The Disaster Avoidance Thread

[mad-bax]

Having looked at the current save last night (1375BC) I spent all night locked in a room having carefully removed all sharp objects from it. What I had seen was a picture of hell, lacking only a handcart at its gates.

We are up to our necks in a hole guys, and we really must stop digging now.

Our iron resource is connected. How did that happen? We are now building swords from scratch. Nothing wrong with vet swords of course... except that we are building regulars, and of course we will have fewer of them.

Our capital city was to be set up as a settler/warrior combo pump. That has been destroyed.

Bentley is building regular warriors. Why?

If we continue like this it will take 150 miserable turns for us to lose this game. It won't be fun.

Here is my damage limitation plan which can be discussed, ignored, whatever.

Bentley should not be connected to a road. It should switch from warrior to rax and the two forests in its boundary chopped to hurry it. It should then build vet warriors.

The city to the North of the Capitol(forget its name) should get a granary and then be made into a 4 turn SF. Once this is done the captital should switch to chariot production, peeling a settler off when it forces a change in the lux slider.

Forget building swords. Just build chariots, and don't build units in towns without a rax. Build workers there instead plus the odd building (harbor?) where growth is needed.

I'm really quite upset with the save. It is a difficult emperor game being played at about Regent level competence. I'm not blaming anyone for that, and I am as responsible as any one other person. I just want it to change, that's all.

 

[DaveShack]

Ah, the joy of demogame play. I see similar effects at work, and call it "herding snakes". No matter how you try, getting them all to go in the same direction is a hopeless task. Try being the turn player and knowing things are wrong, but you have to do them or get CC'd and banished.

Maybe now we'll have actual meaningful discussions on all the departments. One of the departments you're irked with is led by someone who is supposed to be a deity player who borders on being able to handle Sid -- maybe not?

You may want to object to hitting enter on this turn and gently prod certain people to change the approach.

 

[Ashburnham]

I think the problems we're experiencing are problems that stem from the "original sin" of Demogame play: lack of long-term planning. I know we have a government specifically designed to promote this type of play, but the results have been mixed so far. What we really need is for the Consuls to propose long-term plans; specifically, long-term plans that compliment the plans put forth by other departments. This is a critical point in the game, and we need the government to run as efficiently as possible. That means getting approval for detailed, strategically sound, long-term plans. That also means staying in communication with other departments, so that the various plans compliment each other.

If we can do this, we'll quickly be able to dig ourselves out of this blasted hole.

 

[cavvie]

Well clearly there needs to be a smooth method of liason between the departments. Obviously we can't just expect all the department heads to keeps completely up to date with eachother and such. I'm not familiar completely with the constitution so I'll have to review that but maybe somekind of regular cabinet chat on IRC or something will help policy be more coherent and forward looking. Also, perhaps a new small department of inter-departmental affairs; I am against increasing beaurocracy, though. Just some discussion off the top of my head.

Oh, and somebody want to PM me a good place to start studying to play competently above Regent level?

 

[DaveShack]

I posted a thread on coordinating a term 2 strategy and there has been no reply.

 

[Ashburnham]

Sorry, Daveshack. I guess thread titles featuring "Disaster" capture the citizens' attention better than "Coordination". Go figure.

 

[blackheart]

The WOTP is a bit mentally ******** . We really need more info from the government offices.

 

[Bertie]

Sorry, Daveshack. I guess thread titles featuring "Disaster" capture the citizens' attention better than "Coordination". Go figure.

Well, the title of this thread certainly attracted my attention!

RL has been dancing the Macarena on me this past week so I haven’t spent as much time as I’d have liked on the demogame. I just took a look at the save and basically agree with mad-bax. I don’t think we’re yet at the disaster stage, though we’re close. We do need to raise the level of our play IMO. Switching Bentley to a barracks is important (before the workers chop the forest!) as is switching Provolutia to a granary.

Ashburnham in his earlier post ("original sin") has put his finger on part of the problem, but not the whole thing. We’ve actually been doing a lot of long term planning. Somewhere I know we specifically mentioned the desirability of not hooking up our iron before we were ready to upgrade warriors, for example; and we’ve had explicit discussions on what the role for each city was meant to be. What we’re somehow failing to do is translate how our strategy should affect the immediate turnchat. DaveShack’s strategy thread is a good beginning. But rather than have one thread for the entire term, perhaps we should have one for each turnchat? Or maybe, as Ashburnham suggests, we should just communicate better. (Why am I suddenly reminded of the prison warden in Cool Hand Luke?)

 

[DaveShack]

I'm actually considering opening a discussion thread for each play session about 4 days in advance, and maybe slowing down a bit while we get our collective "end product of digestion" together. Each Director would post the presumptive instructions for the next turnset as soon as possible, and we could have coordinated discussion in that thread and go off to other threads to discuss details. Then the TCIT can be loaded up with the results of all that work.

 

[Strider]

The demogame will keep digging itself into a hole untill we create a constitution that is actually plausable and realistic.

Now, while we sure as hell can't do much right now about digging ourselves out of the big hole, we can take care of acouple of these smaller holes. Well, correction, our elected representatives can fill in these holes.

Haven't seen many of them post though, and the one that has only decided upon more debate and discussion, instead of taking a leading role in the nation as is needed.

