TEM8.5

== Final Team Map ==
== Final Nation Map ==
== List of Teams ==
==== Fetusites ====
* Aryans (AC) - Initially AuthCenter. Led by FetusLettuce and solely populated by his close friends and followers. Won RP since Goat gave a lot of advantages to Europe for the RP.
* Accelerationists (ACC) - Initially LeftCenter. Led by Dreg. A top-heavy quadrant with Anubis, Gazpacho, Seasonal, and Lorem all aiming to subvert or even overthrow Dreg. Also won RP since Goat also gave a lot of advantages to Japan.
==== Neutral ====
* Nationalist Pact (NatPact or ARAL) - A merger of AuthRight and AuthLeft. The AuthRight faction was based around the Middle East and was led by Ezekiel, Wulfaz, and Grillmaster. The AuthLeft faction was based around the Indian subcontinent and was led by Deus and several of his followers. Upstate was on his own over in Spain. Deus inherited the team leadership. They carefully balanced their relationship between the two coalitions but were more inclined towards the Fetusites. The nation bridging those two factions together was a Persian-Arabian meganation led by an oil baron named Thughunter, who was secretly an alt account working for ... 
==== Polopists ====
* Authoritarian Liberals (AuthLib) - Initially LibCenter but annexed the cursed centrist team (Trollwaffen). Led by the infamous "Van Der Linde Gang" of Polop, Grant, Zerp, and Val, and included many of their close allies, traditional Polopists, and other TEM power players who were not super invested in the game. They were on track to lose RP if Goat didn't feel like giving them an advantage in steel (they were expected to have an advantage in rubber and oil). They also lost because they couldn't secure enough allies or flip enough dissenters in the Fetusite coalition.
* Libertarian Coalition (LibCo) - A merger of LibLeft, LibRight, and the one-man newcel quad of RightCenter. To reflect this, the quad had two co-leaders: Tinko (of LibLeft) and Chaka (of LibRight). Tinko was heavily puppeteered by the AuthLibs, while Seasonal and a few Accelerationist agents entered LibCo to take over the quadrant. The pro-AuthLib faction won out, turning this quad into an AuthLib puppet quad at game's end. Had things gone differently, this quad could have been an Accelerationist puppet quad.
==== Original teams at game start ====
* AuthLeft (AL) - Deus and Xeno's India team. Had AR merge with them later on. Gained co-leadership of ARAL. ARAL had AL's color. Survived to end of claiming playing both sides.
* AuthCenter (AC) - Fetus's European team. Obviously purple the entire game. Survived to the end of claiming, would have won the RP.
* AuthRight (AR) - Grill and Ezekiel's Byzantium team. Merged with AL with their color being replaced by AL's color. Gained co-leadership of ARAL. Survived to end of claiming playing both sides.
* RightCenter (RC) - One-man quad (guy in question was named "rat") based in the Arctic. Was later forcefully merged into LibCo by Goat, the miniscule spots of orange on the map painted green.
* LibRight (LR) - Africa-based team led by Chaka. Was later forcefully merged into LibCo by Goat, gaining co-leadership of the team in exchange for inheriting LL's green color.
* LibCenter (LibC) - Polop megaquad based around the "Van Der Linde Gang" (Polop, Grant, Zerp, Valentine) and expanded quickly, having a monopoly on the "New World" (Americas and Oceania). Rebranded to AuthLibs while maintaining their cyan color. Survived to end of claiming but was going to lose RP to an AC-ACC coalition.
* LibLeft (LL) - Gay team with a revolving door of leaders and a lack of a powerbase or a consistent stake of land. Their most well-known leader was Tinko. Was later forcefully merged with LR and RC into LibCo by Goat, then made a puppet quad of LibC/AuthLib.
* LeftCenter (LeftC) - Dreg's team. Quickly rebranded to "Accelerationists" and changed their color to black before claiming began. Survived to end of claiming, and would have relied on AC to win.
* Trollwaffen (TW) - A team that was quickly constructed by Goat right after the game began for no discernible reason. It was led at first by John Amazon, then when Amazon was incapacitated irl, a guy named Kimo took over the quad. They poked in the territory of every quad but especially targetted the Polopists, and took over Africa by a sheer stroke of genius and luck, among other outposts across the world. After bullying the AuthLibs too much, Garfield was dispatched to coup Kimo to annex the entire quadrant into LibCenter/AuthLibs, a massive power play that would have backfired horribly on AuthLibs if not for Dreg admin-abusing.
== List of Major Players ==
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== Background ==
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== Major Events ==
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== Results ==
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== Aftermath ==
This was, as of April Fool's 2024, the most successful game Goat hosted, and the only Goat hosted game people still remember. TEM8.5, for the vast majority of people, was considered one of the only two (alongside TEM11) good TEM mainlines in 2022, made proactive by the revolutionary intrigue system that Goat crafted. 
In prior games, coups were much more barebones, "revolts" were often spontaneous, unprecedented and unclear, and assassinations were completely unthinkable. Permadeath, even if just until the end of the claiming phase, would have never been implemented out of a fear of too many power players being offed killing the game. If any of these mechanics existed before TEM8.5, they did not have the sophisticated regulations and requirements that Goat's system had. Goat set a new precedent for how hosts approached the idea of intrigue in a team-based game, and while not every subsequent mainline had a intrigue system, those that did was always bound to take some inspiration from the TEM8.5 system, but were either not as deep or way more exploitable and less robust. 
However, the system was not without its drawbacks. While the coup mechanic was the most solid part in practice, the other mechanics did not fare as well. Assassinations required too much red-tape AND even initially had a timer before it could be done, making it completely useless when one can instead use the coup OR the revolt mechanic. The Revolt mechanic, originally intended to be used by a populist movement fueled by lowranks to overthrow a decadent elite, was instead used to invade a team with the goal of puppeteering or even COMPLETELY subsuming it, as proven by Garfield's takeover and annexation of the Trollwaffen. With such a threat demonstrated quite vividly, it was no wonder that the many disparate teams eventually began consolidating into bigger and fewer teams to ward off other "revolts". 
One aspect of the intrigue system that has never seen reuse was the idea of custom quad constitutions. Goat allowed each quad leader to structure the quad how they see fit, allowing people to develop unique chains of command beyond the traditional leader->highrank->midrank->lowrank structure, and to develop custom roles in the quad to give them unique powers in ways not imaginable before. 
The most unique use of this mechanic was actually done by the least likely quad: in a stroke of mischiveous tomfoolery that ended up a brilliant strike of genius, the Trollwaffen quad constitution had a small bullet point in really fine print that gave lowranks the power to execute other lowranks. While it appeared to be just there as another trolly quirk in line with the theme, the bullet point was activated when Garfield invaded Trollwaffen's quad. If it wasn't for Dreg abusing his mod powers to force the activation, this power could have been considered validated, potentially putting Garfield and up to a third of LibCenter/AuthLib's TOTAL manpower to death. 
Unfortunately, every other implementation of the quad constitution feature was just the development of the traditional structure or a one-man dictatorship in a way as to sideline potential traitors much more efficiently than usual. The feature was considered too abstract and required a much higher level of thinking than most power players in mid 2022 either had or was willing to use. Since then, especially in 2023 and 2024, the community, taking a much more intellectual turn, has since focused a lot more on more sophisticated social engineering, which may see the return of this mechanic.