Information Office poll: How would you rate Term 1?

[ravensfire]

As the first term of DG VI draws to a close, it's time to look back and get an idea of how things went. We at the Information Office want to know how you, the citizens of Fanatannia are feeling about these first few thousand years.

We're giving you the following options to choose from:

5 - The first term went great - almost all good
4 - The first term went well - more good than bad
3 - The first term went okay - not impressed, but not displeased
2 - The first term went so-so - more bad than good
1 - The first term went badly - almost all bad

There is no abstain or other options on this poll - it's a linear scale of how you feel. It's purely for information!

This poll will run for 4 days. At the conclusion, a summary will be made and posted.

After you vote, tell us what some of the good things (if any) and bad things (if any) that you saw in the first term. Here's YOUR chance to give the various leaders some feedback, and help to make term 2 better!

If you'd prefer to make anonymous comments, feel free to PM them to me and I'll post them, or contact me and we'll come up with some alternate arrangement.

Thanks for your help!
-- Information Office

 

[ravensfire]

Argh - this was intended to be public. Ah well - sorry, folks.

-- Ravensfire

 

[GenMarshall]

Argh - this was intended to be public. Ah well - sorry, folks.

-- Ravensfire

You can ask a mod in the needed things thead to do that for you .

 

[ravensfire]

Thanks, CG. Post made.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Black_Hole]

mods cant change that...

 

[ravensfire]

In general, I feel term 1 has gone well.

We've had a lot of long-term discussions this term, which I'm pleased to see. I'd like to see the Overall Strategy thread get some more work in Term 2. Specifically, I'd love to see each Consul start a thread on how their area plans to push us towards that goal.

We had some bumps, some I think from the change to a harder difficulty level. We've gotten a bit used to an easier level, I think. A war in the AA might be a good wake-up call!

More communication is needed. I'm thinking both leader-to-leader and leader-to-citizen. Some areas provided good informations, others started to, but didn't follow through. I know that certain civs have started Wonders, but when did they start??? I'd also like to see the Consul's putting their plans in a central thread, not in the TCIT. They shouldn't be giving turn-specific instructions anyway. In general, all Consuls did a good job at their tasks. Improvement is possible, but a good job by all.

Likewise, I'd like to see Directors pushing for more info from the Consuls, and highlighting how their instructions fit within those plans. As with the Consuls, the Directors did a nice job. Very responsive to citizen comments - several times I saw excellent remarks result in changes to instructions. Very cool to see!

Term 1 was a pretty solid start - I'm excited to see what we can do during the next term!

to everyone!

-- Ravensfire

 

[donsig]

So, where's *abstain*? What about *other*? I'd have to pick one of those since the info for those of us without Conquests left much to be desired. So much so that I can't really tell how things went in term one...

 

[GenMarshall]

So, where's *abstain*? What about *other*? I'd have to pick one of those since the info for those of us without Conquests left much to be desired. So much so that I can't really tell how things went in term one...

I think this is an unoffical/survey poll.

I often include an abstain in my survey polls, but its different for each persion .

 

[Furiey]

I have to echo donsig, not being able to open the save has been a real pain. Time has been almost non-existant to the extent that I haven't been able to patch my C3C (hence can't open the save) and have not been able to get to grips with who's meant to be doing what in the new structure. I've found the lack of information in many cases has made it difficult to take part in the discussions. I rely on CivAssist and CRpSuite, but that can only give you so much without the game itself. All this has made it a pretty frustrating/bad start for me.

Like Ravensfire, I too am puzzled as to why the consuls are posting in the TCIT when that is for detailed turn instructions and they don't give any. But then I'm puzzled all round at the moment - I have not got to grips with this new organisation.

Still not quite decided whether to vote 1 or 2.

 

[Ashburnham]

I'll echo Furiey and Donsig. For those of us without C3C, the lack of information being posted by the varios officies is disturbing. I remember we all made a big deal about the Freedom of Information act before the game started. Sadly, I haven't seen much practice to back up the rhetoric. Hopefully that will improve. Other than that, things went fairly well. I'll give it an "okay".

