Diplomacy Nazi, please!

[notyoueither]

The think tank is a damn good idea.

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The think tank is a damn good idea.

Indeed

[Arrian]

Isn't the team the think tank?

Anyway, any help you can provide will be welcome, MZ.

-Arrian

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Theseus
That's funny, Dom... I was sort of looking forward to those long and sometimes silly logs!! I find it easy enough to scan for the important bits, and yet find it interesting to observe 'tone.'

Exec summaries would be useful of course.

Not only that, but several times, I've seen someone else pick up a tidbit the ambassador missed just from reading the transcript. I agree with Dom that we need a summary, but I think not making the transcript readily available would be a mistake.

[Aginor]

Edit: You've already hit on my conclusions in any case, having looked at additional threads. If you want to read, don't know me and want to get a feel for my thinking, etc. - be my guest!

The advantage of the 'thinktank' concept is dedication to a task. While we'll have our team for making and validating grand decisions, having a 'State Department' if you will to make recommendations can streamline the process of making decisions.

I happen to be a political scientist. As a consequence of this I know some things about organizational theory but I am not an expert on the subject. To summarize the pros and cons of a dedicated diplomatic think tank (long story as short as an academic can make it):

Pros: Quick decisions with clear policy options prepared and laid out for the team with salient points highlighted. A dedicated thinktank assigned to reviewing diplomatic offers, assessing their merit, and advising the full group on the pros and cons of each move as they see it would simplify the decision making process. That would enable us to react with a minimum of time spent on discussion (and that time being spent highly efficiently, with some direction to the discussion already established).

Cons: Groupthink effects, the possibility of missing something important, and thinktank player burnout. Our thinktank would by its existence and recommendations narrow the lines of possible debate significantly, which might cause us to fail to realize something (due to the lesser investment of other team members in diplomatic decisions). Also, those players are probably going to have to communicate often (RL or at a minimum IRC), in a time consuming fashion, and according to a schedule - which may be difficult for some people.

If we go that route, it may make sense to organize some of our other key functions along 'thinktank' lines in order to maximize decisionmaking efficiency overall. That would also help ensure that we're not placing an undue burden on the time available for those players that are in the diplomatic thinktank, strengthen the investment of our other players, and ensure that we spend roughly equivalent time debating the key aspects of the game. Our economic/industrial development springs to mind as another function that could easily be subdivided, as well as our military development.

Taking a further step in the thinking...it may even be best to assign players out to such 'committees' that report to the body as a whole according to their interests and expertise. While I have something as a reputation as a warmonger (probably deserved...I've played a lot of Rome lately, and in SMAC I went from favoring Zakharov to favoring Yang), my battle plans are fairly vanilla, though my tactics are generally pretty sound. I'd probably give you my best contribution either there or on an economic team.

As I see it, the best organizational plan is to have the group as a whole set overarching strategy, have the standing committees figure out how to tactically implement that strategy, and have them convey those directives to the turn player. In overall decisionmaking, committee votes would be public and dissenters would have the opportunity to persuade the group as a whole to the minority committee view through response to posting a response to the committee recommendation.

Some examples of how that might work:

Military - group determines that we wish to attack Rome as soon as their war with Persia concludes. Military committee directed to determine a plan. Military committee comes back with several policy options (straightforward land invasion to take border city A, moving on to cities B and C; feint at city A while seaborne force lands, captures capital, then followed up by pincer on B and C which moves on to A, etc.) Team determines how we want to play it, tells military committee to figure out what we need to pull it off, military committee recommends force size, it is approved, committee and turn player figure out how to implement. Chances are this committee's work would be comparatively light most of the time, with sporadic periods of intense activity. Of course, the more aggressive we decide to be, the more difficult this will become.

Economic - chances are build order and city placement recommendations would be the biggest tasks here. Constant burden, and the turn player should almost certainly be a part of this discussion since it's 'nuts and bolts'.

Diplomatic - receipt and evaluation of diplomatic offers, including requests to make war, tech trades, and the like. Again, likely to be somewhat sporadic in nature, but intense when it has to act. I'd highly recommend that any members of a diplomatic team have experience with Diplomacy games, of course.

