It's about time that we discussed how we want the government's executive and legislative branches to look - the judicial branch, being something of the third rail of our politics, won't be touched by this thread, and deserves a discussion all its own. I'm moving forward with this discussion without really knowing if we're going for the build-as-you-go approach - if we aren't, than the eventual goal of this thread is to create a document, similar to the CoL of DG1; if we do build-as-we-go, this discussion will serve (hopefully) serve as a guide for our future discussion, so we at least have a vague idea of how we want to go about this.

We've already polled this once in the Offices Poll (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=195695), which outlines the direction we're going. So far, we're looking at having deputies that are appointed by the corresponding officials, with a designated player pool to play the save.

The following officials were also favored by a majority in that poll
President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - dealing with foreign leaders, conducting all trades
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military
Ministry of Science - setting research goals/tech queue, coordinating with Foreign Affairs on tech trades
Ministry of Civic Affairs - deals with religion, civics, Great People (both controlling them and coordinating GPP)
Governors - each assigned a certain number of cities as decided by voters (perhaps like the provinces of days gone by)

Along with the executive, we should probably go ahead and define the legislative branch as we've usually done - a Citizen's Assembly consisting of, well, the citizens.

Is this acceptable from here? What changes do we want to make to the above list? Do we want something like the Censor of DG1 (it would be a great extra duty to give the President, whose position in the government is somewhat useless given the use of the designated player pool)? Are there any other issues we need to discuss?

I would agree with the offices that you have placed forward. Quite close to the original Civ4 advisor system that we have in place in the program itself.

I don't like starting with so many. It would be better to discover what we need along the way.

I don't think we should start with any. We don't need a full blown beauracracy to decide where to settle our first city. Let's try concentratig on the [civ4] game for awhile.

I agree with DaveShack and donsig. Let's let [civ4] suggest to us what we need to do.

Has that approach even been polled yet? We've had a nice offices poll that was the basis for this thread, so that's where I'm starting from, so that we at the very least have a somewhat vague idea of where were heading, should we chose to build-as-we-go. And, in the case that we don't chose to do that, we'll have a nice way to start a CoL.

It hasn't been polled specifically, perhaps now would be a good time for that. Or we could ask if people who voted for start the game now would still vote that way knowing it would result in build as you go.

I say a president, who can decided when to add another office or not.

President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military

I feel like we should have at least a few offices to start out with and this are about the "minimum" that I see...

Yeah, I want to start out with at least something.

President, Domestic, Foreign, Defense - 4 offices, I think we can fill those...

I agree with Falcon we should have 2 or 3 offices when the game starts. I think President, Domestic Affairs and Science.

If your one of the people that think the president should be the only office that starts and decides when to add offices, we would at least need a Ministry of Domestic Affairs. We could for awhile combine some duties of Ministry of Defense/Science/Foreign Affairs. With the President and Domestic Affairs.

President- Gets the duties of Foreign Affairs and Science
Domestic Affairs- Gets the duties of Ministry of Defence

We could let events of the game tell us when to have other offices.

First contact with another civ results in excited discussion of how to handle new neighbors, resulting in a foreign minister.
First military action (perhaps with barbs) reveals we need a general.
Six different people start threads advocating different techs to research, showing we need a science leader.

I'd start with a president and a governor.

I'd start with some designated players.

If we build as a play i hope we get a Minister in charge of vassle states

If we build as a play i hope we get a Minister in charge of vassle states
I didn't think we were playing warlords...

I'd start with some designated players.

I was thinking the same thing - see one of the threads I've created ...

-- Ravensfire

I didn't think we were playing warlords...

I didn't think we even polled that yet... I remember some general talk earlier, but don't remember anything coming of it...

I advocate the following:

Prime Minister: Head of government.
Minister of Domestic Affairs: Per Octavian X.
Minister of Defense: Ditto.
Governors: Ditto.

More as we go.

I model this in two ways:


Nonpartisan:
The first Prime Minister is elected and nominates the Cabinet, which is subject to approval by the body of citizens by presenting to them a list of the three people he or she believes are most qualified for the job; the body then chooses from among them.

The Cabinet is automatically dismissed after a fixed amount of time. However, a citizen may initiate a motion of no confidence in the legislature, calling for the recall of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and for new elections to be held. A citizen may also initiate a motion of no confidence in a specific official, causing that official to be recalled and a free election (i.e. without Prime Ministerial nomination) from among the citizens to be held.

Partisan (probably won't happen, but it's cool to talk about!):
Political parties are formed; they must contain a certain minimum number of members (say, 7) before they are eligible for election.
Citizens vote for political parties; the percentage of votes cast for a given party can be seen as "seats" in an imaginary 100-seat legislature. If no party has an absolute majority (i.e. more than 50% of the votes), then each party should designate a leader to negotiate with other parties to form coalitions. Once a government is formed, the parties or coalitions elect a Prime Minister (ideally from the largest party of a coalition) and a Cabinet (ideally including members from the other parties in order of their size). However, the Prime Minister or Cabinet from outside their party if they feel it best (allowing non-partisans to participate in politics.) Either way, the Government must be confirmed by popular vote. If two successive proposed governments fail, new elections are needed.

Alternately, we could have a Non-Partisan League which acts as a political party for election purposes.

