[DG2]Offices

[Ginger_Ale]

I think governors (or a mayor, if a governor appoints someone to be in charge of just one city) are responsible for GPP, based on their building of world/national wonders and specialists.

However, I think we should leave the actual Great People up to the President (unless you want to give them to the individual Ministers).

We could also start with a list of areas of the game, and then amalgamate that into officials. That way we don't miss something like civics. In a previous life (game ), I asked people to identify and record the decisions they needed to think about while playing a game so that we could make such a list, and got no traction. Perhaps now that we have more civ playing under our belts, someone (preferably several someones) would accept that assignment?

Isn't it pretty clear that the Foreign and Trade Advisor is in charge of charge of trades, diplomatic relations, and gifts/demands, that the Military advisor is in charge of all combat units and their deployments? I don't think we need to list every action that each advisor is in charge of - let's just paint some broader strokes and we can work from there and change it in-game if we need to.

BTW: your governor's proposal is brilliant. Works for me. I don't agree with having the Exploration and Settlement position still - when do you determine there is no need for more "exploration"? What happens if we raze a city in the modern age and then want to found a new city, but the E&S advisor has been eliminated now? Let's just assign those particular aspects to permanent advisors - I think we can trust the Military advisor to explore early in the game.

 

[DaveShack]

Isn't it pretty clear that the Foreign and Trade Advisor is in charge of charge of trades, diplomatic relations, and gifts/demands, that the Military advisor is in charge of all combat units and their deployments? I don't think we need to list every action that each advisor is in charge of - let's just paint some broader strokes and we can work from there and change it in-game if we need to.

Those are obvious of course, and we shouldn't need to list details like that. I'm thinking more along the lines of making sure we don't miss something major, and halfway into the game we take a whole month of judicial battles because multiple officials are fighting over the choice assignment like pirhana over an unlucky swimmer.

I don't agree with having the Exploration and Settlement position still - when do you determine there is no need for more "exploration"? What happens if we raze a city in the modern age and then want to found a new city, but the E&S advisor has been eliminated now? Let's just assign those particular aspects to permanent advisors - I think we can trust the Military advisor to explore early in the game.

After re-examining this, I think it's missing something. I don't think any of us has mentioned planning for location of the small wonders. I had to think of things I don't do well in my play to realize we need someone to take on these particular missing decisions. It's not something we can leave to the governors to handle, because as we have shown time and again, it isn't feasible in this environment to expect a committee to be productive. So...

I think we should change "Settlement & Exploration" to Domestic in that list, and include allocating small wonders and other production coordination.

 

[ravensfire]

Why not task the President with all Small Wonders?

-- Ravensfire

 

[Falcon02]

Got one question....

I agree Deputy's are good... however I do feel like at least the early Civ III DG's they really had nothing to do, especially if the prime candidate was on the ball..... so....

What exactly are the Deputy's responcibilities?

And if it's just to take over in the Secretary's absence, what do they do when the Secretary is there? Especially if the Secretary never has any real absences during the month?

And if we do institutionalize some responcibilities for the deputy we've gotta make sure we don't cause conflicts with the Secretary.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

I think it's really whatever the official wants it to be.

Maybe the deputy would be in charge of taking screenshots, or starting the discussion threads...but, yes, he's also responsible in case the official is absent/disappears.

 

[Falcon02]

Well, my concern comes from my experience DG1, I had several different deputies. For the most part my deputies didn't really do much, not so much because they were lazy, they just didn't really have anything to do beyond participate in discussions with slightly more authority then the average citizen. So the Deputy position didn't seem like it was worth very much.

 

[DaveShack]

There are a few people who will only be active if they have some kind of role, even if that role is being a deputy with no powers. There have been countless examples of deputies who did odd jobs to prove their worth to the voters, and then went on to win elections later. And there have been many times when we didn't have a deputy and an area got no attention, because officials are absent a lot more than you'd think, and it's not all planned.

 

[GenMarshall]

I agree Deputy's are good... however I do feel like at least the early Civ III DG's they really had nothing to do, especially if the prime candidate was on the ball..... so....

I do have to agree on this one, though this is comming from experiance. Normaly I see deputies in the early demogames tossed in a cubical forgotten and the deputies themselves are afraid to bring up something new in the department because the top canidate is rolling his ideas through where the deputy is left in a stagnant state.

 

[ice2k4]

Got one question....

I agree Deputy's are good... however I do feel like at least the early Civ III DG's they really had nothing to do, especially if the prime candidate was on the ball..... so....

What exactly are the Deputy's responcibilities?

And if it's just to take over in the Secretary's absence, what do they do when the Secretary is there? Especially if the Secretary never has any real absences during the month?

And if we do institutionalize some responcibilities for the deputy we've gotta make sure we don't cause conflicts with the Secretary.

Well for one, as a governor of a state, I would most certainly have mayors for each city as deputies. Micromanaging cities is what can win you the game. I might want to be a governor, but don't have the time to post screen shots and look into each of my cities, to move around citizens and maximize produciton. I certainly don't trust the AI to do an efficient job with my cities.

 

[Falcon02]

Well, when it comes to governors/mayors it may not be 100% effective to have a mayor for each city, given the number of cities and the number of people.

I think it might be better to have "County Officials" who are responcible for say 3 cities. Reduces conflicts between cities for tiles and doesn't require us to have 20+ people available just to be Mayors.

