DG4 Discussion - Const: Article D

This is the first of the big three Articles dealing with the Branches of Government in the next Constitution. Article D deals with the Executive Branch. Discussing the Executive Branch and any future changes is the purpose of this thread.

Article E is for the Legislative Branch and Article F is for the Judicial Branch. Discussions on these branches can be found in other threads.

Article D from the DG2 Constitution reads as follows:

D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of
the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that
is responsible for one major facet of the country. These departments are Domestic,
Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be
generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization
III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.


One of the main points in this discussion will be the number of Leaders in DG4. So far there have been several proposals about this, ranging from 3 to 6 Leaders. As an example, I've listed FortyJ's proposed changes below:

The Council of Ministers shall be composed of the heads of the three primary departments: Internal Affairs, Trade and Technology, and Foreign Affairs.

FortyJ proposes that the Minister of the Interior (Internal Affairs) would be responsible for all matters related to Dometic and Culture. The Minister of Trade and Technology would of course handle the Trade and Science Departments. The Minister of Foreign Affairs would be responsible for all matters related to the defense of the nation and our rights abroad (Military and Foreign Affairs Departments).

There have been other proposals, such as eliminating the Culture Department or other groupings similar to the one above. Shall we shake the Executive Branch and see what falls out, or should we leave it as it is? And what precisely is the role of the VP? Will there be a VP? Will there be actions taken by the Council of Ministers as a whole?

What do you think?

I like 40J's proposal - anything for a change! I would like a small clarification - control of the slider resides with who?

As an alternative split, I would suggest the following:

Ministry of the Interior:
-- Combine current Domestic and Science roles

Ambassador:
-- Combine Trade and Foreign Affairs

Ministry of Defense:
-- Military

Move culture to a citizen office (has as been suggested elsewhere).

-- Ravensfire

Wow. I'm glad somebody liked at least part of what I proposed.

With respect to your split of duties: I had considered putting Trade with Foreign Affairs, but then decided against it because we will likely get many of our techs from trade (especially at higher difficulty levels). Keeping Science and Trade in separate offices would lead to jurisdictional issues.

Domestic goes nicely with Culture, but if Culture is moved off the council, the Domestic leader shouldn't cry foul - he'll/she'll have enough to do as it is.

Military and FA are a nice grouping, but could just as easily be kept separate if we don't want to reduce the council to 3.

Originally posted by FortyJ
With respect to your split of duties: I had considered putting Trade with Foreign Affairs, but then decided against it because we will likely get many of our techs from trade (especially at higher difficulty levels). Keeping Science and Trade in separate offices would lead to jurisdictional issues.

Domestic goes nicely with Culture, but if Culture is moved off the council, the Domestic leader shouldn't cry foul - he'll/she'll have enough to do as it is.

Military and FA are a nice grouping, but could just as easily be kept separate if we don't want to reduce the council to 3.

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My concept was to keep similar duties together, and try to reduce possible conflict between leaders.

Science will always cause issues. The slider directly impacts it, techs can be traded for, and both of those tasks could potentially be in different hands. Either approach will work well, your reasoning is right on point about the trading for tech.

How about this:

Minister of the Interior: Domestic
Dept. of Defense: Military
State Dept: Foreign Affairs, Trade, Science

Of our current offices, Military and Domestic are by far the most intensive. Science and Trade have become a poll-posting office with minimal though required. FA has some activity, but not at the same level as Dom and Mil - so we merge FA, S and T.

-- Ravensfire

Originally posted by ravensfire


Science and Trade have become a poll-posting office with minimal though required.

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I've never been science leader so I won't comment on that, but from my experience the trade office can become a time consuming nightmare once contact with all other nations has been made and trade routes established if one chooses to do the job thoroughly. This increase of workload would tend to occur at roughly the same time that the FA situation begins to get more complex, so concentrating responsibility for both facets of the game upon one individual would seem to me to be a mistake and I believe that the leadership of such a department would swiftly become a chore to the imcumbent in the game's later stages.

Well, EK, it depends. If we reduce the number of ministers and give each a broad range of responsibilities it could work out well if we allow them to *hire* people to help them. For instance, whoever ends up in charge of science could pick someone to lead science discussions and post polls, etc. He or she could do the same for other areas of his or her responsibility. The Minister would then be responsible for managing his or her ministry and posting the proper instructions. This could work if we're willing to let the ministers hire and fire helpers as they see fit - without official appointments and confirmation polls. I'm just afraid that will our current insistance on *restrictive* rules leaders may not be willing to try this sort of innovative structure.

