How about playing at a high difficulty level. Combining all our expertise against the AI should make us pretty tough and it can also be a very interesting way for less experienced players to learn.
Might a scenario help encourage role-play? Sometimes it's cool, but I can do with it usually.
No matter what game we play, a point will be reached where it's either unlosable, or unwinnable. I don't think that factor needs further consideration except for finding a balance.
Scenarios and modifications have been considered and rejected in the past. I suppose we could discuss it again, but the impact of having to restart the game to load a scenario / mod is an inhibitor. Furthermore, a scenario implies that we might be picking up an already formed civilization, which would be counter to the idea of creating our civ from scratch.
Well theres two types of ways to play a game. One is for the win/highest score. The other is to try and play out your civ as it would in real life and set self goals. Do you think Churchill during World War II said "this war looks likes its gunna hurt us, maybe we should try and get Legendary culture in 3 cities, wait what's legendary culture???"
Anyway maybe we should worry less about "the win." Roleplaying would really help, but the RPG forum got crushed this game before it even started.
The RPG forum has always had a tough time getting off the ground because there was not enough interest, and we haven't had an ultra-dedicated RPG gamemaster since DG2. That's what the RPG needs to succeed.
As for role playing within the game, I have always been for that and have even tried to implement facets of role playing into the Citizens Forum with mixed results. The unfortunate thing is that some who have played here just want to play and discuss a game by the numbers without taking into account the fictional citizens were are supposed to repesent. There also seems to be a desire to dispense with the legal aspect of the game in deference to a more "fun" approach.
The "fun" part should be the role playing and the legal dilemmas that come up from time to time. Do we get a bit out of control? Sure! But we have played a game with minimal laws before, and that has proven to get sketchy as well. And for those who think that a majority vote (sans Judiciary) would get us out of any tenuous situation, can I offer you a "Vote for Your Own Storyline" thread in the Succession Games forum?
The Democracy Game was founded as a game of government simulation. No offense to DaveShack, but I would rather see it fade away than get watered down in the manner that is being prescribed.
I'm sure that there is room for more than one kind of DG. Just look at the variety of games available in the NES or succession game forums. A few different types of games would increase traffic in these forums and attract more players.
I'm sure that there is room for more than one kind of DG. Just look at the variety of games available in the NES or succession game forums. A few different types of games would increase traffic in these forums and attract more players.
Having too many games takes away from any one of them becoming very active. If we have problems right now with activity, what happens when we have 3 single player DGs going...
In this next DG, I don't think we should have an RPG forum, all forums should be rpg forums. In my opinion the game should be based around the forum and our characters that interact in the world, the game shouldn't revolve completely around the actual Civ4 game.
Legal wrangling, contested election debates, and rpg threads were the funnest part about the demogame for me.
We should have a flexible constitution like donsig suggested, then make an easily modifiable CoL, which cares more about the rpg system/civ4 game. For example, a law requiring pollution control. This would affect the rpg going on, and may require us to say sell our factories in our cities in the civ4 game.
There also seems to be a desire to dispense with the legal aspect of the game in deference to a more "fun" approach.
The "fun" part should be the role playing and the legal dilemmas that come up from time to time. Do we get a bit out of control? Sure! But we have played a game with minimal laws before, and that has proven to get sketchy as well. And for those who think that a majority vote (sans Judiciary) would get us out of any tenuous situation, can I offer you a "Vote for Your Own Storyline" thread in the Succession Games forum?
The Democracy Game was founded as a game of government simulation. No offense to DaveShack, but I would rather see it fade away than get watered down in the manner that is being prescribed.
Ah, but you missed my point entirely. If a majority or significant minority wanted to have the fun part be the legal part, then they'd be in a position to define the game that way. What they shouldn't be able to do is have their fun in a way which destroys the game for the people who don't like the legal part.
