OT: Ideas about next Demogame

[Provolution]

Here we go.

I have been challenged to provide my own inputs to the game, and will give an honest try.

The reason, as I see it, that the participation is less than wanted, is that there is not cohesive structure and predictability in the pacing of the game. I have been reading up on the genesis of this game, and saw what the founding fathers wrote on private and public polls and so on.


TIME AS DECIDING FACTOR

One driving force in a demogame is time. Since a Civ4 game lasts for 430 turns, which is less than Civ3s 540 turns. Yet, we must realize that the games age quicker than we would like to, and that a slow demogame would lose participation, as there is no new juicy issue to look at. With a pacing of 40 turns per month, a histographic victory would last a full 11 months, which is a bit long. With a 60 turn pace, the length would be about 8 months. I have no problems in ceding the needed mandate to a DP to do what is needed to be done in 15 turns.

ORGANIZATION OF A GAME MONTH

I see no need to change to structure of nomination and polling in elections, I think that part works remarkably well, except for the point that elections now are a series of futile popularity contests. Elections should also include major debates on issues affecting the next 60 turns (effectively next month).
As the best would be to organize the phasing of reporting, discussions, polling and instructions, I believe we need to make this happen in a full week, not 4-5 days as some players are arguing. This also means we need only 4 designated players, of which the King/President/Leader should be reserved one spot, which means we only vote for 3 DPs, not 6 as we see today. This way, we avoid having 5-6 friends voting each other in all the time, but manage to get some real changes.

ORGANIZATION OF A GAME SESSION WEEK

This would be the radical shift to how things are conducted. This would be along the lines of setting fixed amount of days for reporting/summarizing the game (writing requirement for DP to make it more forum friendly), discussing what should be done the next 15 turns and polling options that came up during discussion. Lastly, instructions contingent to polls should be posted within 12 hours of the announced playing of the game. A game should be played within 48 hours of a defined time-slot in the week. This is very generous, knowing what requirements there is in multiplayer mail games.

Day 1.(Monday)
We need 1 day to report a played game and discuss immediate finds

Day 2-4 (Tuesday-Thursday)
We need 3 days to extensively discuss what options we have, and these options should be posted in an official discussion for poll options per area.
(Tech Polls, War Objective Polls, Wonder Polls and so on).

Day 5-6 (Friday-Saturday)
We need two days to poll the subject, some discussion will go on here as well in poll threads, but no more polling will be conducted. In case of a tie, the leader posting the poll breaks the tie. The leaders opinion should be posted in the poll in a separate post before the poll begins in earnest.

Day 7 (Sunday)
Last Instructions are posted and 15 turns played by DP. As the DP can choose when to play within a 48 hour range (with an earliest and latest time specified before the month), there will be two-three more days to take from, except for February, where the 48 hours are reduced to 24 hours.

Whatever happens in a game, 15 turns will be played, and the DP just takes executive decisions in war and peace and other areas.

Leaders

This area is controversial, so I start out with the more acceptable part first. We should continue having "Governors", as they really improve how we run cities. However, how the game is run now, there is almost no solidarity between leaders, due to a fragmented structure. This needs to be solved.

Governors should run up to five cities (no more) and administer all activities in city screen.

The other leadership should be elected by the progress of techs and civics, so that the game-rules changes "realistically" in the spirit of these changes.

First, we will have a "King", which makes sense in the Ancient Era. The king nominates and polls wonders, great people, civics and new city placements.

...To be continued. (must sleep).

 

[Provolution]

reserved.........

 

[Provolution]

Reserved..............

 

[cassembler]

I think this is on the right track. The only thing I'd propose is sticking to a 4 week (28 day) month over calendar months to avoid said February issue, and the like.

 

[Provolution]

I agree to the 28 day month, effectively a lunar month. I just added inn the 2-3 days as an option to appease the La Mañana players that does not care much for peoples interest in schedules. There will also be a chain of command in all links of this and an effective end to the anarcho-liberal "Four Musketeers" System.