Still more alternately (and more insanely unlikely, for multiple reasons), if the game gets large enough, we could have a twenty-seat Parliament elected only to elect the Cabinet and Prime Minister (all other lawmaking power would remain in the hands of the citizens).

Returning before the "alternatelies", the Government is dissolved automatically after a set period of time. A citizen may initiate no-confidence motions in the Government or a specific member thereof to remove them.

We could let events of the game tell us when to have other offices.

First contact with another civ results in excited discussion of how to handle new neighbors, resulting in a foreign minister.
First military action (perhaps with barbs) reveals we need a general.
Six different people start threads advocating different techs to research, showing we need a science leader.

I agree with this method. It also allows us to grow as the civ would anyway. I recall in the previous game where some of the offices didn't have anything to do in the beginning of the game. It seemed rather foolish IMO to even have them.

Instead, I suggest we start off with the DP's and a mayor, and nothing more. As we meet other civs or advance in the game so does our offices. Once our civ decides on building a settler than a discussion of a president can be brought up.

Instead, I suggest we start off with the DP's and a mayor, and nothing more. As we meet other civs or advance in the game so does our offices. Once our civ decides on building a settler than a discussion of a president can be brought up.

I like this!

Except, I would call that first office something else, and make that our "top" position. As we need to expand, that position would move responsibilities to other offices.

This also makes certain initiatives that I'm working on much, much easier! :lol:

-- Ravensfire

How about we name the first office, (normally president) Chairman of Disignated Players. (we could rename the designated players somthing like Council of players).

His job could be to organise the player pool. And create other offices.

OK, I'd support one top guy and the turn players to start off. I'm not so sure we should lay out rules for addig offcies let's keep things open ended and flexible. We may want to think about a foreign minister or ambassador type guy before we make contact but after we've begun actively exploring.

One possibility would be "The Leader", but that's taken by Epsilon.

Do we need to change the name? President has worked fine, and there's no reason we can't change the title of the office if something better comes along.

At first we don't need a president, as we have only one city. A mayor or city governor is all we need. Once we begin to expand than we need a president and realize, the mayor/city governor doesn't have to take the mantle of president. That can be someone totally different.

Why would we need a minister of FA when we haven't met anyone? Or any specific officer for that matter.

IMO whenever something comes up that we need an officer, someone is put up as a temporary holder (no longer than a week or whatever time period we feel is appropiate) until a permanent officer is elected.

Edit: Grrr, I'm supposed to only be lurking.

We'll probably expand pretty fast, so it wouldn't hurt to have a head of state right off the bat.

Anyway, here is how I think the legislature and the executive should work within the partisan framework I developed earlier:

The Legislature

I'll call the legislature the Chamber of the People. It includes all citizens of the Demogame. Depending on how it goes, it may include or exclude those who hold non-judicial office.

There is also the Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies does not actually exist; it is a construct to more concretely model the results of voting.

Elections for the Chamber of Deputies must be held at least once within a certain set period of time; however, a member of the Chamber of the People (i.e. any citizen of the Demogame) may initiate a motion of no confidence to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and call new elections at any time. Alternately, the citizen may call a motion of no confidence in the Cabinet only, or in a specific Cabinet minister (including the Prime Minister himself) or the Government (i.e. the coalition that provides the Cabinet, requesting a new coalition, if that is possible). Either way, this provides greater responsiveness while maintaining stability; if the people think the government is doing a bad job, we can kick the bums out right away, but if we like the job the government is doing, we don't have to go through the rigmarole of constantly reelecting them.

The Chamber of Deputies is elected thus:

You can vote for a political party or for an individual.

If you vote for a political party, that's that. A political party requires 2% to get "seats" in the Chamber, which represents two seats in the 100-seat Chamber. After that, it's one "seat" for every percentage point. Obviously, we'll have to deal with rounding.

If you vote for an individual, this is how it works:

You vote in the poll. The individual is guaranteed the "seat" if he/she has at least 2% of the vote. He/she may choose to donate one percent of the vote to any party already in the Chamber; he/she should probably list the parties he/she is willing to donate to beforehand.
Citizens who vote for individuals should also send a list by PM to a designated official, saying that if the individual gets more than 2% of the vote who they would vote for, ranked from 2 to any number.
And other stuff. I'm trying to make it like Single Transferable Vote (like elections to the Australian Senate)


After the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is determined, parties and individuals (Independents, we'll call them) can search for allies in the government. Any member of a ruling coalition may be elected Prime Minister or Cabinet Minister. A designated official (let's say the Speaker of the Chamber of the People, equivalent to the last games Censor, sort of) will be informed of a working coalition. Minority coalitions are possible if no majority one can be found.

After that, it's pretty standard parliamentary democracy. The parties and Independents find a suitable Cabinet, present it to the Chamber of the People, and it is given an up-or-down vote.

This may sound like it might take a long time, but it probably should not. Coalitions should be clear instantly if they are necessary, and the math is simply a matter of plugging numbers into tried-and-true equations. I know this proposal is unlikely. But it's different.

If you vote for a political party, that's that. A political party requires 2% to get "seats" in the Chamber, which represents two seats in the 100-seat Chamber. After that, it's one "seat" for every percentage point. Obviously, we'll have to deal with rounding.

