Is this demo game dead?

[dutchfire]

I agree, with should be working more with a plan, and not like we're doing now, everyone just working in his own area.

 

[Strider]

Also, we've never been able to jump right in a start a new game without first having an extended rules discussion. We either talk and don't accomplish much or we talk a little and then start playing with half baked rules which comes back to haunt us mid-game.

Why don't we start the rules discussion for the nextr game now while we're playing this one a while longer. We could use this DG as an expirimental base if we want. Getting ready for a new DG might rekindle interest in this one.

This has been the cause of the large majority of our problems. Lets take plenty of time to work on getting a new demogame set up. I see no reason why this one should just end, play it our while we take the time to get a new DG going.

Reduce the number of elections (let the president or tri make more appointments) and base terms on turns not months.

The "tri" was quite possibly the worst decision made in this game, ever. I'd prefer to completely scratch the constitution and start over with base ingredients.

Let's have political parties. Sure we risk javing a Chieftess party or an anti-donsig party but so what? We might end up with parties based on issues: the warmongers party, the peaceniks party, etc.

We had a demogame in which Political parties were allowed. Actually, I think they may even be allowed in THIS game. They didn't come to much effect, due to a certain veterans dislike of them.

Let's start with a flexible constitution like in the Civ III DG III and just add a CoL as we need rules. Let's try using the CoL to mandate things in the game, like the size of our armed forces.

Let's do away with the chats and make this a forum based game.

Let's give the judiciary the power to post binding game play instructions.

Let's redefine and clarify the role of the Censor.

Let's redefine and clarify the constitutional system of decision making.

As I noted earlier, let's completely do away with current blanket we call a constitution.

I was thinking something like this:

make the governement pretty small. Like 5 or 6 official positions that need to be filled, and let these officials appoint deputies.

I like this idea, have a few elected officers that appoint clerks/deputies to handle certain responsibilities. Leave the organization of the department completely up to the elected official.

 

[Black_Hole]

I have been lurking for awhile, I can't pinpoint the exact reason I lost interest in the game, but I did... I agree with the majoriy of donsig's ideas

Do away with DP pool elections. Has anyone ever ran for DP and not be 'elected'? Have a sign up sheet for DP and give citizens a chance to challenge anyone on the list, sort of like we do with appointments and recalls.

I still think we need DP elections, if anything increase the percent of people that need to approve of a DP to 66.7%

Reduce the number of elections (let the president or tri make more appointments) and base terms on turns not months.

Definetly, on the second part, this lets our officials know what they are getting in to

Let's have political parties. Sure we risk javing a Chieftess party or an anti-donsig party but so what? We might end up with parties based on issues: the warmongers party, the peaceniks party, etc.

We definetly could use polticial parties to add some spice, unfortunately I can't remember whether it was this DG or the last one where the laws never outlawed political parties, but the mods didn't allow them creating some confusion

Let's start with a flexible constitution like in the Civ III DG III and just add a CoL as we need rules. Let's try using the CoL to mandate things in the game, like the size of our armed forces.

This is the best idea I have heard of for many demogames... We should be creating laws that force actions in the game, not create laws that require certain things to be posted certain ways on the forum

Let's do away with the chats and make this a forum based game.

I completely agree, this is one thing has always angered me, when a majority of people agree on something(usually by a small margin), but then the DP and chat goers that make up the losing side come out and stronger force during the chat and guess what happens in the game?

Let's give the judiciary the power to post binding game play instructions.

What would these instructions be like?
I always thought it would be nice if the judiciary could declare instructions illegal to avoid CCs and such after the fact

Let's redefine and clarify the role of the Censor.

Atleast, maybe even get ride of the Censor's role, this is something I would need to think about....

Let's redefine and clarify the constitutional system of decision making.

This definetly needs clarifactions, so we don't spend the entire DG debating what this section of law says, the idea of this section was good, but it wasn't written detailed enough

I also agree with Strider, we need to scrap the constitution, the Triumvirate was a very bad idea, and the CoL has too many inconsistancies... In fact it wasn't even wanted by a majority of citizens!

 

[GeorgeOP]

Let's redefine and clarify the constitutional system of decision making.

I suggest we actually take the "day-to-day" decision making out of the hands of the people. We voted a poster President for a reason. Let the elected officials make the decisions. If we don't like what the elected official decided, we get rid of that person. There will be plenty of posters here that would poll for major decisions (like whether to go to war, etc) but there is no reason to poll the little things.

