Flexible over-/undercouncil votes

1. From the mod "The history of three kingdoms" (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=304872) I got the idea of a flexible voting system for the over-/undercouncil:
When a player votes Yes to a proposal which got passed, his voting power will increase by 10%, and when a player votes No to the same proposal, his voting power will decrease by 10%. And Vice Versa. If a player defies a resolution, his voting power will decrease by 20%. If a player abstains, his voting power will stay the same. The voting power change limit in this way is -100% to 100%.
The total votes of a player are calculated by his population. E.g. 10 votes for every population point.

2. In addition, I thought about an approval from the members of a council, if someone new wants to join. That would mean, if you want to join a council, the already existing members need to agree (maybe 50% of them)

I find this a good solution, to bring some exitement to the voting system...
What would you say?

I agree that these work for the Undercouncil, but not the over council. The Overcouncil is more focused on unification between nations, as opposed to letting backstabbing and powerplaying within the system.

IMO the overcouncil is like a kind of European Union (or maybe UN), and the votes in the parliament are weighted differently (partially according to population).Where do you see the danger of backstabbing there.
I think it just makes the votes more interesting. If everybody has only 1 vote (except Kurio and the one hero - who was it?) it's nearly impossible to re-change allready accepted decisions as the proscription of death mana for example.

With the flexible votes you'd have the possibility to get more power in the council by
growing your population...

And when you look at the discussion about the possible EU-membership of Turkey over the last years, I think point 2. is quite realistic, because there is a majority needed to accommodate a new member.

The civ is the Malakim and the units are Chalid and Teutorix

#1: Council voting is already pretty dull as it is. The strongest member dominates, and even if all the others oppose the strongest member gets what it wants. Your suggestion would make that situation even worse. The strongest member would quickly increase to the max voting bonus, and the other members would weaken if they dared to even disagree. If changes were going to be made to the voting system, I'd prefer to see changes that lessened the iron hold one member can get over a council.

#2: I don't have a problem with this idea, and it might be interesting. I would suggest that there should be a minimum membership, based on map size, and only once that minimum is filled would there be votes on membership of any additional applicants. That way the first member doesn't just refuse to let anyone else in, for example...

Emptiness said:

The strongest member would quickly increase to the max voting bonus, and the other members would weaken if they dared to even disagree.

Click to expand...

Ok, thats a good point! So it has to be thought about the changing votes after voting "correctly" yes or no.
But the maximum votes dependent on population could help to win more influence by growing your cities or even better - you could attack the strongest council member and in that way reduce his votes...

bread smith said:

Ok, thats a good point! So it has to be thought about the changing votes after voting "correctly" yes or no.
But the maximum votes dependent on population could help to win more influence by growing your cities or even better - you could attack the strongest council member and in that way reduce his votes...

Click to expand...

And thats where I see it. Overcouncil makes all members +6 "Council Member" diplobonus. You're not supposed to attack your buddies, which means ouve got to be even more underhanded than you should be. The bigger members dominate, forcing the smaller mebers to be forced into situations by the council.

Yeah! I like the voting system from History of Three Kingdoms (cool mod too btw for your RTK fans). I played through a game where I managed to increase my votes by other 50% by voting shrewdly!

So how about this?

1. Votes are calculated according to population. Maybe 10 per population point, with a small factor for good and evil civs (good has a bonus in the overcouncil, evil in the undercouncil). Also the council leader gets a bonus.

1a. If a player defies a proposal, he gets a penalty of 25% until the next decision, he votes with the majority again.

2. When a council has at least 3 members, new joiners need an approval by the existing members (50% of them have to agree)

3. A new proposal could be added: "Exclude xy from the council" - 75% need to agree

Makes sense. You might want to give a bonus if Council head as well.

Korias said:

Makes sense. You might want to give a bonus if Council head as well.

Click to expand...

Right, I changed the last post with that. Now we only need someone, who is able to implement it. I hope the modders (esp. Kael) read - and like - it!