 

[ravensfire]

donsig, Furiey and Ash,

What areas do you think DID give enough information? What areas were especially lacking?

What information would you consider key to have available to you?

-- Ravensfire

 

[Ashburnham]

I'm afraid that, no matter how thorough the Information Office is, there's nothing quite like being able to open the save for oneself. Those of us without the ability to open the save are inherently at a disadvantage when it comes to making in-game decisions. This simple fact is the main reason I've worked in the Judiciary rather than a more hands-on office, such as the DG5 Culture Ministry. Unfortunately, this is something those of us without C3C will have to live with, regardless of how complete the Information lists are.

However, if there was one aspect I had to ask the Information Office to improve upon, it would be city queues. As it stands now, there's no way to determine how long a certain building would take to complete without asking the Governor and/or Domestic Consul.

This post is not meant as a slight against the Information Office. The various graphs put up for the citizens' convenience are most informative. I just wish this information was provided by the offices themselves, rather than a seperate office.

 

[DaveShack]

My early term play summaries were inadequate. After Donsig dutifully prodded me to do better , I hope the last few sessions were better but would like citizen feedback on that. I also know that I provide fewer screenies that past Presidents, which is partly a matter of time constraints (just barely have enough time to play and get enough turns done) and partly machine configuration. It's running better now that I have taken some unnecessary stuff out of the computer's startup sequence.

I would really like to see the other officials post more info. Hopefully the External Consul will keep an up to date summary of relations with other nations, the Domestic Consul will post a F1 screenie, and maybe the Governor can post city screens.

Also for the benefit of our citizens without C3C, it might be helpful to have Civilopedia info on some of the new features.

For a much improved (IMO at least) outline of how the government should work, see the planning process steps in this overall strategy thread.

 

[ravensfire]

Ash,

You are correct that I can't (and personally feel I shouldn't!) put everything up, but I can work with the various officials on what those officials can do. I'll try to stop by each official thread as it gets created and offer some suggestions.

I can, however, and will add 2 new columns to my city summary - current production and time to complete. Honestly, those spreadsheets don't take too much time to complete - this won't be too great of a change for me.

Ideally, each Governor will also create a summary for the cities they control, and put more detail in there. Specifically, the queue, current time to complete each item in the queue, etc.

-- Ravensfire

 

[donsig]

donsig, Furiey and Ash,

What areas do you think DID give enough information? What areas were especially lacking?

What information would you consider key to have available to you?

-- Ravensfire

The key is the game play summaries (in one thread). If I could go there and keep up with the general aspects of what's going on in the demogame world I could then focus my attention on those areas of interest to me (by going to those information threads that have more detailed information on the subject I'm interested in).
Without the grounding from the play summaries one choice is to slog through numerous threads looking for a couple jewels of information here and there. I don't have time for that sort of thing anymore.
The other choice is to go to the polls thread first to see what the hot topics are. This system is not recommended since we seem to end up polling something then repolling it ad infinitum.

 

[Furiey]

There is frequently insufficient information in discussion threads, a typical example being the "Ghandi has a Sword" discussion. I don't mean to single this one out, as this is but one among many, but take it as an example. The title is misleading for a start, the Indians had Ironworking, there was no indication whether or not their iron was connected up, just that we could do a tech swap for Iron Working. The question posed was not so much a shall we do this deal, but shall we have a special session to do this deal. I tried to find out more. From CivAssist I could find out how much gold we had and the gpt we were making, info that was not presented in the thread. I could also find out that the Dutch also had Iron Working and lacked Masonry, more info that wasn't presented. What was the Dutch trade like? That I couldn't find out from CivAssist - that needed the save. I did ask the question in the thread and our President responded with the information.