 

[ordinaryguy]

Yeah, this means that I don't have to post so many instructions

 

[Provolution]

This means four instructions per month for a governor, each covering 15 turns. The transaction cost for each session will be 50 % less, and you can add more quality planning into 15 turns, which makes more sense than just 10 turns.

10 turns is a dated legacy from the old Civ3 demogames, and that anachronism has stayed around for two long. Quite possibly because a lot of people got 10 fingers to count with, and yet failing to understand the major shift to a Civ4 long perspective thinking.

 

[DaveShack]

Umm hate to burst your bubble but there have been several instances this game where something happened which is impossible to be planned in advance, like Rome declaring war. Also you'll see that it takes a LONG time to play a DG session, if a DP does it properly. Planning for 15 turns every time is simply not feasible. If you only get 40 turns done a month, maybe only 30 due to events, that's 8-10 months to play a full length game.

We should plan for sessions either 5 or 6 days apart. That gives 45-60 turns per month, a much better rate.

 

[Provolution]

6 days apart, that may work out as opposed to 7, but much much better than 4-5 days some here attempt.

 

[Methos]

This means four instructions per month for a governor, each covering 15 turns.

I definitely disagree. It took me 3.5 hours just to play ten turns, so your talking 5.25 to play fifteen? Rough estimate. Plus, as DS already stated, there are some things you just can't plan for. Rarely have I ever seen a turnset (whether DG or SG) stick to the ten turn rule. Things happen.

 

[Provolution]

All right, but 4-5 days is far too short for handling TCs anyways. 6-7 days is needed to get fruitful discussions and polls, as well as instructions. We also need these days to properly sequence the workflows. I can agree that ten turns may be the wanted target, but we should be flexible to allow 15 as well.
A 6 day schedule would allow 4-5 turnplayers, which is the maximum we should have per term.

I will keep ideas for improvements here, as I rather would like to make a new game less flawed, even though Ravensfire "challenged" me to rewrite the rules (possibly just wasting my time as we are to wrap up this). I rather spend the good ideas, creativity and cooperation on a separate demogame creation. I am more along the lines of what cassembler, and several others mean (Fed, Nobody, Husch and several others). These (We) are not taken seriously (and I am definitively not taken seriously by the "founding fathers") by the handful that are happy with the constitution.

I rather focus the debate on rule improvements here, as all initiatives elsewhere will be habitually shot down. There has been a reactionary and negative line to changes, which I now realize and now will stay out of.

 

[Nobody]

How about this, we have offices like President, Foreign Affairs, Military ect. But to hold these offices you have to also be a governor.

So at the election time we election governors, the president and the judiciary. The President is the Governor of the capital city.
He/she then appoints the other officals from the Governors.
Governors are also DP.

So instead of Electing A DP, A group of Governors and some cabnit level guys.

Now you elect governors, who then play the game as well. and the president can choose ministers out of the governors.

It sounds muddled but it might work well.

 

[Provolution]

I agree to that Nobody, and it removes bureaucracy, and gets the job done.

I think also that we should add minister-governors at the rate of expansion and getting new technologies, so that we can scale the constitution per term, and not be stuck with the old stuff for too long.

 

[HUSch]

Nobody
than you have a Game without people.

My idea
you make at the beginnig of every turn an caucus to see, how many want to play together. Perhaps there are 2 times the number of offices and that is a very high number. And all get offices, because than they ve a reason to stay at the play.

 

[Provolution]

We need to figure out how many officials we want. Certainly we could make DP and another role a duplicate, for a start.

 

[DaveShack]

Three days for discussion and two for polling is plenty for any conceivable in-game situation, if people listen to each other and respect others opinions. Most people supported a 5 day cycle when we asked them what they wanted.

