Citizen Pulse : Are you satisfied with the democracy?

[Provolution]

I also think that ministers could be given limited moderator privileges in their own ministry threads, so we avoid the pollution and besmudging of the offices by bitter political opponents, so these could be moderated by the minister and keep the information to the issues.
Too many times we see some bloodthirsty political outsiders messing up government offices in outright flamewars which could be handled by PMs, chat or a separate thread.
This would also make the job easier for the moderator.

PS

In singapore there is a 1000 USD fine for pissing inside an elevator, it might be prudent to have a law in that spirit denying the threadjacking of ministry threads.

 

[blackheart]

In singapore there is a 1000 USD fine for pissing inside an elevator, it might be prudent to have a law in that spirit denying the threadjacking of ministry threads.

And Singapore is ruled with an iron first and its younger generation is calling for freedom. We're not in Singapore. Moderators already handle threadjackings.

Flaming is a no-no, but there is a fine line between that and disagreement (which some take as flaming).

 

[Provolution]

Of course you say that, you risk of being deprived of the Sturmabteilung filibusterng techniques to wear down political opponents. At least government ministry threads should be kept as clean as the TCIT thread. I think we indeed need some iron first in the ministry threads, as I feel the integrity of those threads are not maintained.
The citizens are free to post new threads criticizing the government ministers, but not to swamp ministry threads with garble that undermines the leadership.

I guess even the young people in Singapore prefer their society to Haiti, where teenage mobs enter offices at will and plunder them.

 

[Strider]

The thing that makes this game less interesting is the ones who wish to micromanage every little thing, and have every thing looked over by the citizens. We elected our officials for a reason, and then we give them none of our trust?

I have never seen any reason why leaders should not be allowed to give instructions during the chat. This reduces the micromanagement in the game, and allows people to focus more on the aspects of the game that provide more fun. Tell me, who really cares wether or not Domestic rushed a temple for 400g in a city that flipped? Hell, I could maybe understand if we only have 500g, but would it really make a differance if we have 5,000? No, it wouldn't. Heck, I'm sure the same ones who would complain about it would have voted to rush the temple if it was taken to the forums. We seem to have moved backwards farther each demogame. Each time we move closer to getting rid of turnchats, we run into more and more problems, is that not some type of hint to anyone? Do we really not see, that by trying to fix it, we've made it even worst? Almost any of the old players will tell you that the first demogame was the best, but instead of trying to repeat that, we keep trying to seperate ourselves farther and farther from that.

However, I do agree that keeping the same thing over and over again is likely to get boring, and that to keep active partcipation in the game, we have to keep it new. Continuing to push for something that is corrupting and dividing the game, is however, hopeless and futile. Doing this only sows the seeds of hate, and inspires our uglier traits.

I agree fully with setting polling standards etc., and for once lets try to keep these standards for more than one demogame? This demogame is almost over, and we need to start discussing the rules for DG6, I agree with Ravensfire on this, that we should spend as much time as possible getting it right.

I see several differant aspects to begin the new demogame:

1. Do we want to take an existing demogame ruleset and just modify it, or do we want to start from scratch?
2. Standards (Polling Standards, Instruction Standards, Debate Standards, etc.)
3. Responsibility of leaders
4. The Judiciary (I have yet to see a Judiciary handled well sense the times of Peri and Veera)
5. Turnchats (what should be allowed and what shouldn't be... to every little detail)

 

[Provolution]

I hope we can obliterate as many anarco-syndicalist features as possible in the next ruleset. This is not some hippie collective we are emulating.

 

[donsig]

Another note about the turnchats - When the Civ3 Demogame was first conceived, chats were meant for both advisors and citizens to attend, and give advice when something changed during the game.

Sorry, CT, but your memory is incorrect here. When the Civ3 demogame was first conceived there were no chats! They came after DG1 had started. There also was no turn chat instruction thread. That evolved after the chats became established.

Also in DG1 and 2, we had about 20 people per turnchat attend. Pretty impressive numbers compared to now. Turnchats then were held around 4-8pm EDT, which ensured that a lot of poeple would attend. Turnchats were held every 3 1/2 days, and there was more than sufficient discussion in the forums, too. Take a look at the DG1 and 2 archived forums.