If you vote for an individual, this is how it works:

You vote in the poll. The individual is guaranteed the "seat" if he/she has at least 2% of the vote. He/she may choose to donate one percent of the vote to any party already in the Chamber; he/she should probably list the parties he/she is willing to donate to beforehand.
Citizens who vote for individuals should also send a list by PM to a designated official, saying that if the individual gets more than 2% of the vote who they would vote for, ranked from 2 to any number.



I find the above hilarious, especially when you consider this post also made by Lockesdonkey

I doubt that continuous play as per donsig is a good idea. It requires a great deal of messy mathematics; my eyes glazed over as I read that post.

:lol: All jokes aside, I disagree with having political parties in this game. Didn't this come up in DGI too?

I don't see why a representative legislature rather than just everybody voting is required... We have legislatures in the real world to deal with enormous numbers of people and difficulties of transportation (Among other things, admittedly), and these are problems that don't strike me as likely to occur in forum format...

Therefore I believe that the legislative branch should be all citizens rather than a parliament-type set up...

As for the executive, could we have a ore exciting name than President, please? Like something in the language of whichever civ we end up with?

The parliament-style system has nothing to do with lawmaking. It's just to give a pool to elect the Government. I think that using this means that we can express our collective displeasure with a single individual, a Cabinet, or the whole bunch of proverbial bums.

Furthermore, people are used to doing math for elections; real countries do it all the time, and as I recall, the French Wikipedia uses a more complex system for votes. But for when we can play? It's somewhat ridiculous in my opinion.

Not to mention that I recognize a partisan system is unlikely; I just want to throw it out there. I think that this just might provide a system that is fresh and interesting, and if need be we can throw it out by constitutional amendment. I have new ideas to make this whole thing a bit simpler, anyway.

And I agree wholeheartedly that President has gotten old. Pick something new!

@Lockesdonkey I don't mean to shoot down any of your proposals, as they are interesting and may be fun, but when a newcomer looks at this type of system, they might experience confusion or they might just feel the rules are too complicated. Even though this would mock a real government a lot better than the conservative version of rules, it does get a bit complicated.

How about we name the first office, (normally president) Chairman of Disignated Players. (we could rename the designated players somthing like Council of players).

His job could be to organise the player pool. And create other offices.
I wanted to bring up this topic a bit later, but I guess you've raised it somewhat now. I feel that the President had too little importance in DG1. I advocate that the President (our leader) should be the leader of the Executive Branch, instead of being just another member who shares power.

In the last demogame, government officials, although encouraged, really never talked and worked together. One of the President's duties was to organize the officials (or something of that nature), yet the President never once fulfilled that (with the exception of my Presidency and the Presidency that succeeded me, although for the most part it was a failed attempt.)

Being a leader of the executive branch, he should bring the rest of the branch together in one thread, to discuss all issues. That way officials don't make decisions based on one citizen discussion thread, that will only benefit their department. Also requiring weekly (or per turnchat) reports of every point in a specific department would be nice. Most of the time the citizens were the ones who would search and identify problems or points of importance after turnchats. This caused a lot of small things to go overlooked, but with officials searching just in their area of operations, they are more likely to find those little things that come back to haunt us.

I agree with the people who've argued for a simple structure in the beginning, there's no need to have all these positions when we don't even have workers, or contact with foreign civilizations, etc. Let's see what we need, and when we need it, we'll vote on it and install someone into office! :)

I wanted to bring up this topic a bit later, but I guess you've raised it somewhat now. I feel that the President had too little importance in DG1. I advocate that the President (our leader) should be the leader of the Executive Branch, instead of being just another member who shares power.


I agree! We usually put something in the rules about the President having the responsibility for anything not mentioned as duties of another official, and sometimes (but not always) give the power to "resolve disputes" whatever that means. Neither of these powers goes far enough towards making the President a true leader.

Sometimes we elect a President who does the full job including the unwritten leadership part, but most of the time we don't.

There are two ways to push "President as Leader". One is to lobby vigorously for giving the President meaningful duties, balanced with an easy method for the citizens to challenge the power if it gets out of hand. The job must be worth the trouble someone is going to put into it. The Constitution's placement of Initative above Mandate means we can take away powers with a simple poll, so the checks/balances thing is covered.

The other is to be very selective at nomination and election time. Entice strong leaders to take the top job. Respect the situation of those who decline because they can't put enough time into it, and applaud the ones who accept.

I would like to see the President gain the power of firing or re-assigning the official, so this way he can organize the government more effectively (placing him more like a management figure.) To check his authority, we could require him to first give notice of the firing/re-assignment, and then give the citizen's 48 hours to complain. If a single complaint is raised before the 48 hour period, an immediate poll (48 hours in length, from the time of the poll creation) would be made asking to veto the President's decision. Only 51% should be needed to veto the action, since the official in question was elected by the people.

ice2k4's suggestion seems very good to me...

I would also like to see the president receive the power to nominate people too offices if none are elected... As with the judges for example
And I assume the president would also be DP pool Manager... If only to avoid too bloated a bureaucracy


Obviously the President must remain accountable to the people

If we want an executive that works together, we could just change some of the institutions to force them to do so. In the past, when it came to making orders for gameplay, we entrusted each individual executive to post orders for the designated player to follow. Each minister came up with his own instructions.

