Forum Structure Discussion

[General_W]

Forum Structure Discussion:​

I think we should really talk about how we want our forum structured.
Last time, on Team Epsilon, it just sort of slowly evolved and was really sloppy and messy, imo.

A little time spent now will save us from that fate.
Especially with a moderator on our team (Hey Whomp! ) there’s no excuse for not taking advantage of getting things setup just the way we want them.

Here's the format I'd like to propose:
--------------------

Sticky: General Team Info

This thread should contain instructions on how to access team e-mail, how to look at the save, and information about how Team SANCTA works. Very important stuff for any new members that join as we go along.​

Sticky: I'm Away Thread

This thread will be for posting notice when you're going to go missing for a while. Hopefully this thread won't get much use, and should be stickied so it doesn't get lost.​

Sticky: Sanctum Nexus

This thread will be for storing a high level overview of all our opponents (Civ, traits, UU, UB, current list of cities, known alliances or wars, and key rankings). Each of our opponents would have their own post, to be updated periodically. I operated something similar to this for Epsilon, and it was pretty helpful, I think. Since I just continually update the original posts, this should probably be Sticky. Also, I think we could have any treaties we sign or key formulas or anything we want to preserve at a high level so it's easy to find later.​

Played Turns:

This thread will be the turn player to post the updates on the save. There should be NO discussion in this thread, but it doesn't need to be stickied as it will be in frequent use. Last time, on Team Epsilon, we created a new thread every 25 turns or so. I think this was a big mistake. Much better to just keep every turn update in the same thread from now on – much easier to look back when we get into the later game that way. Having been on MTDG teams that have done it both ways, that's my take anyway.​

Pre-turn Discussion Thread:

Rather than create a new thread for each turn (as they might fly by rather quickly on occasion) I propose that we have a single thread for discussion actions coming up in the next immediate turn or two. The Turnplayer should always make sure he’s current on this thread before playing the save.​

Grand Strategy Thread:

This thread would be reserved for very high-level discussions – not of city builds and unit moves (like the Pre-turn Thread) but rather for issues of War and Peace, big-picture technology and wonder strategy, etc.​

Die Schlapphüte:

This thread will be exclusively for posting images from the Demographics screen and for discussing and analyzing those findings​

Team X Embassy Thread:

These threads will be created when we meet our opponents and will be for collecting correspondence and deciding how to deal with them.​

​

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A forum structure like this would help us concentrate discussion into a few threads so we don’t have to skip all over the place to find what we’re looking for.


It doesn’t have to be exactly this way, of course.
Mainly, I’m just advocating that we be thoughtful about how we’ve got everything setup, before our disorganization causes things to get lost.

We also want to make it as easy as possible for the lurkers and semi-actives to keep up with what’s going on so they can toss in their two cents intelligently as much as possible.


Thoughts? Discussion?

If we can nail something like this down, we can have Whomp (or Ginger Ale) help us implement this structure.

 

[dutchfire]

Die Schlapphüte:

Why that name by the way? It's German

 

[remake20]

I think we need to set up new threads for different sets of turns. Like every 10 turns that way we can more easy to find a turn we're looking for. It would also be good encase we have to look at a previous turn.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

@Remake, that's how it is set up right now (turns 1-25).

@GW/All, I think we should have a sub-forum dedicated to intel. There are different kinds; city, military, etc and there will probably be a fair bit of evolution during this game, making previously good intel suddenly useless.

I would hate to make everyone (including myself) have to dig through all of the intel on all of the teams all piled in together...while we're talking structure, I think compartmentalization of our information (to make it eaiser to find, not harder) would likely be a great first (and possibly final) step in organizing our mess!

 

[General_W]

I think we need to set up new threads for different sets of turns. Like every 10 turns that way we can more easy to find a turn we're looking for.

