Introduction

To keep things simple, let's refrain from creating lots of threads for now. We can differentiate and expand later.

So, to begin, Welcome!

I'll start things off by posting a response to GingerAle's talking points>....

GingerAle said:

UN Representative
For those not in the Civ3 MTDG, this is how things work with regards to the public forum: each team elections a "UN Rep", who is in charge of voting in official polls for their team (i.e. All later polls in this forum, for example for determining the Map Type, or Difficulty Level, will be done on a one vote per team basis. Your UN Rep will cast your team's vote after discussion and concensus in the private forum).

They are sort of a public figurehead for that team with regards to things here in the main forum. You can have a nomination thread open for a couple days (not everyone has signed up yet!), then maybe an election on the weekend or such.

Government Structure
This can greatly vary - it is basically how you run things like playing the save and discussions/instructions for the turnplayer.

Some teams choose an anarchist approach () - while there are discussions/threads for topics, anyone can play a save for that team. Others have gone with a semi-formal design with a "Turn Player" (who plays the turns, of course) and then just citizens discussing things. Even still, teams have come up with a more structured government, electing people like Military Advisor, Foreign Advisor, and President. They all work - choose one that works for your team; note: for elections, I suggest going every X # of turns, not days.

Email Setup/Passwords
Another critical point: your team needs: an email account, the password for that email, and a password for your civilization team save. Please discuss what those passwords can be (please don't use password ), and for an email account, it's best if every team can get a GMail account: www.gmail.com . If you need an invite for an account, just PM me and I'll hook you up. Be sure to make a "information thread" in your forum with the email address/password/save password so that everyone can view the email, grab the save, and view the save. Team's emails will also be in the Team Information Thread in the main forum for notice.

Team Name
Another simple thing - think of a team name.

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I think it's too early to discuss UN Rep and Email. But we should start talking about government structure and Team Name. We can also start to develop the outlines of a constitution. I've only had experience with MIA's constitution, but it's given me some ideas on what might work and what is better to be avoided.

I would like to propose that the skeleton for our teams's constitution could be the MIA one ... we have bashed and slashed at it and developed a managable easy to follow document ... well usable as a draft until fleshed out

Regarding Stickies ... I like the way we have organised MIA ... minimal stickies and links posted within them which jump to various elements serious and frivolous ... makes it easy to navigate.


This will support a government structiure as follows -

President (Turn Taker) ... 20 Turns
Domestic Minister ... 20 Turns
Defence Minister ... 20 Turns
Foreign Minister ... 20 Turns
Team Captain (UN Rep) ... 40 Turns
addition
Due to the added labeling of landmarks available in cIV ... I wonder if we can have a new position(s) ... the Namer of the Map and Things roll would be to organise a poll and ask for submissions ...


Regarding the password ... let's make it easy to remember and not a bunch of random letters.


Team Name ... this will probably we a pollable offence
> PyroGenesis ... symbol the Phoenix
> Blue Oyster Cult ... H.P.Lovecraft (Cthulhu Mythos) and also groovy band


I'm sure you guys can come up with ideas.

Also it might be a cool thing to chat and meet over AIM (sorry I am on dialup and cannot chat other ways)

The only other thing is ... to declare the Bar Open ... first round on me

I'll take you up on that , even though it is just 8 am here. But it's a special occaision, right

I was thinking the same thing about using the skeleton of our MIA constitution. But then, after I woke up today, I thought it might be fun to do another one up from scratch. One of the things that I would change is I would try for the fewest words possible.

I like the general structure of Pres, DM, FM, MD, and UN; but I've never understood th rationale for having the UN rep stand for 2 terms at a time.

As far as the Namer goes, maybe a Minister of Nomenclature? That position would be responsible for naming all units, towns, landmarks. Of course that minister would get input from the public, and will get voted out if they don't follow the will of the people.

A Team Name based on the Phoenix could be good. But I wonder if we should wait and see what the civ choices are? I have always found it awkward that KISS is playing the Celts but are the Way-too-Cool-dudes. So many different layers of Identity are cumbersome.

I agree with fewer and easier to understand constritution or team rules ... let's strip the MIA constitution of the legalspeak and keep it simple ... we all know the spirit of the rules anyway

Thanks for the beer Fe!