Instead, we should have all the ministers submit gameplay instructions at once, to create a unified turnplan, with all aspects of the game accounted for in their plans, so that the right hand knows what the left is doing. The President (or President-analogue) gathers and coordinates the plans of all the ministers, and posts if the for the designated player to follow. This, of course, might lower the number to gameplay sessions we can expect to have per week; however, with a single plan clearly laid out, we could play more turns per turn session.

You mean, they give their instructions to the president (Who really must be renamed once we know what civ we're playing with) who then molds them into a whole?

Hmm, we tried something going in the opposite direction, in Civ3 DG6. The idea then was to have an overall plan, and then have lower level officials post specific instructions which aimed for that plan. It didn't work out because the flow of information was too confusing.

While I like the idea of someone being responsible for making sure instructions mesh, flowing the instructions through that office sounds like trouble. If that one person is absent, we potentially grind to a halt.

ice2k4s idea is a good one

If that one person is absent, we potentially grind to a halt.

That's a very good point... This plan would not work if we adopted continuous play, for just that reason...

I'm sure it could be modified so as to make it work with that method however... Or we could elect a leader with no life

How many citizens are there currently? In the past, how many citizens have there been? This is important to determine an effective organization for the "legislature". If there are fewer than 100, then it seems no need to elect representatives.

I don't think there is need even if there are more than a hundred.... People will come foreward who are leader-types, and people will generally speaking fall in line with them regardless... There aren't issues such as transportation, costs, and business that prevent anyone from being active on this board...

Basically a legislature is a response to physical problems which I do not believe will effect us in a virtual format... I may be wrong about this, as I am new, but the fact that previous demogames do not generally appear to have used legislatures would seem to indicate that they are unneccessary

Like I said, I was just trying to stir things up. That said, the whole legislature thing was merely an imaginary construct--even with fewer than 100 people, only a few people (political independents) would be actual members of a legislature; hopefully, a majority would be political parties. Because good political parties always vote in blocs, the seven or so members of a party could control as much of the legislature as they got votes for.

Anyway, a nonpartisan system with universal membership in the legislature:

The Legislature

The Legislature shall be named the Chamber of the People.
The Chamber of the People shall have all legislative power.
The Chamber of the People shall have the power to elect the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.


The Executive


The Prime Minister shall be the head of the Government of [country name].
The Prime Minister shall nominate candidates for the Cabinet, subject to the approval disapproval of the Chamber of the People.
The Cabinet and Prime Minister shall be called the Government of [country name]; it should seek the confidence of members of the Chamber of the People to have a parliamentary majority; the Government cannot serve without a parliamentary majority.
The Government shall be dissolved automatically after [fixed term].
The Government may be dissolved before [fixed term] by virtue of a Motion of No Confidence. If the Motion of No Confidence passes, the Government is deemed to have lost a parliamentary majority.
A parliamentary majority may also be denied:

If a bill introduced by the Government and designated a Measure of Confidence fails, or
If a bill concerning taxes, the budget, Civics, or religion introduced by the Government fails (equivalent to Loss of Supply (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_Supply) in Westminster-style governments).



I have other ideas, as well.

I do like your executive plan very much...

Although, depending on the civilisation we end up with, I would propose the Head of Government's title be renamed to something more flavourful...

Does the Head of Government also serve as head of State in your system, or are we assuming that that position is held by the in-game leader (Bismark or Caesar or whoever), or does it just not matter? I'mk never quite clear on Heads of state vs Heads of government...

I don't really think a Head of State matters, since we don't really need a symbol. However, we could add a popularly-elected, fixed-term President (or equivalent) to serve as a "caretaker" ruler during disputes and to appoint a Prime or other Minister when none are willing to run.

(head of state=symbolic leader of the nation; head of government=person who actually runs things. Absolute monarchies and presidential republics--e.g. the USA--combine the two positions. Parliamentary democracy does not. Semi-presidential systems--like France--are in the middle).

I like the idea that we don't appoint people for jobs until we need them, but it doesn't make sense to me to not set up a position until its already needed, when we know we will probably need it in the future.

I propose we elect a 'National Council', as Lockesdonkey proposes, although this chamber will not in itself have any power. It will serve as a pool for the president (elected seperately) to choose his cabinet (all the ministers), as well as to fill minister vacancies during his term and fill newly created offices as well.

I don't know how succesful this would be in practice, but it would help prevent game delays when some new position is needed- i.e., we won't have to stop for a week the first time we find another civ or get in a fight with a barbarian.

This plan would help 'keep the ball rolling' in the early turns, which would increase the game's excitement for everyone and possibly even prevent some from leaving out of boredom.

After minister positions get settled down, we could revert to just electing them directly, but in the initial phase of a suggested 'build as we go' style government, it would be benificial to have this system.

OK, three different models that I've thought up.

First, no council, nonpartisan (same as above):

The Legislature

The Legislature shall be named the Chamber of the People.
The Chamber of the People shall have all legislative power.
The Chamber of the People shall have the power to elect the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.


