Do we need some competition within the game?

[eyrei]

Competition makes games a lot more fun, in general. I was thinking we might try something a little different in the next game...

What if we try to implement a form of political parties, which are limited in their number of members by law? Each party's goal at the end of the game is to put forth a candidate to stand in an election for 'winner'. In this public poll, you may not vote for the representative from your party.

Basically, the parties are teams, with parameters set by a set of rules, though they may organize themselves internally as they want. A system for determining teams at the beginning would need to be developed, as well as for adding new players as they join.

Other than that addition, the game would run as it always has, though the rules regarding team numbers and selection processes would be set in stone at the beginning.

 

[DaveShack]

This is an interesting idea. Especially intriguing is the idea that members of a team can't vote for their own candidate. I guess it would be a mistake to discuss strategy of how to win this kind of "side game".

 

[GenMarshall]

What if we try to implement a form of political parties, which are limited in their number of members by law? Each party's goal at the end of the game is to put forth a candidate to stand in an election for 'winner'. In this public poll, you may not vote for the representative from your party.

No political parties! We have done fine without it. Political parties will only create mudslinging, hurtfeelings, and flamewars. Also, I find it fair not to vote for someone from your own party.

 

[Nobody]

could make a rule on moral issues (like nukes, Disbanding units, slavary, destroying citys) everyone can vote what ever they want. This is the way the new zealand parliament works, on issues such as gay marraige and abortion all the MPs can vote how ever they want and they wont lose there goverment positsions

 

[Chieftess]

Isn't that exactly what the Spam Rule says not to do?

(exclusive participation)

 

[GenMarshall]

could make a rule on moral issues (like nukes, Disbanding units, slavary, destroying citys) everyone can vote what ever they want. This is the way the new zealand parliament works, on issues such as gay marraige and abortion all the MPs can vote how ever they want and they wont lose there goverment positsions

Do we realy want to have another Model Parlament in CFC? If you want to discuss and vote things in manner on moral issues and other non-Civ3 related. Feel free to join one of the Model Parlaments that has moved out of CFC.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

If we want competition between ourselves, let's do it with a multi-team demogame, not political parties.

 

[eyrei]

No political parties! We have done fine without it. Political parties will only create mudslinging, hurtfeelings, and flamewars. Also, I find it fair not to vote for someone from your own party.

The cause of most of that is mostly removed by making the teams by certain specifications, and by making the selection process somewhat random.

The reason you can't vote for someone of your own team is that the election would end up with no conclusion, because if everyone voted for their own team the vote would be evenly distributed. You don't win with your vote, but by earning the respect of the members of other teams, which would, in turn make insults and such very unlikely.

 

[Black_Hole]

political parties are a great idea if they are controlled by the law...

 

[GenMarshall]

political parties are a great idea if they are controlled by the law...

Political parties is a bad idea, regardless if they are controlled by the law. I have already expressed my reasons why there should be no politcal parties in the demogame and felt no need to repeat them here

 

[DaveShack]

Eyrei's idea is not exactly the same concept as "political parties". As specified in the 1st post, the "teams" would not have any special powers or consequence until the game has ended. At the end, a kind of "best of DG7" would be chosen, in theory the person who has earned the respect of the most people in the DG.

One way to prevent this idea from turning into true political parties which so many people are concerned about (maybe justifiably so I might add), would be to use a semi-random arrangement of team membership. Let a few trusted citizens (three for example ) privately choose how many "teams" there will be, before the citizen registry is created. This would be recorded somewhere private and secure, like in the secret moderator's forum . At the end of the game, the citizen's registry members are "dealt" in round-robin fashion to the designated number of teams -- i.e. if there are 6 teams then citizens 1, 7, 13, 19, 25 etc. are on team 1; citizens 2, 8, 14, 20, 26 etc. are on team 2; and so forth. This prevents any possibility of conspiracy of players to get on the same (or different) team, and nobody knows who their teammates are (and more importanty who are on the other teams).

To get elected as the "best of DG7" a citizen would need to get selected by his/her team in a public team-only vote, and then get selected by the people on other teams, again in a public vote. Essentially this means that anyone who wants to be named the "best" would have to be on good terms with everyone -- which would be a great goal if we could pull it off.

 

[eyrei]

Eyrei's idea is not exactly the same concept as "political parties". As specified in the 1st post, the "teams" would not have any special powers or consequence until the game has ended. At the end, a kind of "best of DG7" would be chosen, in theory the person who has earned the respect of the most people in the DG.