It'll be exciting to see who joins this game. When I get a few free moments, I'll post some thoughts on Civ4, since I believe I'm the only one on this team that has played it so far.

I like the basic idea of our MIA constitution, and it's a good starting place. But I think it could be simplified for sure.
Specifically, the jobs of the various ministers is a little bit murky, and could use some clarification.

I like the idea of a "Minister of Nomenclature" – sounds like fun!

I agree with Fe – our constitution should be simple – but I like more structure than that "KISSesque" anarchy.

that "KISSesque" anarchy.

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Yeah - there may be situations where that structure works well, but I think that MIA's experience proves that several minds moving in a specific direction are more effective than changing strategies from turn to turn.

In many ways, Civ4 is a much deeper game than Civ3 is. (Which is a good thing! imho)

As a result, we have the option to include many more people in the decision making process than we did in the Civ3 MTDG. (Where there are only 4 positions that make any real decisions)

I'd like to propose a government structure that I think is simple and involves the maximum number of people with the minimum number of elections.

I propose a system of 4 Officers/Ministers, and 12 Departments.
Officers will be elected, but won't necessarily make any decisions. Officers will appoint Department Heads, and these Department Heads will make the decisions. An officer may fill 1 or more department positions if they are empty, or if the officer just wants the job. This will obviously be a major point of consideration in the elections.
Department Heads report to the Officer, and then the President plays the save.

Here's the specifics:

Office of the President (turn player)

Office of the Domestic Ministry

Office of the Defense Ministry

Office of the Foreign Ministry:


As you can see – there's a lot to do and decide in Civ4!

I think the beauty of my proposed system is that it's perfectly scaleable with the amount of involvement that we have.

If there are only 4 active people, then the officers can just run each department.
If there are 16 active people that all want to make decisions, they can each hold an important office.

An example of how this might work:
General_W runs for Domestic Minister, promising to appoint Peter to be head of the Dept. of the Interior, and Fe to head of the Departments of Great People and Economy. He announces he will retain personal control over the Dept. of Industry.

He is elected in a landslide, of course, but 5 turns later, Peter still hasn't showed up for work, so General_W (who has been running the Dept. of the Interior in the meantime) fires Peter, and appoints Chamnix to replace him.

Hopefully that illustrates how this system could involve lots of people without crashing the team when people go missing (as we've seen people do in the Civ3 MTDG).

I'll stop there for now.

What do you think?
(If you have questions regarding how Civ4 works - feel free to ask! If this were Civ3, some of my proposed departments wouldn't exist or wouldn't have much to do – but in Civ4 they are quite important. For example, workers now have MANY more choices of what to build, and those choices have sweeping effects on the game)

I like General_W's idea. It provides for more involvement all around, creates a very organized system for decision making, and allows for specialization. Let's face it, we're all better at some things than we are others.

If we end up having a ton of people (which we probably won't), we could even have governors for each city who are in charge of the citizen specialists (or is that only a civ3 thing?), and have Generals in charge of armies/fleets (if the Secretary of the Army plans the attack, the generals are in charge of executing it).

When/how do we choose our civilization?

Well, General_W, I'm glad you've chosen to throw your lot in with the rest us us Epsilons. On the surface, your scheme for grabbing power seems to be quite rational

As I don't know all the in's and out's of cIV, I can't speak to the minutiae of your plan. But in broad strokes, your plan excels for its Flexibility combined with Specialization. For instance, I am very comfortable with generalized movements, but when it comes to 'Have that unit Fortify, and have the other worker build a Pasture' I am less astute.

But now I'm starting to have some questions:
I'm not trying to complicate things, but I want to explore some possible situations.

I'd prefer to keep the number of positions down. Do we really need everyone to have a job?

fe3333au said:

Regarding the password ... let's make it easy to remember and not a bunch of random letters

Click to expand...

I actually find that the passwords we have at MIA actually forced me to remember them and now everytime I go to the save I can remember that password easily.

I'll oput my hand to be the UN Rep for this team.

gbno1fan said:

I like General_W's idea. It provides for more involvement all around, creates a very organized system for decision making, and allows for specialization.

Click to expand...

Peter Grimes said:

As I don't know all the in's and out's of cIV, I can't speak to the minutiae of your plan. But in broad strokes, your plan excels for its Flexibility combined with Specialization.

