Discussion - Old, Current, or New ruleset.

[Chieftess]

Let's try to keep this one as simple and as civil as possible. Which ruleset do we want to use? (Any modpacks, variants, etc. can be added on later...)

Old one - The one that's been used from DG1-DG5. This has the elected positions equal to the advisors in the game.

Current one - The one we use now.

New one - Something different for a change.


Personally, I like the old one the best. This one seemed a little messed up. External Affairs had way too much, and the pocket strings were in the President's hands. (Oddly enough, it could have been used for the old Commerce advisor....) We definately need a rule about better provinces. (I've said this since DG2 I believe... and I'll say it again! Make provinces based on the size of the landmass, and world size. You can easily tell early on just by doing some exploration).

(Maybe we should try archipelago next to get each civ on an 'island' if we can...)

 

[Ginger_Ale]

We can't do it in this order. The ruleset will have to change based on what DG7 will be. A 5CC? The constitution needs to be different and flexible. Less positions are necessary. A Multi-Team DG? A whole new constitution, tailored for Multiplayer. An epic? Perhaps the old, perhaps the new. Depends on what else we might chance.

edit: We definately have to take out long-term offices. These had no use. Domestic, which I served for one term, and Foreign did very little that actually affected the turnchats and the game. If we do a new ruleset, for an epic game, I would use:

Domestic (sliders, happiness, city placement, cash rushes, workers)
Foreign and Trade (trading, declarations of war, RoPs, MPPs, MAs, gifts/demands)
Science and Cultural (science research path, advising on wonders, wonder placement, advocating for culture and scientific improvements)
Military (troop placements, advises on build queues for military, battle plans)
President
Governor(s) (based on world size / land format)

That's only 6 positions, maybe more governors later on. Easy to fill.

 

[Black_Hole]

We have too many offices right now, I also still think we should split strategic and tactical...
Something like this:

Strategic
1. Consul of Military Affairs
2. Consul of Internal Affairs(Long term settlement, science, general worker strategy, etc)
3. Consul of Foreign Affairs(Long term trade and foreign affairs)

Tactical
1.Director of Military
2. Director of Commerce(Trading, science, money)
3. Director of Domestic Policy(Settlement, culture suporivision, governor suporvision/takes place of missing governor and controls cities not in provinces)
4. Governors

Notes:
1. Names can change
2. Not all positions are created equal, this allows people to choose a job based on the amount they can participate
3. Even if we do a 5CC varaint this would work(just change the word "Governor" to "Mayor")

 

[Double Stack]

We need to form the ruleset to cover most DG process. Even then Civ4 will come out and there will be a new ruleset for that. Just have a ruleset that can be covered from game to game rather than making a new one each time.

 

[Chieftess]

Read what I wrote. I said we'd be able to model it around afterwards. That's like saying, "Wait, let's see if we're on a pangaea or archipelago map before deciding if we should have a Navy Commander".


Besides, (call me old school.... but...) the ruleset was still being decided while the early demogames were being played...

 

[Provolution]

What about this:

Pure and simple:

King (Geared to all conditions)
Domestic Minister (Geared to Culture or Space Ship Win)
Military Minister (Geared to Conquest Victory)
Science and Culture Minister (Geared to Culture or Space Ship Win)
Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister (geared to Diplomatic Win)

5 Political Parties (each has to nominate a candidate for each position, a political party is locked at five members, meaning the political party decides internally who runs for which position, from where the remaining citizens can choose)

Provinces (each political party is given a province each, in order to remedy the endgame where a major election is going to take place over victory criteria and which political party is nominated the first president of the last term).

There will be a maximum of 10 workers per province, each administered by a political party.


Parties have ideologies by victory condition:

Conquest Party (global conquest)
Cultural City Party (Build a major cultural city)
Diplomatic Party (Become national leader)
Astronomic Party (Reach the Stars)
Historic Party (assure that the nation does not get too powerful, yet win the game)

If we can have a core of 25 political party members, and let the citizens not in parties compete for governorships and Judiciary positions, we will have a hell of a game with high participation. This system will force the people to watch if the King is following instructions. This time, we pick a Random Civ and add on max barbarians).

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Political parties simply won't work. You saw what happened when we were deciding between 2 victory conditions. Multiply that by 2.5 and you get your idea of political parties.


Sorry, Chieftess, but it is MUCH quicker to do the ruleset as the last thing, when you know EVERYTHING that will be the parameters of the game. Old school.

 

[GenMarshall]

I am totaly gainst political parties in this game. We have done fine without them and we can certanly do fine in the future. All political parties will just lead to is flamewars, hurtfeelings, and mudslinging.

 

[Chieftess]

What about this:

Pure and simple:

King (Geared to all conditions)
Domestic Minister (Geared to Culture or Space Ship Win)
Military Minister (Geared to Conquest Victory)
Science and Culture Minister (Geared to Culture or Space Ship Win)
Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister (geared to Diplomatic Win)

That would imply already knowing the victory condition... What if we decide to change mid-stream?