I also thought this in the first Civ4 MTDG.
Turns out, that this works the opposite way.
When the turn set is complete (1-10 or whatever) then it begins to drop in the page rank and get lost among the other threads before it finally churns off the "last 100 days" displaying or whatever. It makes it highly obnoxious to try to find old turns if you want to look for some reason.

Keeping it all in 1 thread allows people to subscribe to the thread, and always know when a new turn update has been posted... and if you can count by 20's - then it's still super easy to find any old turns you're looking for by just counting back that many pages in the turn tracker thread.

@GW/All, I think we should have a sub-forum dedicated to intel. There are different kinds; city, military, etc and there will probably be a fair bit of evolution during this game, making previously good intel suddenly useless.

Could you flesh this idea out a little more? You mean a sub forum here on CFC?


I'll try to post a rough-draft version later of what I'm proposing for my Nexus idea so you can better see how it might work.

In the meantime, I'd like to hear a bit more about your proposal.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

@GW, that is a good point. I remember trying to read through Epsilon's logs and ended up not finishing looking through the whole game because it was such a chore to track down all the turn updates. I support the idea of having a single place to go for all the turns -- now whether that end up being all the data stored in one place or just have a thread with links to the updates doesn't matter to me but the former seems the simplest.

What I am suggesting is creating sub-forums/folders under the Team SANCTA forum. Maybe the best way to do it that I can think of is creating folders for the other teams; this way all of our interior info can be in the main forum and all of our intelligence threads for each particular team would be moved to/started in their respective sub-forum.

As I am writing this I feel that I am not conveying my point; but maybe I have. I will wait and see how you all respond!

But, question for Whomp...it is possible to create sub-forums under [our] team forum, right?

 

[Memphus]

I am all for oing turnupdates in 1 thread. sicne no one else is posting there it is a chronological log where finding the turn (divide by 20 to get page number) is simple.

As more threads open i will make sure that i have the links at the bottom of the turn update (like the die whatchamacalit thread for the first update)


so to me a logical course of action is:

1. log on read new turn update
2. follow links to thread X to express your opinion.

I must say though i did like last game with Epsilon where there were ministers issueing orders.

i.e. build this....research that.
move unit here.

i.e. i would love if someone was in charge of exploration and posted "orders" for the warrior. (in a turn order thread where only officers could post orders)

otherwise i try my best to interpret but want to make sure it isn't always my final say before moving something.

 

[Krill]

I am all for oing turnupdates in 1 thread. sicne no one else is posting there it is a chronological log where finding the turn (divide by 20 to get page number) is simple.

As more threads open i will make sure that i have the links at the bottom of the turn update (like the die whatchamacalit thread for the first update)


so to me a logical course of action is:

1. log on read new turn update
2. follow links to thread X to express your opinion.

I must say though i did like last game with Epsilon where there were ministers issueing orders.

i.e. build this....research that.
move unit here.

i.e. i would love if someone was in charge of exploration and posted "orders" for the warrior. (in a turn order thread where only officers could post orders)

otherwise i try my best to interpret but want to make sure it isn't always my final say before moving something.

If we want ministers to provide orders for workforces/build/unit exploration then, we ought to start holding elections soon for each post...or we should formallay elect the turn player and invest all of those powers to him, or just make it a pure democracy and let the majority decide.

For each course of action except the pure democracy we effectively chose someone to decide the course of action (after all debates have taken place), so if we have multiple people good at different things then the ministers route is better, but if we trust the president/turnplayer to make all of the decisions in the best interests of the team, then the president idea is best.

 

[General_W]

We should probably write some kind of a constitution to make it clear how we do business. Mainly for new people. Wouldn't have to be complicated.

My understanding is that the general consensus is to have the Turnplayer be the elected leader - and his job is to look at the "pre-turn" thread to determine the general will of the team and make decisions accordingly in the game.

But we seem to have a pretty good level of participation here (as well as divergent viewpoints) so maybe that would invest too much power in the turnplayer? Or make it too nebulous for him to decide what to do?

