Another Proposal

General

• This proposal is a mix of traditional ideas with a new way for leaders to lead.
• It would work with either Civ3 of Civ4.
• The basic principle is to make elections more fought over and to give leaders more power.

Branches

• Executive - Made of three elected leaders and their "deputies".
• Legislative - The citizenry as a whole.
• Judicial - Setup the same way it currently is.
• Turn Players - Same way it is currently run.

Note: The Judicial and Turn Players branches could be setup differently than they currently are as they have little impact on this proposal.

Executive Branch
The executive branch is made up of three elected leaders:

• President
• Domestic Minister
• Foreign Minister

The domestic minister is in charge of all things domestic, for example: city placement, civic choices (if we play civ4), worker strategy, and build orders.
The foreign minister is in charge of trading and military excursions.

Appointed Leaders
These two ministers may appoint leaders to assist them in a certain area (these people could be called deputies, but aren't exactly the same). For example, the foreign minister may appoint a General to be in charge of troop movements or the domestic minister could appoint a leader in charge of research or a governor in charge of certain cities' builds. The power of these "deputies" or appointed leaders will largely be up to their bosses. Some bosses may be hands off and give complete control of say 5 cities to their appointee. Some leaders may give their deputy general guidelines (for example: the domestic leader may tell the research leader to focus on economical technologies).

Legislative Branch
"Where does this leave the citizens?" you may ask. Well the citizens would have less control. However the legislature may create laws to direct the elected and appointed leaders. For example: the citizens may pass a law requiring at least 2 military units stationed in each city. Laws would be a slightly lengthier process than currently, which stops the citizens from meddling in small matters and keeps them to larger matters or more role play type situations.

The President
Now we come to the president. The president's largest power is the veto pen. (I'm not sure where I came up with this idea ) He may veto legislation made by the legislative branch. Of course the legislature may override a presidental veto with a certain percent. (I'm between 2/3 and 60%). The president is also responsible for coordinating efforts between the foreign and domestic departments and likely some other things I haven't thought about.

Judiciary
The judicial branch would have two major responsibilities, which are nearly identical to the current setup. They would be able to declare laws unconstitutional. They would also be able to declare executive leaders in contempt of the legislature (Basically when somebody in the executive branch violates a law). The legislature would be able to impeach or remove leaders from office. For example if the Judiciary rules a member of the executive branch violated the law the legislature would be able to vote to impeach the official.

Conclusion
Obviously this idea is very rough and many things are unaccounted for, but I think it gives my general idea. I believe this proposal would give leaders more power by creating a law making process that is a bit lengthy and has the threat of veto. It also makes elections much more important because there are only three elected leaders (not including the judicial branch). It also would account for fluctuations (usually negative) in the amount of active citizens. If fewer citizens are active then the domestic minister will have to give himself more responsibilities than if there are numerous active citizens.

Are you planning on considering the presented ideas on CIVIC centric elections and powers based on chosen civics, for historicity reasons?

Several of us wants something brand new, and being too close to traditional demogame is not what we seek (CIV4 BTS crowd that wants something radically new that fits the game better, with roleplay integration).

Provolution said:

Are you planning on considering the presented ideas on CIVIC centric elections and powers based on chosen civics, for historicity reasons?

Several of us wants something brand new, and being too close to traditional demogame is not what we seek (CIV4 BTS crowd that wants something radically new that fits the game better, with roleplay integration).

Click to expand...

I'm not sure which way you mean this. I was not considering civic centric elections for use in this proposal, however that does not mean I am not considering your proposal as a separate proposal. I'm merely presenting a different idea that is somewhat more traditional (yet I think with some nice changes) to see how much interest it attracts.

I also don't think we should merely put all of our efforts in a single proposal as I would like a bit of variety so that we can later choose from different proposals when they are polished. (Similar to not having monopolies in an economy)

Good sport, and a fair attempt to revive the demogame.

Personally, what is needed for me is not just another demogame with a "traditional" structure. I, and several others, want something with more soul, with some historicity to it, and not necessarily a modern constitution that remains the same throughout the entire game, from 4000 BC till 2000 AD.

I proposed a CIVIC-centric system in order to break the pattern somewhat, and to differentiate the long term strategy election from the operational running of offices, by making it into two component elections. I thought also making civics the cornerstone to the system would help add more immersion for some of us. I am not much to keen on observing yet another game of terms lasting 1 month each, an abundance of positions for election no one cares to fill, the too much used term "President", which we have seen around for years now, even 4000 BC and finally having cabinet members elected separately, not like a faction - I am, and maybe some others, through with that. We are also through with reusing the Civ3 demogame template for CIV4 BTS, the game is simply too great and complex to justify a traditional demogame structure. Also, we would like some profound changes in particular to the Judiciary, to make it reflect political realities throughout the ages.

I am sorry for being negative here, but like Donsig and a few others we look for something radically new, that fits CIV4 BTS in particular.

Please - let's keep discussion of this type out of the proposal threads. Provo - I don't think you'd appreciate it in yours.

-- Ravensfire

ravensfire said:

Please - let's keep discussion of this type out of the proposal threads. Provo - I don't think you'd appreciate it in yours.

-- Ravensfire

Click to expand...

