Free Speech

[chiefpaco]

I thought I would open a new thread on something I feel is a bit absent from the forum here. A thread where people are able to ramble on anything they want. While we all know a specific thread may be opened on any particular point, and anyone can voice opinions to specific departments, perhaps that is sometimes a bit scary to do or no category quite fits.

Here may be some suggestions:
- Where should we be headed in Phoenetica? What should our goal be? What, in general, are we missing & what should we be doing about it?
- Aspiring game officials, what should we be doing & how would you change it?
- Why isn't every city building military units?
etc...

I just mean to perhaps start some debate on perhaps larger issues, giving us some goals or a place where perhaps concerns match over more than one area. Furthermore, I think I just want to keep good conversation going. Please, post on. Debates are open. I hope this might be a "Phoenetica" thread....

 

[Cyc]

I like the idea of a free speech thread. It might be a good springboard for new debates while encouraging comments on minor issues as well. How about this...

As to your question about military units being built in every city....
I would think that the cities with barracks would either be upgrading pikes to muskets or building muskets to replace the units in other cities and towns. I realize the larger cities with barracks have other priorities, but a strong defense in all cities is needed for Phoenatica, IMO.

 

[chiefpaco]

I think I'm going after the governors this time Not that I think they are doing poorly, but here are some things I wish to see. I'm making no demands, all of this is personal, humble, opinion (like I want the rest of this thread to be):

- more musketmen. We aren't at war, but a Republic needs to be ready. We've been attacked out of the blue before. Pikes may not fare well against Knights, Riders, and Elephants. I would feel safer if a few Muskets were sprinkled into some of the governors' build queues.

- a settler or 2. We have about 4 proposed city sites & can fill more space!

- a few towns have build times over 50 turns. While I know that some towns will not be powerhouses, I think sometimes we should make some tradeoffs between what we could use & what can be built before the game is over.

- sometimes, cities can be re-optimized for maximum production or food. A town may finish their happiness improvement & citizens may go back to work. Perhaps the governors would be the best people to periodically take a look at their cities' workers & make sure they're working their hardest?

How about making this thread sticky? Cause it is not related to any 1 issue in particular that might die?

I agree with Cyc & I see he's caught the spirit already . This thread will hopefully be a springboard for specific issues we face. All ideas must start somewhere...

 

[chiefpaco]

Ok, maybe I should've called this thread the "chiefpaco's ramblings"

Our government officials should be more responsible in developing & defining our long-term goals. It would give us something to aim & strive for. We had a Manifest Destiny before and we should make a new one.

Personally, I think we should be in more of a militaristic mode, creating the "Grand Army of the Republic"... (heehee, had to get that in there )

We should be agressively trying to expand our borders & putting more pressure for border enemy towns to give in to our superiority. If they do not, swift action by our grand army will convince them! Let those Chinese and Roman border towns face our grandness from up-close!

 

[donsig]

Chiefpaco, I think you've hit on something here that must be addressed. The governors are making their build queues to enhance their cities and their provinces. This is to be expected and encouraged to some extent, but then things of a national character (like a Grand Army of the Republic) are put on the back burner. Perhaps we need to reward governors for building musketmen or settlers for other provinices. We could give those governors a budget to be used for rushing improvements.

 

[Cyc]

What a grand statement, chiefpaco.
I've always felt that Phoenatica should do away with the Greeks and the Romans. The Iroquois will probably take the Chinese.
I believe our unspoken goal is a cultural victory. It would seem most appropriate for the highly cultured citizens of Phoenatica.

Shaitan's new Foriegn Policy seems to have a long-term feel to it.
I'm not saying this approach would work in all areas, but F/A does cover a lot of ground. Domestic and Culture have temporarily combined budgets, so that says a lot about internal growth. Military. hmmm, the tool of the afore mentioned Departments. What are you looking for here, chiefpaco? More seems to work for Trade and better seems to work for Science. So they're covered as both can only be planned as far as opportunities allow.

Our Manifest Destiny was thrown out the back door, as the pangaea pretty much nullified the original intent. What do you propose for a new Destiny? Pretty soon we will all be corporate lawyers and stock traders. No, wait. We haven't gotten that far yet. Anyway, you're a government official...what's your long-term goals, besides scaring China and Rome?