@Memphus, you're likely to serve as turnplayer for a majority of this game... how do you feel about the "general will of the people as expressed in the turn-tracker thread" vs. "specific ministers post their orders" ?

If we go with ministers, I'd strongly advocate that this be kept to a minimum of positions.

Ie a Council of Three...
#1) Domestic Minister who posts final orders (based on his understanding of the team consensus) for all slider settings, city builds, worker/missionary orders, and tech plan.

#2) Foreign Minister who posts final orders for anything that has to do trading or communications.

#3) Military Minister who posts final orders for non-worker/missionary unit movements.


I'm not necessarily advocating for having elected ministers, mind you. Just saying that if we're going to do it - I think it should be kept to a small group.

 

[General_W]

Double-post - sorry.

So here's how a Nexus Page would look in my conception:

Each team would have a post like this, and I'd update it as often as possible/relevant.
It would capture in one-place the key relevant data for anyone that can't access the save / is just looking for trade opportunities and doesn't want to have to mess with logging into the server to see what's available for trade.

It would not be intended to replace the Demographics monitoring thread or any espionage thread for in-depth analysis. Just a handy spot to collect the most up-to-date key info for easier discussion and planning in other threads.

Here's what it could look like:

-----------------------------

Team Kazakhstan

Elizabeth of England

Updated: Turn 1
​

Team Kazakhstan

• Leader Name: ?
• Civ: Elizabeth of England
• Traits: Philosophical, Financial
• Unique Unit: Redcoat (16 strength +25% vs Gunpowder and Mounted Units. Replaces rifleman which is only 14 strength with +25% against Mounted units)
• Unique Building: Stock Exchange (+65% commerce instead of +50% for Bank)
• Contact: – not yet met -

Current Trades: None
Resources Available for Trade: No Route Established

Technology to Trade: – unknown -
Missing Technology: – unknown -

Gold to Trade: – unknown -
​

Known towns:

Capital <unknown name> [Size 1]

​

Kazakhstan Foreign Dealings:

• With Team Saturn: - unknown -
• With Team Mad Scientists: - unknown -
• With Team Cavaleiros: - unknown -

Treaties and Agreements with SANCTA:

Spoiler :

&#8211; none yet -

-------------------------------

Does that help clarify what I'm advocating for?

We can clearly go crazy with analysis and speculation&#8230; but only a certain amount of that will actually be useful. When we actually make contact and get our spies up and running &#8211; then I think we should have a specific thread for that (like the current demographics screen thread).

Thoughts?

 

[Krill]

If the infomation we have about a team is posted on the board, then that is a start. But if it is posted in an easy to read fashion, as you just showed, then that gets a big plus from me, as we can easily grab the infomation when we need it much more easily. So I like it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I completely agree about keeping turn info to one thread. I also like discussion (in general) kept to one thread. I think there may come time where a turn is so important that we need separate threads, to make it easier to track what is going on, but many turns will need no discussion whatsoever.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

I was thinking of something similarly awesome to use that would be cool to distribute after the game and possibly generate some great tables and all that for some videos at some point...but these forums make a great way of cataloging data and it is tough to beat.

I really like your idea GW and would like to contribute.

As to the idea of a constitution and minister positions, I like the following:

IF we are going to go the minister route...why don't we make them cabinets? So that Domestic, Foreign and Military were all groups of members of SANCTA who had an interest in that category. Each cabinet would discuss among themselves to plan, for instance, an invasion or a diplomatic alliance or what improvements to build. I imagine that we would all still influence each other through the necessity of cooperation and joint desire to win!

I'm not necessarily stuck on those three categories though -- they seem to encompass everything but does the arrangement of responsibility overlap in a way that is most advantageous to information flow? For instance, should espionage be melded with the interior or the military? Or left to the turn player?

 

[Ronnie1]

I like the idea of cabinets....

A chair position would head the cabinet of course....sort of how congress works..only we will actually get some sh!t done!!!

