PTW Demo Game Rules Outline

[Jon Shafer]

These are recommended guidelines to keep in mind.

The tenative start date for the game is December 1st.

Anything in italics is an issue in question.

Teams:

- There will be seven human-controlled teams involved.
- There will be NO AI-controlled civs involved.
- Each team must have a name and a 15x19 pixel icon to represent itself with.
- Each team may pick it's own civ.
- Each team must have at least 5 members.
- Each team has a maximum of one day to hold the save file before passing it on to the next team.

General:

- The game will be between teams made up of Apolyton members.
- Standard Civ 3 rules will be in place.
- Barbarians will be set to random.
- Difficulty level will be Monarch.
- The game will be conducted through PBEM (Play-By-Email).

Map:

- Map size will be Standard.
- Landmass will be Random.
- Climate will be Normal.
- Temperature will be Temperate.
- Age will be 4 Billion.

[Spiffor]

Good work
Edit : removed now irrelevant content

[Jon Shafer]

There were two seperate labelled official polls over those individual issues. As by vote they've been established as rules for the game unless changed.

[Donegeal]

How can anything be "official"? Where are the rules that determind what "official" is?

We can only say what we have so far is a consensus.

To be Official, we need to set up a governing body of the entire PTW-DG.

[Jon Shafer]

Where are the rules for establishing a government?

People vote for things because they know the results will have bearing upon what goes on in the game.

[Donegeal]

Yes, but "official" gives it a finality that just doesn't exsit.

[Togas]

I agree with Donegal's protest. Nothing is "official" as of yet. Right now it's just mob rule. Kinda like my Roleplay team.

But more seriously, I don't feel a mandate to ascribe law or officialness to our previous poll decisions. I respect Trip's desire to get things organized, but I don't agree that we have "rules" yet, just opinions and some loose agreements.

--Togas

[GodKing]

Ditto to what Donegeal and Togas have said.

[Jon Shafer]

Fine then, I'll ask Markos to delete the thread.

[GodKing]

I don't hink you have to go that far Trip. It is good to get organized, and that means keeping records of what has been discussed. However, we are so early that things are just getting set up. Things can change rather quick as more people join, so on and so forth. Lets just keep things flexable for now, recognizing that they may change, but need not. Keeping track of our early discussions is good, as it helps to give us a foundation to work off of. Thanks for putting all of this together. It is mearly the verbage that we object to, not the listing of the discussions.

GK

[alva]

hey Trip, don't get discouraged too soon (there's plenty off time for that )

We do appreciate what you're doing , it's good someone tries to organise it and get it going.

[Jon Shafer]

Well to avoid any potential problems or stepped-on toes I'm not going to do anything else to help set the game up. Everyone can set things up fine without me anyways.

[punkbass2000]

That's my GL.

[Arnelos]

CONCERNING TRIP:

I enormously appreciate what all Trip has done here to organize this demo game for PTW... we wouldn't be even remotely as far along as we are without him taking leadership on the issue...

CONCERNING WHETHER THESE POLLS ARE "OFFICIAL":

You guys have set up a chicken-and-the-egg problem here... How do you establish an "official" state to legitimately codify and enforce laws if you don't have a legitimate way of establishing such a state? Put more planely, if polls are not a legitimate means of establishing authority, how do you justify using a poll to establish a state, which then itself possess legitimate authority? In part, this gets at an age-old question of how legitimate authority is derived, but I'd rather not get into too much political philosophy at the moment (we have a problem to solve here...).

Just because things decided in polls that have been labelled as "official" and are not necessarily codified and enforced by an established "state" does not mean that they are not legitimate authority... I would argue that most posters on Apolyton (and certainly within this specific forum) would have an inherent sense that the democratic voting represented in a poll is a legitimate means of establishing authority for a "democracy game". This is due to the near complete absense of any other means for establishing legitimate authority - as Hobbes' argument that all authority is (when you follow it to its source) based upon the fear of a violent death is sorta moot on the internet (I happen to agree with Hobbes' and its why I think the Internet is so anarchic...) On the internet in general, democratic voting largely seems to be the only way of getting people to consider external authority "legitimate" (whether or not it is legitimate delves into too much political philosophy than is productive here...). I would argue that it could work here, especially since "democracy" is included in the title of the forum

Since polling is really the only means we have, I would argue that the accumulation of poll votes is our unwritten constitution. Later polls trump earlier polls and there is no written prohibition against re-polls on any time-frame, so I'd expect that the poll to allow so-called "surplus teams" would trump the poll establishing the ideal number of human teams. Other cases may arise and would be treated similarly.

Until we pass a written constitution via a poll, our unwritten constitution (the accumulation of all passed polls), which is constantly changing, will simply have to suffice as the only additions we have yet made to the law of the jungle.

IN CONCLUSION:

It would be VERY VERY HELPFUL for Trip (or at least someone) to record for public review the resulting "decision" from each poll held thusfar, adding to the list as additional polls are passed. There is currently nothing to enforce the decision of these polls and nothing to prevent them from being reversed by later polls, but writing them down WILL HELP.

So... Trip, PLEASE either continue your attempt to record the results of each polls in a central location or find someone else who will (I'd be willing if you aren't now).

[Jon Shafer]

I suppose I'll continue my work, but jumping through hoops of 'political' correctness isn't exactly what I want to have to deal with after having spent (literally) hours on setting this thing up. Official, unofficial, what counts? Do we have to repeat each poll three times in order to get something to be considered 'official'? If not, then how is anything we've polled on relevant. What's stopping a team of 1 person making his own team?