Citizen Pulse : Are you satisfied with the democracy?

[classical_hero]

Well, that hits the nail right on the head. Why isn't info posted in the forums? Because of the reliance on the chat. Rik Meleet also points out something we learned way back in DG1. We're a world-wide community who cannot all be online at the same time. Two very good reasons to get rid of the blasted chat.

What would be the other option instead of Turn Chats?

 

[Black_Hole]

Cyc:
Unfortunately Im not shur what moving all the results of JRs over would do. Last DG we had a clause in 1 of the books that said JRs were treated as law, however we dont have that here. It might just be easier to put all the JRs into their respected places in the constitution.

I already have a few ideas for some small changes to our current ruleset...
We might also want to make the judicial procedures a form of law below the code of laws.

After term 2 I lost interest in the actual civ3 game(hence the reason i moved to the judiciary) because I couldnt figure out what was going on without looking at the save, and yesterday was the first time in about 2 monthes I looked at the same and Fanatica was drastically different from the last time I peared into that save and different from my knowledge

 

[Sir Donald III]

BTW, maybe we should change the focus of the duties of our elected officials. Rather than give them the power of posting game play instructions (which many wrongly construe as the power to make game play decisions) we should make it their duty to post relevant game info. For example, rather than have the Trade Minister tell us what trades we should make he (or she) should post a list of possible trades and let us decide what we want to do...

Who would this "Us" be? A majority of the people, or the Designated Player de jour? And if the former, whose responsibility would it be to take and then interpret the polls necessary to ascertain WOTP.

As for the response of "Doing Away with the TC", perhaps we should. Let the designated DP play at his/her own convienent time without others looking on. The only requirement is a Log of (non-routine) Events and a Save on each Turn.


Or perhaps another solution... Perhaps those of different time zone regiosn should have their own nation and we play a PBEM DG per region via PTW or a mod thereof. (There would be an American Nation, a European Nation, and an Oceanic Nation (Austrailia and East Asia), in addition to 5 AIs.)

Of course, that means 1-2 turns per week. But at least it guarantees that we have some form of discussion over every move we make.

 

[MOTH]

One idea to increase world wide participation would be to separate the Elected office of President from the function of DP. Perhaps we combine the President and Domestic offices so that there is enough meat for the job.

The president sets a schedule of chats based on days (not hours) and we then decide (via discussion and maybe polling) who is the most appropriate person to be DP for each chat. This would allows us to spread the chats to players from various timezones and allow greater participation.

As far as moving forward on for DG6, I think we should start a constitutional convention with straight up or down vtes for each article. We could then keep the solid parts and only have to revise and discuss those parts that need changes. Off hand, then only changes I would see to the existing constitution would be to the description of offices (at least the Governors vs Mayors question if we run a xCC game). We should also embed any potential varient into the Code of Laws just to make it that much more difficult if someone were to try and overide the choice.

We should also start a serious discussion on if we are to play a varient and if so how tight are we following the idea. For example, if we play 5CC, I would like to play it loosely, similiar to how SGOTM4 was structured.

 

[Black_Hole]

Who would this "Us" be? A majority of the people, or the Designated Player de jour? And if the former, whose responsibility would it be to take and then interpret the polls necessary to ascertain WOTP.

As for the response of "Doing Away with the TC", perhaps we should. Let the designated DP play at his/her own convienent time without others looking on. The only requirement is a Log of (non-routine) Events and a Save on each Turn.


Or perhaps another solution... Perhaps those of different time zone regiosn should have their own nation and we play a PBEM DG per region via PTW or a mod thereof. (There would be an American Nation, a European Nation, and an Oceanic Nation (Austrailia and East Asia), in addition to 5 AIs.)

Of course, that means 1-2 turns per week. But at least it guarantees that we have some form of discussion over every move we make.

im pretty shur 'u's means citizen, it wouldnt be a democracy otherwise... however this goes into the issue of democracy(everyone votes on everything) vs republic(people vote on leaders and the leaders decide most of the time)...

 

[Sir Donald III]

Actually, I have one more thing to say.

I think the main reason for me the game is loosing its juice is that I've seen it all and done it all. It was clear what would happen and that the game was won. I consider most after term 3 as "sitting it out".

What if we were to lose the vote or the score? What do you think would happen then?

Would we want to launch a new game immediately, to rectify this loss?

Would this spark interest? Ala the Potential loss of Apollo 13? (What was that quote? "[the crew] going to the moon is not important enough for [the press], but now their not making it is?")