We could also set up groups on an ad hoc basis (the Roman Committee on Destroying Carthage, for instance) to deal with certain key issues as they arise.

Now, I'm new to diplomacy games, so for all I know this may be too unwieldy a system for decision-making...but it strikes me as the best way to subdivide the labor, keep everyone involved in some aspect of the game that they are interested in, and provide for an established system of replacement or easing of burden should a key person become unavailable (illness, RL intervening, burnout, etc.). All we would have to do if the chair of a committee or other key player became unavailable or needed to step down is just hold a quick committee vote to name a replacement (or better, have a deputy chair already established to promote and name a new deputy chair), and we're back off and running again.

Thoughts?

[DeepO]

Thoughts?

Yay... page long posts with plenty of ideas... me likey! Welcome to the Storm, Aginor.

I'll read it in a moment, first of all some other stuff I need to do... my internet access has been very spotty the past few days. While it works, let's do the most important things first (so first GS, than banking, than eBay, than GS some more, holiday booking, and maybe catching up on my in-box too.)

DeepO

[Arrian]

@ with DeepO.

-Arrian

edit: fixed. I'm just as bad!

[DeepO]

Aginor, part of my job is thinking on / analysing of corporate organization... there, they call this concept competence centers.

The main difference of my view to yours, is that I think these things should be self-organisational. Indeed, cons like burnout will happen, people will be missing because of rli, and the game situation migth change as well. The best way to react to this is to let the change happen from within, instead of from some outside rule/procedure.

This, not to say that any formalisation is unnecessary, but what you picture as an ideal goal is something that tends to emerge on itself too... if only there were ever enough members to fill all the spots.

Basically, the same thing happened last game: we started scholia with clear leaders, on different subjects. It was not so well defined that e.g. strategic plans had to come from the Spartan academy, but whenever a situation arises the whole of the team quickly turned to whoever was 'in charge' of a scholia to focus the ideas and report. You're asking for the same thing, and I can only agree...

The only thing that seems to lack after a while is the rigid organisation, and I think we should improve there: for instance the strategic plans were all over the place. Ideally, I see one topped thread per scholia to focus discussion in, but organisation of that thread is up to the concerned scholia. We really need reference material, for instance a topped thread with 'executive summaries' of diplo chats with links to the complete log and links to the separate discussions as well. This way, members who are not involved in the diplo discussions don't need to wade through tons of threads to get what they want.

Similarly, the Spartan topped thread could be a history of different plans: summaries with links to discussion (so not the actual discussion itself). Again, I see it a task of the scholia to permanently adapt to new situations: e.g. the turnplayer logs followed a certain format last game, which changed considerably when forest reforesting and chopping became a major task of MMing. And, it is the responsibility of the leader to keep the topped thread clean and up to date.

We could also use a dedicated hisorian for such a task, but if one person has to write all those summaries, and link to all those threads / posts, he will burn out for sure. Even now roles will change very dynamically: when I've got an active night I read everything, and comment on lots of things no matter which scholia it belongs to. Others might be more interested in only the MMing, or only diplo, or... doesn't matter really. We need to have some kind of system where everyone is free to invest as much energy into GS as he finds enjoyable.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Topped theads with finalized plans: yeah, definitely.

When I was running Cake or Death in the PTWDGII (before vanishing without a trace ), I had a thread labeled "the current plan" for all the micromanagement moves 10-15 turns in advance (managing the settler/worker pumps, worker actions, etc). When I was active and kept it up to date, it was very useful.

The Spartan thread will consist of contingency plans for both offensive and defensive war, but perhaps also procurement goals (by 500bc, we want to have so many spears, axes, cats, etc) - both general and specific (general = we need these troops to attain military survivability; specific = if we want to be able to do X, we need these troops). If we're really firing on all cylinders, it will include links to not only Spartan discussions, but anything germane to the plans (like, say, an intelligence report on the troop strength/composition of a neighbor).

-Arrian

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Aginor
I happen to be a political scientist.