Another reason to halt the chats. They tend to be scheduled for the convenience of those in the US (particularly the east). This has the effect of disenfranchising many non-US forum members.

Anyway, playing two turns a day, every day is workable. The pace isn't too slow. That's 60 turns a month. That compares reasonably with having two chats per week and 5 to 10 turns per chat.

Do you think we can't find seven people to be DPs? There's no one out there who can play two turns every Monday? No one who can play two turns every Tuesday? Think of it, there could be a mini-chat every day!

Would ministers ahve to be there every day? Would citizens have to log on to the forums every day? No. You miss a couple days you miss four turns. If you're a minister you're posting general instructions that will allow the DPs to take the game in the direction the citizens want it to go. If you're a citizen then you know that every day you do make it to the forums there's something new to see.

And we could have one thread where each DP summarizes what happened for two turns. Anyone going to that thread would see the history of the game and our country right there.

Is the AI really going to be able to destroy us in two turns? Come on. Part of the problem is that we're all pretty good at playing Civ III. Part of the problem is the Civ III end game get boring. Part of the problem is that as you go up in difficulty level you lose some of the realism needed for the demogame. (At emperor and above it makes little sense to do your own research for instance.) By playing at a constant (slow and steady) pace no matter what the AI does, or our leaders don't do, we will surely make some mistakes and not play a perfect Civ III game. But overcoming those mistakes is what would make the demogame fun.

 

[Black_Hole]

The thing that makes this game less interesting is the ones who wish to micromanage every little thing, and have every thing looked over by the citizens. We elected our officials for a reason, and then we give them none of our trust?

I have never seen any reason why leaders should not be allowed to give instructions during the chat. This reduces the micromanagement in the game, and allows people to focus more on the aspects of the game that provide more fun. Tell me, who really cares wether or not Domestic rushed a temple for 400g in a city that flipped? Hell, I could maybe understand if we only have 500g, but would it really make a differance if we have 5,000? No, it wouldn't. Heck, I'm sure the same ones who would complain about it would have voted to rush the temple if it was taken to the forums. We seem to have moved backwards farther each demogame. Each time we move closer to getting rid of turnchats, we run into more and more problems, is that not some type of hint to anyone? Do we really not see, that by trying to fix it, we've made it even worst? Almost any of the old players will tell you that the first demogame was the best, but instead of trying to repeat that, we keep trying to seperate ourselves farther and farther from that.

However, I do agree that keeping the same thing over and over again is likely to get boring, and that to keep active partcipation in the game, we have to keep it new. Continuing to push for something that is corrupting and dividing the game, is however, hopeless and futile. Doing this only sows the seeds of hate, and inspires our uglier traits.

I agree fully with setting polling standards etc., and for once lets try to keep these standards for more than one demogame? This demogame is almost over, and we need to start discussing the rules for DG6, I agree with Ravensfire on this, that we should spend as much time as possible getting it right.

I see several differant aspects to begin the new demogame:

1. Do we want to take an existing demogame ruleset and just modify it, or do we want to start from scratch?
2. Standards (Polling Standards, Instruction Standards, Debate Standards, etc.)
3. Responsibility of leaders
4. The Judiciary (I have yet to see a Judiciary handled well sense the times of Peri and Veera)
5. Turnchats (what should be allowed and what shouldn't be... to every little detail)

the problem is starting from scratch will get us just as far as we are now, i think major changes to the current one should do

all of these standards limit freedoms of the leaders, but some things standards might be neeeded....

the judiciary worked great this game in my opinion(of course all i have it to compare to is the DG4 judiciary)

 

[MOTH]

That would take longer MOTH than it does now (imagine that!). I think part of the reason people lose interest and aren't as excited is because of the pace, as people have mentioned. That, unfortunately, while it simunlates real life, would take an extremely long time.

I mainly think this is an idea worth exploring. The first 20+ turns (up until our 1st settler is produced) could easily be done in larger chunks as it would be boring to just have to press enter while we wait for a turn.

Donsig has answered this much better than I did just a couple posts up above...