 

[Black_Hole]

One idea to increase world wide participation would be to separate the Elected office of President from the function of DP. Perhaps we combine the President and Domestic offices so that there is enough meat for the job.

The president sets a schedule of chats based on days (not hours) and we then decide (via discussion and maybe polling) who is the most appropriate person to be DP for each chat. This would allows us to spread the chats to players from various timezones and allow greater participation.

As far as moving forward on for DG6, I think we should start a constitutional convention with straight up or down vtes for each article. We could then keep the solid parts and only have to revise and discuss those parts that need changes. Off hand, then only changes I would see to the existing constitution would be to the description of offices (at least the Governors vs Mayors question if we run a xCC game). We should also embed any potential varient into the Code of Laws just to make it that much more difficult if someone were to try and overide the choice.

We should also start a serious discussion on if we are to play a varient and if so how tight are we following the idea. For example, if we play 5CC, I would like to play it loosely, similiar to how SGOTM4 was structured.

isnt a bad idea on the president not always being the dp, he could be more of a cheerleader and someone who is incharge of information

pretty soon I will edit our current constitution to include the JRs this DG, and some ideas I had...

what do you mean loosely on a #CC? I have heard of normal(never more than #cities) and passice(not more than # cities at end of turn)...

 

[Black_Hole]

Actually, I have one more thing to say.



What if we were to lose the vote or the score? What do you think would happen then?

Would we want to launch a new game immediately, to rectify this loss?

Would this spark interest? Ala the Potential loss of Apollo 13? (What was that quote? "[the crew] going to the moon is not important enough for [the press], but now their not making it is?")

people might just laugh at us, as its close to impossible to lose a dg on monarch with no variant

 

[Strider]

I want to see DG6 played with Conquest (I can finally retire my Civ3 CD, the thing is certainly getting old) with a Diety difficulty, this should make it more than interesting enough, and will allow us to concentrate more on the game. I do not, however, want to see any varients of any type. They keep people from the game and causes confusion, something we have plenty of already.

I think seperating the DP and the president would be a good idea, and selecting the DP from the populace would be a good idea also, but I would like to see some "filters" put in place for this also. Maybe the president nominates 3 candidates, and then the citizens choose which one they want as the next DP?

Also, I've been thinking about this for the last 30 seconds, so expect some bumps, but if we do end up doing the above, lets keep domestic and president seperate. It would be more interesting if we limit the democracy in this game some. Allow the president to organize committee's on certain forum based issues (poll formats, re-writing laws, etc.) who then make the main decisions (public of course) on what to do with that issue. Granted as I said it still has some bumps in it, but if people seem to like the idea, I'm sure we can work those out fast enough.

 

[Black_Hole]

I want to see DG6 played with Conquest (I can finally retire my Civ3 CD, the thing is certainly getting old) with a Diety difficulty, this should make it more than interesting enough, and will allow us to concentrate more on the game. I do not, however, want to see any varients of any type. They keep people from the game and causes confusion, something we have plenty of already.

I think seperating the DP and the president would be a good idea, and selecting the DP from the populace would be a good idea also, but I would like to see some "filters" put in place for this also. Maybe the president nominates 3 candidates, and then the citizens choose which one they want as the next DP?

Also, I've been thinking about this for the last 30 seconds, so expect some bumps, but if we do end up doing the above, lets keep domestic and president seperate. It would be more interesting if we limit the democracy in this game some. Allow the president to organize committee's on certain forum based issues (poll formats, re-writing laws, etc.) who then make the main decisions (public of course) on what to do with that issue. Granted as I said it still has some bumps in it, but if people seem to like the idea, I'm sure we can work those out fast enough.

i think demigod would be better, deity could scare ppl away

P.S: for ppl without conquests the difficulty levels go like this after monarch:
emperor - > demigod -> deity -> sid

 

[DaveShack]

My gut reaction to demigod on first seeing the suggestion was that it's too hard, we should move up one notch at a time. The danger is that we'll get to a point that only the highest level players will know how we should proceed, so they would become dominant. After thinking about it more, the extra danger is actually what we need.

On starting the rules fresh each game, yes we've done that, but we haven't actually changed anything of substance in doing so. Well, in DG4 we experimented with merging offices and having only four advisors instead of six, but that was hardly what I'd call a radical change. In my view, most of the arguments about rules have been about peripheral details like whether deputies are appointed or the 2nd place candidate and what format threads need to be in.

I'm seeing some comments which indicate we need to work a lot on quality in the next game. One way to address that is to have a quality commission like the Polling Standards Commission in DG3 (or was it DG4). We should have objective standards somewhere in the law itself, like information must be updated every play session, specific information which must be made available, polls must have a link to discussion, etc. There should also be subjective standards, not sure if that should be in the law, or exactly what they should be. The quality commission should be empowered to warn leaders about poor quality, invalidate polls, and make recommendations during elections about prospective leaders track record.

