The Constitution of Polystralia

[regexcellent]

1 Citizenship

1. Citizenship shall be granted upon posting in the official Citizenship Thread.
2. Citizenship may be revoked for violating any Apolyton forum rules.
3. New Citizens shall be located in the Capital, but may choose to relocate to a new city once every 15 turns.

2 The General Assembly

1. The General Assembly shall consist of the body of all Citizens.
2. The General Assembly shall have the power to make any law pertaining to the playing of the game, amendments to this constitution, and instantiation of new government posts and departments.
3. Any Citizen may place a bill before the General Assembly by posting a poll thread.
4. New Laws shall not take effect until the start of the turn following their signing.

3 The President

1. The President shall play the game in accordance with this Constitution and the Acts of the General Assembly.
2. The President shall have the power to veto new acts of the General Assembly, but the General Assembly may override his veto with a two-thirds majority vote of the quorum.
3. The President may delegate playing of the game as he sees fit unless otherwise encumbered by acts of the General Assembly.
4. The President shall be appointed by the General Assembly every 20 turns, but after each election, the General Assembly shall set the length of the next term.
5. The President shall be limited to two consecutive terms.
6. The President may be removed from office by a 2/3rds vote of the General Assembly.

Until game start I reserve the right to make modifications to this constitution by general consensus. After game start all changes will follow the legislative process.

[regexcellent]

This constitution is just a "bootstrap" version to get us going for the first few turns. We will undoubtedly be amending it many times with new portfolios for players and new legal mechanisms. For now, we want to keep it simple, but as the Polystralian Empire gets larger we will want to add some of the following positions.

Governors: Elected by citizens in each city to a term. Has the power to decide where city pop points are allocated, that is, which tiles and specialists are worked. Selects city production item. May also have the power to control workers and units in his city radius and select what tile improvements to build.

Secretary of the Interior: Controls worker units and tile improvements

Secretary of the Treasury: Manages finances and selects city production (or coordinates with governors to do so)

Secretary of Science: Selects tech research

Secretary of War: Controls military units and/or outlines military production goals.

Secretary of State: Manages foreign relations

Secretary of Intelligence: Manages Polystralia's espionage

These are just examples. The possibilities are boundless (more or less) so use your imagination!

[regexcellent]

Reserved

[Kuciwalker]

To be clear to everyone, the above OP is our working constitution for now but is open for discussion and debate.

[Jon Miller]

I think rather than having individual governors/etc, we should have a stronger central decision making body (say five people) which follows clear direction but makes the minutia decisions for themselves (reporting them every set period). We can have a vote on the decision making body every longer period (with possible votes of no confidence after each report).

How the decision making body does things can be determined internally.

The decision making body can converse by skype/etc during the play period.

JM

[Kuciwalker]

The goal isn't efficient governance; the goal is widespread participation, followed by funny incentive structures, subject to a constraint of being efficient enough to play.

I propose that the first 5-10 turns be done all at once in the Twitch stream rather than back-and-forth with the forums just so we can get up to a higher level of complexity quickly.

[Jon Miller]

The goal should be to have fun. It isn't fun to move citizens around in a city every turn. It is fun to direct (or contribute to the direction of) the course of the civ (maybe even with countering regions/interests/etc that are part of it, the committee could grow/shrink depending as the game progresses, and divide things how they wish (even geographically)).

Having a committee that is voted in for periods of ~12 turns subject to recall and required to post reports of every ~4 turns (of course, they could be given instructions to post reports every turn if that is their platform for being elected) is a lot more fun with regards to the democratic control of the course of a civ.

JM

[Aeson]

I participated for a while in a Civ III demogame which allowed members to move around from city to city. I don't remember much about it except it was a fun mechanic with a lot of role-play potential. Will have to go dig into the archives and see what actually was going on. Other demogames I played in were more focused on the gameplay, and that was fun too.

Whichever way we decide to go with, we can have some utilities made (maybe even a mod) to make it easier to manage.

[Donegeal]

What is this 'moving city to city' or starting out in the capital thing? Strictly a RP thing?

And screw the president having any kind of veto power. No. No, no, no, no.

[Aeson]

It's a roleplay thing, but also factors into who can vote for governors or potentially on regional voting issues. Sadly the game mechanics won't allow for civil wars

[Hercules]

Looks ok except:

I don't like the word ' instantiation' in 2 General Assembly point 2. How about simply creation.

And in The President You may need to define 'quorum'. Is it an absolute number of all citizens or of those present within a time frame.

Can I be Secretary of Population growth.

[Seeker214]

And screw the president having any kind of veto power. No. No, no, no, no.

I disagree entirely. The president should be able to advocate for his voters by utilizing powers such at a Veto. The general assembly will represent the whole of the community but not necessarily the whole of the presidential vote.

We place trust in the president to make the right decisions in our stead. If the president continually goes against the will of the people then there are systems in place to either override his Veto or remove him from office. The Veto is essential to this type of Political system.