I've got some ideas and projects that I'll be running from the Information Office, but I also want to know what you are looking for, what you would like to see.

I'll be honest - a great deal of the information that many of you would probably like to see should be part of various Director and/or Consul threads. I don't plan on posting instant summaries of troops, attitudes of foreign civs, etc.

The long-term stuff - ahhh, now your talking! Things like this: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Dom_Graph_510AD.jpg
And: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Culture_Summary_610AD.jpg

Also, updates about how we've progressed, how far we've grown over time. That's some of the things I'm planning on doing.

Maps - that's the Cartographer's Office - I'll not step on their toes.
Wonders - I plan to track the ones we've done, and the one's other nations have foolishly built for our use (although we'll rent them out for the time-being).

But, what else do you, the citizens, want to see?

-- Ravensfire

Great proposal Ravensfire, finally someone bringing in the Stats.

These are great examples! :goodjob:

The amount of information handled directly by the Information Office is of course up to the amount of time its volunteers are willing to donate. I would recommend efforts to ensure elected officials post the information relating to their office, and organizing help for those who are not able to do so because they can't open the game.

How often would you produce that spreadsheet?

How often would you produce that spreadsheet?
Hopefully, within a day or two after each game session, time permitting. Once the spreadsheet is setup, it's just a case of entering the values, getting the screenshop and editing it with photoshop to a more realistic size, uploading and linking it.

-- Ravensfire

Excellent!

Can we have 3d versions of the stats ;)

could you have stats for each named unit? how they have fared in battle? so at the end we can see who the real Hero's are?

i would like information on how each elected member has fared, such as battle sucess for the general, the corruption/money earned for treasurery, etc.

Those examples look excellent, raven. The only other thing I would ask would be plenty of screenshots to keep the people who don't have C3C informed on what's going on.

Sucha, they hate bureaucracy, so publishing budgets will sit deep in some of the more simplicity oriented trendsetters in this game.

Actually, I like Sucha's ideas. I like them a lot. For too long have elections been based on popularity or (in rare cases) election thread eloquence. Having a clear history of a certain candidate would vastly improve the decision-making ability of the populous.

Of course, I realize that we a simply piling on duties for poor ravensfire. Even if he simply provided the information he displayed in the first post, I think we'd all be appreciative.

Deleted as requested by Ravensfire-.

Ash

This is why we need a military consul, to handle long term planning as I presented.
A poor economic planner in this job would probably cost us 10 % or so on the slider.
I am amazed people cannot see this.
Provo - no offense, but get it out of this thread! I don't threadjack you, kindly show me the same courtesy.

Good ideas. Not sure about some of them - the military units info will depend a great deal on the DP's giving that info. When it's done, it can be tracked. Remember, that's not automatically given.

Tracking stats by office - should be possible. Some of what your looking for will be done - income, corruption, etc. All I'll have to do is add labels to the graphs for when the terms change and you'll have the info,

For the screenshots - I'm hoping that our leaders will help out by providing that information for their areas. It's not difficult to do, they just have to do it. For those areas missed, either Information or the Cartographical Society will be glad to help out.

Ash - several others have volunteered to help out, and that will greatly reduce the workload on me. Once I have my spreadsheets set up, it's just a matter of typing in data as I get it. I did this in DG4 as MIA - that's where the screenshots above came from.

-- Ravensfire

keeping track of units is a good idea, but it is a nightmere for the information office...
if someone really wants to track their units they can read the log, because most will not and keeping track of 200 units wont be fun for this office....

I kept track of units as MSAV minister, and it did not take much time as soon as the organization was set. all you need to do is to have the Military Consul, or until Term 2, External Consul, set a target number of units, which represents gold upkeep per turn.
Then he needs to set up Army formations, of 10 unit groups or so, and locate these in battle groups in various borders, write down which named units goes where, and station them there. So when a war arises, everyone knows which named units are localized where, within which formation and with which operational capabilities these can handle. One could have 2-3 MPs in capital and wonder or border cities and one MP per city in the rest, for example. This is actually not too hard to do, as we would have less than 100 units or so prior to Term 3. I cannot see this as a big obstacle.

Since we are going to name the units anyways, we can as well organize them.
This is typical work a Military Consul can provide the Information Office, with Order of Battle (OOB) for each military district, economic costs and criteria for disbanding or upgrading troops, as well as forecasts for major upgrades.

keeping track of units is a good idea, but it is a nightmere for the information office...
if someone really wants to track their units they can read the log, because most will not and keeping track of 200 units wont be fun for this office....

Black Hole, give this task to the Military Consul. That person could also build on this work to organize the military properly in formation and task forces.

I'm also thinking of a cooperative effort between the Information Department and the Department of Cartography to provide a more detailed at-a-glance look at a snapshot of the Demogame.