The Executive


The Prime Minister shall be the head of the Government of [country name].
The Prime Minister shall nominate candidates for the Cabinet, subject to the approval disapproval of the Chamber of the People.
The Cabinet and Prime Minister shall be called the Government of [country name]; it should seek the confidence of members of the Chamber of the People to have a parliamentary majority; the Government cannot serve without a parliamentary majority.
The Government shall be dissolved automatically after [fixed term].
The Government may be dissolved before [fixed term] by virtue of a Motion of No Confidence. If the Motion of No Confidence passes, the Government is deemed to have lost a parliamentary majority.
A parliamentary majority may also be denied:

If a bill introduced by the Government and designated a Measure of Confidence fails, or
If a bill concerning taxes, the budget, Civics, or religion introduced by the Government fails (equivalent to Loss of Supply (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_Supply) in Westminster-style governments).



Council/upper house, non-partisan:

Legislative

The National Assembly of [country name] consists of the Chamber of the People and the Chamber of Deputies.
The Chamber of the People shall comprise all citizens of the Demogame; it has final lawmaking power.
The Chamber of the People shall elect from among their number twenty people (or fifteen, or something--I'm pretty sure we'll get to 100 citizens within a day or two) to the Chamber of Deputies.
The Chamber of Deputies shall elect from among their number the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, subject to the approval of the Chamber of the People; it shall have no part in the process of making and/or debating law except in the right of Deputies to speak/vote in the Chamber of the People.


Executive

The Chamber of Deputies shall, as outlined above, nominate the Prime Minister and the Cabinet from among their number; the Chamber of the People must approve.
The Cabinet and Prime Minister comprise the Government.
The Government must maintain a majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of the People.
The Government shall be dissolved automatically after [fixed term].
The Government may be dissolved before [fixed term] by virtue of a Motion of No Confidence in either the Chamber of Deputies or the Chamber of the People. If the Motion of No Confidence passes, the Government is deemed to have lost a parliamentary majority.
A parliamentary majority may also be denied:

If a bill introduced by the Government and designated a Measure of Confidence fails, or
If a bill concerning taxes, the budget, Civics, or religion introduced by the Government fails.

A loss of a majority in the Chamber of Deputies requires that the Chamber of Deputies elect a new Government. However, if a Motion of Confidence in the Government passes the Chamber of the People, then the Government remains in place and a new Chamber of Deputies shall be elected.*
A loss of majority in the Chamber of the People requires that both the government and the Chamber of Deputies be dissolved and new elections held.



*Complex. Essentially, if the Deputies don't like the government and the people do, it's the Deputies who get the boot.

Council/upper house, partisan:

Legislative


The National Assembly of [country name] consists of the Chamber of the People and the Chamber of Deputies.
The Chamber of the People shall comprise all citizens of the Demogame; it has final lawmaking power.
The Chamber of the People shall elect the Chamber of Deputies in the following manner:

Citizens will vote for political parties. Parties shall take imaginary seats in the Chamber of Deputies proportional to the percentage of votes they win in the election.
A single poll option will be open for people who wish to vote for individuals. Those citizens who vote for individuals should PM a list of individuals, ranked by preference. Those who vote for individuals may not vote for parties.

The Chamber of Deputies shall elect from among their number the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, subject to the approval of the Chamber of the People; it shall have no part in the process of making and/or debating law except in the right of Deputies to speak/vote in the Chamber of the People.


Executive is same as the nonpartisan version with an upper house. For the purposes of offices, parties can choose which people occupy their Chamber of Deputies seats. If the number of seats is larger than the party, all party members are Deputies.

If I had to chose between these three, I'd chose the first. Simpler is better.
However, I don't really like the cabinet all acting together, and failing together. I think that a simple bill/initiative/whatever not passed shouldn't be the end of the cabinet.

If you're talking about loss of supply, then there's two things:

If the people and the Government disagree about money, civics, and religion, what can they agree on?

In addition, the poll options can be constructed thus:

Question: Do you agree with this tax increase (or civic change or budget realignment or religion change)?

Yes
No, but I retain confidence in this government
No, and I have lost confidence in this government
Abstain.

hmmm under a TRUE democracy the citizens would control all the decision making powers.. now.. if we run a democracy rather than a democratic republic we risk tons of red tape and buearacratic(sp) nonsense.. i say avoid the *citizens control all* style of leading and instead stick with the *citizens picked this guy to make decisions for them* style.. of course im in no way advocating the complete disassociation with the populace.. im just saying that voting on every little decision will slow everything down to a crawl..
peace,
Jon

I admire the perserverence shown in trying to advocate a parlimentary style structure, but it doesn't seem a good fit to the way DG politics actually turns out.

Although the names of offices are quite different, and there are some nuances between this and what we've tried before, it's really very similar to two past experiments.

In Civ3 DG6, we tried a two layer government with a strategy council making up overall policy and a tactical layer implementing that strategy with specific instructions. Only a few (2-3) people really understood how the work flow was supposed to happen, and it resulted in mass confusion.

In Civ4 DG1, we tried another two layer system, with a Triumvirate of President, State, and War; and a cabinet made up of the remainder of the offices. If we ignore the difficulty caused by DLs and look strictly at what we did with that system once the game started, the first things we did were to take out the aspects where the Triumvirate acted as a single unit. In particular the ability of the citizens to vote "no confidence" (it was called a recall instead) in the whole Triumvirate was struck down very early.