As for the actual division of authority, I think the military should be seperate. The Fa / trade combo makes sense. How about combining domestic and science? This would make slider control by domestic more sensible and less conflicting.

Why not take the power of the purse away from domestic? Why should our military and FA leaders need permission from the domestic leader to upgrade our forces or made a trade? What about giving the power of the purse to the president or the Senate?

Originally posted by donsig

Why not take the power of the purse away from domestic? Why should our military and FA leaders need permission from the domestic leader to upgrade our forces or made a trade? What about giving the power of the purse to the president or the Senate?

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What? Give the Senate an actual JOB? A real TASK?

That's crazy talk man! Crazy talk!

liking the idea, I am.

-- Ravensfire

Hmm, i like the idea, especially if we go for 5-6 size provinces. If we don't, we'll have a hard time trying to get elected anywhere. In DG3, there was culture where you could be elected with a one post count.

There was the president, the 6 advisors, the 3 judicial and the 5 (DG3 end) legislative. If we go for it, we'll have the president, 3 advisors, unknown judicial and unknown legislative. That's ok, if we can get atleast 3 more governors for a similar country size.

To get to another of the questions raised: Role of the VP

I feel the official role of the VP should be that of any other deputy. Each President may, or may not, expand that role by assigning duties, but that should be up to the President.

-- Ravensfire

Originally posted by Fier Canadien
Hmm, i like the idea, especially if we go for 5-6 size provinces. If we don't, we'll have a hard time trying to get elected anywhere. In DG3, there was culture where you could be elected with a one post count.

There was the president, the 6 advisors, the 3 judicial and the 5 (DG3 end) legislative. If we go for it, we'll have the president, 3 advisors, unknown judicial and unknown legislative. That's ok, if we can get atleast 3 more governors for a similar country size.

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Fier, I plan to strongly campaign for more, smaller provinces for our country. I also would like to see these provinces based more in a wheel pattern around our Palace and FP cities, to ensure that all provinces have some strong producers. Few people would want to govern a province of "fishing villages".

I feel that the smaller province size will encourage more people to get involved as Governors due to the reduced time commitment. I also believe that the provinces will receive better management with the fewer cities for the Governor to look at.

-- Ravensfire

Originally posted by donsig
Well, EK, it depends. If we reduce the number of ministers and give each a broad range of responsibilities it could work out well if we allow them to *hire* people to help them. For instance, whoever ends up in charge of science could pick someone to lead science discussions and post polls, etc. He or she could do the same for other areas of his or her responsibility. The Minister would then be responsible for managing his or her ministry and posting the proper instructions. This could work if we're willing to let the ministers hire and fire helpers as they see fit - without official appointments and confirmation polls. I'm just afraid that will our current insistance on *restrictive* rules leaders may not be willing to try this sort of innovative structure.

As for the actual division of authority, I think the military should be seperate. The Fa / trade combo makes sense. How about combining domestic and science? This would make slider control by domestic more sensible and less conflicting.

Why not take the power of the purse away from domestic? Why should our military and FA leaders need permission from the domestic leader to upgrade our forces or made a trade? What about giving the power of the purse to the president or the Senate?

Click to expand...

Quite contrary to my normal impulses, I like everything said here. I would prefer the Senate having the power rather then the President, however. It just makes more sense.

Originally posted by donsig
Well, EK, it depends. If we reduce the number of ministers and give each a broad range of responsibilities it could work out well if we allow them to *hire* people to help them. For instance, whoever ends up in charge of science could pick someone to lead science discussions and post polls, etc. He or she could do the same for other areas of his or her responsibility. The Minister would then be responsible for managing his or her ministry and posting the proper instructions. This could work if we're willing to let the ministers hire and fire helpers as they see fit - without official appointments and confirmation polls. I'm just afraid that will our current insistance on *restrictive* rules leaders may not be willing to try this sort of innovative structure.

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Many people may not realize this, but we did have this in previous DGs. Mayors. Look through DG3 - are Mayors mentioned anywhere? Nope - but we had them! Several mayors were removed due to lack of participation, several set new standards for city threads (Hi Cyc!). This may be one of the few examples of where the DG3 ruleset was used, and interpreted correctly.

