Call to Power Democracy Game FAQ

Frozzy · January 12, 2003, 16:57

This is basically ripped from the CtP2DG. Thanks go to Locutus, MarkG and TKG (from the CtP2DG, Civ3DG and ACDG respectively)

As the game progresses, I (or the moderator) will edit the post

1. What is a Democracy Game?
In the CtP Democracy Game (CtPDG), all members play the same game and the same civilisation. Many people decide commonly what we should do next. Nobody has the same power when paying single player vs. the AI.
The name "Democracy Game" comes from the fact that the game is played a a democracy like a real nation. For example, nobody has the power to declare war to America, it needs a vote. If a majority of citizens want war with America, than war is declared.

2. Who plays the game?
Technically, this is a single player game. Only one player gets to play the game physically: the President. He is elected for a "term". Everyone can access his savegame. Nobody is allowed to "play ahead" on this savegame, meaning acting before the president actually does it on his own computer.
But the President has to obey the Ministers (also elected every term) who give precise orders each turn. Each Minister is specialized in a specific field: military, economy, foreign policy, etc.
The Ministers often consult the people via polls on what policy they should promote. When they poll the people, Ministers have to follow the poll, or risk losing all credibility.
The people can also express their views whenever they want and start their own polls to force the Ministers to follow the policy they desire.

3. What are the rules?
A DG is a game, and thus it has rules. These rules are called the "Constitution". The Constitution can be modified by a vote. The rules of the Constitution (as well as other Laws) are enforces by the Court, a group of players who have been elected for this purpose. If the rules are broken, the Court can punish offenders as it sees fit (eg. impeachment).

4. Can I form (political) parties?
In a Democracy, you can't hinder people who think the same to unite. So if you want to, you can start your own policial party, or join existing ones. Just post the new party's goals and policies, and perhaps, if people agree to your policies people will join.

5. How do I join this Democracy Game?
You must register yourself in the CivGroups at the top of the CtPDG forum. If you don't do this, you won't be able to vote and other rights may also be restricted (the feature is currently still under development). Once you've done that, you're a Citizen of the CtPDG.

6. Why would I join by entering the CivGroup if I can just post and vote as it is?
Soon, the CtPDG will be read-only. Also, since some of the rules in the Constitution require that a certain portion of the population is involved in certain events, it's important to keep track of the size of the population. The CivGroup is the easiest way to do this.

7. What do I have to do if I join?
Technically, you don't have to do anything. However, as a citizen you are expected to vote in polls and express your opinions. Other features are the ability to run for a ministerial and presidential position.

8. Do I have to own a copy of CtP to be able to play?
The short answer: No. The longer answer: Without CtP, you can't run for President, and it will be difficult for you to run for Minister if you don't have the necessary knowledge. However, the Judiciary positions require no knowledge of the game.

9. What settings is the game played on?
We haven't decided. Feel free to begin a poll.

10. Who moderates this forum?
At time of writing, there is no specific moderator. If you wish to have a thread topped or closed or edited, PM MarkG or Ming (the adminstators of the ACS forums)

Frozzy · January 12, 2003, 17:06

Kids, never use notepad when editing an FAQ

Nimrod · January 12, 2003, 22:28

TheBirdMan · January 13, 2003, 01:36

Think I should have read this before I answered on which mods to be used

CptDG only a "singleplayer" game

.

Could we make it PBEM (the AIs are simply too stupid - even with the MedMod).

Frozzy · January 13, 2003, 01:41

Bird, the problem with DGPBEM is the size, or lack of it, of our community.

Maybe after this Democracy Game, we could change it to PBEM, however there are a lot of people here who are not familiar with a Democracy Game.

If you want, you could make a poll, but thats up to you.

Personally, I'd rather have 1 single player game THEN a PBEM.

Sorry

Quickbeam3 · January 13, 2003, 08:19

I agree im new to this and would like to see how a pro plays the game. I can study the play and then learn to crush you all ahahahahahhahahaah cough cough splutter.