Sorry, I will not do it again. However, there have been several traditionalist commentaries there, on the other hand. I just hoped we could bring some compromise about at a later stage.

It's an interesting proposal, however I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about it from a traditional game. I'd say it would be wise to incorporate elements of this proposal into a newer game structure, but I wouldn't vote for it as a stand alone.

I really like the idea of a small number of elected officials who then appoint others to oversee certain tasks. I think that does a lot for our ability to keep the number of officials appropriate as the DG population rises and falls.

What I liked with this idea, is the concept of having less candidates for election, and some appointments that followed behind an elected candidate. This would make for more competitive elections. However, a separation of powers modern parliamentary style throughout all eras does not bode well for the roleplayers among us.

However, I would still like to see some way to handle historical development in terms of government structure (semi-realist)

I also like the small number of elected officals and the proposed veto from the president. But like Grant and Provo, although it is a major improvement on the last ruleset, it doesn't quite do it for me, it has something missing that defines it from being different to other games.

What we could do is do, is mix this idea with a cut down verison of Provo idea, ie in the despot government the ruler and the two minister + the chief Justice would be elected and other positions appointed by whoever area they are in charge in, ie public defender appointed by chief justice.

For monarchy the same but using Chieftess' idea from another thread, change leaders after each turnchat so the minsters would have a turn at being leader and another job.

For representation all judges elected and the ruler and ministers elected.

For Police State all positions appointed by leader (let's be honest, we will never use Police State, because if we need the +25% bonus to produce miltary then we haven't planned well enough and if we need the -50% war awareness bonus then we are at a stalemate in a war with no obivious way to win.)

US All positions elected and appointments made by minister need to be approve by citizens in a poll

This keeps it relatively simple to do but adds a bit of change when new civics are added.

Another plus is that this would only mean one civic column would affect leadership type and easy to follow. And instead of waiting until the end of the term to change civics we could implement some of it mid term, ie start rotating ministers once monarchy was our government civic. The election part of the civics wouldn't be implemented until the next elections, which would be at the end of the month as last time.

Plus if we choose to do civ 3, we could still use this system.

I can go for Joe's proposal. Better than boring traditional.

grant2004 said:

It's an interesting proposal, however I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about it from a traditional game. I'd say it would be wise to incorporate elements of this proposal into a newer game structure, but I wouldn't vote for it as a stand alone.

I really like the idea of a small number of elected officials who then appoint others to oversee certain tasks. I think that does a lot for our ability to keep the number of officials appropriate as the DG population rises and falls.

Click to expand...

You hit the nail on the head. I didn't design it to be fundamentally different than a traditional demogame. My goal in designing it was to have elections much more contested and to give elected officials much more power instead of them just being pollers. I understand many may not want this idea because it isn't drastically different, but I made this more for the traditional crowd.

Joe Harker said:

For Police State all positions appointed by leader (let's be honest, we will never use Police State, because if we need the +25% bonus to produce miltary then we haven't planned well enough and if we need the -50% war awareness bonus then we are at a stalemate in a war with no obivious way to win.)

Click to expand...

This is the type of thinking we need to do away with, no offense . We shouldn't choose a civic because of its in game properties, but we should choose a civic based on role playing values (many may want freedom and others may want more government intervention to protect the people) and then we continue roleplaying based on the consequences of our decisions in the game.

Black_Hole said:

This is the type of thinking we need to do away with, no offense . We shouldn't choose a civic because of its in game properties, but we should choose a civic based on role playing values (many may want freedom and others may want more government intervention to protect the people) and then we continue roleplaying based on the consequences of our decisions in the game.

Click to expand...

I think we can make the players to represent various character types, to add depth to the roleplay, metagame and in-game integration.

What if each player nominated each term, prior to the election, their core attributes, which would make the total game experience a bit more interesting than the average succession game.

I can see we have the following eight classes:

Nobility
Military
Clergy
Administrators
Intelligentsia
Corporatista
Middle Class
Working Class

These classes would be located in various cities and provinces and represent clans, dynasties and factions (handled by individual players).

So, each player would have a class allegiance, a home city, a home province, a religion (taken from in-game religions present in the realm) and finally one out of eight sources of income (Political, Finance, Construction, Art, Science, farming, mining and fisheries).

So, in the player registry, a player could choose:

Class
Home City
Home Region
Religion (In-game)
Income type


This would not be more complex than the player registry, where we scrap aspiring and so on, and replace these with these 5 attributes.
These 5 attributes would serve as a simple basis for sub-games.

This is the type of thinking we need to do away with, no offense . We shouldn't choose a civic because of its in game properties, but we should choose a civic based on role playing values (many may want freedom and others may want more government intervention to protect the people) and then we continue roleplaying based on the consequences of our decisions in the game.

Click to expand...

Agreed, just didn't wan't people to complain about the extreme power the ruler gets in this situation

Please check out my newest thread, which incorporates traditional, and simplifies the civics-centric aspects to a simple minimum.

In this structure, we also see mid term elections defined by the Civic Primaries, where the three positions are National Leader, Warlord/General and finally High Priest, each of these three leaders responsible for observing 2 victory conditions each. Appointments and such are handled during mid-terms, giving the key leaders 2 weeks to consolidate, as well as providing some overlap and continuity. I also follow a similar turnchat set-up as well as 1 month term, but with a civic twist.