The T4 Judiciary explicity recognized the right of all leaders to delegate duties as they deem fit. The responsibility stays with the leader, that's the only restriction there should be. I tried to get some citizens to help me out on various tasks during my term as President, but didn't have any takers. If people don't use aides in the coming DG, it's probably not because of the "current insistance on restrictive rules", but unwillingness to change, and not knowing they can assign tasks.

I would like to see something in the CoL that explicitly allows an elected official to delegate a task to a citizen of their choice. No confirmation poll, no transfer of responsibility and the leader, or any succeeding leader, may remove the citizen from that role.

-- Ravensfire

Originally posted by donsig
Well, EK, it depends. If we reduce the number of ministers and give each a broad range of responsibilities it could work out well if we allow them to *hire* people to help them. For instance, whoever ends up in charge of science could pick someone to lead science discussions and post polls, etc. He or she could do the same for other areas of his or her responsibility. The Minister would then be responsible for managing his or her ministry and posting the proper instructions. This could work if we're willing to let the ministers hire and fire helpers as they see fit - without official appointments and confirmation polls. I'm just afraid that will our current insistance on *restrictive* rules leaders may not be willing to try this sort of innovative structure.

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The idea of letting leaders delegate is absolutely fine by me, but I'd prefer it if departmental workloads were not so great as to leave their heads no choice but to do so. Some people - myself included - like to exercise a level of control over the way in which their department is run that can only be guaranteed by their doing every last thing themselves. Both approaches should be possible, which will not be the case if the workload is too large.

Originally posted by Eklektikos
Some people - myself included - like to exercise a level of control over the way in which their department is run that can only be guaranteed by their doing every last thing themselves.

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This could be exactly the thing that is driving people away from the DemoGame. The tasks are too large to do if you have only limited time and the main players are reluctant to let go of control of their domains. There is no delegation of duties, there is only limited democracy through polls that are stacked in the favor of the poll creators... That may not be the way it is with the PI structures you guys are always arguing about, but it appears that was to the casual DG citizen.

Originally posted by donsig
If we reduce the number of ministers and give each a broad range of responsibilities it could work out well if we allow them to *hire* people to help them.

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I was also struck by the similarity of this relationship to Govenor/Mayors. I was happy to be mayor of a 'fishing village' because it meant that my limited time was put to good use on a semi-frequent basis.
If the main players were to delegate some of the tedious tasks and not have to get approval of the entire nation to do it, it would allow more people to meaningfully participate without a huge time commitment.
If it works for Mayors, why can't it work for other tasks? Heck, some of the CIV newbies might even learn something about the game you love so much.

Originally posted by Cyc
The Minister of Foreign Affairs would be responsible for all matters related to the defense of the nation and our rights abroad (Military and Foreign Affairs Departments).

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I don't think the Military and Foreign Affairs are a good match. A conquest type player is drawn to the Military. He wants Foreign Affairs duties only so he can arrange to go to war with the smallest WW ramifications. Foreign Affairs is concerned with keeping the peace, maintaining trade relations and draws the diplomatic type player.

I like the idea of giving some responsibility to the Senate - the power of the purse. If the Senate actually had duties to fulfill on a regular basis then there might be interest in being the governor of a fishing village province because the governor would be just as powerful as any other in the Senate. And it makes sense to not have one minister retain power over other ministers.

I am still not sure about combining minister positions. I have seen many times in my short tenure work that could have been done that wasn't; what I mean is the position is what you make of it, and many do not make much of it. On the other hand, it makes sense to reduce the number of elected officials when you consider the number of active players in the game. It seemed that while I was here most active players had an official position. It would be nice to have a large number of active citizens that were not elected to a position.

I agree with what donsig said (it seems I keep saying that) about a minister being able to "hire" assistants. As mentioned, a great example of this was the use of mayors. Maybe a section in the CoL or CoS (I have no idea which level that would go in, but that is another discussion) mentioned the ability of ministers to do this would encourage the practice.

Ok, now some nitpicking on wording.

1. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of the game,

Leaving this as written could be interpreted as the President is the only one that can be the designated player. I think the DP position should be seperately defined in a differenct section, and then a chain of command for the DP position be defined in the CoL. And "headed" needs to be fleshed out somewhere too - what does that mean?

2. and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that is responsible for one major facet of the country. These departments are Domestic, Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade.

We are disccussing this....

3. Each of these departments will be generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization
III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.

This is fine as long as we get specific in the CoL, otherwise we need to define their responsibilites here.