Frozzy · January 13, 2003, 18:54

Yes, Demo games are great for getting strategies and tips...

jpww · January 14, 2003, 00:41

There's not much to learn by beating the AI. It's a matter of taste: you can go for a fast kill, for a faster kill or the fastest kill

Wait... I'm not a citizen. Should I get a visa or something?

lunger75 · January 14, 2003, 12:30

Why don't you become one?

quinns · January 14, 2003, 15:22

I echo JPPW, The Tourist

, sentiments. You won't learn much by playing the a/i.

I am confused by why we need so many people to run one civilization? We each usually just run an entire civilization by ourselves without much effort. That is, we play the role of all ministers and president. I'm sure you have a good reason, I just haven't heard it stated yet.

Frozzy · January 14, 2003, 15:32

Quinns, you need elections and a lot of input in complex judge decisions.

Recently in the CtP2DG, we have all been debating the context and the meaning of the word "can". As stupid as it sounds, it is a actually a major wording flaw in the constitution which is interpreted two ways: They "are allowed to, but don't have to" and "That is what they must do".

Stupid? Well, it would be eliminated if we have more people.

Locutus · January 14, 2003, 16:29

Quote:

Originally posted by quinns
I am confused by why we need so many people to run one civilization?

That's the whole idea of a Democracy Game. Otherwise we'd call it Despotism Game

The idea is to get together with a group of different people with different ideas about how to approach the game and to try play the game together, making decisions democratically. This process of decision making is (supposed to be) both fun and educational (both in the sense that you might find some new tricks and tactics or ways of looking at the game, as well as in the sense that you might learn a thing or two about democracy itself). In addition to that, Democracy Games also offer plenty of room for role playing, story writing, debating, bickering, spamming and other forms of entertainment

Everyone gets a different thing out of Democracy Games. H Tower doesn't even own CtP2, yet he's a very important member of the CtP2-DG. He's really only there for the role-playing and decision making part of the game, while there's this Touissant guy (or whatever he's called), who doesn't even participate in the CtP2DG but who only lurks, to learn tricks and strategies to improve his own game. I myself am mostly participate for the community spirit, and to a lesser degree for the decision making and to find out how others approach the game in terms of strategy and tactics.

So to answer your original question of why we need so many people to play the game: because it's fun

quinns · January 14, 2003, 16:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Locutus

That's the whole idea of a Democracy Game. Otherwise we'd call it Despotism Game

The idea is to get together with a group of different people with different ideas about how to approach the game and to try play the game together, making decisions democratically.

Believe it or not, I understood all this before, Locutus.

But I still don't see why you need so MANY people. If 10 people are interested, go with that -- If 5, go with 5 -- If 3... okay I'll stop now....

But seriously, why do you NEED such a huge number of people to play this democracy game? It is still "fun" with fewer isn't it?

quinns · January 14, 2003, 16:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Frozzy
Quinns, you need elections and a lot of input in complex judge decisions.

Thanks Frozzy. That makes sense. I'm just asking because I would hate to see this democracy game fail because we don't have hundreds of players participating. Seems like there is enough now to have two teams. Again, IMHO.

Frozzy · January 14, 2003, 17:47

Quinns, small countries have small govenments. NZ, for example, has 4 million people, and a 120 seat parliament. UK has over 600-odd, because it has 60 million people.

The bigger the community, the bigger the government, the fairer the decisions

Locutus · January 14, 2003, 18:11

Quinns,
You need about 7-10 people to keep the government running and if you want to keep the elections even remotely interesting, you'll need at least another 7-10 as backups. Having only one person run for each position during the elections (which is happening in the CtP2DG at the moment) is very boring. You need more candidates, to create diversity and spark debate. Plus, not everyone may be interested in participating in the government every month, or even at all. It's just like in a real democracy: most cabinets of real government consist of between 10 and 30 members, while the total number of people involved in politics numbers into the thousands, even in the smallest countries. Unless people are very devoted and don't care that everyone does the same thing throughout the game, you can't possibly play a full DG with less than 10 people, while 15-20 is really the recommended minimum.

