Seemed like this topic needed a thread of its own. DoM has stated that political parties were pretty much a disaster in the Civ 3 demo game (of course, we're all more mature, experienced players here in Civ 2 and that would never happen with us ;-) ). Another idea floated by some astute, obviously intelligent Demogame player (who was that, now?) was to generate some sort of conflict between local and national interests, with players invested in some way in the success of particular cities and/or regions. I"ve tried to think this through a little bit, and haven't really thought of a way to make it work well yet, but thought I'd get some discussion going to see if all of you more astute and obviously more intelligent demogame players might be able to come up with something.

another thought I had was for each player to take on some sort of "persona" for the game, like a role-play, and play the demo part of the game from that perspective rather than their own. Any thoughts/ideas on that?

If we can find a way to make them work with the amount of people we have and in a way that it actually benefits the game, we can do them.

Maybe we could somehow tie the population size (in-game pop points) of a city/region to the number of votes the representant of that region will have in the national council. That would give the regions a reason to see to themselves before other regions and create the need to negotiate for support from other regions to get their representatives elected into the government.

Roleplaying a persona, ok I wouldn't mind doing a bit of roleplaying, but I guess not everyone likes it.

Nice thought about tieing population to number of votes. Would be a headache for the polls, however :( How could we get around that?

We would have to poll by posting I guess, by allowing no other posts in the vote thread than the vote posts I think we could keep it manageable.

ooh, that would make anonymous voting a thing of the past. :/ Make people put their name to what they voted for--could actually generate a bit more discussion I'm thinking, which would be a good thing. Anyone think it would scare people away from voting? IMHO it would not.

The region could have a poll about it internally if they have enough members then just the regional delegate need to post the decision together with the region's population.

This would really encourage regions to grow their cites. And maybe the capital could remain outside the regions and be the place for people who wish to be neutral in regional politics. Whoever is president at the moment could control the capital city's votes. Just throwing around ideas now...

Keep throwing; I'm liking what I'm hearing :D

We don't want a bunch of sub-forums for each region. The governor of a region could post a thread about decisions to be made, and anyone could comment, even those outside the region (in an effort to sway that region's vote on a matter they see as of national importance, for instance). The governor would then make a decision and vote, weighted by the number of pop points in his/her region as you suggested. If the governor doesn't follow the will of the people--doesn't get re-elected. Under this scheme, would governors need to appoint advisors, such as domestic advisor or defense advisor, or would we be adding to beauracracy at that point? Might not be enough people in the game, either :(

So it could happen that people of Region A vote against a particular plan that negatively impacts them, but have that plan passed on a national level anyway. Their only recourse would be to mount a recall campaign or try to vote out those who voted against them. Would governors be elected only from within the Region/voted on by those in the Region? Makes sense to me. Several positions would need to be voted on nationally as well, I would think.

this means folks in office would get elected/not-elected based more on their philosophy/success than on how well they can poll and follow results. That's been one part of the demo games that's been a little less than succesful IMHO. The best advisors/governors are really those who organize polls the best, not those who have the best/most creative ideas. This might mitigate that a bit. I'm finding more reasons to like it :D

The only real way we could actually simulate seperation and conflict in a one nation demo game Imho is with a sort of virtual nation sperated in a number of civ's each representing a particular province or state ,so that in times of severe conflict a civil war could happen.For ex. you have four states ,and a virtual country called the united states.Each state is an actual civ ,but is part of the united states.And from each state's governor's a president is elected by the people of all states.Now the ruling cabinet of the virtual nation has power over it's states ,and the states have some sort of self gouvernence.the president has an actual capital province ,that is controlled by the cabinet of the president.All states are allied to eachother by default.All states must give tribute to the virtual nation givven to the capital state rulled by the current president in for of taxes and millitary suport ,etc...
Maybe a representation of a feudal nation ,with a king province and a few noble families competing for the monarch title.

There are numerous detail's you can add to this.This system could ,if well refined ,allow for much fun.
In any case i would advice to add a humongues everlasting Barbarian threat ,so that at some time's the states would need eachother to defend themself's.

BUT ,it would be extremely hard to implement ,given that every "state" should have to play it's turn ,so that would take a long time.And creating balanced rules for such a system would be very hard to.

Yet ,sollution's are there to be found.