I do not believe that it should be the responsibility of the Information office to provide all this information - the ministers (or whatever they're called) should provide what is under their office and provide it where it is needed. With limited time I get what I can from the utilities, and just don't have time to keep asking in discussion threads for more, which by the time it is given, is too late for me to use. All this info has a life and if it is not available for the discussion then there's little point in having it whan the chat starts as the decisions have been made, the game is about to be played, everything will change and a new lot of information will be needed. I know it takes time, when I was FA minister the first thing I did after a turnchat was update my FA Summary spreadsheet with all the info I could glean from the FA screen and post that.

The lack of info on who's building what Wonder and city build queue information has already been mentioned. I also find it frustrating not knowing mm details, when the cities grows, tiles worked etc and unless an up to date map/screenie is posted almost immediately I can't see what tiles we have mined, irrigated or roaded.

For a bit of feedback on the information office, it's the graphs I find most interesting, the rest should really done by the individual ministers. I'm playing SGOTM6 where we're going for 100k culture and tracking our progress in terms of culture, culture per turn gain and what is required to achieve a target date has made it really exciting. This might be something you could add. I've found the information here generally useful, but as the number of cities grow so will the time taken to produce the spreadsheets and for 130k we will need a lot of cities!

I wouldn't worry too much about cyclopedia info, that's available on CivFanatics already, I recommend Julian Egelstaff's (LoneWolf) excellent reference guide (available here, approx 3.5MB)- something I've used since Vanilla and still use the C3C version for reference now. Hopefully soon I will have the time to patch, then I will be able to open the save!

edit after reading donsig's post: ah yes detailed game summaries that allow you to find out what actually happened - yes please!. Screenies also make it feel more involved as if I'm playing the game, but maybe that's just me.

 

[TimBentley]

An interesting question is whether the information should be provided by the strategic or tactical positions. I would have to say it should be the directors' jobs, although having the same information twice wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, when holding discussions, applicable information should be provided there (although it is difficult to provide broad information).

 

[Furiey]

Tactical I would guess should provide the immediate in-game information, Strategic should provide progress against their strategy.

In-game information does take time to compile, so fewer tactical positions than there were ministers means fewer people providing the information - perhaps they could rope their deputies in to help?

 

[donsig]

An interesting question is whether the information should be provided by the strategic or tactical positions. I would have to say it should be the directors' jobs, although having the same information twice wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, when holding discussions, applicable information should be provided there (although it is difficult to provide broad information).

Here's the thing. Personally, I don't think someone has to have an *office* in order to post valuable information. Anyone who has information, thinks it should be posted, has time and resources to do so should go ahead and post it. Back in DGII (as part of the role playing game) I published a *newspaper*. I wanted to do that again last game but didn't have time. (I still don't.) The census back in DGI was started and maintained by a non-elected volunteer.

I don't think it is the job of the elected whatever-they're-calleds to post all info pertinent to their departments. If they have time and inclination to do so then so much the better. If they don't they should at least try to round up some volunteers to post their department's stuff. I've brought up the idea before of allowing ministers (or whatever) to *hire* (and *fire*) at will citizens to post info in an *official* capacity. Having a *job* in the demogame (whether elected or not) makes it more fun. (Unless the job is VP. ) The idea that a minister is a minister is a minister and it's the minister's *job* to post departmental info (and don't anyone else dare tread on that minister's territory) is counterproductive. We're a group of people trying to play a game of Civ III. By splitting up the information gathering we take a step towards all of us contributing to the game. (We won't actually reach that point until we also split up the decision making.)

We also have to manage the information. We need a pyramid of info. The tip is the game play summaries which should give a broad and general view of what's going on in the country. The middle of the pyramid should be the departmental threads which give an overall view of what's going on in each department or province. The bottom of the pyramid would be things like current maps, screenshots of cities, etc.

Well, I want to check out DaveShack's link above to the overall strategy thread. Sounds interesting.

 

[ali]

i feel that term 1 wasnt too good coz i wasnt elected in kidding