It used to be that the President was DP for the entire month. There were only 2-3 people who could devote that much time to it, and it finally got to the point where nobody would run for the office because it was too much commitment. A few of us came up with the DP Pool as a way to take all that workload and spread it around. DPs are already merged with other offices, not a separate office.

 

[Strider]

We have always had problems with Governors, because well they just are not that powerful. As I've said many times.. you have to give an elected official more power than the average citizen (or more power in a certain aspect). When we had the huge and tight races... it was because someone could be elected and actually see their ideas put into motion. For the past year though... elected officials are just glorified poll-posters. They lead discussion... post polls, but nothing really other than that.

It's really a waste of time (for the person elected).

 

[Provolution]

I agree very much to retain the DP institute, I would never like to have a fixed turnplayer for a month. We agree there 100 %. I am willing to compromise for 5 days, as long as no one pushes 4 day schedules.

Ok, what if we had a 5 day cycle, then we would need to make sure the discussions have a good format. I am still for making players nominate poll options, in order to avoid very sprawled polls with too many options. We also need to make sure the discussions have a beginning and an end, and someone should be responsible to post the poll before the last 2 days are begun.

The problem with having citizens making absolutely all polls, is that there is weak arbitration mechanisms.

For a tied poll, I suggest the "minister" breaks the tie by giving his/her official public vote preemptively, declaring what they vote (I never heard about ministers having a private opinion on how they wanted to handle state matters, and if they did, they resigned quickly). The declared vote will be indicative of what that minister wants, and would break any tie before the results are counted. This would solve future ties.

Instructions should be given in conditionally based on polling, to cover most eventualities based on pending polls.

Elections should mean much more than they do today. I suggest we make major civic changes and major wonder discussions during the elections, and even poll them there if possible. We need to make the elections more attractive again, as the elections right now are favorite contests and nothing more. Adding long term goals in the shape of "Wonder Bills", "Civic Bills" and "Land Expansion Bills" would add more excitement to the election.

These are a couple of ideas that may help the game, not from a pure legalist perspective, but from a fair gameplay perspective.

 

[DaveShack]

We have always had problems with Governors, because well they just are not that powerful. As I've said many times.. you have to give an elected official more power than the average citizen (or more power in a certain aspect). When we had the huge and tight races... it was because someone could be elected and actually see their ideas put into motion. For the past year though... elected officials are just glorified poll-posters. They lead discussion... post polls, but nothing really other than that.

It's really a waste of time (for the person elected).

I see this problem slightly differently. The governors currently have near absolute control over cities and workers. The times that citizens even comment on city management are so few that if anything governors get lonely.

Officials (Chieftain, Warlord, Science) could have a lot of power but either they don't use it, or they abuse it. There doesn't seem to be any in-between in this game. Using either science or warlord as an example is fraught with danger because current and former occupants of those offices could take offense, but let's use Science.

How can the scientist be a strong leader, and still give the citizens their craving for having influence in the game? By being an expert in their field! The scientist should research the strategic alternatives for tech path, explain the benefits and costs of each, take a position on which one is best for the current national strategy, and lead the discussion. Either explain and convince the doubters that their alterations are damaging to strategy, or poll things proactively instead of letting citizen concerns stay unsatisfied so long that a wild west shootout results.

 

[Provolution]

I fully agree with that leadership ideal Daveshack, I must say that.

What we are trying to achieve here (in the next game discussion, since I am not interested in dabbling in someones personal constitution), is to format the discussions in such a way, that official are made to poll presented citizen alternatives along their own. Setting a timeframe on the official discussion and making it mandatory to present poll options in a formated way (putting some responsibility on MPs), would remove some of the confusion and lack of perspective that causes some of the trespasses (both official and citizen trespasses, and yes, citizens can trespass as much as officials). Making crystal clear mandates for officials have totally lacked this game, and I see the founding fathers here fell short compared to some of the mechanisms that worked out in the Civ3 demogames.

I have never been a "founding father" myself, and I see that the same handful have dominated all these discussions. I wonder if next game would have a different direction in this sense.