Click to expand...

Thank you! Thanks what I was aiming for!

Gbno1fan said:

If we end up having a ton of people (which we probably won't), we could even have governors for each city who are in charge of the citizen specialists (or is that only a civ3 thing?), and have Generals in charge of armies/fleets (if the Secretary of the Army plans the attack, the generals are in charge of executing it).

Click to expand...

Having individual governors would be tricky – since running a city already crosses over 3 departments in my proposal. Dividing it up further could be troublesome. Civ4 does have "citizen specialists" so to speak, but they are more varied, have more prerequisites, and are more powerful. For example, you can't make a scientist specialist until you have a science building… like a library… which will support up to 2 scientists. You can't have an engineer specialist until you have a forge. Etc. Specialists not only generate some goods (hammers, gold, culture) for your city (and often better than what you can produce by working a tile) – but they also generate "Great People points" that are a truly wonderful addition to Civ. Hopefully that sorta makes sense. Keep asking if you have more questions!
(The Generals thing could totally work - but you don't seem to end up with armies quite as large in Civ4)

Peter Grimes said:

In this scheme, would the Minister run on a platform of appointments?
Is the Minister required to lay out who he will appoint?
What if he doesn't appoint those he promises to?

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The idea is that the Minister/officer would run a platform of goals and department appointments. But there isn't any requirement that an elected minister follow what he said in the election (like in the Civ3MTDG). The situation may change, people may disappear, lots of things could happen. However – if someone is really ignoring what they said they'd do, then they probably won't be elected again! I also think there should be an impeachment clause in our constitution, if we're unfortunate enough to see things actually come to that.
But I don't worry much about that – our Civ3 mtdg experience leaves me optimistic that we won't have any jerks that will just try to hijack the game out of spite.
Bottom line: The democratic process will keep the ministers accountable, the constitution should empower them to be flexible.

Azzaman333 said:

I'd prefer to keep the number of positions down. Do we really need everyone to have a job?

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We certainly don't need everyone to have a job! And under my proposed system, 4 people could easily run the whole government, if desired. However, based on the Civ3 experience, when we get someone new and excited like gbno1fan, it'd be great to be able to give him a job without trusting the whole domestic or defense department to someone that no-one really knows yet. My proposed model would allow us to include people that want to be involved at whatever level they'd like to be/are able to be involved. People that just want to read and comment are, of course, welcome to do just that also!

Classical Hero said:

I'll put my hand to be the UN Rep for this team.

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That works for me!
Good to see you on the team Classical Hero! (And you too Azzaman333!)

I think we should let Classical_Hero be our official voice at the UN, at least until we establish formal elections. He knows the ropes (from MIA's offices) and he's thoughtful, intelligent, circumspect, and experienced.

So unless there are any strong objections, I think we should have him speak for us. That'll hasten our maturation to a functioning organ.

If people like the basics of what I've proposed above, I'll start working on a new constitution for us to kick around.

Before I put too much work into it, I want to make sure we are agreed on the basics.

Comments?

P.S. And greetings to Lost Civantares! Hopefully you won't be playing Civ4 fulltime here soon! (due to no-longer having time obligations with team TNT)

Thanks General_W:

As no one has really touched on names right now here are some ideas:

-We don't seem to be the team of wildness, so I'll go with the more refined names.

-Team Apollo
-He was the Greek god of wisdom and knew the future, people traveled from all over the known world to hear what he had to say.

-Team Fate
-They were the ones in the greek world who decided who lived and who died, who won and who lost (what could be more usefull? ).

-Team Odin
-He was the main god of the Norse world, all feared him, he was the supreme god.

-Team Hydra
-The all encompassing arms of hydra will trample all! Would make for great taunting when needed .

What do think? Any other ideas?

Hmmm ... naming is the fun element that can shape the flavour of a team ... I see this as a poll.

I favour Fate and Hydra from your selection

Oh and welcome lost_civantares and also MjM who just joined good to see new non-MIA blood

I like Odin and Hydra from the suggestions made by lost civantares

Good start LostCiv - I like Apollo and Hydra.

However, before we get too settled, we may want to get a name that matches our chosen Civ more closely.

But we should definitely keep these names in mind. (esp. if we choose the greeks!)