Discussion: Domestic Office

Should we have a domestic offical? what should their power/job be?

I think they should be in charge of coordinating the elders, we will now have four next term. Also for the moment being in charge of the spread of religion and also to just to look at the big picture of our empire and ensure it stays running smoothly instead of focusing on individual cities. which the elders will do anyway.

Each city has independent offices as we speak and it seems to be working fine. I say no as a result.

I see it as the chieftan's job to coordinate between the cities, or at least that seems to have been the way chief tan's have played it so far

First off all, we MUST limit the number of Elders. That's imperative, I think, lest we tie up too many citizens in those jobs. A Domestic adviser would be responsible for coordinating the Elders, assigning which cities each of the elders controls, etc. The Domestic adviser could even preside over a domestic council consisting of himself, the elders, the Chieftain, and maybe a few other citizens to make policy recommendations to the legislature.

Octavian X said:

First off all, we MUST limit the number of Elders. That's imperative, I think, lest we tie up too many citizens in those jobs. A Domestic adviser would be responsible for coordinating the Elders, assigning which cities each of the elders controls, etc. The Domestic adviser could even preside over a domestic council consisting of himself, the elders, the Chieftain, and maybe a few other citizens to make policy recommendations to the legislature.

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I don't think it's a question of tying up too many citizens. Recent numbers suggest we may be nearing the limit of citizens who wish to be elected to an office. What we are likely to see in the not too distant future is either one person serving as Elder in multiple cities or a city where no one ran for the office. I'm not sure about the legal status of either of these. Probably the simplest solution is to expand the scope of an Elder to cover multiple cities (a district? province?). If these provinces expanded so that there were always 4 to 6 Elders, they could discuss matters that crossed their borders and share resources as needed. I'm not sure I see the value of adding another job when we have trouble finding unique people for the jobs we already have.

I would agree with giving Elders more cities.

so keep a max number of elders, say 5?

A domestic official would help the game.

And do not say current system is working fine: DP to play well needs to play
against the rules (or did you find any instructions from Elders saying to get
negative food income in NotA or EA?).

Best regards,

fed1943 said:

And do not say current system is working fine: DP to play well needs to play
against the rules (or did you find any instructions from Elders saying to get
negative food income in NotA or EA?).

Click to expand...

There were no orders in this area, giving the DP full control to act as he saw fit. This is the best solution to most micromanagement problems.

When I proposed our current Government, I explicitly mentioned the need to eventually shift from one Elder per city to multiple cities per Elder. I think we're just about at the limit, with 4 Elders.

Accordinginly, I propose the following amendment to the Tribal Government Act of 4000 BC

This Amendment will replace the 4th paragraph in the TGA (the paragraph that establishes the Elder office). It will also add a clarification to the duties of the Chieftain.

Each city will belong to a Aimag (name for provinces in modern day Mongolia, and is derived from the Mongol and Turkic word for Tribe) which is run by a Governor (title used in modern day Mongolia). The governor will have control of all cities within their Aimag. Workers will be allocated to each Aimag by the Chieftain, to perform tasks as outlined by the Governor. The Chieftain may only issue worker instructions for National projects.

Aimags will contain cities that are generaly close in geographical nature. Governors will decide amongst each other which Aimag control all new and/or captured cities. Governors may also reallocate cities if all Governors affected accept the reallocation. New Aimags will be created by Initiative.

Upon adoption of this initiative, all current Elders will become the Governor of an Aimag, containing the city of which they were the Elder.

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It's certainly not a full-blown proposal, but that's more formatting and language. It gives us a lot of flexibility, it's fast and keeps some of the flavor of our nation. It also clears up the worker stuff by mostly following how we do it now. Governors get a bit more control over the workers. We did this in C3DG7 and it worked extremely well.

-- Ravensfire

I mostly like it...

I imagine it would help to clarify a National Project is. Anything the Chieftain wants it to be? Something more specific? Any orders outside culture zone of any governor?

"Upon adoption of this initiative, all current Elders will become the Governor of an Aimag, containing the city of which they were the Elder."

"Upon adoption of this initiative, all current Elders will become the Governor of an Aimag, containing the city of which they were the Elder."

