Department of Foreign Affairs - Term 3

Foreign Minister - chiefpaco
Deputy Foreign Minister - Padma
Former Term 3 Deputy Foreign Minister (Resigned) - Plexus

I will open by continuing the work of Shaitan and Plexus in the previous term. The policies and operations from term 2 will carry over and re-assessed in time. This thread is open for all debate, recommendations, and objections to the scope of our Foreign policy.

FOREIGN POLICY

1. We will declare war only in the event that an ally requests an alliance against a civ below that ally's rank.
   
2. We may not seek military alliances, military protection pacts, or trade embargos with civilizations of a lower rating than recognized or potential victims.
   
3. We will not agree to foreign demands of extorsion.
   
4. We will prosecute a campaign of Cultural Assault in support or our Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is defined as territory in the effective corruption reducing radius of Fox Nest.
   
5. We will practice a campaign of regular extorsion against Rogue Nations. We will extort Suspect Nations if they have a required resource or technology.
   
6. We will not sign Rights of Passage with Rogue Nations. We may sign Rights of Passage with Suspect Nations and Common Neighbors to achieve strategic goals. We will always endeavor to renew Rights of Passage with Most Favored Nations and Able Partners.
   
7. We will not raze captured cities.
   
8. We will not renew Peace Treaties with Rogue Nations. We will renew Peace Treaties with Suspect Nations if they posess a resource or technology that we need. We will always renew Peace Treaties with all other ranks of civilizaitons.
   
9. Unless specifically previously proposed and accepted by the citizens, Military Protection Pacts, Alliances, and Trade Embargos shall be rejected during the course of a turn. They will be noted and put to a vote for us to decide if we wish to initiate them for turn 0 of the next round.
   
10. We will attempt to achieve and maintain a polite or gracious attitude from our Favoured Nations and Able Partners. We will also attempt to avoid a furious attitude from our Common Neighbours. This may involve any of the following with such nations, subject to a proposal and citizen acceptance:
    - Promoting trade
    - Small Gifts
    - Establishing Embassies
    - Right of Passage Agreements
    - Limiting troop movement in their territory
    [/list=1]
    
    RANKS
    Most Favored Nations
    Iroquois
    England
    
    Able Partners
    Rome
    
    Common Neighbors
    Zululand
    India
    
    Suspect Nations
    Greece
    Azteca
    Babylon
    China
    
    Rogue Nations
    None
    
    
    HOW RANKS ARE DETERMINED
    Polls are taken asking citizens to score the AI civs from 5 (best) to 1 (worst). These votes were tabulated and run through a simplifying formula to come up with the rating numbers.
    Spread Formula (vote, points):
    5, 3
    4, 1
    3, 0
    2, -1
    1, -3
    
    These will be repolled each term for all civs and as needed for individual civs when their actions warrant it (someone declares war on us, attempts extorsion, agrees to an alliance and helps us kick butt, etc).
    
    
    CURRENT CIV RATING NUMBERS
    England 30
    Iroquois 24
    Rome 19
    India 6
    Zululand -3
    Babylon -12
    Greece -14
    Azteca -14
    China -18
    
    Public Opinion Results Spreadsheet
    
    RATE# RANK
    20+, Most Favored Nation (MFN)
    10 to 19, Able Partner (AP)
    -9 to 9, Common Neighbor (CN)
    -19 to -10, Suspect Nation (SN)
    <=-20 Rogue Nation (RN)
    
    
    HOW RANKS DEFINE THE FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS TURN PROPOSALS
    
    EXCHANGE RATE - These generalizations will be used to help figure out whether a proposed deal amount is acceptable or not.
    
    MFN - Fair trade
    AP - Small Gain
    CN - Medium gain
    SN - Large gain
    RN - Extortionate gain
    
    CREDIT RATING - Deals for gold/turn get more income but also create the possibility that the AI civ will bankrupt and declare war to break the deals and save their economy. This table shows how we will try to structure deals.
    
    MFN - Straight payment first, then g/t
    AP - Straight payment first, then g/t
    CN - Even mix
    SN - G/t first, then straight payment
    RN - G/t first, then straight payment
    
    ALLIANCES - When requested by a foreign nation, consult the civS' ranks. An alliance can be granted if the target nation is a rank below the requesting nation. When we seek alliances, requests may be made to nations equal to or above the target nation's status.
    
    RIGHT OF PASSAGE - Rank will determine whether we always want an ROP, never want an ROP or will use opportunistic ROPs (when we intend to move through that civ's territory).
    
    MFN - Always
    AP - Always
    CN - Opportunistic
    SN - Opportunistic
    RN - Never
    
    PEACE TREATY RENEGOTIATION - Rank will determine whether we will seek peace treaty renegotitations.
    
