Government Structure - Executive and Legislative Branches

DaveShack said:

I think it says the Warlord appoints to empty offices.

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

dutchfire said:

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

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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? WTH 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.

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)

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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! ). 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,

fed1943 said:

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,

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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

Joe Harker said:

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

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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.

Falcon02 said:

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...

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- 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!

-- Ravensfire