[Off-topic alert]

no kidding. where/doing what? My wife is 1.5 years from a phd in poly sci at Indiana. (and we both got undergrad poly sci degrees at Ole Miss)

[Aginor]

Began grad work at Vanderbilt in poli sci this year. Was a loan officer/store manager for Wells Fargo after college prior to returning to school.

(Wife was in med school and is now a psychiatrist at Vandy...someone had to pay the bills.)

[asleepathewheel]

Cool. I really dig Nashville, pretty underrated city IMHO.

What type of poly sci? My wife does American/methods. she'll go on the market next fall. Good times. I'm a lawyer in Indy.

SEC is quite well represented. Solomwi is an Auburn ( )grad.

[Aginor]

Deep O,

My thinking on this one is merely focus - certainly war plans don't have to come from members of the Spartan Academy per se, but it would be (in my opinion) best if our members with competence in that area are narrowing the field of ideas for the rest of us to sort out. That way we don't all go crazy trying to keep up with the massive volume of information that we're going to have to cope with.

In short, we're going to have twenty-some-odd people that have to come to some sort of agreement on how to move, what war plans to execute, and so forth. While it's good to get as much input as possible on these things, too much input at the broad (full team) level will greatly increase the amount of information each of us has to deal with on a daily basis in order to be an effective contributor.

If you have a day where you have the time to read and even make contributions across all the scholia - that's fantastic, but we all know it won't be every day for anyone (except maybe poor Dominae, who is playing our turns out). I completely agree that we need to be somewhat flexible in how we operate; at the same time a line of initial succession (if X becomes unavailable Y knows to take over X's responsibilities after a couple of days until X reappears) may be helpful.

If each scholia is responsible for managing its own topped thread (eg: bringing up consensus warplans, diplo summaries history, city site proposals, ten-turn econ execution plans, etc.) and stays on top of that task, the topped thread should stay fairly manageable. That should help our historian avoid burnout. Perhaps this is the task that we can assign out to a 'next of kin' if you will in the scholias. I'd be happy to take over that responsibility for one of them, if the members desire.

I completely agree that we need to offer flexibility in participation levels. My intention is not to lock anyone into any specific responsibilities, but merely to have some idea going in of who is going to be focusing on what, so that the body as a whole can take decisive action swiftly as needed. Also, I agree that the scholias should be flexible enough to adapt to multiple roles - yet I can foresee times where more intense situations will crop up and we will want to have a few volunteers look at a particular issue in a very in-depth fashion.

(Having read some of the history, I have a suspicion that a Committee on Grinding the Horde Beneath Our Bootheel at the Earliest Opportunity could be popular, should we encounter the Horde early on. )

Organizational routines will emerge with time, as you noted - I certainly don't want to force anything there. The method of handling the task at hand should ultimately adapt itself to those that are handling it, as this makes for the best results. However, having established who is primarily responsible for what (scholia leadership, turn player, and historian) at this point, it may be best to also think about figuring out who those people can turn to when the going gets rough, rather than waiting for the first crisis in each sphere of influence to begin sorting that out.

[Solomwi]

With Vandy and Ole Miss represented here, somebody has to be around to redeem the conference's football reputation.

On the burnout issue, regardless of how rigidly we structure the scholia, allowing for movement between them should alleviate this somewhat. Naturally, we don't want wholesale scholia-jumping based on the whims of the day, but I think enough of our members to believe we can police ourselves on that.

On threads, I think it would be most helpful to let discussion rise and sink and only keep the finalized plan/summary threads Arrian referred to at the top. That avoids needless clutter for those wanting to know a scholia's current position, while still allowing those who want or need to know how it got there to dig up the thread and wade through it. This seems to best fit the dedicated parcel structure we're leaning toward.

Pseudo-edit: On re-reading the preceding posts, I see that I'm covering ground already trod, but I'll post this anyway, if only to add emphasis and another member's support to the ideas.

[Aginor]

I well and truly think that organizing this braintrust is the key...if we can do that, the raw power of the insanely good minds assembled here should easily overwhelm all opposition IMO.