5 Political Parties (each has to nominate a candidate for each position, a political party is locked at five members, meaning the political party decides internally who runs for which position, from where the remaining citizens can choose)

no, No, and NO! Not only is that too exclusive, it goes against the forum rules. (making exclusive threads (political party would be a thread) is against the forum rules). This is EXACTLY why we don't have political parties. Even if you don't have that, parties are going to make rules like, "You can't join other parties". That's exclusive, and not allowed.

Provinces (each political party is given a province each, in order to remedy the endgame where a major election is going to take place over victory criteria and which political party is nominated the first president of the last term).

There will be a maximum of 10 workers per province, each administered by a political party.

The workers per province was tried during DG2, but political parties shouldn't be allowed. BTW, what happens to the left over workers? What happens when one province finishes before the others? It becomes unproductive later on. What happens if we want a "War Road" that extends outside of provincial borders, like in DG2?

Parties have ideologies by victory condition:

Conquest Party (global conquest)
Cultural City Party (Build a major cultural city)
Diplomatic Party (Become national leader)
Astronomic Party (Reach the Stars)
Historic Party (assure that the nation does not get too powerful, yet win the game)

If we can have a core of 25 political party members, and let the citizens not in parties compete for governorships and Judiciary positions, we will have a hell of a game with high participation. This system will force the people to watch if the King is following instructions. This time, we pick a Random Civ and add on max barbarians).

Again, too exclusive. What happens to poor citizen #26 who just joined the game? Are you going to tell them, "Scram you n00b!". That's a fine way to lose membership. What determines an inactive member? What if they want to join a party and just lurk? If you kick them out, and someone else joins, that origanal member gets left out. This is blatently against the forum rules.

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[greekguy]

I agree with Provolution, have less and more basic leaders. The "strategic" and "tactical" thing never worked, and kind of made Domestic an office not needed, except if something big came up. (revolutions, province splitting) His set of leaders seems like the best thing i've seen during this entire time playing the DG. Each position covers enough to make it worthwhile to get eleceted and not too much, so you've got too much power. I don't like his political party system though.

 

[GenMarshall]

no, No, and NO! Not only is that too exclusive, it goes against the forum rules. (making exclusive threads (political party would be a thread) is against the forum rules). This is EXACTLY why we don't have political parties. Even if you don't have that, parties are going to make rules like, "You can't join other parties". That's exclusive, and not allowed.

Again, too exclusive. What happens to poor citizen #26 who just joined the game? Are you going to tell them, "Scram you n00b!". That's a fine way to lose membership. What determines an inactive member? What if they want to join a party and just lurk? If you kick them out, and someone else joins, that origanal member gets left out. This is blatently against the forum rules.

Yay, I am not alone in against the whole idea of the political parties . Which furthers my backing that political parties will lead to hurtfeelings. I have dug up several older threads that states political parties are a bad idea.

Political Parties and Block Voting has been banned from the start for the demogame. It was orginally believed that they will tear apart the game.
Source

Chieftess also dabed into the historical background on why there is no political parties since day one

The origanal reason political parties were cut from the demogame was the mess it made back in the Civ2 demogame. It would become unfair for newcomers as political parties would always vote for the same person (since we have no term limits, that could be every term).
Source

I found a thread from Demogame III were Political Parties have been polled and been shot down. This thread contains several posts there with the majority of the citizens voted against having political parties.

In short, Political Parties in the demogame is a bad idea.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

So what you are saying is you like mine.

Domestic (sliders, happiness, city placement, cash rushes, workers)
Foreign and Trade (trading, declarations of war, RoPs, MPPs, MAs, gifts/demands)
Science and Cultural (science research path, advising on wonders, wonder placement, advocating for culture and scientific improvements)
Military (troop placements, advises on build queues for military, battle plans)
President
Governor(s) (based on world size / land format)

 

[Double Stack]

I understand what provolution means with the political party. Having a non specific victory goal and "citzen groups" try to get the victory they want by winning appriotate office. Hence, if a citzen group want to win the space race, they will elect someone who will research toward getting the technology required to build those spacecrafts. Those who want to win by diplomacy will try to maintain good relations with opponents and push for UN.

Just add the emphasis of citzen groups.

 

[GenMarshall]

I understand what provolution means with the political party. Having a non specific victory goal and "citzen groups" try to get the victory they want by winning appriotate office. Hence, if a citzen group want to win the space race, they will elect someone who will research toward getting the technology required to build those spacecrafts. Those who want to win by diplomacy will try to maintain good relations with opponents and push for UN.

Just add the emphasis of citzen groups.

There we have a problem of a citizen group acting as a stealth political party by endorcing and advocating Block voting. Block voting again is a political party action and thus would lead to hurt feelings because you are voting for someone who holds membership in a particular office insted of voting for someone who is qualified for the job.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

And what the people we elect go Culture -> Conquest -> Space -> Domination -> UN parties? We'll build up culture ... only to not build anymore and start mass producing units while turning science off ... then stop, and build mostly infrastructure with science on full ... then go and declare war again, raze / capture lots of cities, losing attitude with AIs, only to try to win an AI vote with a possible broken rep, a bad attitude hit, and lots of wars. Sounds like fun? Not to me.