A proposal would be a small pbem game , 3 province's of each 3 city's and a capital province of 2 or 3 city's.this with a first version of a constitution for such a game ,to test if this sort of game would work well.A specialised scenario would probably have to be created for it.With 3 faction's pbem would still go fast enough to have a good rate of playing and wouldn't require much people.

On a personal note:
I hope i won't shock anyone by being here.I certainly wanna apoligize to Duke of marlborough for leaving about a year ago ,withought saying anything.So i hope i'm still welcome ,but i don't doubt at the good spirit of the people on this forum.
I'm glad i got back to this place anyway.

Try to understand ,there is something in me that make's me a terrible person to lay responsibilety's on ,especially in administrative task's.Rather i'm a inventive person that is good in seeking solution's to various problem's.Moderator was never my thing ,but i love to create and invent new thing's.

I certainly don't think anyone will object to your return. We need all the participation we can get.

BTW, Duck, you may want to update those links in your signature. :D

My view on this subject is that it adds a whole level of complexity we really don't need. I would not have any objetions to smoething more simplistic. To be honest, I've gotten lost more than once in this thread...

I have no problem with the fact that you left, but the way in which you left was inexcusable..... But, you will see no reflection of that from me in the forums. That said, you are more than welcome to join the game. :)

BTW, I'm glad you got your account straightened out. ;)

One way of making everyone involved in the game is to make everyone responsible for an individual town - build queues, workers etc. The main problem with this, however, is who looks after towns of people who drop out, and how can we help those who can't download the came.

As for role-play..... maybe we all start off as 'Citizen' and must sign our posts as such. As we get further into the game, the Government can award titles to citizens for their contribution, eg 'Earl', 'Baron'. Maybe each new thread is posted as a letter to someone, similar to the letters Counsellor GaryNemo was getting from the Baroness of Reneaux!!! I see this as a way where we don't get too bogged down on the role-play bit, and even people who aren't keen on it can still participate with little embarassment!

Duckie's back :D Welcome "home" Duck. :wavey:

However, I find your suggestion to be a bit unwieldy, although an intriguing idea:hmm:

Octavian, I wasn't sure what suggestions you were deeming as too complex, Duck's or the general idea Talar and I had been batting around. Something like what Jayne proposed with each person in charge of a town would be good, except there arent' enough towns early in the game, and then what happens if someone is not around to take charge of their town. Maybe we could still have governors, who would take charge of any unclaimed towns in their province. There would need to be clear deadlines for submitting suggestions/changes, however. And how do we resolve a conflict between what a "Mayor" wishes for his/her city and the needs of the nation as a whole?

If we all keep talking about this I'm confident we can hammer out the details to make it work :goodjob:

Hey Leo ;)

About that idea ,it's just an idea.I knew it would probably a bit to extreme given what we want here.

Hi Duck! Anyway, the first Civ3 demogame had Citizen's Groups. These were special interest groups that talked about certain aspects of the game. For example, my Spice Traders Guild was about the trade of spices. The War Church was a warmongers type group, wanting to expand into certain areas (which we eventually did by game's end, thanks to an oppurtunistic AI). There were other groups, but none lasting as long as these two. (BTW, we eventually - for a brief time - had control of ALL the spices in the game).

In the Civ3DG2 however, these groups aren't as popular. I attribute some of that to the Demogame RPG, which has taken on a life of its' own, and until recently, was only 10% demogame related. (It's getting better now, but not by much).

Something like Duck's suggestion would be great - two civs working together - deciding whether to help each other... or not :evil:. It would be like a massive collaborative PBEM. The biggest problem would be that the two people would have to alternate turns when it was time to play, slowing things down to a crawl. It could take a week just to play the turns! I doubt we could hold everyone's interest doing it that way.

The Civ3 Multisite Demogame (and that's 540 turns!) could take up to two years to finish! Civ2 (with around 640 turns) might be close to 3. :eek: - that's if you play a turn a day.

If only i could persuade firaxis to program a little addon for civ to play it demo game style ,i have send them some e-mail's over time ,but they never react. :(

For example ,i asked them if it was possible to program a proggy for civ so that you could folow the game on an other computer ,withought actually playing it.Would be great for the turn chat's of the civIII demo game ,just that you could view what happens in the game ,but no ,no reaction.

But one thing i know for sure ,an actual programmed democracy game might be a succes if made well.I said to firaxis that such a game might get very popular and so much money could be made after it ,thinking they would go for the gold ,yet.......


