Code of Laws draft headquarters

This is the headquarters for drafting the Code of Laws.

Things which need to be included are:

• Definition of the duties and powers of the offices.
• Naming, if we choose to codify it in the law.
• Term limits if we choose to include them.
• Judicial procedures and/or standards, if we choose to include them.
• Other matters as suggested by citizens in this thread.

The objective for completing this work is December 15th. We can proceed with a Jan 1st start if the Offices part is completed before December 22nd, even without the remaining CoL material. To do so, the people would need to agree to launch the game without completing the other work.

There are two major proposals for dividing up the work into several offices. Discussion on the pros and cons of these two proposals is encouraged, and if you have an idea for another way to set up the offices, speak now or forever hold your peace!

Flexible Government

Triumvirate

Alpha has computer trouble, I think he said his laptop blew up, and hasn't posted his newer version. There are no dramatic changes.

Anyway I vote for the Triumvirate Gov.

-KL

I like the idea of the Flexible government, it would make elected positions more needed and elections much more fierce...

Flexible Government All the way. It makes tight nit friendships among the player more important. This allso makes parties a rea important part of the game. IE Vote for me and i will make you important OR Vote for me and him and him and her together we shal dominate.

I like the Triumvirate government.

I prefer the Triumvirate government,but I would like it explained as to why nominations must be self-nominations.

Up to now a LOT of work has gone into the Triumvirate government, whereas the flexible government is still much more of a concept. I really like both, but as the Triumvirate government is so much more in a state of completion I'm all for the Triumvirate.

I think we need to have political parties included in this constitutional discussion.
There is a broad support base for trying out political parties, and most of the worldsdemocracies do have political parties. Political parties should represent the long term planning needed to develop policies on Civics, Religion, Economic policy, a basic long term defense and foreign affairs policy and finally a long term research policy.

The political party election should be a singular election, where the nominees would be getting a seat in the "upper house". The upper house would carve out the long term policy of the nation. The lower house would be the citizens assembly, and the lower house should ratify or reject a proposal as it sees fit from the upper house. We may agree that the upper house has a fixed number of seats to be distributed between the parties, for example 15 seats.
Then we may need a law to distribute seats according to votes.

I honestly do not believe we have enough people available to use this sort of 'parliamentary' system. From our midst we chose the people to serve in the executive and judiciary branch of government, while the rest of the people form the legislative branch.
Plus, if you'd have a parliament as such I don't think there'd be much left to do for the 'ordinary' people, except perhaps naming cities and units...

Provolution's idea is different, and it is interesting, but it hasn't had enough opportunity for full discussion to implement for the 1st Civ4 DG.

One drawback to this idea is that RL parties often are exclusive membership, at least for the members who are eligible as candidates. The DG parties are much different, there are some individuals who are members of many or even all of the parties and citizen groups. Also there are other citizens who haven't really joined any party. There are independents in RL too, but maybe not as prominent as some independents in the DG are.

It's time to decide which government structure to concentrate on in this game. I have posted a request for final arguments in each of the government proposals. Please make your case to the people.

Flexible Government
Triumvirate 4.0
Traditional Government

1-2 days from now you can expect to see a poll asking which of these proposals you prefer. Once that's decided, we'll need to hurry a bit to get enough in place for elections to start at the normal time, or defer the start until it is ready.

Here is an analysis of government styles. It is my opinion based on what I've read about them, which is open to change as the proposals change or as people convince me otherwise. I would be very interested to hear if this matches others' analysis.

Traditional

Flat government with all officials at basically the same level. Originally based loosely on the Civ3 advisors (president, domestic, trade, military, foreign, culture, science). Few rules regulating how officials collaborate. Challenge is adapting the offices to account for changes between Civ3 and Civ4. All positions are open election right from the start, even the ones which aren't really needed.

Triumvirate

Tiered government with 2 (or 3) layers. The upper layer Triumvirate (President, Secretary of State, Secretary of War) have broad powers and can be impeached. The lower layer Cabinet seems to be subserviant to the Triumvirate and cannot be impeached. Two election cycles per term, one for Tri and one for Cabinet. Many rules on how officials collaborate.

Flexible

Initiallly this started out as a government which would "grow" through the game. It could be a modifier which can operate on either the Traditional or Triumvirate governments. In a pure Flexible government, we would start with a President and Judiciary. The people can create more offices by writing laws, or the President can appoint new officials. No procedural details are provided, those would also grow as we play the game.

Should we set a date for the big vote so people can start their campagining, also i think that if we intend to start this game Jan 1 (or a day near that) we need to get it done fast.

DaveShack said:

TriumvirateTwo election cycles per term, one for Tri and one for Cabinet. Many rules on how officials collaborate.

Click to expand...

I would really like to know where they myth of two election cycles per term comes from.

-the Wolf.

No myth - that was from an earlier version of your ruleset. The one where you had the President choosing from the various nominees.

If that wasn't your intent, you didn't do a good job of explaining it.

-- Ravensfire

ravensfire said:

No myth - that was from an earlier version of your ruleset. The one where you had the President choosing from the various nominees.

If that wasn't your intent, you didn't do a good job of explaining it.

-- Ravensfire

Click to expand...

I have spent the last few minutes looking over the old ones, and in the very first one I do explain it but somehow it got dropped. The out going President was the one that choose from the nominees. That part is no longer in the rule set.

-the Wolf

Correct - but it was. Please, don't accuse people of making things up when the verbage WAS there. Without a changelog, it's impossible to know what has, and has not been changed.

-- Ravensfire

My later post in the government style runoff had a more up to daate comparison of the tri vs other, should have posted that here too.

Anyway, that debate is now over, so time to wake up this thread and polish the tri 5.2 into a complete col. i'm on the kiosk again, can't look at it for 2 more days. Hope Ravensfire will help Alphawolf with the edit work.

See ya all in a couple of days. For now, the Tropicana is beconing.

Judicial procedures and/or standards, if we choose to include them.

Other matters as suggested by citizens in this thread.

Click to expand...

At least concerning the judicial procedures: Have these been discussed?
Did I miss them? I started a thread a while ago but got sort of huffy after it got slowed down and stopped in the process...