afraid this is a problem that has always had no perfect in-game solution.
(My ideal hard-code solution would be preventing 100% seat parties from calling Early Elections at all in the software, which is unenforcable in a soft fashion at present without a moderator on every 4 hours. In a real nation, if the other parties aren't known (i.e., aren't visible in game), you have no perceived threat to force you to call a vote. But then, a party with no seats couldn't propose a bill in a legislature either!)
I happened to be looking through old things for nostalgia's sake in a moment of wistfulness and it was curiously familiar to see this debate come up again. Past players have shared the anger of the problem and past moderators the despair of a lack of a suitable solution for it.
Aquinas, I empathise entirely with your view but also Zanz's situation here. This discussion is as old as the game itself, needing a lengthy discussion with a large number of players for a comprehensive and feasible solution.
I was here by chance and didn't even know it had reared it's head again, but consider this an apology from the past.
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Incidentally, good to see there's a lot more respect in here than the dark early days and keep it up!