 

[DaveShack]

The current strategic government achieved one of its goals, which was to increase interest in national planning and to strengthen pursuit of a strong long-term goal. There were, however, two major flaws with this system. The smaller problem was that even though we had a long-term goal, we did not control short-term actions to ensure that goal could be achieved, and when we got into a crisis we were left with several bad alternatives.

The other major problem with this setup is that it encourages leadership which is focused on efficient in-game play. This is not in itself a big deal, it is perfectly legitimate to have people with this focus as active participants. Unfortunately there is a psychological / sociological problem when the balance between spontaneous vs planned play tips too far towards planned. Those people who want spontaneous become completely alienated when things are too planned, and just pack up their things and leave.

Whatever we do, we need to restore the balance.

 

[Chieftess]

The current strategic government achieved one of its goals, which was to increase interest in national planning and to strengthen pursuit of a strong long-term goal. There were, however, two major flaws with this system. The smaller problem was that even though we had a long-term goal, we did not control short-term actions to ensure that goal could be achieved, and when we got into a crisis we were left with several bad alternatives.

The other major problem with this setup is that it encourages leadership which is focused on efficient in-game play. This is not in itself a big deal, it is perfectly legitimate to have people with this focus as active participants. Unfortunately there is a psychological / sociological problem when the balance between spontaneous vs planned play tips too far towards planned. Those people who want spontaneous become completely alienated when things are too planned, and just pack up their things and leave.

Whatever we do, we need to restore the balance.

That's why I was for the traditional system.

The "new" system bunched up too much stuff together, and the fact that we went with the largest provinces in demogame history also killed participation, since there wasn't many governorship positions to run for.


Remember back in the OLD days when advisors (based on the civ3 advisors) would support a particular citizen group? And then the few citizen groups that were really popular, and pushed for a certain goal, like conquering the northern continent, or collecting all the spices? That's the type of spontenious roleplay that we used to have...

 

[GenMarshall]

That's why I was for the traditional system.

The "new" system bunched up too much stuff together, and the fact that we went with the largest provinces in demogame history also killed participation, since there wasn't many governorship positions to run for.

Good luck trying to push forward the traditional system to the newer DGers. Strider tried it and it failed .

 

[Black_Hole]

Yay, I am not alone in against the whole idea of the political parties . Which furthers my backing that political parties will lead to hurtfeelings. I have dug up several older threads that states political parties are a bad idea.



Chieftess also dabed into the historical background on why there is no political parties since day one


I found a thread from Demogame III were Political Parties have been polled and been shot down. This thread contains several posts there with the majority of the citizens voted against having political parties.

In short, Political Parties in the demogame is a bad idea.

I wouldn't say shot down, 15-20 isn't that bad....

Also I want to point out to everyone, if we don't ban political parties in the constitution they are allowed because of article A... actually this game political parties were legal(I think someone wanted to but a mod didn't allow it.... *sigh*)

All I am saying is its an idea worth exploring

 

[GenMarshall]

I wouldn't say shot down, 15-20 isn't that bad....

Also I want to point out to everyone, if we don't ban political parties in the constitution they are allowed because of article A... actually this game political parties were legal(I think someone wanted to but a mod didn't allow it.... *sigh*)

All I am saying is its an idea worth exploring

Political Parties will spawn elitism, which is against the forum rules. Block voting is also not that fun also with groups of people just voting on the party lines just because the person is a member of that party while the more qualified person gets gybbed.

All I see in Political Parties is an elitist fraternaty group that will only accept people, as Chieftess pointed out, that only agree to the party's beliefs and thus becomes exclusive and elitist. It furthers becomes elitiest when voting blocks comes into play.

If we do establish a political party system (Which I hope we do not), then I will form my own political party based on the ideas of the Independent Party of the United States giving citizens an opportunity to associate and hold beliefs in different spectrums of the demogame. Also, my party will not advocate voting blocks and the member is free to vote for a person he or she feels like voting.

As I said before, Political Parties were bad news in the Civ2 Demogame and were imediately removed because it caused nothing but mudslinging and mini flamewars inbetween the party lines. I do hope that we never see any political parties to make an apperance in DG7.

Here is what the original moderator of the demogame said about political parties in the demogame.

The initial reason was based on the fact that political parties basically excluded particular people. Since the political 'party' would be based on nothing more than who is friends with whom. It wouldn't be based on anything like ideals or game concerns. Once that 'party' is able to get enough friends together, they can basically stuff the ballot box and elect whomever they want.

This would lead to people not even trying to run against them and thus stop playing the game.

In one of the Civ 3 DG, we had 'guilds'. These guilds basically satrted to act as political parties by recommending their favorite people to the rest of the guild.

The main concern is that political parties would effectively exclude people from the game and thus cause the game to lose players. The first is technically against ther forum rules and the other thing we did not want to happen for the game.

Hope that helps.


DoM
Source

I personaly hoped that the subject of political parties in the demogame would be "the old horse that's been beat on that subject a million times can be put away." (Octavian X). I guess some people want to intergrate the Model Parlament (Which has political parties) into the demogame.