You might want to argue that the veterans dominated and wouldn't allow the process to deviate what we were comfortable with, but in fact it was veterans who advocated for and allowed these two experiments to proceed. We found the hard way that complicated is bad, simple is good.

All this leads to my opinion on the matter. Just my opinion but I'd not be surprised if a lot of people share it. Unfortunately the parliment style is too complicated for a game which is in a rebuilding state. Perhaps it would be worth looking at for the next one. :)

As a person who lives in a RL country with a completly functional unicameral legislature, I think that having two houses is a completly useless waste of time and money... (Well, I suppose it dosen't cost us anything here, but still...)

i think an office for each civic category should be in place when we get the 2nd stage of that category... like no Minister of Economy until we get Mercantilism, no Minister of Law until vassalage is discovered........

The government will be ruled by the president until one of the civic goes stage 2, then we will have the president leading the 4 other civic (like a despot leader) and 1 minister to rule the civic that just went stage 2

Am i making any sense?? :king:

yeah i was thinking around the same thing lordogre.. but i think that will be a little bit too cumbersome to enjoy.. i say we keep the same offices.. maybe adding some more as we go.. but rather than make them different.. rename them lol

As a person who lives in a RL country with a completly functional unicameral legislature, I think that having two houses is a completly useless waste of time and money... (Well, I suppose it dosen't cost us anything here, but still...)

Perhaps. But I don't think that the House of Representatives includes all five million or so New Zealanders...it would be d*** hard to elect a government that way...take it from an American, Presidential elections are annoying.

In any case, upon reviewing the old demogames, I don't think that my simplest system (Model 1) is any more complicated than the old systems; and remember, I am a DG novice myself. In fact, it should completely understandable to the majority of the democratic world that runs on parliamentary lines. I explicitly modeled it on the Westminster system (loss of supply is unique to the UK and UK-derived parliaments).

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Everyone see that okay? :lol:

It's time to determine our government structure. Various options have been proposed, time to get the proposals out there. Sometime on Sunday, I will go through this thread, from this point on, and create a poll listing each proposal. That poll will be multiple choice. The top three (and any ties) will be single polled, with the option getting the most votes being the form of government we adopt. Each poll will last 4 days. That will give us a March 1 start date.

Please, when you post your proposal, name it. When discussing a proposal, use that name. That will greatly help keep things organized.

Sounds a bit hard, but we've been dancing, dallying and wasting time. Time to :hammer:

-- Ravensfire

Citizen's Initiative - The Tribal Government Act of 4000BC

In order to function, the structure of the Government must be defined, and duties allocated. In all of the offices declared below, the specifics of how the office is run are left up to the office holder. Office holders can delegate duties, but not responsibilities. This means an offical can have another citizen conduct actions in their name, but the official is responsible for the actions, or lack thereof.

As our nation is small, this government reflects it.

The Warlord is the supreme leader of our nation. They control all units and have all powers not granted to another official. This includes overseeing Elections and the Designated Player pool.

Each city will have an Elder. The Elder controls all functions of the city. If a city is founded in mid-term, the Elder will be appointed by the Warlord.

Officials may be removed from office by a Coup. To declare a Coup, any citizen may post a thread in the citizen forum declaring a coup against an official or group of officials. If two other citizens support the coup, a poll is posted asking if the citizens support the official(s) targeted by the coup. This poll is private, single-choice, and must be set to expire in 4 days.

If the number of citizens that voted to not support the officials exceeds by number of citizens that voted to support the officials by at least one and a half as many votes (a 3/5 majority), the coup is successful. The citizen who originally called for the coup immediately replaces the official targetted by the coup. If more than one official is targetted, the citizen may choose which office they take. The citizens removed from office may not be reappointed to any office for 7 days.

If the coup fails, the citizen calling for the coup is removed from any elected office they hold. They may not be appointed to any office for 7 days. They may not call for another coup for the remainder of the current term.

Any appointment may be challenged by a confirmation poll. If a confirmation poll does not already exist for an appointment, any citizen may create such a poll. This poll must be created within 48 hours of the action, and must ask "Do you approve of <description of action>", contain only Yes, No and Abstain options, be marked privte, single-choice and expire in 2 days. When the poll closes, if the majority of citizens, not including abstain, voted No, the appointment is overturned. Any other result confirms the appointment.

---------------
EDIT:
This would elect a Warlord and an Elder in the first term, in addition to the Judiciary. I tried to have a little fun with this, in both the titles, and the "coup". For those that remember, this is just a renamed impeachment, with a slight twist. This should be a nice ruleset, adding 1-2 offices, for 2, maybe 3 terms. After that, it will need revamping and adjustment. Given the differences between Civ3 and Civ4, and the utter failure of the C4DG1 government format, that may be a good thing. After 2 terms, we probably have a better idea about the needs of our Government

-- Ravensfire

I would ask each proponent to state the offices which would be elected at the beginning of the 1st term. This will eliminate any uncertainty in the election process, should the proposal be selected.

Lockesdonkey has posted his proposal here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206508).

-- Ravensfire

If more than one official is targetted, the citizen may choose which office they take.