 

[Viva_Chingon]

A flow of information would naturally emerge for (as one example) the military to request new units or for the interior to press the ambassadors to secure a certain technology or resource. This brings some interesting role playing elements to the game if the cabinets are structured to enhance our enjoyment and not reduce it!

Especially considering we are calling the turn player the 'president' and he gets to effectively steer the ship and keep us in the clear -- this could turn out to be a really fun game to play!

You know, if we could get HTML enabled on the Nexus Thread(s) we could do some cool stuff...

 

[Memphus]

i am all for cabinet positions.

to me the president (a.k.a. turnplayer) follows orders of the cabinet. He however also must have the power to make last minute descisions when the save is open and sometimes ignore an order...(think like hte power of veto) as there could be some unforseen circumstance.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

Its early, so there's not that much to do. In fact, it seems that everything can currently be handled by the group-at-large functioning as the Cabinet of the Interior (CoI).

But at some point we're may want to split that single group into two cabinets with a handful of us wanting to influence the military decisions more than interior ones. One way to do it would be to give a larger percentage of voting power on issues that the cabinet was designated to handle (in this case the Cabinet of War (CoW)) while non-cabinet members would maintain a lower voting power in decisions of military affairs.

Military decisions are, in this way, more greatly effected by the members in the CoW but less effected by members in the CoI.

Responsibilities for Cabinets should be identified when the cabinet is needed and should be thought of as fluid, not fixed. This would mean that, when when it's time to divide, the CoI we would determine the what, where and how of what the CoW will be allowed to do (the who being the members and the when being the turn number, of course). As we build naval/air units we might expand on the internal organization of the CoW by assigning CoW members to control the different aspects of the Land/Sea/Air gambit. In this manner we would be sub-dividing the CoW into departments; Dept. of the Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.

But, essentially, I think we first need to identify what all there is going on in the game...in other words; the President logs in to do our turn -- he takes all the available, pertinent, information and creates a turn log. Members would look at this log, or log into the game itself, and decide what to do and then give their turn orders to the President (in an organized manner). "Which elements of our civilization is each cabinet responsible for ordering around"...is what I'm trying to get at.

Anyway...just trying to get ideas out and, at the same time, instigate discussion. I will continue working on this -- I don't know how many of you are also, but there has been little discussion here in the last few days...probably, many of you don't think this is too important yet. You're right...it's not...yet. But a little discussion now, when it doesn't yet matter, is what's going to help us maintain a strong early-mid game as we will have a leg-up on internal organization vs. just sorting it out.

 

[Ronnie1]

Not sure where to post this....who has MSN IM accounts?....It is proving very effective for real time discussions in other games I am playing. I know it is good to say hey to GenW sometimes for me as a newbie to this format.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

There are some things that I think should always be up for vote by the entire team. We might have cabinets come up with recommendations, but these are long-term decisions that may take many turns to conclude. It may make sense to have cabinets to help come up with these things, but I think that if a cabinet were to say "We should go for Alphabet first", then people on the team who weren't part of that decision who disagree with it would be very unhappy. That's an example, not an indication of how I feel about Alphabet as a goal or anything.

Things like that are:

1) Tech path
2) Declaring war/suing for peace
3) How we are going to win
4) What to do with great people
5) Slider settings
6) What general things a city should build (research, money, culture, military)
7) What wonders we should go for
8) Where to settle
9) Who to ally with
10) general tone of diplomatic notes

There are also stuff that almost HAVE to be handled in small groups, perhaps with some feedback from the larger group, perhaps not.

1) MM'ing
2) Battle Tactics (including what to attack, what units to build, what promotions to give units)
3) Phrasing of diplomatic notes
4) Worker moves
5) Military unit placement

 

[Viva_Chingon]

...who has MSN IM accounts?
It is proving very effective for real time discussions in other games I am playing.

We could also use Google Messenger in this regard -- it seems like the majority of the team already has a Google Account.

@AutoTeller -- Valid points, indeed! I was thinking much along those lines but you took the time to make a few very good examples.