Well, nevermind, looks like we won't be fixing these holes very soon. Go Figure.

Edit: You'd get much better results posting directly inside of the said leaders thread (might want to wait for the turn of the term though). I'll quickly come in an add my support for these filling actions.

 

[Chieftess]

I think it's the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing... I looked at the governor's queues, and it said "Warriors/Swords if the iron is connected". I took that to mean the governor was expecting the iron to be connected.

I also think the old government setup was better. More people dealing with specific advisory roles rather than 2-3 at a time. The current system (and I said this would happen) leads to potentially overlooking things.

 

[DaveShack]

We didn't have a strong External Consul, or there was a misunderstanding about what that position should do. This led to incomplete planning.

However I would mention that the best place to look for planning information is not in other tactical departments, but at the strategy discussion threads. There were constant mentions of building vet warriors to be upgraded and pretty much no disagreement with that idea.

This is water under the bridge though. We just need a minor adjustment to focus things a bit more.

On the in-game front, just disconnect it, and problem solved. OK that's not as efficient but it would accomplish what we want.

 

[Ulyaoth]

We didn't have a strong External Consul, or there was a misunderstanding about what that position should do. This led to incomplete planning.

I'll take the blame for that. While TimBently was gone, I wasn't sure what his plans were, and didn't want to just put my own ideas in and undermine his plans, so I just kept out of saying anything on the issue. I'm sorry.

 

[DaveShack]

I'll take the blame for that. While TimBently was gone, I wasn't sure what his plans were, and didn't want to just put my own ideas in and undermine his plans, so I just kept out of saying anything on the issue. I'm sorry.

You're not the only one to blame, I should have made sure the slack was picked up. Like I said, water under the bridge, and now we go to work on fixing it.

 

[Nobody]

I also think the old government setup was better. More people dealing with specific advisory roles rather than 2-3 at a time. The current system (and I said this would happen) leads to potentially overlooking things.

yeah the new ways dumb, some people have 2 or 3 things to do, while at the same time there are other people who have to do the same thing, and then there is culture who dosent have much to do at all.

 

[RegentMan]

yeah the new ways dumb, some people have 2 or 3 things to do, while at the same time there are other people who have to do the same thing, and then there is culture who dosent have much to do at all.

I wouldn't say it's dumb. It's a new way to play this game. We've gone one term. Give it more time. We'll see if we still want it for DGVII or not.

 

[ali]

haha told u so....long time planning and coopeeration between the departments are needed

 

[mad-bax]

With the greatest respect, attempts have been made by various people to generate discussion of the "big-picture" game. The response has been almost non-existent.

From my perspective, one of the many problems we have is that people are not working within the governmental hierarchy.

The president should lay out a long term stategy, drawing advice from his consuls. The purpose of this would be to provide a coherent strategy for the current term that takes into account the wishes of the various consuls, but also resolves conflicting policy between them.

The consuls should develop their policy to deliver the overall "presidential" strategy. In other words, they should not be proposing a wish list of what they would personally like, but a plan to deliver what the strategy tells them to deliver. In most cases, since their view were already accounted for, this would mean only slight changes to the original.

The tactical layer will then use the strategic layer plans as a framework for micromanaging the empire. Again, they should not be doing what they "want", but should be doing what is required.

Only the tactical layer should post in the TCIT. However, the DP should have the latitude to interpret the Strategic level policy where the TCIT is inadequate to allow more than one turn to be played at a time.

In general, people are doing what they want, rather than what is required of them. The president should take the lead and post a strategy, and then poll the main ideas within it. The consuls will then interpret that, post their strategy and so on.

People who become candidates in elections should post the platform on which they are elected in the poll. By voting for a candidate you are then voting for a policy rather than a person. This policy, having been voted on can then be carried forward into the new term, and modified once its' contents have been polled.

This sounds complicated maybe. But really it isn't. It is just a matter of establishing a reporting line, and then taking responsiblility for your obligations in office.

"Told you so" is not good enough. On turn 18 I said we would be locked into an 80 tile hell-hole if we were not careful, and until now I have resisted the temptation to gloat. It isn't helpful.

 

[zyxy]

Hi,

I am a new citizen, but lurked for a while. It looks like this game is getting interesting...

I agree with most of the points in the first post. A few comments:

1. Iron can be disconnected. Otherwise, one city on warriors and 3 on chariots means we'll be heavy on horses and thus can expect high losses. Fun if you have the production power, otherwise I think it is better to stick with upgraded warriors and a few horse.

2. Do we really need a granary in Provo? Where are these settlers going to go? There are perhaps one or two spots until we downsize the Dutch. That will be 30-40 turns from now (I guess, can't look at save), after which we'll probably have conquered more high food sites, and be close to a better government. First priority should be military, I think.

3. What's the flip risk of Bentley? Can we expect to get a rax + decent amount of warriors before it flips?

The difficulty (and fun!) of the demogame may be that people with different strategies get elected, leading to uncoordinated policy.

 

[GenMarshall]

1. Iron can be disconnected. Otherwise, one city on warriors and 3 on chariots means we'll be heavy on horses and thus can expect high losses. Fun if you have the production power, otherwise I think it is better to stick with upgraded warriors and a few horse.

There is one problem, one of the Dutch core cities is built on top of an iron resource.