 

[Provolution]

I agree on full turbo in the ancient age. I found it highly futile to discuss to death which tile the settler should go the first turn, intimately analyzing where the warrior should go on and so on. A major technology debate is all there is to term 1, or if we should have 1-2 wonders or not. Frankly, the absence of interesting issues has no bearing. The argument we had for a slow pace last time was for the judicial people to do its work.

 

[blackheart]

I like donsig's idea of a continuous game.

Provo, the ancient age is arguable the most important. It is what determines how strong our nation will be. And please stop using terms no one but you knows, like Sturmabteilung (I know what filibustering is, which is impossible since no one is talking or exclusively has the floor).

Oh, and we can emulate whatever we want, hippy, commie, fascisti, etc.

 

[Provolution]

Well, I see lot of hippievalues now. Problem is to make leaders real leaders, and attract enought people to become leaders.

 

[Chieftess]

Well, I see lot of hippievalues now. Problem is to make leaders real leaders, and attract enought people to become leaders.

Therein lies the limitation. We're a bunch of players, not leaders. If we were real, live leaders, we wouldn't be playing a game of Civ3.

 

[DaveShack]

I hope we can obliterate as many anarco-syndicalist features as possible in the next ruleset. This is not some hippie collective we are emulating.

Sorry, I have absolutely no idea what anarco-syndicalist means? Someone who wants syndicated anarchy? I would think those are contradictory terms...

 

[Provolution]

Google it if your are in doubt You guys got all the means to learn what you don't know.

 

[DaveShack]

Therein lies the limitation. We're a bunch of players, not leaders. If we were real, live leaders, we wouldn't be playing a game of Civ3.

Not real leaders? Maybe some of us are RL leaders.

 

[Strider]

anarcho-syndicalism is, if I'm thinking right is a type of anarchy that deals with workers rights and unions. I've never understood it much, however, and I may be wrong.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

It seems we have some clear options for the next demogame now - couldn't we do an informal poll just to see where the majority lies?

Really, though, I do think we need to end this demogame to start in depth discussing the next. You can't work on a new ruleset while a game is in progress. So my final thoughts for this post...it's great to throw ideas out, but don't it doesn't do much good if we still have to focus on what we really need to do. (Not that we don't really need to fix the rules. )

 

[Black_Hole]

Google it if your are in doubt You guys got all the means to learn what you don't know.

google doesnt even think its a word

 

[Provolution]

Honestly, we all agree this should end asap. Problem is, this post shows that more people prefer to bicker, argue and analyze other wrongs, rather than driving the game forwards and writing entertaining posts. If the same legal masterminds and minister critics delivered a tenth of their energy into proactively driving the game in place of mocking, minimizing and distancing themselves to what has been done, this could conceivably go much better. But the strong presence in this debate, the lack of interest in government offices and lack of participation in other debates, proves that the game has lost most interest. In fact, the biggest challenge for the next ruleset is to make government positions interesting and respected enough in order to keep minimal game population and participation. I think it is high time to upgrade all citizens to responsible congressmen and senators, with a different political dynamic placing responsibility and authority all over. Right now, we got a bunch of disgruntled veteran players throwing tomatoes on performers on the stage as soon as they pop up, and automatically shift to legal ruleset fantasies when there is no one to bother.

 

[zorven]

We do need something to improve the standard of instructions, perhaps a quality commission would do the trick - allowing the quality of instructions/polls to be questioned without it being seen as a personal attack.

This should really be common sense. Take polls for example. There were many times this game when I would see a poll asking something akin to "Should we rush a Temple for X gold in city Y?". And there was no other useful information in the poll. The writer of the poll should anticipate what questions might be asked an answer them in the poll. For this example I had questions like:

• where is this city? a map would be nice
• how much money do we have in the treasury?
• what is our gpt?
• what other rushes are being considered?
• what is the corruption of this city?
• what is the shield production of this city?
• are we at war, and if so how near is the enemy?

I am sure the person posting the poll knew all of this, but as I obtained my info from the forums and didn't have time to spend an hour reading posts to see if this info was out there somewhere, I couldn't make informed decisions, so I stopped voting.

It would have been easy for the poster of the poll to take a minute and think what kinds of questions people may have. It is the same for leaders posting instructions. It does not take much to write your instructions and then imagine you are playing the game to think of possible situations you may encounter where your instructions are lacking.