 

[ice2k4]

I suggest we actually take the "day-to-day" decision making out of the hands of the people. We voted a poster President for a reason. Let the elected officials make the decisions. If we don't like what the elected official decided, we get rid of that person. There will be plenty of posters here that would poll for major decisions (like whether to go to war, etc) but there is no reason to poll the little things.

This was one of my biggest problems with the demogame. There was really no point in being an official because everything you do had to be polled (or it was perceived that way.) Government officials had little or no power. It actually seemed liked governors had more freedom than the President. I think that like in a real democracy, the officials should have the right to do what they want. The only exception should be going to war (that does not include making peace) and the ammendments of our Constitution/CoL. If the citizen's don't like the choices an official makes, they are always able to try and impeach him, or they may choose to wait out his term, and not re-elect him. I think demogame has forgotten that citizens can still have power without directly making decisions.

 

[Strider]

As a quick clarification, is everyone in a general agreement that we should let the current game play out and use that time to immediately start addressing the problems of the next demogame?

I suggest, as we have plenty of time, we take that time and not rush into this. Let's take it slowly, try not to be stubborn bastards, and get some things done correctly.

 

[ice2k4]

I dont see why anyone would be against that.

 

[dutchfire]

As a quick clarification, is everyone in a general agreement that we should let the current game play out and use that time to immediately start addressing the problems of the next demogame?

I suggest, as we have plenty of time, we take that time and not rush into this. Let's take it slowly, try not to be stubborn bastards, and get some things done correctly.

I agree.

So we should first think what laws we need: Constitution, maybe a Code of Laws? And then we should start drafting them?

 

[1889]

Giving the officials more power and reducing the polls sounds fine, but terms should be short (like 10 turns) so the unwashed masses can stay active as well.

The game should take precedence over the rules. Lets keep them simple and short. A little guidance on how, when and why to run elections with elected officials filling in the blanks. If we like the way they run things we can amend the rules or simply keep them in office.

With such short terms we don't need rules for impeachment. And political parties will form or not regardless of what rules we write.

 

[ice2k4]

10 turns = a little more than 1 turnchat.

Nominations and elections combined take 7 days. That would mean 1 turnchat per week and as soon as elections finish, next terms nominations would be starting.

 

[DaveShack]

How about just 3 rules?

1. We're here to have fun. Any citizen can do anything fun as long as it's not against the forum rules and doesn't infringe on another citizen's right to have fun.
2. In a conflict between what one citizen finds fun vs what other citizens find fun, the majority prevails.
3. If you're not having fun, either live with it, or the door's over there. You are not permitted to ruin someone else's fun. It is OK to try to convince people that your way is more fun, but refer to rule #1 while you're doing it.

 

[1889]

10 turns = a little more than 1 turnchat.

Nominations and elections combined take 7 days. That would mean 1 turnchat per week and as soon as elections finish, next terms nominations would be starting.

Once elected the president would have polls about what sort of action should be taken, so maybe 2 terms a month. This would be very much like a succession game where we elect the turn player.

Dave's rule set covers most of it. Lets add:

4 - Turn player is elected by majority vote every 10 turns.

 

[dutchfire]

10 turns is nothing, I'd say 20 minimally.

 

[Strider]

I think you guys are already kinda jumping ahead in things . The constitution is only a small part of what we've got to decide on and honestly it's not overly important at the moment. I thought the idea of starting to plan this early was to figure out what went wrong and to make plans to oppose it in the coming game.

Now, quite possibly the worst problem we have is just a lack of interest. I believe that we mostly fix this in two ways:

1) Our first problem is getting noticed. We are one forum among two dozen.. and most people have no idea what the hell a "Demogame" is. So, our first goal is to actually find a way to get the game noticed. Now, I'm sure we have ALOT of possibilities where this is concerned. We talk TF into letting us post announcements/bulletins on the main page. Hell, I say we go on and put an announcement up saying that planning for the 2nd Civ4 demogame is starting.

2) Now, the second problem is the considerably harder one. Getting attention doesn't do anything if we just confuse the living hell out of anyone who decides to visit our humble abode. Screw the constitution, screw political parties... we make our priority help threads and making it easier to get into the game.

Anyone think I'm on target?

 

[DaveShack]

On the idea of term-based turns, I think 50 is more reasonable.

On length of play sessions, I've always advocated going "until a public decision needs to be made". The tradition of 10 turns comes from it being the standard length of a succession game set. We keep it around because every so often we see the combination of an official not posting instructions, and a DP who is willing to take the resulting power and run with it.