One way to prevent this idea from turning into true political parties which so many people are concerned about (maybe justifiably so I might add), would be to use a semi-random arrangement of team membership. Let a few trusted citizens (three for example ) privately choose how many "teams" there will be, before the citizen registry is created. This would be recorded somewhere private and secure, like in the secret moderator's forum . At the end of the game, the citizen's registry members are "dealt" in round-robin fashion to the designated number of teams -- i.e. if there are 6 teams then citizens 1, 7, 13, 19, 25 etc. are on team 1; citizens 2, 8, 14, 20, 26 etc. are on team 2; and so forth. This prevents any possibility of conspiracy of players to get on the same (or different) team, and nobody knows who their teammates are (and more importanty who are on the other teams).

To get elected as the "best of DG7" a citizen would need to get selected by his/her team in a public team-only vote, and then get selected by the people on other teams, again in a public vote. Essentially this means that anyone who wants to be named the "best" would have to be on good terms with everyone -- which would be a great goal if we could pull it off.

I was thinking that the teams would be known from the beginning, so that the team could cooperate and develop a strategy. Of course, individuals on a given team wouldn't always agree, but they would have to learn to compromise if they wanted a shot at winning.

I don't see why it couldn't work the way you propose, but my personal preference would be to know who was on what team from the beginning.

 

[RegentMan]

What of the 40+ people who join the demogame and never post/vote? Would they not hamper their team, especially if there's one or two active people and ten non-posters in Team Blizzard?

 

[eyrei]

What of the 40+ people who join the demogame and never post/vote? Would they not hamper their team, especially if there's one or two active people and ten non-posters in Team Blizzard?

That is a good point. I think it could be dealt with by first, not requiring that a new player immediately join a team, and then giving the teams the option of voting out an inactive player. If a player was voted off a team, they could still participate in the game (just not on a team), and would be reassigned if they have a change of heart. They would then open up a spot for another new player to join. A request to vote off a team member would probably need to be approved by the mods and/or the judicary, however. I'm sure a fair way to do this could be found...

Another way it could be dealt with, in a roundabout fashion, would be having an election for a number of team leaders (after we decide how many teams there should be), and then allow those leaders to recruit one additional player. This would, if the leaders choose wisely, guarantee a couple of active players per team, which could be an issue if we do it randomly. Though it does allow some degree of those things we do not wish to cause by having constructs similar to political parties, the rest of the restrictions would keep it at that low level. And it may be necessary.
A team leader would have no powers other than those the team (in a democratic way) granted to him/her.

I'm really just brainstorming here...but it does seem like a good idea to 'spice things up' a bit.

 

[Double Stack]

Another way was to do rank method. The more you get invovle and the team members elect you for team leader, then the higher you go in the team rank. Being inactive will drop you down lower (excludes planned absence) in the rank. If someone get in a negative rank, a new player may be substitue based on majority positive rank members.

Just coming up of ideas how to handle inactive who just drop the game when others want to join and play.

 

[DaveShack]

I'm really just brainstorming here...but it does seem like a good idea to 'spice things up' a bit.

I agree -- just don't want too many people to see "political party" and run around like chicken little, hence the random selection suggestion to lower the anxiety level a bit.

My preference would also be to know the teams in advance, and allow strategy and planning on how to influence others. To avoid the fearsome "group of friends" argument, how about randomly selected but revealed after the initial rush of signups ends?

 

[eyrei]

Another way was to do rank method. The more you get invovle and the team members elect you for team leader, then the higher you go in the team rank. Being inactive will drop you down lower (excludes planned absence) in the rank. If someone get in a negative rank, a new player may be substitue based on majority positive rank members.

Just coming up of ideas how to handle inactive who just drop the game when others want to join and play.

That may be problematic depending on the team. Maybe we could just allow each team to decide how it would like to deal with inactive players, given that the mods or judiciary would have to approve such a measure anyway.

 

[eyrei]

My preference would also be to know the teams in advance, and allow strategy and planning on how to influence others. To avoid the fearsome "group of friends" argument, how about randomly selected but revealed after the initial rush of signups ends?

That is fine with me, but I do want to make sure we avoid teams being accidentally 'unbalanced'.

 

[Kentharu]

the random selection of teams is great but how many? two? three? and perhaps(if the team number is just two)then the first two cities can be split
City #1 goes to team #1
City #2 goes to team #2
and the two teams go on their separate ways but they are still required to help out the other team if need be. The two cities would spawn of their own cities (with their own workers) and the wealth can be calculated from each city that goes to their respective teams so teams would have a budget and would spend accordingly
e.g. Team #1 gets 3 and then team #2 gets 4 gold total 7 gold but team #1 can only use 3 out of the 7(obviously) borrowing and all that can be done but the teams would have to pay each other back and what not... not sure if this would work though because tight records would have to be kept of money and people might get nasty about who has how much gold all the math people out there would be happy i guess
but this would give the game some heavy competition, random selection of teams of course.
comment would be really helpful

 

[Provolution]

Well, the idea is already killed, as we can see. Political parties should be no problem, but this eunuch version does not make any sense.