The end of spot votes in the chat?

[chiefpaco]

I fully agree with Bill with but one reservation - putting 100% faith in the forums. I think that many of the major decisions that were made in chat were new events that could not be easily predicted. For this, I have no problems coming back to the forums to debate. Some, however, were the result of leader absences, poor planning, and poor leadership. I do not care to bring up examples of this but I will stick to this.

The game has to continue on, IMHO, at some sort of pace. Not necessarily the 10 turn marathon, but something. Even in real life, we are faced with making decisions with time as a factor. If the issue comes as a result of one of the above reasons, I think the DP with the group has total rights to make it and go on, just like the Player would if the chat group did not exist. I don't think we should stall for people who care not to put in the work for us.

Hence, I would also give power to the Player to reserve judgement on important issues in this regard.

 

[disorganizer]

@Immortal: we could have a chat based and a forum based nation.

@Bill:
Which decisions are major? As seen from the turnchat script of last turn, some (including donsig for example) stated the issue not worth of stopping the chat for it. others (like eyrei) direktly stated it should be stopped. Where is the line? Which matter is important and which not?
This would be the most important point here. I think:
Maybe we should define all decisions which will not stop the chat. All others have to stop the chat. If we find an issue why we stopped was not worth it, we could still add it to the "do this in chat" part with a public vote (this should be a 2/3 vote though).

 

[disorganizer]

btw: this could be part of the PPO-Discussion 1-3... Check the sticky group-thread for the links.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by disorganizer
[B@Bill:
Which decisions are major?
[/B]

As I noted in my post, I think you hit on the key point.

But rather than try to define the thousands of different possibilities that could be major events depending on the situation, I would advocate simply putting that decision on the shoulders of the President.

We elected him or her, they should be the one to carry that burden of judgement.

Bill

 

[disorganizer]

We should not decide which to be major. We should decide which ones are minor. This way, it prevents impeachments.
Your proposal puts the decision in the presidents hand. As we saw in the last chat, donsig decided to continue the chat without having the trade before. Only after some insisted, he held the spot-vote but still resisted on stopping the chat until eyrei insited on stopping.
In your proposal, we would have played another 5 turns and then we would have come to forum to discuss the till then obsolete deal.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Shaitan
I don't know how the decisions were made as I wasn't at the chat and have not read the log yet. I would imagine that immediate actions were based on interpretations of our long term plans, perhaps with some chat room discussion.

The way to reduce spot votes is to reduce the number of decisions being made. Ideally this is done by pre-planning in the forum. Another (less efficient and less democratic) way is to just avoid decision making.

Last turn chat (1340 AD, June 16) we had no build queues from Ameris or New Cormyr. Second chat in a row for both I think. Some cities were still working on build queues entered long ago. Some weren't. Philadelphia made 4 workers in a row (one turn for each) since there was no build queue. Did anyone want that? Justinian and Plexus made military units when they could have been making culture generating buildings. In the absence of instructions I let it go with whatever came up.
I do not micromanage the cities. According to the constitution governors control tile use in their province. I am reluctant to go against the constitution. I'm practically 1-1 in public investigations and don't want to try for best 2 out of 3.

 

[disorganizer]

but thats our problem: it is not our rules or something, it is the lack of information provided by the officials. i wonder why nobody impeaches the governors for not fulfulling their job (hey eyrei, thats your job! i wont open a single pi any more).

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by disorganizer
We should not decide which to be major. We should decide which ones are minor. This way, it prevents impeachments.
Your proposal puts the decision in the presidents hand. As we saw in the last chat, donsig decided to continue the chat without having the trade before. Only after some insisted, he held the spot-vote but still resisted on stopping the chat until eyrei insited on stopping.
In your proposal, we would have played another 5 turns and then we would have come to forum to discuss the till then obsolete deal.

Well perhaps not, because if donsig would have had this power in his hands, he may well have decided to do what he did, take the issue back to the people.

But, I do agree with your concept of laying out key issues considered to be major. I think that is good, but that we should put in the hands of the President, whomever that is, the power to further decide what else should be sent back to the forums.

Bill
...in PDX

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by disorganizer
but thats our problem: it is not our rules or something, it is the lack of information provided by the officials. i wonder why nobody impeaches the governors for not fulfulling their job (hey eyrei, thats your job! i wont open a single pi any more).