After reading along, this seems to be the best approach after all. I haven't done the best job of leading so far, so I am going to follow along for a spell. Some thoughts:

1. Military and FA offices should definitely not be combined. Huge conflict of interest, as it could allow the General to write his own ticket for a war.

2. I have always liked the idea of having the VP hold the deciding vote in the Senate. Of course, the role of the Senate would have to be enhanced greatly for this concept to amount to anything.

3. That said, I like donsig's idea about having the Senate bicker back and forth about the budget. If we go this route, we should make sure that we start the game with 3 senators and add a fourth when we found our fourth province etc.

4. Don't give the Domestic Department too much responsibility--- aka keep the Six Advisors. I guess I will play the hardline traditionalist in maintaining the status quo on this matter.

5. Smaller provinces. More Senators. Better management. Love it.

6. If we have a game that ends up more structured around Senators, I could see allowing the drop in Cabinet positions. We would have to consider 3-4 city provinces(states?) for this to happen.

Yer not alone DZ. I'm also in favor of keeping the 6 Leaders. I'm also in favor of splitting up the responsibilities of the overburdened Leaders to those less occupied Leaders. We could send the Provincial Borders to the Senate, or to Culture. We could also delegate the budget out to the Senate.

Mayors and Governors could handle special tasks asked of them by various Leaders (like naming terrain features, etc.) I think Governors should be eligible for Leader status and can only hold one Leader position at a time. Mayors on the other hand are not Leaders and can become one of the 6 Leaders or a Governor.

Some of us are talking about reducing the number of Leaders and then going to the extra trouble of not only writing laws allowing it, but going out and finding others to help share with the work load. :huh?: Why would we create all this extra work for ourselves? Because it's different? Let's keep the people involved in the elected Leader positions, divy up the work somewhat to make it more equal, and then worry about looking for people with free time to fill in on a work schedule.

Cyc, do you have a proposal that uses all six leaders, divides up the workload somewhat evenly and doesn't have over-lapping spheres of influence?

Originally posted by donsig
Cyc, do you have a proposal that uses all six leaders, divides up the workload somewhat evenly and doesn't have over-lapping spheres of influence?

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Well, donsig...this thread is just to discuss Article D. I would be willing to discuss the different responsibilities of each Leader in a discussion for just that in the CoL book. Those ideas don't go in the Constitution. The ideas listed in the CoL would then spawn the guidelines listed in the CoS. Ibelieve that once we get past the initial acceptance of how many ministers we're going to use, we cab then concentrate on the details appropriate for each supporting book. I can't see spending a lot of time working up a very detailed proposal, like you say and then refine it with discussion until it's suitable and then flush it down the toilet because we decide to go with three Leaders. That's a waste of time.

Generally, I think we can spread the work around and I don't think It would take much time if we worked together as a group once we knew what direction we were going in.

On the other hand, if we say "Let's reduce the number of Leaders and increase their workload, then let them figure it out!", we're just brushing off our responsibilities as citizen of DG4. This is a group effort. We need to make accurate decisions, and we need to make them together. We shouldn't be relying on some 1 to come up with the winning proposal. I don't like the idea of condensing the workload onto 3 people and saying "Good Luck! I hope our experiment works...".

Whoa, Cyc. What's the point of article D? It should be to define the composition and duties of the executive branch in a general way. If we can manage to do that without being so vauge as to be meaningless we can just go ahead and hammer out the specifics in the CoL and be done with it - we won't need to make general laws then specific standards.

Now I don't see how we can decide the number of ministers we want unless we get a pretty good idea of what we want them to do. I've nothing against keeping the six leaders per se, but I do not accept your implication that reducing the number of leaders increases the workload on the remaining leaders. What workload did the culture leader carry? None in DG3. What about the overlapping areas of responsibility? The science leader has to go to the domestic leader to get the science slider changed. He has to go to the trade leader to trade techs. What about the all powerful domestic leader who controls the sliders, the gold and wonders? Should we not take some of the workload off this leader?

Yes, we have to make decisions together but you seem to be advocating no decision at all until we work on the CoL and CoS! If we don't make decisions now we might as well make article D read:

The executive branch will consist of some leaders who will have some responsibilities.

Or we can just trash articles D, E and F and leave it at: The government will consist of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

If we don't want to do that then we must at least come up with some idea how we can keep six leaders, reduce conflicting spheres of influence, distribute the workload evenly and give all six leaders some tanglible duties and responsibilites - or make changes along the lines suggested.