Turnchats : dealing with absence

[Spiffor]

Today's turnchat (like thursday's, from what I heard, because I wasn't there) was marked with the lack of severalofficials :
- Vice President
- Foreign Minister
- City Planner
- Science Minister

I don't wonsider them as evil because they missed the turnchat : Real life can call at any time, like it called me thursday.
But I'm looking for ways to deal with it efficiently. Out of 4 absent ministers, only one gave precise plans, i.e the minister of science. Our Public Works minister also gave precise plans beforehand, but made it into the chat.
All ministers cannot prepare sufficient plans beforehand (I especially think of the Foreign Minister and the Supreme Military Commander), as the international situation permanently changes.

So, we have many ways to deal with absent people, but the lack of rules in this domain made us waste much time during the chat.

We could :
- The going-to-be-absent ministers are to make precise plans, and to entrust someone (vie PM) to transmit them. Indeed, the President can't keep track of everything, which is posted in several threads. For example, should GoodFella not be here, none of us would have been able to say "GoodFella's plan is to make this, this and this".

- The going-to-be-absent ministers appoint an aide, who can meet decisions, and give orders if they follow the genral line of the ministry.

- The Prez appoints an official / anyone in the chat (this point is debatable) to temporarily replace an absent. This has be done today, when Ninot made me replace Sn00py for the chat.

- People present at the turnchat elect temporary replacement among the officials / people in the chat (this point is also debatable), via a quickpoll. This has been done today when UberKrux replaced Punkbass2000, after a competition against SirRalph (for the record, SirRalph voted Uber )

- People present at the turnchat vote for each decision to be made by an absent official. This has been done at the beginning of today's chat, but proved very unsatisfying and slow.

That's all the ideas I've came up with / seen so far. I think this issue is important for every people who attend turnchats, because absenteism is almost permanent. If we have general rules about it, we could deal with absenteism beforehand, and avoid slowing talking about something else than the very game.

What do you think ?

[Epistax]

I think officially, if there are missing officials, the VP should take the job over which is the most pressing. This is already done, but I just like it stated.

It would be nice if each candidate had a 2nd to take his place, although it is quite easy to understand both people missing a session-- but as you stated, all ministers should have full plans that are usuable for at least five turns (possible exception to the SMC due to the variability of results).

There could even be a third executive, or an additional minister, whos duty is to replace an absense. Now it sounds silly.. but look at our track record.

[Inverse Icarus]

Logically, it would make sese for all officials to make a geenral outline of their plans, ala my "War Path" Thread.

if each advisor could make maybe a 5 turn order list, and maybe a list of "general objectives" (not specific orders), we could cope a lot better.

It's rather hard to predict much further into the game for a few offices, so general objectives are neccessary.

[Spiffor]

Epistax : once I was in a turnchat where only Timeline and myself could play. Timeline played everything. It was very efficient, but also went against the principle of the Democracy Game.
Plus, when things become more complex and thay're already becoming so), doing a good job for 2 or 3 ministers will be nearly impossible for the VP.

I think the VP should replace up to 2 ministers, when he's present. However, due to time constraints, it happens the VP isn't in the turnchat, like everybody else. We need other solutions in this case.

[Ninot]

Simply, the quickpoll will be the death of the turnchat. We can't depend on the VP to be there, atleast not always. I found what we did today was efficient

We need a chain of command within the minister system. Uber taking over for Punkbass was very efficient, and probably saved us 30 minutes of quick-poll debating. Spiffor taking over for Sn00py would have been godo too, but we ended the chat before that really matted.

So, how about a chain of command minister system?

[OPD]

[SIZE=1]
There could even be a third executive, or an additional minister, whos duty is to replace an absense. Now it sounds silly.. but look at our track record.

A "minister without portfolio" perhaps.

Personally I like the idea of voting in a replacement at the chat.

[Harovan]

I think, if a minister misses a turnchat (which should be a rare exclusion!), he either shall give the president clear orders about what to do, or he has to nominate a deputy, who shall take part in the turnchat on his place. Ministers, who are absent in turnchats and did not leave orders or an active deputy, should be warned exactly once and the second time impeached even without a poll.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I think, if a minister misses a turnchat (which should be a rare exclusion!), he either shall give the president clear orders about what to do, or he has to nominate a deputy, who shall take part in the turnchat on his place. Ministers, who are absent in turnchats and did not leave orders or an active deputy, should be warned exactly once and the second time impeached even without a poll.

/me prepares the gallows for our soon to be ex-city planner.

[Falcon02]

Well, in the CFC Demogame we've developed a system where after each turn chat the President posts a "turnchat" thread with the date (in game date of the save we're going from and the date of the turn chat itself). Inside that thread we have all officials post their directions for the turn chat, in case any of them can't come, even last minute.

EDIT: if you would like to look at an example here's the link to our last complete turn chat thread

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27364

Also, in the CFC we do have a Chain of Command (CoC) in case the President or the VP can't come (which can happen quite often). In fact our last turn chat I had to play through since neither the President, the VP, or the Domestic leader (3rd on the CoC) were able to play, and the Military leader is the 4th in the order of our CoC.

I hope this helps, and we can both draw off the experiences of the other to make both of our Demogames better.

[Kuciwalker]

There's a real problem with punkbass - I don't think he's ever been to a turnchat, and he rarely posts.

[Will 5001]

Couldn't the turnthreads sove this prolem as there is more time for the ministers to get online and post their suggestions and discussions can run for longer.

[Chieftess]

Like Falcon said, we have a CoC in effect. When I was the Trade Leader, there were times where I (7th in line I think) had to play. The biggest problem is time zones, since half of our citizens are European. But, the forum is a great place to hold discussions before the chat. Oh, and we have ours seperated into 3 subdivisions to avoid forum clutter.