And the other office is filled by appointment by the Warlord?

And the other office is filled by appointment by the Elder?

I think it says the Warlord appoints to empty offices.

I think it says the Warlord appoints to empty offices.

Argh, second mistake you point out in my posts in a minute. :blush:
This one is edited now.
:)

And the other office is filled by appointment by the Warlord?
Yup! So if a coup forces multiple people out, including the Warlord, then the citizen could appoint quite a few people!

Now, I'll freely admit that I had a great deal of fun writing that section. RP-wise, it fit the early governments. Practicality wise, it does allow for the removal of an abusive or ineffective leader. I don't think that we've ever removed a leader from office in any of the rulesets that had a recall provision. I doubt we'd start here.

It does have a nice theme though, doesn't it?

Other aspects I like - the government starts small. Initially, we don't need much. One Elder per city means the cities get early babysitting, hopefully helping them maximize their potential. Duties are explicitly allowed to be delegated. This is seperate from creating a new position in that the official can just do it, and not wait for an initiative.

It's a simple, straightforward system. It's easy to figure out what will happen, and who will do it. It meshes nicely with the "As we go" concept.

There are flaws in it. The Elder system will break down once we get to 4 or 5 cities. We will need to shift to a province-based system at that point. We will be creating offices, possibly late in the first term, defintely for the second term.

Ideally, we want to have the total number of elected offices be less than 1/2 of the active voters. Beyond that, you get many uncontested races, and apathetic office holders. There is nothing more boring than an uncontested election. Contrawise, there is nothing more exciting or useful to the DG than a contested election between multiple qualified, articulate candidates.

It's been a while since we've had a good one of those. I think this proposal will produce 2 terms of exciting elections at a minimum.

-- Ravensfire

Warlord seems to bias an early war, what about calling the senior position Patriarch. An oligarchy of Patriarch and Elders would be a normal way for a tribe to evolve into a nation. Makes for roleplay if the citizens unhappy with the first Elder can become the settlers and lead a migration. Those leaving the established city should be able to elect their own elder. Every citizen shouldbelong to only one city so we can go through the creation and rise of city states that might band together in the face of external threats and may eventually unify into a coherent state.

We could name each city after it's first elder and the nation after the patriarch. Assumes we elect the patriarch and first elder before we start the game.

That is a very good idea.

yeah but you must think of the starting civics..

despotism:it dont matter if you like him or not.. hes got an army.. so dissent and die, or agree and live
barbarism: umm you look weak, give me that bone club.. NOW!
tribalism: we need you to do this.. why? cause its for the tribe welfare! no still? guards! (refer back to despotism)
decentrilization: money? wtf is that? ill let you have this clay pot for that skin right there. Taxes? what the hell is with this crazy talk.. the leader cant take MY pot.. its mine for crying outloud!! *sounds of stabbing and screaming* (refer back to barbarism and despotism)
paganism: oh mighty spear shaped rock! protect my sons from the wilds of the southlands! oh mighty bent tree, may our harvest be good this year! oh mighty... ahem.. who are you? stop worshipping this rock? what? who is buddha? no i dont believe in him! meditation? whats with you crazy soldiers? ill damn well believe what i wa... *sounds of stabbing and screaming* (refer back to despotism)

yeah.. thats just a parody version of what our country will be like in its early days.. i dont see the elder position existing, but rather the warlord. i dont see the citizens getting equal share of the power, i see total adherance to the warlord. But alas... it shall not work that way in this game.. just thought id share my thoughts ;)

oh and i know im missing one.. i just didnt feel like opening up the game to remember it.. oh well.

Remember--just because the civ we rule is in the Dark Ages doesn't mean that the Demogame will be.

And I'd like to draw attention back to my proposal (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206508).

oh i can blatantly see that lockesdonkey! a man can dream cant he? hehe
btw your proposal looks good.. i can live with it

President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - dealing with foreign leaders, conducting all trades
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military
Ministry of Science - setting research goals/tech queue, coordinating with Foreign Affairs on tech trades
Ministry of Civic Affairs - deals with religion, civics, Great People (both controlling them and coordinating GPP)
Governors - each assigned a certain number of cities as decided by voters (perhaps like the provinces of days gone by)

I like this one the best, but a few changes...

Ministry of Foreign Affairs - should be "Ministry of Trade & Foreign Affairs"
Ministry of Civic Affairs - should be "Ministry of Culture & Civic Affairs"

Domestic Advisor - (ok, so I'm partial to the terms of old) These would draw up provincial maps and borders. We used to have a system of "110 give or take tiles per province".

Governors - These would control a certain area, with 10-20 cities depending on the landsize and era (1-5 ancient, 5-10 middle, 10-15 industrial, 15-20+ modern).

Now, Civ4 has kind of killed the idea of provinces due to the requirement of city spacing, smaller map sizes, and memory for larger maps (just try a 362x362 map, and come back in a month when the turn has finally changed! :p). We could still have provinces, but they would be limited to maybe 5 cities max.

I really like ravensfire's proposal... It seems to perfectly encapsulate how things should be organised, at least to start with...