It looks like several people are in agreement about making the Designated Player a separate position, or at least exploring that idea. Coupled with that we should do something to give the President some actual power. Something is seriously wrong with the government structure to have so many good leaders set to auto-decline their nominations due to time committments. President is a nomination which should go to our most outstanding, highest quality citizens, and it should be a job they are eager to accept. Not being able to physically play the game, or being on a bad timezone, or not having 5 uninterrupted hours to play should not be reasons to decline the presidency.

 

[Furiey]

Time is the big killer for me this game, add in the lack of in-game information posted by many of the leaders and it is difficult to keep up with what is going on, let alone make an informed decision as to how to vote in many of the polls!

With regard to the President and DP being separate positions - being DP is what I find to be one of the most fun things about being Pres, so rather than separate it off, why not have the President and Vice President elected as a team, that way they could divide up the work between them and spread the load, one running turnchats when the other couldn't, even perhaps across timezones. It would make the nominations/elections more complicated as people would be nominating and electing a team of 2 people rather than 2 separate individuals, but it would also make VP a position worth having, not just what you get if you fail to be Pres.

 

[blackheart]

Perhaps we should start polling on options for the nxt DG near the end of this one, instead of doing it all in one month.

 

[Octavian X]

Here's a random idea - why not get rid of the Presidency? It would free up a person, who is usually a veteran player for a position that actually requires that some work - like one of the Ministries or as a governor.

The save could then be played by the Ministers, who would take turns being the designated player. This way, we can introduce a variety of playing styles and preferences - one minister may prefer a turn chat, another may prefer a closed session. One minister might be European, another American, and another Austrailian.

 

[Provolution]

I would actually go for a trilateral solution, in order to accommodate timezones, so we can maximize DP organization.

 

[donsig]

What would be the other option instead of Turn Chats?

The DP plays turns according to the game play instruction thread and posts a log of events along with the save. A summary of what happened would also be nice.

 

[blackheart]

Why don't we just scrap the idea of a DP and go for a continuous turn play. Like each minister loads up the save when they are ready with their orders and put their orders in. Or... something along the lines of that.

 

[Black_Hole]

it wouldnt be bad to scrap TCs, but we might want to experement first...

 

[zorven]

I don't think the turnchat should be the focus of making improvements. What should be is the narrative and the information updates that derive from the turnchat. We will still be in the same situation whether the DP plays the turn on thier own or the ministers each play their part of the turn. Without good narratives of what happened during the turn and posting informative data on the game situation we will not get greater participation from those that do not have the time to load the current save 2-3 times a week and explore it for 30 minutes to an hour to derive the current state of the democracy.

 

[Furiey]

At the moment the turnchat is the best way of getting information about the game, at least there you can ask a question if it isn't clear what's going on - and that should be one of the things the people at the chat do, witnessing the play, questionning and advising the DP. Getting rid of the turnchats will remove one of the social aspects of the game (which I would miss), which I do not think would be good, the problem therefore is how to stop the people there giving orders to the DP rather than just advice. Perhaps in that we all need to be stricter in our interpretation of the rules regarding instructions - the TCIT is the ONLY place for legal instructions, that does not mean you can change them or add to them in the chat. If those of us who believe the forum is the place for instructions don't stand up and do that; say in the the chat if something's against the instructions (I know sometimes it's too quick and is already done), and be prepared if necessary to raise a CC, not just against the DP, but the chat attendee giving the instructions, then the citizens who believe that is OK will continue to do so. Ammendments will continue to be put forward allowing instructions to be given/changed in the chat, until they are polled at a time when there are fewer forum players present and they are passed.

I'm not without blame here, but at one point when my participation time was extremely limited and the only time I could spend was at the chats (only way to find out what's going on) I actually thought the law must have changed to allow changed instructions in the chat, as my initial comments of that's not in the instructions were ignored by all present so I stopped saying it. It became common to give instructions in the TCIT with words to the effect of "I'll tell you what to do in the chat". It took me a few weeks to find out that was not the case.

But please, even with all the problems, do not do away with the chat.

More in game information and better game summaries - yes please! (and I do know how long it can take!)

NB: This was meant to be in support of zorven's post above saying don't try and solve it all with the chat, better information posted in the forum is more of the answer:
Problem; not enough information in the forum to play the game.
Answer; do away with the chat? - No! - post better game information!