    MFN - Always
    AP - Always
    CN - Always
    SN - Opportunistic
    RN - Never
    
    EXTORSION - Rank will determine if we will extort the civ at all, only when they have something we want, or if we will do it constantly.
    
    MFN - Never
    AP - Never
    CN - Never
    SN - Opportunistic
    RN - Every 20 turns or less
    
    The Department thread for term 2 can be found here.

The department of Foreign affairs has made recommendations for the next round. Please give your input:

Foreign Affairs Proposal for June 2 Turn

Hello evreyone, thanx for re-electing me as deputy. (don't feel bad, I didn't even vote for myself).

The Department of Foreign Affairs is hosting discussion and polls on the shape and direction of our nation. Please participate!

Setting Public Opinion on England:
Public Opinion Poll: England

Revolution Discussion:
Revolution

Next turn chat proposal:
Foreign Affairs Proposal for June 5 turn

Changes to our Foreign Policy:
Changes/Additions to Foreign Policy - MPPs and Embargos

Also, I support discussion on our Military Policy, hosted by the Military Department:
Military Policy

I propose changes to article one of the Foreign Policy:

1. We shall declare war on three conditions: the people see it fit, if war will benifet the people, and if we can destroy the opposing nation within 50 turns.

We could probably destroy any civilization in 50 turns but that would be a judgement call. Benefiting the people is a definite judgement call. If the people want war, that would overrule a policy in any case.

I think what he meant was that the ppl should be in the mood for war, not exactly cry for war.
That is a difference (at least i think this). At the moment, im running a "war!" informational poll to see the moods of citizenry. This will tell us wheter we will have to avoid war under any circumstance or wheter we can risk war.
If we are allowed to "risk" a war, then we should instantly build a strike force in addition to our strengthen our defence.
Example:
We could have easily avoided WWI if we would have given away our map. Now, our foreign policy stated not to give it away. We could had hade this dependant on citizen mood, so if there was a "no war!" mood, it would have been appropriate to give the map away. If there would have been a "war!" mood, the action taken would have been best choice.
[i dont want to bring up old issues, but this seems the best example]

At that time we were definitely in a war mood. We were preparing an invasion of America. That's why the policy was formatted so agressively. In other words, I agree that our policy should reflect the overall desires of the populace. The current policy carried over from last term. That policy was revised when we were finally at peace after millenia of war and there was a very strong anti-war feeling but also a strong desire for expanding relations and gathering allies. It's possible that popular opinion is swinging back to the agressive side now, in which case the war clause would need to be readressed.

thats why i started the poll war! to find out. The result will have major impact on all of our departments.

At the moment, I am still coming to grips with being the Foreign Leader and am still finding out what "Foreign Policy" (FP) means. Whether it is the official stance of the Foreign Department, demands, expectations, recommendations, guidelines, hints, or the collective belief of the citizens.

I have so far thought it to be a mix of "official stance of FA" combined with "recommendations". Citizens then get their say when FA makes a proposal and then again when they vote on issues.

If my assumption holds true, then I think we can declare war whenever we want. The FA dept would not support it, but citizen voting can turn anything over. What they aren't changing is the policy but the direction our nation takes. I'd probably rant saying "this is an outrage!" and "you are all bloodthirsty maniacs!" and we'd continue on with the war.

In the case of the map trade, I hope that it was also a vote from the citizens to not trade maps or at least a general citizen consensus. Otherwise, I think the FA may have been acting a bit above the citizenry which I would not tolerate in these times. The game has come a long way since those early days so this was not a fair comparison, but an illustration to how I would handle it differently today.

To tie in the policy changes I recently proposed, I'm not sure if I need a citizen vote to set the FA stance. Citizens can always question and reject my proposals anyway. The elected Leader was voted in, and I'd like to think that the citizens did so because they agreed with the Leader's ideals. At the same time, citizens also have the right to debate it. I am still unsure of how the FP supports changes though. Surely a leader who does not listen to the opinions of the citizens will not become very popular. At the same time, I have a job to do and a great responsibility and wonder where I should be focusing it.

Just to sum up, I don't think the FP are rules of the game. I think they are guidelines for our nation to follow but certain circumstances and opposition definitely take precedence. Does this mean FP is useless? I don't think so, but the Dept of FA needs to have an official stance on issues. Where does the citizen will fit in though? That I am still thinking about.

Just to clarify. The map that started the Domino war wasn't a trade. Babylon tried to extort it. When we refused to be extorted they declared war. The Foreign Policy at the time was that we would not give in to extortion attempts unless the President thought it would start a war and the Military Leader thought we were unprepared to fight a war.