 

[ice2k4]

Agreed, but first we should analyse why there was such a loss of interest and not only the causes, but the causes of those causes and the causes of those causes until we can nail each root on the head.

I propose before we do anything like making rulesets or announce planning, we make a huge lsit of what went wrong. To start:

I. Loss of interest
   A. Poor Decision Making/Win not likely
       1. First Civ4 Demogame (Most people didnt have much experience in Civ4 since it was just released.)
   B. Turnchats (arguable)
   C. Judiciary
       1. Complicated Play
       2. Turned almost every thread (at one point) into a Judiciary battle.
   D. "Slow Play" in the Reniassance Era
       1. At levels above Noble the Reniassace Era always seems to be slow.
           I. Lack of wonders
           II. Lack of new units
   E. Timing
       1. Of course we lost a lot of players to school and what not.
II. Officials had limited power
   A. Everything had to be polled
   B. The Judiciary was constantly checking the executive
III. Checks & Balances
   A. The Judiciary constantly (and lawfully) checked the executive
   B. The Executive really never had any power to check the Judiciary or Legislative.

It's a start, let's try and add a few more. Lets see what we did wrong, and find a way to fix it.

 

[1889]

That's a seriously big list, maybe we can just ask why some other games were fun?

An announcement on the main page and topped threads in the ISDG, MTDG, Succession and PBEM forums should reach about everyone who cares.

They should be directed to a thread clearly titled as “New game sign-up/start here” with links in the first post to all the junk that we need to discuss.

Lack of interest may be the problem now but I doubt that was what went wrong in the current game. The major problem was whatever killed interest, which I think was the rigid or cumbersome constitution.

 

[DaveShack]

I thought the idea of starting to plan this early was to figure out what went wrong and to make plans to oppose it in the coming game.

I agree, and my "three rules" post is an attempt to identify what's wrong. Blkbird was having fun posting tons of detail and got blacklisted for being a little arrogant about it. The "idiots" were having tons of fun, and we essentially told them to go away by relegating their fun to a back room. The remaining people were having fun trying to play the game by the available rules, and some activists killed their fun by tying up the game in endless debate about dotted i's and crossed t's. We don't let people have fun. We told our Secretary of War that he had authority and responsibility for coming up with war plans, and then an activist slapped him around and polled the plan before it was even ready. The segment of the population who don't like chats browbeat the people who do like them, to the point that they just gave up that part of the fun. Certain people need to learn when to zip their lips and let the (usually new) ordinary folk have their fun.

1) Our first problem is getting noticed. We are one forum among two dozen.. and most people have no idea what the hell a "Demogame" is. So, our first goal is to actually find a way to get the game noticed. Now, I'm sure we have ALOT of possibilities where this is concerned. We talk TF into letting us post announcements/bulletins on the main page. Hell, I say we go on and put an announcement up saying that planning for the 2nd Civ4 demogame is starting.

One of "our" mods is too tied up in testing the next big thing (TM), and the other one doesn't even play Civ4. From what I can see, it's not possible to volunteer to be a mod, it actually seems to be the quickest way to ensure you'll never be one. Without an interested mod who has TF's ear, we're screwed on the publicity front.

2) Now, the second problem is the considerably harder one. Getting attention doesn't do anything if we just confuse the living hell out of anyone who decides to visit our humble abode. Screw the constitution, screw political parties... we make our priority help threads and making it easier to get into the game.

I have two responses to this.

The big problem with making the help threads first is that we can't say how the structure of the game works until the structure is defined. We could have a help thread on how we get a game started, to break the ice.

The other response I have to the "standard help thread point" is that there is nothing stopping anyone from just doing it. If you think the help threads need work, then do it, you don't need our permission. Talking about it is cheap, let's see some action.

 

[1889]

The new thread is up.

New Demogame Start Here

It links to here for now and I'll work on getting it topped.

 

[DaveShack]

That's a seriously big list, maybe we can just ask why some other games were fun?

The biggest difference that I can identify between the later games and the earlier ones (this has been happening for a long time) is the decline of role play.

The other factor which seems to dominate the later stages of the game every time is either being so far ahead that the game is won and no longer a challenge, or in this game (for the first time) being so far behind that it's hopeless. Most players abandon hopeless games that they're playing for fun, and when they're ahead they either chalk up the win, or zip through it to get the HOF entry so the next game can be started. The very few who slog it through to the very end of every game trying to get the best result are playing GOTM, or HOF, or MP, or RBCiv.