 

[eyrei]

I think we do need goals on a national level. Right now, my main goal is commercial superiority, and allowing the governors pretty much free reign to improve their provinces moves us towards this goal. We have already achieved military superiority, as was seen in the great war. Obviously, this is not a permanent situation, but this is the way most of my games go. I fight for territory at the beginning, spend the middle ages building my economy, and then go looking for fights once I have infantry defending my country. I suggest we continue to build defensive, upgradable units in one city out of every province to fortify our borders, while allowing the rest of the cities to build improvements as the governors desire. Meanwhile, we will be building markets and banks to increase cashflow, courthouses to decrease corruption and waste, and libraries to increase our science output. We also need to get 5 banks built ASAP so that we can build Wall Street. About the time the industrial age begins, most cities will have most of the major improvements, we will have a very strong economy, that is not dependent on foreign trade, and can start building military units in earnest for the imminent war that nationalism causes. We do not need a military for aggression right now, but for deterrance. Any units we build now will have to be upgraded soon, and will take away from the cash flow that allows us to rush projects in preparation for the time when we wish to exert our influence on our neighbors. Offensive units we build now will likely go to waste, as the upgrade path stops at cavalry, which are made nearly obsolete by infantry. Our neighbors will likely not attack us as long as we continue to build defensive units at a regular pace, maintain trade deals, and do not sign any MPPs. Aggression should come later, when infantry make our borders nearly impregnable to attack.

 

[disorganizer]

our manifest destiny at the moment should be to improove the game for the citizens.
POWER to THE PEOPLE.

 

[donsig]

Well said disorganizer!

Since this is a free speech thread i don't feel bad changing the direction of the discussion:

The turn chat needs to be radically overhauled or done away with. The recent proposal regarding the turn chat proposal passed a citizen poll but look at it in light of the where are our citizens poll.

17 voted in the former and 41 in the latter. Sure, those of us who are still around like the turn chats but those turn chats help drive away half our citizens!

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I think we should not let go of a very key comment in this thread:

What is our victory goal?

I believe we have reached the point in the game where this should be decided and then worked toward. With the pending elections and a new President on the way, this is a excellent time to ask our officials what victory path they advocate, and how they would achieve it.

Bill
...in PDX

 

[disorganizer]

donsig: maybe because the poll only was up 2 days? it took very long for my poll to reach the 41. 2 days were about 20 citizens.

 

[donsig]

That could account for it disorganizer but many in the 'where are our citizens?' thread said they lost interest because those who can attend the turn chat have a disporportionate amount of power in the game.

 

[disorganizer]

well, i read the most complains about ppl saing they could not really influence the game because the officials are not forced to comply to the citizens polls.
we did the 1st move to open the turn-chat and democratize polls there, we should also do the 2nd move to turn down cabinet votes (to in the future vote everything as citizen vote) and force the chat-reps to represent the citizens, not only the thoughts of their department.
IMHO, the duty of the departments is to give the citizens proposals, which they can vote about. the department should then always decide in favor of the citizens decisions, and not go over the public opinion in the chat.

 

[Cyc]

I believe that situation has pretty much changed Donsig.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Cyc
I believe that situation has pretty much changed Donsig.

Do you think everyone came back to the game? I'm not convinced of that.

Near the start of this game we had almost seventy registered citizens. We got to a point where some of our polls had only ten to twelve votes. When we asked why citizens lost interest they pointed to the turn chats. By adhereing to turn chats we also keep many people out of government simply because they cannot be at the turn chat.

 

[disorganizer]

maybe it is just a kind of confusion: most ppl who left thought there were all decisions taken in the chat. in fact, the constitution as it is now supports this, but this is wrong! there are almost no decisions taken there. maybe the constitution should just reflect this better

btw:
we had 73, we have 67 now.
was there a time at the beginning when more than 30 ppl voted in any poll? i think no.
the turn chat is exactly what the president did in civ3-demo, the only difference is that any1 can participate in this "play-out" and the pres does not take the "ad-hoc decisions" on his own. the only point is maybe that our officials did not stop the game in the past when important things happened to go back to the forum to ask the citizenry.
our aim should now be to change the constitution (and make it easier! not adding new rules!) to reflect the real spirit of the game (as you can also see in some other threads i posted today)

 

[Cyc]

People come and go. That's the nature of the net, especially in a forum based situation. All of the original 70 citizens may still be with us in a dettached sort of way. Shaitan and Eyrei have proven to us that you don't need to attend chats to be in the Government or be an involved citizen. Dis may be right (ok he is) about the turn chats being played for too long without discussion in the 1st term. Please set up another thread, Dis, on how the Constitution could be made easier. I think we need to ride the game as is for a while and see how it turns out. It may be "just right" now.

 

[chiefpaco]

I like Eyrei's thinking. What military production we are doing seems to be focused on knights. I hope our front-line pikemen are being continually re-fitted with brand new muskets. We should decide a rough number of knights that we need, perhaps a band of 20 or so, that can be upgraded to cavalary when Mil Trad is discovered. This band of 20 may then be used to counter any offensive posed against us in the near future.

Muskets, OTOH, are not a significant upgrade to the next rifle defender and will always be valuable. We could always use them if they were built from scratch as well. Every musket built costs us 60 worker hours (shields), but saves us 60 gold in upgrade costs too.

I'm not saying Knights should be ignored, but scaled to defensive units. However, organizing national needs amongst governors may be difficult. Perhaps there should be some sort of Phoenetican code that each province should be providing an offensive and/or defensive military unit of some sort. We can't have some governors not making national contributions to all areas, can we?