Take DaveShack vs donsig, which has gone on for most of this game. We had our little contest over whose interpretation of the law is right, and came out fairly even -- at least we'd probably each say we "won" . The difference in our approaches to that battle was that I recognized that we were upsetting the natives and decided not to play lawyer any more.
Strider suggested we should figure out what went wrong, and fix it. We had one of the highest number of citizens ever, and then we screwed up and they all bailed out. The main reason, as far as I can tell, is that there are too many people around here who have mastered being rude without breaking forum rules. There have been at least a half dozen incidents where I wanted to take one or more people aside and tell them to drop the issue or take a forced vacation. If forum rules aren't broken, there really isn't much that can be done.
The key part structure-wise is still balancing leadership and citizenship. Take too much power away from the leadership and you get nobody running for office, which pushes down morale. Too little power for the people and you end up with the leaders as the only ones left.
As for me, the DG kind of died for me when I was not able to mend my image after a seemingly harmless slip-up turned public opinion against me and made me out to be someone I hadn't been for my entire 3 years in the DemoGames. If you rail against mediocrity, be sure to choose your words carefully! Other than that, I've been pretty busy.
\/quote]
What was it you said? personally i like to think donovan died when i crushed him in the foreign affairs election a few demogames back.
(my greatest hour, one of the few times i actually feel i did a good job after i was elected. I was in FA, provolution was in the military. all was great)
And in reference to the crazy consitution thing. THe constitution isnt so bad its that crazy ass Code of laws. The Tri thing was pushed by one person. The vote was crazy , 2 fairly good alternatives got beaten by the tri because people didnt just vote for one of the good alternatives. And even then the only reason the tri won was because one person had 50 DLs and voted it through.
Getting noticed
Even though we don't have very active moderators here, we should be able to get noticed. If we send a nice pm to Rik Meleet, signed by all of us (I can see 17 people posting in this thread) to ask him if he could talk to Thunderfall about an announcement. He either asks it to Thunderfall, and then it probably will be allright (come on, things like Creation&Customization and GOTM get loads of announcements, we should get one too!), or he doesn't, and then we could ask Thunderfall ourselves.
We could also pm people that we think might be interested, like people from former demogames.
Confusion
I don't think it's that hard to maintain a thread with all relevant information and links for starters (it would seriously help if we had a mod to do that though, because mods can edit posts made by someone else).
Loss of Interest
Spoilerquote :
Ice2k4 said:
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.
A. I think we were unlucky with our starting position, locked in a peninsula full of desert. This led to over-expanding, high upkeep, killed the economy, lost us the game.
B Turnchats, I haven't been here since the start, but I do remember some decisions made in a turnchat (to capture some mongolian cities instead of razing them) that are at least doubtful in retrospect.
C Judiciary, I don't think this is much trouble, as long as the "lawyers" debate in the appropriate threads, and have fun doing that, while the other can have their talk on the game, something that gives them fun, in other threads, uninterrupted by legal debates.
D Slow play, I think the game would move faster if we were in a winning position now, we could just automate a bunch of workers to do the roading while our troops conquer enemy civs. However, at the moment, we don't have good troops, so we can't wage war. And war is the thing that makes the game interesting.
E Timing, I think that people would keep involved in a more interesting game.
Role play
Role play is fun for many, but the point was that we couldn't get it set up. But what if we ask someone from the Never-ending stories forum to help us? This might get a lot of people there interested in our game, and they have the experience to set up a nice role play game for us. I think it would be best to ask someone involved with the DG, maybe Civgeneral? (He's a NESser right?)
Code of Laws
I think this one should be more "customizable". Like for instance when we wanted to delete the Minister of Culture position. I made a new law, taking the duties of the MoC and splitting them up, giving the Minister of Science most of them. But when I tried to get the law passed, I got a lot of comments: "Keep it as it is, this change is not needed". This is because we don't have many ammendments, if we would tolerate minor adjustments more, the CoL would be way better. Now it's full of minor errors and inclarities (who doesn't remember the debate on polls?), but no-one wants to change them because it's a hard work, and all you'll get is criticism.