2. When a council has at least 3 members, new joiners need an approval by the existing members (50% of them have to agree)

3. A new proposal could be added: "Exclude xy from the council" - 75% need to agree

Click to expand...

The AI would vote according to relationships (more likely to vote for friends), according to religion (religious buddies ftw) and maybe according to estimated "power" of the new civ: if they have more voting power, they would receive a malus; but this could be easily overridden by the previous bonuses. For excluding someone, it could be good to also consider the "voting modifier" instead of solely the "voting power"; ie. if two civs have 100 "voting power" but as, respectively, 0% "voting modifier" and -25% "voting modifier", the second would get a malus because that would mean that they're constantly going against the council.

I like the idea

One thing that bugs me is that I cannot apparently buy influence for the various votes either. Would be cool if that was a diplomacy option.

Like in SMAC? It cost horribly to lift atrocity prohibitions but it was worth it.

Cool ideas. I would definitely like to see a more detailed voting system in place. Older games certainly spoiled me in that regard. But first, I'd like to see more things to vote on. The current list for both is rather bland. The ones that give a bonus are nice, but why would anyone ever vote no? The ones that ban "evil" mana are an annoyance when the AI controls the council. At the very least, some benefit should come from banning them like happiness or a drop in the AC. I do like the option of getting people to vote on a war, but you don't always get a council session when you need one. Being able to call for votes on minor issues at any time would be nice. Perhaps a tiered system would be best. The head of a council can propose the big stuff like banning mana or adopting a civic while the minor stuff can be proposed by anyone. For instance, the Bannor AI might propose a universal declaration of war against the evil nation they are attacking. Other AI's would vote based on how much they like the Civ in question and the relative powers of those concerned. Diplomatic buffs/debuffs would certainly be appropriate based on whether or not you voted with or against them regardless of the vote's final outcome.
Other things that might call for a minor vote include the aforementioned trade embargoes, voting a member off the council, banning certain religions, asking for tech to be shared, asking for some monetary assistance, and many more.
Naturally, to avoid too much spam, there should be a delay of 5-10 turns between being able to propose something.

Just like alpha Centauri. Everbody could call in a council every 20 years and the leader every 10 years. To avoid spamming one topic there was also a delay of 20 turns before the same topic could get voted on again (even by other players).
That worked really well.

Very good, so this would be the suggestions for an updated voting system:


1. Votes are calculated according to population. Maybe 10 per population point, with a small factor for good and evil civs (good has a bonus in the overcouncil, evil in the undercouncil). Also the council leader gets a bonus.
1a. If a player defies a proposal, he gets a penalty of 25% until the next decision, he votes with the majority again.

2. When a council has at least 3 members, new joiners need an approval by the existing members (50% of them have to agree)
2a. Every council member can call in a council every 20 turns. The council leader every 10. There is a delay of 5 turns after a decision, before a new proposal could be called in, and a delay of 20 turns before the same proposal could get voted on again (even by other players). Only the election of the council leader will be fix - eg. every 100 turns.

3. A new proposal could be added: "Exclude xy from the council" (75% have to agree)

4. On a diplomatic way (trade screen), it should be possible asking your opponents to vote for you at the next proposal - or to vote for you next time the council leader is elected.

5. There should be thought about some deeper impact of the passed decisions on the players. E.g. if death-mana is banned, every council member, that voted yes should get a little happyness bonus...

Isn't part of the point of the Overcouncil that the little guy gets just as much say as the bigger members? And that's why votes are specifically not counted by population.

And thats one of the things, I would like to see changed! The present voting system is kind of boring, IMO. And it's too much dominated by the council leader, who can propose - and gets passed - what ever he wants.

Keeper_GFA said:

Isn't part of the point of the Overcouncil that the little guy gets just as much say as the bigger members? And that's why votes are specifically not counted by population.

Click to expand...

Technically it's the Empyrean that gives equal voice to small and large empires, but it's so closely tied with the Overcouncil that I would be very surprised if the Overcouncil let large empires have more to say than small ones.