The term Warlord is notably flavourful, but, as noted, is a bit biased to, well, war... Although, I suppose in the early game we may be pretty at war with the 'barbarians'... Don't know about naming the civ after the 'Warlord' but the cities should surely use the names suggested in the citizen registry? Presumably the ones suggested by each prospective elder there?

Anyway, this is a good system... I approve


Incidentally, does the capital get an elder too?

And... Do we elect new elders for all the cities at the beginning of a new term? I assume this is what is implied by the provision for appointing an elder mid-term?
Are there provisions on who can vote in polls concerning elders? Does everyone have the right, or only those who've chosen in the citizen registry that they're residing in the elder's city?

It looks good; but a thing is not clear to me, please:

Actually who decides the build queue and work force position of a city (and

things like pop rush or forest rush) : the Governor/Elder or Domestic/Interior

Ministry?

Best regards,

It looks good; but a thing is not clear to me, please:

Actually who decides the build queue and work force position of a city (and

things like pop rush or forest rush) : the Governor/Elder or Domestic/Interior

Ministry?

Best regards,

Traditionally (I know many old-timers hate that word, too - there's essentially two camps of us old-timers), governors could give the order to pop-rush, since it had to do with their cities. The Domestic Advisor/Minister was in charge of cities without a governor, creating provinces, and drawing up plans for growth/productivity/commerce.



Way back when, this is how it would idealy work - (this is harking back to the Civ3 DG1/2 days)

President/VP - The president was elected, and the VP was the runner up. They were also the first two in the Chain of Command to play the save. (It went President, VP, Domestic, Foriegn Affairs, Military, Trade, Science, Culture - Military took over (defacto-president) in the event of mobilization. We had a few mobilization votes, but none ever passed I think). The president could draw up plans - and in Civ3 DG1, we had tons of fun with acrynyms - for helping the civ grow. "PEP", for example, was Passive Expansion Plan, (worked along side Domestic) which had to do with settling in gaps when the Greeks and Iroquois were razing each other's cities.

Domestic Advisor - The 3rd most powerful advisor. They created provinces (citizens would vote on the borders) after an area had 3 cities. The domestic advisor would also write the build queues for provinces without governors (happened a lot at the end of a game when there were 10+ provinces), and for cities not in a province. They would draw up general plans on how to increase production/growth/commerce, units like workers, and where to settle the next cities. An example would be, we're approaching the industrial age, and we needed atleast 30 shields per city (this is Civ3, now). The Domestic Advisor -- also done by an office of the Domestic Advisor, the Office of Infrastructure in later games -- would draw up which tiles need to be worked, roaded, and what the ideal spt should be. This is the type of long term planning that should go on. Domestic was also in charge of the resources to some degree.

Foreign Affairs - Early on, they only did things like sign treaties and declare war. Later on, they did more trade. They would also make discussion threads (and semi-roleplay) how to treat each civ (i.e., they had a forum based reputation scale). This helped add to the roleplay, too.

Military Advisor - They would keep track of the number of troops, and be in charge of upgrades. In some games, they would take over in times of war to move the units around.

Trade Advisor - This was nerfed in Civ4 (I think Civ3's trade advisor had potential). They would review all trades, and check the resources of each civ to see who had what. I think, if anything, Trade should atleast be an office in the Ministry of Foriegn Affairs.

Science Advisor - Their main goal was to promote discussion on research, and tech trades.

Culture Advisor - In cities that did not have a full 21 tile radius, Culture could intervine and give the city a cultural building. In Civ4, this isn't nearly as important if you have certain wonders, or religion in your cities. They could also create plans - i.e., in DG1, we won by culture (would have gotten spaceship the same turn if we switched a wonder, actuallly), and Culture had a program called "CAP" (Culture Assimilation Program), which started gobbling up many cities on the eastern border. We had a city - Strider's City I think, or a neighboring one, which flipped 6 cities around it. The funny thing is, this one Roman city which was entirely in our borders (only 1 tile) never flipped the entire game -- until 1 turn after Falcon played the game after the game was finished. Culture was also in charge of placement of Wonders early on.


Now that we have Civics, Culture can be combined as a "Culture & Civics Advisor". That would be in charge of culture, civics, Great Artists, and even landmarks. (Landmarks, I think, should greatly add to the roleplay).

Surely you don't a minister for civic affairs as that sought of falls under domestics affairs

Surely you don't a minister for civic affairs as that sought of falls under domestics affairs

Domestic basically manages all the city/provincial micromanaging normally.

They normally have governors/mayors to help them but they tend to pull everything together. Not to mention they deal with worker assignments and tile improvements.

Domestic has quite a bit on their hands to start off with.

Personally I agree that Civic/Culture should be combined as one though.

President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military

I feel like we should have at least a few offices to start out with and this are about the "minimum" that I see...


:agree: - we need to have a minimum to start with.

We had been pulling city management away from domestic and giving most of the power to the governors. I think distributed power (governors control) will work early, but we've been missing the guiding hand in the mid-game. Some office should evolve into a domestic strategy position, and some form of domestic office fits that description.

Thank you, Chieftess, for your excellent explanation.

And I think each city must be coordinated into an empire, lest we play ones

"against" the others.

Best regards,

A poll for choosing the proposal to use for our Government has been posted!

Please vote here! (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206929)

-- Ravensfire