People join games because they are good not because there are no other choices so let’s not worry about having a little more variety here.
This kind of demogame may not be for everyone, but it sounds cool to me.
Players join one of three aristocratic classes: Soldiers, Merchants and Scribes. These guilds can decide how they run themselves, but at the end of each turn we check the demographics screen to see which class is put in charge of the government.
If GNP is the lowest in rank compared to the AI, then Merchants are discontented with the ruling class and have instigated a coup. If Manufacturing is lowest then Soldiers have seized power, and if Crop yield is lowest the Scribes have swept into power at the head of a popular uprising.
The leader of the appropriate guild can setup the government as they wish but afterward players can change guilds freely.
Its not too complicated, gets rid of most elections which I think are generally pretty dull, gives people considerable power but doesn’t let them know how long they will keep it, leaves the decision to chat or not to chat up to each guild and encourages Role-play.
I’ve started a thread on this in the RP forum to avoid starting too many threads here that don’t pertain to the current game.
(I also like the suggestion of inviting NESers, because they are a pretty fun bunch anyway.)
People join games because they are good not because there are no other choices so let’s not worry about having a little more variety here.
This kind of demogame may not be for everyone, but it sounds cool to me.
Players join one of three aristocratic classes: Soldiers, Merchants and Scribes. These guilds can decide how they run themselves, but at the end of each turn we check the demographics screen to see which class is put in charge of the government.
If GNP is the lowest in rank compared to the AI, then Merchants are discontented with the ruling class and have instigated a coup. If Manufacturing is lowest then Soldiers have seized power, and if Crop yield is lowest the Scribes have swept into power at the head of a popular uprising.
The leader of the appropriate guild can setup the government as they wish but afterward players can change guilds freely.
Its not too complicated, gets rid of most elections which I think are generally pretty dull, gives people considerable power but doesn’t let them know how long they will keep it, leaves the decision to chat or not to chat up to each guild and encourages Role-play.
I’ve started a thread on this in the RP forum to avoid starting too many threads here that don’t pertain to the current game.
(I also like the suggestion of inviting NESers, because they are a pretty fun bunch anyway.)
hmm, I think doing something similar to this for our actual government would create new interest in the game among old and new players. Any changes made to the government in past games were minor. We've always kept about the same system of departments with a head and deputy. Maybe it's time to switch from that method? Your idea gave me an excellent way to incorporate roleplay elements into the game itself.
Why don't we create guilds for each "section" of the game. When a person joins the game, they chose which guild they wish to belong to (Soldiers, Scribes, Artisans, whatever we chose and whatever number we chose). That guild and it's members then operate that section of the civilization with almost complete power. The guilds can elect their own leaders, whom then decide who to elect to head the government for a centralized effect.
Sounds interesting, to me anyway, but the question is whether we can pull it off. Regardless, maybe we should attempt to form a completely different government this game?
Somehow what turned me off from the demogame was the unnessciary judicary arguments and discussions cluttering the entire forum and not enough discussions related for in-game actions. This is especialy usefull if people dont have the time to boot up Civ4 while they are in the middle of doing their school work to at least catch up insted of being left behind in the dust.
However, I am only speaking within the people whom are in the "In school/college demographics" .
Amazingly enough, the Judiciary is a REACTIVE tool. Oddly, people keep forgetting that. Heck, the Judiciary didn't even DO all that much this DG - people just like to blame it for faults that have nothing to do with it.
How do you minimize the impact of the Judiciary? Two ways.
1 - Don't bring matters to the Judiciary unless they are important to you. Review the list of cases brought, and some of the people loudly complaining BROUGHT cases.
2 - If there's a problem with the law, FIX THE PROBLEM. By far, this DG has been the worst at that - people whine, complain and moan, but won't fix the issues that are being raised. Heck - I gave up trying to fix it because people didn't seem to want the fixes.