The splitting up civ's idea ,it could make a super fun game ,though i fear indeed that it's practicly impossible to implement. :(

Here's an idea. The forum plays a civ and I play a civ and see what happens. :groucho:

Well, here's the idea I sort of semi-floated in the general thread:

Have a 3rd party create a map - someone like Smash who's been able to help us out in the past. It may have to be done as a scenario, but what the heck.

Have the creator (we'd have to worship him at our temples I guess) do an accelerated startup and customize our own civ - I guess through the cheat menu. Give us a start of 3 different cities but have each start on a separate island that can hold maybe about 5 or 6 cities each (Give the AI's 3 cities to start as well). We would be one civilization, but each island/province would have its own concerns and desires. All 3, however, would answer to a single president and cabinet - though they can hold their own polls and the like. Perhaps make it so you can only vote in the polls coming from your own island.

This can provide some interesting gameplay, though I'm sure things would have to be tweaked to make it work optimally. Perhaps one island would be more militaristic minded while another more commerce driven. Perhaps there would be battles to decide where the SSC city would be built - things the cabinet would have to discuss and decide upon. So too might there be more participation - especially in voting members into office since you'd like to get 'your person' into those key spots.

Still, we'd all be one civ so when the other islands do well, the whole civ does well.

This can also be a way to keep us at a city cap. No building off of the 3 islands. This would end arguments of who controlls non-island colonies, and would make the city placements on you home area very important. We would have to implement the razing of any foreign city, or just remain isolationist and implement a 'no attacking foreign city' rule.

Two problems:

1. Flaming other islands. Sure, we'd expect some good-natured ribbing and jokes, but it may get ugly. Espeically true where elections are concerned. Still, being a single civ would help to make sure we all work together.
2. Attrition. One group may have dropouts resulting in having only 1 or 2 people where others retain their players and have 6 or more. I guess we can have people move to take up slack, but it may be tough when you have invested a lot with your own group.

Probably other difficulties I'm not seeing - like how to make such a map or something like that. Still, it's almost like the Greeks with the Athenians, Spartans, etc.

Just a thought.

I could see the idea of different regions competeing among one another, but it seems to me actually running them as different allied civs would create a host of problems, not the least of which would be the necessity of playing a multi-player game and having a player from each region. I think some modification of our province/governor model would work best if we decide to do something like this.

I like the region idea, and having 3 separate islands would help with how to divide up the regions. Hmm... any island/region could get the capital by just building a palace, this could allow for some interesting competition if we attach some important political advantage to having the palace :)

Islands is also a good way of giving us a definite city cap without setting an exact number of cities. Editing could also ensure us some some competition frpm the AI.

I don't think splitting up into different civs would be a good idea. If we are to do that we could just as well go all the way and play mp team demogame.

Having different cooperating civs would for one thing be way far too powerful (much more than just starting with 3 cities) and also very difficult to manage and keep track of.

About the flame problems with splitting up in different factions, look on it from the bright side, at least we are not discussing USA/Iraq issues in here :mischief: I think we could manage.

Players dropping of is of course always a problem and becomes even more noticable with 3 factions. Still I know it's possible from personal experience. The first team demo game which was recently finished at GC with 3 teams had a very low number of players because of GC being a very small site. Still I wouldn't suggest trying to coordinate 3 civs into one or playing with too few players. At GC the in-team democracy became suffering by not having enough people to fill up important positions and I guess the same would happen here. I'm not sure exactly how many players would be needed to make 3 factions and have it work well, it also depends much on the activity level of the people involved. If we clearly won't have enough players we'll just have to abandon the region idea and play the "normal" way. If a lot of people drop of during the game I guess the regions could be joined if needed.

For anyone interested I can tell you the GC game took 11 months to play. It was played in weekly sessions, normal mp style - not PBEM. It worked really well except for that we missed playing the session several weeks because of various reasons like no player showing up and no backup, connection problems and a corrupted savefile problem. A PBEM game which I think would be the case if we played diferent civs here would take much longer as someone pointed out somewhere and probably never finish if played with small teams.

Maybe 5 players/region should be a definite minimum to try the region/island idea. To work well it would probably need twice that number, but it all depends on how active people are...