Wouldn't it be better to have just 2 Aimags to start? An Aimag containing only the capital has little room to grow and still remain geographically close, so we might start having issues right away. If a current elder wouldn't volunteer to give up his job, we could wait until the end of the term. Or have a quick poll between elders being merged. Or simply name one Elder Deputy Governor or something.

This also leads to the first real use, IMO, for naming cities. If we have cities assigned to Aimags, it might be useful to rename the cities so that Western Aimag might contain West Haven, Western Gold and West Podunk. This might help people keep things straight. I'd let the governor do this as desired.

I like ravensfire's idea of forming our cities into Aimags and replacing city elders with governors. I also agree with 730195 that we should start with two Aimags (and governors), not four.

If we do this I think we can delay the adoption of a Domestic Office for a bit.

Sounds good, ravensfire. You can count me in for this revolution as it looks like it'll be a quiet, non-hostile one.

I agree with the Aimag system, but do have some points I would like to have altered:
I don't like removing 2 Elders we are just electing so either start with 4 Aimags or start this system in term 4 (we should be able to cope until then with the Elder system).
I don't agree with letting the governors redistribute their cities. Governors should be elected in light of the cities they control and not just say "we elect 4 Governors and they pick their cities" (I know its not meant that way, but could happen). I don't think distribution of old cities needs to be changed within such a short time that it cannot be voted on so I propose the following wording:

Each Yasutanian city belongs to an Aimag, which is controlled by a Governor. Governors have control over all cities within their Aimag.
Workers are allocated to each Aimag by the Chieftain and are controlled by the governor. The Chieftain may issue worker instructions for projects of national importance if necessary.
Aimags are created and cities are allocated to an Aimag by initiative. If not already specified by initiative, the governors decide amongst each other which Aimag controls a newly acquired city.

Upon adoption of this initiative, all current Elders will become the Governor of an Aimag, containing the city of which they were the Elder.

This allows for
a)Keeping all current Elders in office
b)Allocating new cities quickly (until an initiative decides allocation definitely)
c)Giving the citizens the say over which city belongs to which Aimag.
Also 4 Aimags are a reasonable number for quite some time so why not keep this number and reallocate cities as needed. Governors can also move their household to an alltogether new province if the people wishes

ori said:

..saving space, follow the link ...

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Some thoughts:

- If we wait until term 4 to start this and if all elders automatically become governors of an Aimag containing their city when we start, how many Aimags will that make? How many will be able to expand and still retain geographic coherence?
- Polls to redistribute cities may not be a problem timewise, but they could be so complex as to be unworkable. How many competing options might there be, shifting a few cities this way and a few others that way in pursuit of one goal or another? Personally, I'm not much interested in voting on the distribution - that strikes me as an issue of efficiency for the governors to work out. I would rather be voting on things that bear more directly on winning the game, like wars, religions, technologies, etc. I also have no idea why I would vote for someone to be governor of one Aimag/city but not another Aimag/city. Seems too micro to worry about.
- As to firing newly elected Elders, I don't see this as much of an issue. The current elders would probably get to play one or two turns before this could be enacted. Then they could have a shot at being governor for the remainder of the term. Then they could run for the first full term. It's not like they are being banned from the game completely.

730195 said:

Some thoughts:

- If we wait until term 4 to start this and if all elders automatically become governors of an Aimag containing their city when we start, how many Aimags will that make? How many will be able to expand and still retain geographic coherence?

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I worded this as if we start now - so its 4. Also I did not want to argue about geographic coherence: But I don't care. In my opinion it would just be fine to give the provinces to some Aipags and combine the Capital with any "outlying" cities (read: colonies )...

730195 said:

- Polls to redistribute cities may not be a problem timewise, but they could be so complex as to be unworkable. How many competing options might there be, shifting a few cities this way and a few others that way in pursuit of one goal or another? Personally, I'm not much interested in voting on the distribution - that strikes me as an issue of efficiency for the governors to work out. I would rather be voting on things that bear more directly on winning the game, like wars, religions, technologies, etc. I also have no idea why I would vote for someone to be governor of one Aimag/city but not another Aimag/city. Seems too micro to worry about.