Will information count as a good answer?

1) The current tech were research and how many turns untill completion.

2) Our lump sum and gpt

3) Slider Settings

4) What each city is building (for ancient age and medevil age only)

5) Wonders, who has them, and in what city. Also who's building them

6) Our corruption/maintance/unit upkeep penalities

7) Most of the Victory Condition information (how many tiles we control, how many people we control, our culture, our top rivals culture, etc.)

That's about it.

Strider, I think most of those fall under specific Consuls or Directorates. I know in DG5 the Culture Ministry kept extensive records of Wonder locations and City Culture. I would like the Info Office to deal with issues that deal with more than one office. The examples ravensfire gave above fall under that catagory. However, I agree that keeping track of the Victory conditions for our nation and our rivals is a good idea.

the info office should be less concerned about trasferring data from the game to us in a more user friendly way, and more about info that cannot be seen by simply loading up the save.

i would like the office to conduct polls on presidents approval rating mid term and end of term. and as requested earlier data that quantifies how each elected member has performed. so that after like 4 terms of office we can compare and see who is doing a good job.

stuff like gpt average over the term, sci output per term, so we can see percentage spent on military/science/treasurery so that we can see who has been to influence their agenda most and whether that has been a good thing or bad.

and i definately think that one of the most fun aspects could be to keep a track on units (although this would get long and hard - but i'm sure u can delegate tasks to willing citizens), so we can see which province makes better units or which named unit has been our hero which could lead to naming cities after it. and so on.

Sucha, good you push them to make this look more like a real government simulation.
Thumbs up. Maybe we get real budgets too.

the info office should be less concerned about trasferring data from the game to us in a more user friendly way, and more about info that cannot be seen by simply loading up the save.
Note that the consuls or directors should include info that can be found by simply loading up the save (both for those without Conquests and for those who don't want to load the save just to know what's going on in the game).

Will information count as a good answer?


Yes! And good for a laugh on a day when it's needed. Thanks!

-- Ravensfire

Summary of requests for the Information Office


3d version of stats Very probable
Battle Stats for each named unit Very dependant on DP's to give that info - no guarantees.
Stats for each elected official Possible - would love to see the leaders do this on their own
Military: Battle stats
Commerce: Economy
Screenshots Can do - direct requests for maps to Cartographical Society
Current tech being researched, and time to complete Should be done by Director
Cash and GPT Should be done by Director. Long term trends will be on graph, so will be there
Slider settings Should be done by Director.
Wonders Some aspects should be by Director, but the full tracking is a good idea
Victory Condition Info Hmmm, that would be an interesting screen shot - very probable
Mid-term approval rating polls Probable. Would have to be private though. Some prospects for bad things
GPT average The plan is to produce a graph with points from the end of each session to show trending
Sci output As above.
GPT/Sci on a per-term basis Very interesting - will have to play with this

List of citizens that have volunteered to help out:
Ravensfire
Double Stack
donsig

Time permitting (and it hasn't been kind of late), I hope to put up the skeleton 411 (quick number for information, for those that are scratching their head) thread tonight. The plan is 5-6 posts for the continually updated summary information. All other requests will be posted as we get them.

-- Ravensfire

An idea just popped into my head: the F11 screen.

i'll give you a hand if u need, its late here so tomorrow i will make a nice summary/plan of the ideas that i have, and how they could be implemented, and how i can help.

Great proposal Ravensfire, finally someone bringing in the Stats.

You can look back at the History Office from DG1 and 2 to see how those stats went. (a ton of stats, BTW).

Just thought of another thing I'd want:

Our Top 5 Culture Cities w/ total culture
Our Top 5 Production Cities w/ total shields (most shields non-corrupted)
Our Top 5 commerce Cities w/ total commerce (most commerce non-corrupted)

Possibly a Big Mac every time I visit, but I think that is generally out of the question.

Just thought of another thing I'd want:

Our Top 5 Culture Cities w/ total culture
Our Top 5 Production Cities w/ total shields (most shields non-corrupted)
Our Top 5 commerce Cities w/ total commerce (most commerce non-corrupted)

Possibly a Big Mac every time I visit, but I think that is generally out of the question.

Pretty cool idea, Strider.

Scratch version 1 of these remarks. Pending further thought, I'm going to try to do just exactly this. Except for the Big Mac - I'm a Quarter-Pounder w/ Cheese kinda guy.

Big Mac - that's from the cafeteria at my office! (translation - McD within walking distance)

Keep 'em coming!

-- Ravensfire

Could we have one thread devoted to game play session summaries?

Can we have stats in an understandable format. That is, less of the long display of numbers and some interpretive values?

Could we have one thread devoted to game play session summaries?
I believe this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112542) is for this purpose, although DaveShack hasn't updated it for the recently completed turnchat yet.