I am hoping those who did not or were not able to carry out their duties will simply not be elected again. Whether or not it is a situation beyond their control that kept them from the forums unfortunately, does not matter. We need our governors to post new build queues for every turn session, whether or not there are any changes. Some provinces do take a huge amount of time to complete anything, but most provinces do complete a couple of things every time turns are played.

 

[disorganizer]

Maybe we should implement a "Hall of Shame" for those?

 

[Eklektikos]

Eyrei: Sometimes it's just not possible for me to re-evaluate the the province for each turn chat. To compensate for that I try to make the build queues at least 3 deep so that they shouldn't become an issue during play. Since the queues should be entered in full by the player I don't see that they need to be posted in the turn chat thread unless changes have been made to them, the exception being those cases where one of the queued items is a prereq of another in which case I would repost that specific queue. Would you not consider this approach satisfactory?

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Eklektikos
Eyrei: Sometimes it's just not possible for me to re-evaluate the the province for each turn chat. To compensate for that I try to make the build queues at least 3 deep so that they shouldn't become an issue during play. Since the queues should be entered in full by the player I don't see that they need to be posted in the turn chat thread unless changes have been made to them, the exception being those cases where one of the queued items is a prereq of another in which case I would repost that specific queue. Would you not consider this approach satisfactory?

Since the completion of the Forbidden Palace, your province will be building improvements quite rapidly. Just keep that in mind, and if possible check for 'tweaks' that could make the cities more effective. And please post in the turn chat thread regardless of whether or not there are changes if at all possible. If you don't think you will be able to 'tweak' your province, please give permission to the designated player to do so.

 

[donsig]

As designated player I do enter all the build queues right into the game. Anyone can check the save to see that they are spooled up. I double check those queues posted in the turn chat thread against what is in the game during pre-turn and make adjustments accordingly. The beauty of having a three deep build queue is two fold. First, now that we've been using this system for awhile doing the build queues in pre-turn is much faster. I generally have to enter only the last on the list for some cities and many don't require changes at all. Second, this does allow for a governor to miss a build queue every now and then with out any problems what so ever. It is important for governors to keep an eye on things and note any changes that must be made but it is not necessary at this point for full build queues to always be posted. At the very least copy and paste the old build queue into the turn thread so the DP has a reference. One tricky think is queueing up things like a bank right after a market. We can't spool the bank up in the save because the city doesn't have the market built yet. So reminders are helpful.

The trouble we've had recently is that Ameri and New Cormyr have gone at least two turn chats without any build queues posted. Philadelphia in the former reverted to building workers (4 in a row) while the later had cities making military units. No disasters here but we could have done better. Having to do spot votes in these cases can be troublesome to say the least.

Perhaps we do need Lt. governors or deputy governors after all.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

I thought (or maybe there was just discussion about it) that the Domestic Leader was in charge of any province that did not otherwise have instructions.

So, anymore discussion about the idea of switching spot votes to the forums?

 

[Shaitan]

The Domestic Deputy is the defacto governor for provinces that don't have a governor. I think an absent governor would make the province qualify as lacking a governor. Maybe make the Domestic Deputy the default backup for missing govs?

Incidentally, Cyc is filling in for SKILORD at the moment for his Domestic and Provincial duties so is sort of the acting Domestic Deputy.

 

[Cyc]

Almost Shaitan. I tried to post instructions for the Provinces, filling in for SKILORD, but it didn't fly 'cause I wasn't elected or appointed and approved. So I guess it falls back on the Constitution. The DP, the DL, whoever...

 

[Shaitan]

I was afraid of that. I was hoping they'd just do a spot vote to confirm you as the interim gov. Is SKILORD totally absent? If he could just post a poll to get you approved then it wouldn't be a problem.

EDIT: That wouldn't actually help for the Domestic Deputy spot though. The fill-in for the Domestic Deputy is the Domestic chat rep and that's got to come from Eyrei.

 

[Cyc]

I believe he's on the beach in the bahamas, but I could be wrong. I don't expect him back before the 26th.

 

[Shaitan]

Yikes! The Pres is going to need to step up and get somebody working in that province!

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by Shaitan
Yikes! The Pres is going to need to step up and get somebody working in that province!

Never mind. Eyrei's already taking care of it.