My first thought is that if one region began to lose members, we could "transfer" people from other regions to balance out. Just think of it as moving to a different city. We could allow people to freely move between regions, except then folks would abandon a failing region and flock to one that was doing well; not a good idea. Any transfers would need to be initiated by and coordinated by the pres and council.

My second thought is whether we need such hard and fast "teams," or just assign people to regions and tell them to look out for the interests on their region as well as the nation. Folks elected to the cabinet would forgo their regional interests (in theory :groucho: ) and focus on national interest. Governors would be primarily concerned with their region's interest.

Having a custom map created by an uninvolved third party would be a great idea, if we can talk someone into doing it.

Is there one of you that usually posts in the "Civ2 - Scenario Creation" section ?
May you ask for maps creators to look at our problem ???

Originally posted by Elsaak
Is there one of you that usually posts in the "Civ2 - Scenario Creation" section ?
May you ask for maps creators to look at our problem ??? Ithink it's ok to venture into that forum and post, even if you're not a regular. I occasionally lurk over there to see some of the amazing work those guys do, and for the most part they seem quite civilized and willing to help others. (Just don't take sides on the hi-res/Nemo unit debate and you'll be safe!). Most of those guys are more than willing to help someone out, and the worst they can do is, what, give you a :rolleyes:? I'd go post there to ask for help with a map, but I'm not sure what we're asking for yet. Also, I think Smash set up several of the GOTM starts, so he might be willing to do the same here if we asked nicely.

My thought was not to set up as 3 different allied civs, but have us as one civ with a settler on 3 different islands. Have the AI's start with 3 settlers as well to make it fair. In this way, we have 3 provinces, and each one will not be able to encroach upon the other. There would be a central government of President etc., but I could see each provincal governor holding general polls for the cities in his/her province (i.e. island).

It would stand to reason that each province would, in essence, compete for resources. I could see all three pointing out how their city would be a great one for the SSC and so forth. I can see requests for rush-building all over as well.

The President and the rest of the cabinet would have to make the best decisions possible for the civilization as a whole, but they would have to be fair or otherwise may lose all of the votes from the province(s) that got the shaft. In theory, this sounds a lot like American politics in that the central government tries to appease many different facets of voters.

Perhaps this will encourage people to come by the game and at least vote - to be sure their province was heard. Other province-mates would certainly notify any laggers of important votes to be sure their collective voice is heard. I would think as new people join they could be put into provinces evenly or replace someone who has left the game.

The other choice we can look into is playing an actual scenario. There are some very good ones, though I'm not sure if there would be download issues for people to view some of the games.

Getting someone to create a map to our perameters is a good idea. It gives us more scope to chuck other things into the equation eg Fundy-only government, other civs start with monarchy/wonder etc.

Along the lines of Kevs suggestion, if you could find some way to split responsibility so that some decisions are made by regional vote (one vote per island/governor) rather than popular vote (one per citizen) you could get some interesting dynamics. if one island has most of the people, the other two could still block its decisions in the regional votes.

Ohmigod! I just recommended fillibusters, didn't I? That way nothing would get done and it would be much more like a real democracy! :wallbash: Maybe I should shut up now.

Tim and Kev, I like these ideas. When I first started reading Kev's the idea of starting with three settlers on three islands sounded a little strange and kind of "forced," but I think it would really create some problems to deal with right off the bat even game-wise, let alone the politics. Imagine having three cities to start with in Despotism--faster science, but closer to the city cap that causes unhappines. Who gets the capital? Massive corruption in the other cities because they'll be so far away. Hmm, that gives a distinct advantage to whatever island gets the capital, doesn't it? Still mulling this one over....:hmm:...

We could start in a Communism form of government, that would eliminate the corruption issues for being away from the capital.

We can also eliminate the capital so that no one island gets an advantage.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
We can also eliminate the capital so that no one island gets an advantage. ...at least until some unscrupulous president rush-builds a Palace on his island during his term in office! :nya:

I like all those nice ideas ; but how can we custumized a such "pre-definited" world without losting a huge part of mystery...?

The more I think about it the less I like starting in three locations. Why not just create the provinces as we go as we have done in past games, but assign people to them when they are created to look after each region's own interests?