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That is a point we disagree on, but both are valid - I like micromanaging sometimes

[Edit]: I'd be fine with whatever though, if I don't like some sort of decision I can always start an initiative - But this makes me think: how about something like in the Appointment rules: Governors will decide amongst each other which Aimag control all new and/or captured cities. Governors may also reallocate cities if all Governors affected accept the reallocation. Any city allocation made by the governors may be challenged by a confirmation poll. Any citizen may create such a poll. This poll must be created within 48 hours of the city allocation, and must ask "Do you approve of <description of allocation>", contain only Yes, No and Abstain options, be marked private, single-choice and expire in 2 days. When the poll closes, if the majority of citizens, not including abstain, voted No, the allocation is overturned. Any other result confirms the allocation.
New Aimags will be created by Initiative.
This is awkwardly phrased, but you get the idea...[/Edit ]

Also if you look at the Polls there are questions asked as to what the elder plans to do with his/her city - if you don't know which cities are ultimately controlled by this person such things would be futile...

730195 said:

- As to firing newly elected Elders, I don't see this as much of an issue. The current elders would probably get to play one or two turns before this could be enacted. Then they could have a shot at being governor for the remainder of the term. Then they could run for the first full term. It's not like they are being banned from the game completely.

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You are right that it would not be a big deal, but I'd still rather redefine them as 4 Governors and change their provinces when time comes. E.g. There is talk about war with France, this would (if successful) probably lead to the acquisition of one or two cities - that would then allow to move one Governor to the freed lands and give his old city to some other province...

As it looks to me the Aimag system might be better off with three Aimags rather than four, an eastern, a western and a central Aimag.

I've prepared a map of my proposal. Thank you to the cartography office I borrowed your map and it made this job much easier.


The map is a bit old so it doesnt show Riversight or Coppertown, Riversight is in the central Aimag, and Coppertown is in the western Aimag.

IMHO, the Aimag system is better than the one city/one Elder one.

And if you do not like Domestic Officer why not a Domestic Department

composed by all Governors?

Each Governor shall work his cities and all together will plan cities

specialization and cooperation.

Best regards,

I would favour a combination of the Aimag system and a Domestic Department. That Department should become the central place for Governors, the Chieftain and other people who are responsible for our citizens + cities to post.

For now, I don't think we need a Domestic department - we're pulling more duties from the Chieftain (Warlord and Seer), so have them work with the Governors to organize. Good governors will work together on specialization anyway. If they create a specific thread for cross-Aimag issues and discussions - even better! Let's keep this proposal straightforward and simple, and not require such things.

On the number of Aimags - we've got two ways to do it. We can have the Aimags start at the beginning of Term 4, with 2 or 3, and organize the cities at that time. Or, we start the Aimags immediately, with 4. We're almost certainly going to have 4 eventually, so I'd prefer to start out with that.

I would also prefer to keep the organization of the Aimags to the Governors, at least in the amendment. Remember, fellow citizens, that we can always use an initiative to force leaders to do something. So if people don't like where a city is assigned to by the Governors, they can pass an initiative and that city will be reassigned. We don't need to restate that.

So, how's this for a full proposal:

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Aimag Amendment to the Tribal Government Act of 4000 BC

Purpose:
As our Nation continues to grow and develop, we need to better organize and plan the guidance and care of our cities. Accordingly, with this Amendment we eliminate the position of Elder, and create the new position of Governor. Our cities will be organized in to Aimags, each one under the control of a Governor.

Section 1:
The fourth paragraph in the Tribal Government Act of 4000BC is hereby stricken and removed. Specifically, this paragraph created the office Elder, and defined the duties of the Elders.

Section 2:
The following paragraphs are to be placed after the 3rd paragraph.

Each city will belong to a Aimag which is run by a Governor. The governor will have control of all cities within their Aimag. Governors also assign tasks to the Workers allocated to their Aimag.

Aimags will contain cities that are generaly close in geographical nature. Governors will decide amongst each other which Aimag control all new and/or captured/flipped cities. Governors may also reallocate cities if all Governors affected accept the reallocation. Aimags will be created or removed by Initiative, which must identify any affected cities, and what Aimag will control them.

Section 3:
The following sentance is to be added to the paragraph detailing the duties of the Governor.

Workers will be allocated to each Aimag by the Chieftain, to perform tasks as instructed by that Governor. The Chieftain may only issue worker instructions for National projects.

Section 4:
Upon adoption of this act, an Aimag will be created for each city that we currently control, containing only that city. The current Elder of that city will be made the Governor of that Aimag.

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v.0 - Original version

So - how's that look?

-- Ravensfire