On top of that, the more people play, the more people can share their knowledge of the game and the more different opinions are represented, which adds greatly to the experience. Also, with more people you could start political factions or parties and you have more room for roleplay, minigames, etc, etc. Generally speaking, the more people are involved, the more fun it is...

quinns · January 14, 2003, 19:38

Very good! Thanks for the in depth explanation!! I'm getting a much better idea of what a DG is now. (I hope others are benefitting from my ignorant questions

) Much appreciated Locutus and Frozzy.

Even if the a/i isn't that strong, it may still defeat us -- as a democracy -- because we will be constantly debating and arguing and fouling things up-- just like a real government! Am I starting to get the idea?

Locutus · January 14, 2003, 19:56

NP.

Quote:

Even if the a/i isn't that strong, it may still defeat us -- as a democracy -- because we will be constantly debating and arguing and fouling things up-- just like a real government!

Well, it hasn't happened before and I sure hope we won't be the first, but if we can't agree on what the best course of action would be, then that's entirely possible

Quote:

Am I starting to get the idea?

Yeah, you seem to be getting the hang of it

H Tower · January 14, 2003, 20:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Locutus
The idea is to get together with a group of different people with different ideas about how to approach the game and to try play the game together, making decisions democratically. This process of decision making is (supposed to be) both fun and educational (both in the sense that you might find some new tricks and tactics or ways of looking at the game, as well as in the sense that you might learn a thing or two about democracy itself). In addition to that, Democracy Games also offer plenty of room for role playing, story writing, debating, bickering, spamming and other forms of entertainment

i don't think i could have said it any better

Quote:

H Tower doesn't even own CtP2,

I'm working on that, I was at BestBuy yesterday and they were selling a copy of the game for $28 USD. I refuse to pay that much

checkMate · January 14, 2003, 22:56

Quote:

[SIZE=1]
Even if the a/i isn't that strong, it may still defeat us -- as a democracy -- because we will be constantly debating and arguing and fouling things up-- just like a real government! Am I starting to get the idea?

Yes, this is quite a well know phenomena. Occasionally a chess Grandmaster will play a game agains his whole country (Usually Russia.) The country never does any good. The average chess player is a bit better then the concensus chess player.

quinns · January 15, 2003, 00:10

Very interesting, CheckMate. I never heard of that before... But I believe it!

Pave · January 26, 2003, 08:30

Hey, this Democracy game sounds great!
Take me, take me!!

Menlas · February 9, 2003, 21:05

Sounds exciting...count me in

checkMate · February 10, 2003, 01:46

Pave click the "civGroups": Call to Power Democracy Game above to join the democracy game.

Pave · February 27, 2003, 05:19

Yes,I joined in democracy game, what else I have to do?

Pave · February 27, 2003, 05:28

Wait a minute, is this democracy game already going on or can I make a new game?

checkMate · February 27, 2003, 08:51

Pave, just read all the threads here. The game has just started. We vote on all of the moves. Most of the action is in the threads that have the word "Official" in their title. These are the polling threads where game decisions are voted on.

Pave · February 27, 2003, 10:21

Oh, I see. Ehehee

... DAMN I'M STUPID!!!

MrWhereItsAt · June 9, 2003, 10:07

I know what a Democracy Game is ( if anyone should, it should be me

).

I am here to learn what this "Call to Power" is and how it's played.

**--Initialising lurk mode---**

checkMate · June 9, 2003, 23:33

Well you've come to the right place. But we need to get our die hard ctp players over here to make the discussion lively.

Berxpert came for a few turns and got us going pretty good with his quick building of settlers, mounted archers, and markets.

I have seen many times that the best way to start is to build many cities early. In the long it is just best to have started with more cities every time.

A players prospects in this game depend largely on how much river they can find and settle on. In this game we are reasonably fortunate in that respect.