I think the problem with developing three provinces as we go is that we'll have to build two more cities before we can even have three provinces. Further, we'll have to keep changing the borders around as we add cities to be sure that each area has an equal amount of cities involved. With my original method, each area is clearly defined and can grow at similar rates. There should never be a time when we have to put a city in a different provice from which it started. It would be a shame to put your efforts into getting something for a city only to have it 'rezoned' and now part of a different province.

The three islands need not be overly distant from one another, and we could even connect them with a small land bridge if we want it to count as a single continent for corruption reasons. As long as we maintain that you cannot build a city outside of your province.

Still, the fact that one city will be the capital and without corruption simply means that the other two provinces should be primary when it comes to rushing items and protection. It also makes it more of an impetus to get to another form of government quickly (like that doesn't exist already).

One issue in this is that even with giving the AI three settlers the human players (us) will have a decided advantage right from the start. We should likely come up with ways to hamstring ourselves a bit more - the city cap of only building on the islands is a good start. Not keeping cities that we capture is another good one.

Tim's suggestion is pretty funny (regarding the president relocating the capital - the filibuster one is just plain scary :)). Again, a presient's (and other cabinet members') actions will certainly make them accountable in the next voting. Plus, again, we're all ONE civ here, we must do what's best. In this case, I would think that the president would likely build the first city (hence the capital) in the most central of locations for future Monarchy and Republic reasons.

As far as losing the 'mystery' of the game - the map would still be dark to us but for those three areas for the settlers. Really, we wouldn't even know what the islands looked like and where specials might be. The map would be created by a 3rd party who would not be in the game, though I might have to try to bribe that person for some info.... In essence, it would make planning of city placements all that more important - and the exploration of the area key.

I'm not married to the idea, and my feelings will only SLIGHTLY be hurt if we don't do this. :)

If we find we cannot decide on any of this, then perhaps we could look into a good CivII scenario. Of course, I think it would require MGE in order to look at the games so perhaps that wouldn't work.

Ah well, I don't come by forever and now I won't shut up. Sorry.

Kev, we appreciate you making up for all the time you were away ;)
Seriously, I'm still ambivalent towards this idea of three starting provinces. I don't think the exploration bit would be dampened that much. Might even be heigtened as three seperate groups all clamor to explore their island first.
:enlighten:Just had an idea as I was typing. One small central island on which to found the capital, connected by land bridges to three adjecent islands. The game starts normally (however we decide that will be), but no other cities can be founded until three settlers are ready to found the first city in each provine simultaneously. The capital is always its own province and not part of the other three. The cabinet will look out for it's interests as wel as national. That way no province can claim the capital and all have equal disadvantage re: corruption. Additionally we'll be a bit hamstrung early on waiting to get three settlers ready to found cities. Wadda y'all think?

I also thought of a capital outside the region, but I still think we should have the palace inside one of the regions. It won't make things exactly equal, but who cares? I don't mind if my region doesn't have the palace from start (we could always build it later :evil: )

If the rest of you want to go for 3 provinces from start I'm all for it, but I could live with whatever decision we make.

I don't know why the poll AND associated thread were closed :confused: but only 11 voted, and 4 of those were for not doing anything. Given the apparant lack of interest and complications in implementing any of the suggested schemes, I am unofficially calling this subject dead for this demo game. :die: Anyone who feels strongly we should revisit this is welcome to post here and take up the cause.

Only the poll was closed since it possibly related to the game settings, this thread was still open...... :confused:

I'd like to try it, but since enthusiasm among the other posters here seems a bit lacking maybe we should do a more normal game instead.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Only the poll was closed since it possibly related to the game settings, this thread was still open...... :confused: The thread was also closed when I looked at it. Must have been a glitch of some sort. Seems okay now :confused:

I personally think regions should be allowed to grow organically. Once a province has, just for the sake of the argument, four cities, it's released from the control of the council to the citizens of that region who decide build order, although the President, Domestic Advisor or Council can change those build orders in the event of military strife or wanting a wonder. However, they're only allowed to enforce two builds every 5 turns, so if a region really wants to do nothing in the face of impending doom, it can.

I also think political parties should not exist, but that there should be no ban to members banding together to support each others motions to get them through. In practice, there'll always be hawks and doves, so this is merely the logical extension.

I think political parties are nice, but a bit to much 'overdone'. If we want a complete country simulation, we could just as well put al our money together and buy an west-african country :D

That african country is a wonderful idea :lol:

But until we do that I guess playing the old civ game will have to do :)