Originally posted by Shaitan
Just to clarify. The map that started the Domino war wasn't a trade. Babylon tried to extort it. When we refused to be extorted they declared war. The Foreign Policy at the time was that we would not give in to extortion attempts unless the President thought it would start a war and the Military Leader thought we were unprepared to fight a war.

Click to expand...

Right. I mixed my words too much on editing. Regardless of how it was handled in the past, I meant to say that I would keep the stance of FA clear & open it up for a citizen vote. It was a bad example and I will jump into the trout-slapping bin for 15 minutes.

I also wish to state that the poll disorganizer posted has not been officially recognized nor endorsed by the Foreign Affairs Department and shall not be bound by the result of the poll.

cp:In the case of the map trade, I hope that it was also a vote from the citizens to not trade maps or at least a general citizen consensus. Otherwise, I think the FA may have been acting a bit above the citizenry which I would not tolerate in these times.

Click to expand...

I think at the time, the citizens in general felt that we should not give in to their demands.

Originally posted by chiefpaco
The game has come a long way since those early days so this was not a fair comparison, but an illustration to how I would handle it differently today.

Click to expand...

I wish to rephrase this as I know it to be incorrect and caused confusion, just so we're clear (theme of the day!). Omit the word "differently" and I think it reads better and to what I intended.

It seems that the polling method is somewhat flawed because the scoring system also depends on the number of votes. i.e. a civ that gets more "lower" votes than another can have a higher rating. I will see if there is a better way to do this. Perhaps the vote re-adjustment forumula could just be lowered by one so each vote is balanced around 0 rather than an ever increasing number.

This is a reminder too all cabinet members and governers to post their turn chat instructions here for tonight's turn chat, if you haven't done so already.

I have done a study on re-evaluating the ranking system that we currently use because it skews the results towards polls with higher votes. While I think voter turnout is a valid criteria for Foreign Nation opinions, I'm not sure it works well in the structure of our game because of the flux of citizens we have coming in & out of the game and the fact that polls may be held at different times, gather different traffic, etc...

In my study, I am proposing 2 alternatives to the scoring method to avoid this potential issue:

#1: Centred Ranking. Centres the voting around 0 so that # votes don't really matter.
Votes are tabulated 1-5 where:
5 (best) = 2
4 = 1
3 = 0
2 = -1
1 = -2

#2: Spread Ranking. Basically this one is like Centred but puts more weight on the extreme votes.
Votes are tabulated 1-5 where:
5 (best) = 3
4 = 1
3 = 0
2 = -1
1 = -3

In the case of these 2 proposals, I propose the following ranking criteria:
Favoured: 20+
Able Partner: 10 - 19
Common Neighbour: -9 - 9
Suspect: -19 - -10
Rogue: <-19

The results of the study for our current voting are shown in the following spreadsheet that I prepared with Excel. I would appreciate anyone's feedback, especially that of Shaitan, the founder of the ranking system and my deputy.

Thanks,
cp

Civ Ranking Study

I hope you can read it ok.

Unless you use smoothing (averaging), the number of votes will always play a factor. A generally positive vote will rank a civ higher if there is a larger voter turnout. Same with a generally negative vote - the larger the turnout, the lower that civ's score.

Of the ones you've got spec'd out I like the spread better.

Originally posted by Shaitan
Unless you use smoothing (averaging), the number of votes will always play a factor. A generally positive vote will rank a civ higher if there is a larger voter turnout. Same with a generally negative vote - the larger the turnout, the lower that civ's score.

Of the ones you've got spec'd out I like the spread better.

Click to expand...

Good point. It is not entirely a bad thing, as we agree on. I'd like to lessen its effects. The proposals I've got seem to work ok or well with our current ranks but I can't be sure it will be perfect. I'm not sure how to mathematically prove the ranking value. In any case, I am leaning towards giving the spread formula a go for the next round.

Originally posted by Plexus
I propose changes to article one of the Foreign Policy:

1. We shall declare war on three conditions: the people see it fit, if war will benifet the people, and if we can destroy the opposing nation within 50 turns.

Click to expand...

How about on 1 condition? If we are attacked first, in which case we can defend ourselves. But I seem to be the only reasonable voice in our empire. Looks like we have warmongers in our midst. Or revenge seekers. I think "destroying" other nations is sick, and should never be considered. Of course I just joined our civlization, so I wasnt around for the past wars, but I would have been pushing for peace the whole time, even if no one listened.

But this is the Game of Democracy! Not the Game of RX2000's Peaceloving Tendencies.

If the people are bloodthirsty, they must be satiated eh? :slay:

Oh rest assured young one, your not the only peacemonger.