 

[ice2k4]

Well with deputies, one governor, can have as many cities that are in his state. If he feels he is not able to fully take all 5 or whatever the number may be, he can hire mayors for 2 cities or maybe even all 5. If he feels he can handle it, he doesnt have to hire mayors.

 

[Falcon02]

Another thing, I think there should be a "History Department" either appointed or elected that would be responcible for keeping historical archives maintained and they would be responcible for introductions for new players to get caught up.

 

[dutchfire]

A perfect example of a history thread can be found in MTDG 1 for civIII, team MIA. I really helped me get into the game.

 

[ice2k4]

We should definetly have a history department. Would really increase the number of people who join mid-game.

 

[DaveShack]

Regarding having a Domestic position with control over settlement, small wonders, and production coordination...

Why not task the President with all Small Wonders?

-- Ravensfire

Settlement is a big and very important job, one I strongly advocate assigning to a position instead of what we had in C4DG1 with ad-hoc decision making. City placement, and even the number of cities, is a lot harder in Civ4 than it was in Civ3. City specialization is even more critical. So I think we need an official to oversee the big picture for cities, like we had in the earlier Civ3 games.

 

[DaveShack]

History, Cartography, Help Desk, Chat Office, and Elections should all be volunteer departments. Allow these positions to be recalled if someone's head gets too big, but otherwise no further structure is necessary. Doing it this way helped role play in previous games, and regimenting these areas is a symptom of the decline of the game because it took away some fun.

 

[ice2k4]

Especially the history department. People could contribute freely.

 

[StrategyDoRk]

Okay, this is probably were discussion will take the longest. In any case, here we go.

As I see it, there are three main systems we can use as a "template" for us to base our ideas off of. They are:

1. The Triumvirate (used in this game)
2. The Flexible System (proposed at the beginning of DG1; Oct_X already wrote a CoL for it, mostly complete, that we could just edit).
3. "Traditional"/Civ4-based (basically a President, and then advisors from the game as the officials, with some merging, say of Trade and Foreign, or Religion and Civic)

My thinking is that we should use the Traditional, old DG-style for now. We've seen that the Triumvirate is a tad too complicated, but I'm not sure that going to the Flexible system is the right move just yet. It may get a bit too confusing at first, who knows. We've seen that the Traditional system can work, but that doesn't mean we can't change parts of it. Here the officials I'm thinking of:

President (nominations/elections, all great people, turn playing)
Minister of Defense (all combat units, promotions, military plans)
Minister of Domestic Affairs (workers, sliders, settlers)
Minister of Trade and Foreign Affairs (trading, declaration of war/peace, gifts/threats, spies)
Minister of Science (technology path)
Minister of Civics and Religion (civics, religion, missionaries)

(that is also the Chain of Command if need be)

There - that's 6 core people. If we follow it up with a Judiciary system (which we need to overhaul, I think), that's 9. Add 1 Governor (as in Civ4, there aren't nearly as many cities, so they can all fit into 1 province), that's a grand total of 10 people. I think we should easily be able to keep 10 people active if we keep the game moving!

And yes, call me crazy, but I didn't put a DP pool there. I'm not that big of a fan of it, and without it, the President has much more to do. Anything else I missed?

I'd like the officials to post discussions and polls, but it should be so that the citizens can comment on the official's suggested instructions. But overall, everyone should be working together, and the official should use the citizens' ideas to formulate similar instructions.

I would also allow people to be appointed by the President (or next person in CoC) to an empty slot, if no one ran for it, with preference given to those that don't already have an office.

DEPUTIES - let's just make this the runner up in the election; if none, the official can appoint one

I like this idea.

As for history and the other offices, I agree in that they should be volunteer.

 

[DaveShack]

And yes, call me crazy, but I didn't put a DP pool there. I'm not that big of a fan of it, and without it, the President has much more to do.

I would like to bring up the original DP pool idea.

Before the DP pool, we had the Chain of Command, with the President at the top. We were starting a new game using C3C, and I wanted to separate the leadership responsibilities from the game playing responsibilities, to allow the President and other elected leaders to be people who didn't have C3C.

The 1st attempt was a suggestion to just allow the President to delegate the DP responsibility to anyone, on a chat by chat basis. Some people, rightly so, said they didn't like the idea of non-elected, and thus non-approved, people playing the save. The 2nd idea was to have confirmation polls for the appointments, to give the people a chance to veto an appointment by voting NO in the poll. That was seen by a very select few as too much opportunity for personalization of that no vote, so we ended up with the multiple choice election we have now.

Let's revisit the original concept. I would very much like to allow every official the right to delegate authority to others. Someone who wants to delegate a lot can, someone who doesn't want to delegate can just do the whole job. The responsibility would always rest with the official -- if a subordinate breaks the rules, it is also the official's fault. We could make the willingness, or not, to delegate a campaign issue. Give the people a mid-term check on the power to delegate (recall does the trick IMHO) and just loosen it all up.

 

[ice2k4]

I dont think that having one office play the save is efficient for two reasons.

A) This means that the President has to not only have a working copy of civilization iv, but also has to be able to hold a standard map size on their pc.

B) IT also may drag out playing times because only one person is playing rather then 4 or 5 people who can work out times.