Civ IV Demogame IV - The Government

[Bowsling]

We have several options on the government we can use to rule our nation for the demogame.

* The standard Dgame with President, a representative body, and a judicial body. Along with multiple cabinet positions and city mayors/governors.
* Fgame, a feudal style government that is taylored around land-ownership and building armies.
* Mgame, Monarchy structure with King or Queen at the top with regional governors that control their cities.
* Social Structure System along the Dgame model but with a more complex Government body.
* A combining of Athens Democracy and the Roman Republic with 2 Presidents and a new twist that one citizen is exiled each term.
* Ogame, an oligarchic council that starts small, ruling as an or with more limited positions and expand as demand and player involvement expands.

Thanks to Lord Civius for making the list.

 

[Lord Civius]

I favor the Monarchy (Mgame) style. It pretty much maintains the Dgame format and adds alot to the RP aspect. The Monarch is basicly Governor of the Capital City and appoints citizens to the various offices of within his/her administration (ie Military, Science, Trade, etc..). City Governors are appointed (either by the Monarch or citizen election) to head the city government (ie build queues, worker allocations, specialists etc...). The Monarch would also appoint a Religious leader once we either found a religion or when religion begins spreading to our cities.

This is a basic layout of an Mgame so feel free to pick it apart or add suggestions to the format. My second choice would be a standard Dgame, although there are a few I'd rather play I just don't think they'll get us the number of participants we need for a good game.

 

[civver_764]

Mgame sounds good.

 

[1889]

Seriously, nobody liked the faction system? I personally would like to give it another try. I know that it got a little political but some people enjoy that aspect of the demo games. It also allows us to have different government structures as the game progresses because each faction can write their own constitution. I also really liked the call for revolution rather than regularly scheduled elections. What did you guys hate most about it maybe we can think up some tweaks.

 

[Lord Civius]

Hey 1889! glad to see you in on the discussion.

The big problem with the faction system was the beginning. When the Triad (3 factions) joined together to defeat the more popular Tribal Council Faction. It caused alot of conflict as the tribal council was made up of alot of the veteran Dgamers. Then the Triad leaders were not very active and most citizens felt left out of the decisions and there was very little organization. This caused participation to drop significantly. However those of us that stuck around were able to get the game organized and it turned out to be a good Dgame though by the end participation was pretty low. There isn't any reason we couldn't take the things that worked and use them in the new Dgame, however I wouldn't recommend we call it the faction system.

 

[civplayah]

I did like the faction system.
But, as Lord Civius said, there are many problems with it.
I also like the Roman-Greek game style.

 

[1889]

Well I guess we don't actually need the factions since my favorite inovation of that system was the call for revolution to change government instead of regularly scheduled elections. Maybe we can call it a parlementary system. Regularly scheduled elections have such low turn out, if they aren't forgotten about entirly, and usually entail an anoying beuracracy anyway. Instead we can let a government structure remain in place indefinatly as long as players are happy with the leadership. Then we can spare ourselves the trouble of elections until disagreements arise and say at least two players call for them. Then people can propose a new system and appoint/elect office holders and such. There will be no factions however, each player simply gets one vote at election time.

 

[Lord Civius]

I would be a big fan of using the call for revolution process instead of the scheduled elections. I think one of the greatest successes of the faction system was keeping the government style in line with the civic we adopt. A Dgame revolution coinciding with the in-game one. So instaed of factions being organized under a gov't civic, citizens would do this individually? I think we could come up with a happy medium. Why not reintroduce political parties. All of my previous Dgames before joining Civfanatics had them and there was never a problem. I'm not sure the circumstances behind them being blacklisted here. I'm sure we could regulate them to avoid whatever problem(s) they created.

 

[Lord Civius]

Seriously, nobody liked the faction system? I personally would like to give it another try. I know that it got a little political but some people enjoy that aspect of the demo games. It also allows us to have different government structures as the game progresses because each faction can write their own constitution. I also really liked the call for revolution rather than regularly scheduled elections. What did you guys hate most about it maybe we can think up some tweaks.
......people can propose a new system and appoint/elect office holders and such. There will be no factions however, each player simply gets one vote at election time

Now, having never done this before, I could be talking out my ass and this could be a terrible idea, but it seems to me an interesting idea would be to structure the player government after the in-game civics that we are using. So early on, we can have a Despotic/Strongman at the helm, delegating nearly absolute authority to city-governors/military-leaders who would control their respective fiefs, (and also allows the game to start with a few players) but as we graduated to more sophistocated civics, set up more participatory roles. Or has this been tried and proven to be disastrous?

I'm beginning to lean towards this game style. Let individual citizens create platforms in line with our gov't civic to run on. Then we could use the call for revolution to institute new governments when civics change or the ruling government loses favor. Since we wouldn't be using factions I guess it would be up to the new leader to choose citizens to govern with him/her. Haven't really thought that part out yet but I'm liking this idea.

 

[Bowsling]

Once we get more people, we can have an official poll on the subject. But all suggestions are still very welcome.

 

[SunTzuWarrior]

I favor the Monarchy (Mgame) style. It pretty much maintains the Dgame format and adds alot to the RP aspect. The Monarch is basicly Governor of the Capital City and appoints citizens to the various offices of within his/her administration (ie Military, Science, Trade, etc..). City Governors are appointed (either by the Monarch or citizen election) to head the city government (ie build queues, worker allocations, specialists etc...). The Monarch would also appoint a Religious leader once we either found a religion or when religion begins spreading to our cities.

This is a basic layout of an Mgame so feel free to pick it apart or add suggestions to the format. My second choice would be a standard Dgame, although there are a few I'd rather play I just don't think they'll get us the number of participants we need for a good game.

I prefer this method you posted.

Also another suggestion; Once we have religion maybe we could adopt a Holy Church structure as well. The first city with religion becomes the Holy City and is the home to the "insert holy leader title." Then each city is appointed a "Bishop" by the Holy leader. The interworkings of the church and state could be discussed to determine how much power is given to the church. Could lead to a possible religious uprising depending on the will of the holy leader. Could also have the Bishops vote every so many turns on a new holy leader, just to keep things fun.

I also like to see a feature where once the empire has a certain number of cities, say 5. There could be a revolution if the majority of Governors support it. I definately would like to see politics involved greatly in the demo game.

 

[NKVD]

I prefer this method you posted.

Also another suggestion; Once we have religion maybe we could adopt a Holy Church structure as well. The first city with religion becomes the Holy City and is the home to the "insert holy leader title." Then each city is appointed a "Bishop" by the Holy leader. The interworkings of the church and state could be discussed to determine how much power is given to the church. Could lead to a possible religious uprising depending on the will of the holy leader. Could also have the Bishops vote every so many turns on a new holy leader, just to keep things fun.

I also like to see a feature where once the empire has a certain number of cities, say 5. There could be a revolution if the majority of Governors support it. I definately would like to see politics involved greatly in the demo game.

why not work this way until free religion civics! i like your idea

 

[civplayah]

 

[SunTzuWarrior]

why not work this way until free religion civics! i like your idea

The holy church might not allow a change to free religion, it would definately be interesting how we could interwork the two sides. The holy church could be given veto power over the monarch when it came to religion civics.