Folks, no DG is going to be perfect. But for the love of Pete, if you're going to whine about something, get off your lazy tush and fix it!
So - what should be in there for the next DG?
1. Smaller government.
-- It should be small enough that people are forced to run for office.
-- Explicitly allow leaders to appoint "helpers" for the term. It's been both officially, and unofficially, done for many DG's, just make it official.
-- 3 or 4 positions AND THAT'S IT.
2. Smaller ruleset
-- Basic Con (see this DG; C3DGIII)
-- Basic CoL w/ offices
-- Scrap Initiative/Referendum - too complicated
-- Have citizen's direct requests to leaders, if blown off, citizen's can post the poll on their own
-- Explicitly allow leader to poll only major decisions, can decide minor ones on their own (subject to point above). This prevents a leader from, say, planning a war without getting plans approved, but allows changes in those plans based on events.
3. On-line/Off-line game play
-- Allow either
-- Allow minor changes to instructions be made if play is on-line, if the leader explicitly allows
4. Smaller Judiciary
-- 1 person for everything.
-- All JR's handled by a thread on the topic, issues presented and the Judge rules. If people don't like it AMEND THE LAW. Problem fixed.
-- All CC's require someone to rep both sides. If it can't be found within reasonable time, charges dismissed.
What else needs to happen? More players need to be involved in discussions of all types. That means some of the "political players" (like me) need to get invovled somewhat in the game, and some of the "game players" need to get invovled in the politics. The DG is about both, not just one side. You cannot complain about the other side if you don't get involved in it.
Players need to support and encourage the discussion. Some of the discussions here really look like SG threads - fairly direct in nature, and somewhat hostile at times to ideas that are, actually, bad ideas. That will NOT help the DG. We had an extraordinarly rude and hostile period, with great hostility, anger and direct jibes between lots of people. THIS DG LOST PLAYERS BECAUSE OF THAT. I'm pretty sure that some of my direct posts chased some away, and I can say for certain that various people chased ME away because I finally decided they made this DG "unfun" for me. Nobody likes to be repeatedly insulted and denigrated, whether directly or in an sneaky manner.
Think about that - the comments often made in SG's work because it's a different system that the DG. It's really, really hard to get new players here, and really, really difficult to keep them.
Keep the rules simple.
Keep the rules flexible.
Resolved disputes quickly.
Limit the positions to encourage the political debates and contests that bring life into the DG.
Further suggestion - this may be sacriledge, but I suggest that the older "vets" back away from the ruleset creation process, and see what new ideas come forth. I'm looking at myself, DS and Strider in particular.
I'm certainly not saying be silent, but post mostly questions and some comments, and see what some of the newer players come up with, They have fewer convictions and traditions than we do, let 'em run with it where we don't overpower them.
Further suggestion - this may be sacriledge, but I suggest that the older "vets" back away from the ruleset creation process, and see what new ideas come forth. I'm looking at myself, DS and Strider in particular.
I'm certainly not saying be silent, but post mostly questions and some comments, and see what some of the newer players come up with, They have fewer convictions and traditions than we do, let 'em run with it where we don't overpower them.
What is a demogame, you ask, it’s a great way to meet new people, hang out with old friends, learn some new tricks and show off what you already know while playing a cooperative Civ 4 game against the AI.
Wow, sounds great is there someplace I can go to learn more?
Sure.
Erm…were?
Oh, right here at the [link] thread.
[/News]
And oppened an invitation thread in the NES forums.
What else needs to happen? More players need to be involved in discussions of all types. That means some of the "political players" (like me) need to get invovled somewhat in the game, and some of the "game players" need to get invovled in the politics. The DG is about both, not just one side. You cannot complain about the other side if you don't get involved in it.
I deal with plenty of politics over in off topic. I honestly dont want to see the Demogame being drabed in politics. Plus I am very unwhilling as a "Game player" to be involved in the nitty and gritty side of politics.
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