Democracy Game: government positions

[Locutus]

As I said in the 'main' Democracy Game thread, the biggest problem with a possible CtP2 Demo game will probably be the small community. So it is IMHO key to keep the number of government (as well other official functions) as small as possible. But of course, there should still be enough positions to keep the workload of government official acceptable and to keep things fun (it would seem to me that the more officials, the merrier...) Let's discuss the positions we should/want/need to have here. My proposal is to have the following break-down of responsibities (this is an initial proposal, feedback required):

President/Grand Apolyton
- The only person who actually physically plays the game
- Distributes the savegames to whoever needs them (government officials, maybe others - TBD)
- Organizes turnchats and communiticates with the members in other ways
- Organizes new elections
- In charge of in-game 'government affairs' (government type, location of the capital)
- Naming of cities
- Has the decisive vote in case no decision can be reached on certain issues (maybe a right to veto certain decisions?)

Minister of Domestic Affairs
- Responsible for City Management
- Responsible for Infrastructure (PW)
- Sets Domestic Policies (Worday, Rations, Science, etc)
- Controls the Imperial Expansion agenda (where to found new cities, what to do with conquered cities)

Minister of Science, Trade and Diplomacy
- Determines what advances to research
- Conducts diplomacy with other Empires
- Responsible for all (national and international) Emperial Trade
- Since this seems to me a rather 'lightweight' function, could serve as Vice-President as well (i.e. helps President wherever needed, replaces him in case of absence)

Supreme Commander
- In charge of Army, Navy and Airforce (as well as all unconvential units)

Do we need/want a Historian?

[centrifuge]

Re: Democracy Game: government positions

Good Idea Locutus, Yes, it will have to remain small, so four positions would probably be ideal for getting it started.

Originally posted by Locutus

Do we need/want a Historian?

What would the role of the Historian be?

Edit: oops, I mean't 4 (5 with the historian )

[Turambar]

Sounds good Locutus.

A historian would write the history of the Civ I'd assume.

[Locutus]

Yes, the historian would write a nice story of everything what happens, for posterity and possibly (not sure how other Demo games do this) for decision making. See the Succession game threads for how we do that there (particularly the posts by Hermann, IW and hex are excellent examples), or Vel's Celtic AAR. If you don't have a historian, I guess the president would have to write a brief, factual report of the most important events (I suppose he would have to do that anyway, to give the historian something to work with).

[mapfi]

Ha, those gov positions make you realize that CivIII is in certain aspects more develloped after all... Well, hopefully, being newer!
I think an SMC in Ctp2 has a great power, so we should at least take some of it away - I'm strongly for giving the command over the specialforces to a secret agency which we could give to the science,trade,diplomacy minister. Would make sense - since those actions don't always have military reasons (e.g. slaving, franchising, converting, diplomacy...)

Distributes the savegames to whoever needs them

No public posts? Works fine in C3DG.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by mapfi
Ha, those gov positions make you realize that CivIII is in certain aspects more develloped after all... Well, hopefully, being newer!

How's that? I don't really see a big difference...

I think an SMC in Ctp2 has a great power, so we should at least take some of it away - I'm strongly for giving the command over the specialforces to a secret agency which we could give to the science,trade,diplomacy minister. Would make sense - since those actions don't always have military reasons (e.g. slaving, franchising, converting, diplomacy...)

Yeah, I was in doubt about what to do with UW. Giving it to the Minister of STD would make sense as well...

No public posts? Works fine in C3DG.

As I said, that's TBD. I think C3DG has them public, C2DG and ACDG only have them available to cabinet members and people who specifically request it, or something like that. We could vote on that...

[mapfi]

TBD, oh yes - I get it now...
As for CivIII, foreign affairs on itself is keeping one official really busy, and then they need one for the workers... But I mostly thought of diplomacy and trade.

Oh and yes, a history like in the succession games would be nice.

[Locutus]

Hmm, maybe I should be a little more conservative in using abbreviations? (In case it's still not clear to some people: TBD = To Be Determined)

Yeah, I guess you're right in that respect: the resource system in Civ3 makes Diplomacy and Trade more important...

[mapfi]

I hope we won't have long constitution discussions like the C3DG!

Since we won't be too many people we have to think of the voting process - since we couldn't assure that any non-participant would vote on polls which would have a great effect with only 15 participants! we should vote with posts. I don't think Markos can provide us with anything else (he couldn't do it for the others).

[Locutus]

I hope not, but we'll see

If we vote through polls, the accessibility of the demo game would be higher, perhaps making it easier for new people to join in...

Edit: Plus, polls are anonymous, which could be significant as well for some people...

[Method]

Originally posted by Locutus
I think C3DG has them public, C2DG and ACDG only have them available to cabinet members and people who specifically request it, or something like that.

just to clarify: ACDG posts the save files in the turn report thread. since you're trying to cut back on positions, i'd suggest you don't even bother with a vice-president. we went without one for the whole month of october (he disappeared) without trouble.

historian: we only have a weekly newspaper. it's not an official position, just something someone wanted to do. EDIT: here's an example
domestic affairs: we split that up into 3 places: industry and energy, terraforming and colonisation, and base production. that might be a lot for 1 person to do.

as for the consitution: stay away from C3DG. it's too long, and unnecessarily complicated. the ACDG's started with the 1st 3 articles, and the others were added later. you should take a look at it as a reference; it's pretty straight forward

[centrifuge]

I think historian is a nice Idea. "Without history, the future is meaningless" A once a week update as in ACDG would be great.

[Locutus]

Thanks for your comments, TKG, us DG n00bes can really use the voice of experience in this phase

Originally posted by TKG
since you're trying to cut back on positions, i'd suggest you don't even bother with a vice-president. we went without one for the whole month of october (he disappeared) without trouble.

Yes, that's why I merged this position with one of the ministers. When needed, he can help out the President, but if the President can do the job on his own, that's fine too (it's is actually standard practice in RL Dutch politics - the position of VP has been a ceremonial one for decades AFAIK).

historian: we only have a weekly newspaper. it's not an official position, just something someone wanted to do.

Yup, it's not needed but we have some very talented writers in our community, it would be a shame not to exploit that fact

domestic affairs: we split that up into 3 places: industry and energy, terraforming and colonisation, and base production. that might be a lot for 1 person to do.

Yes, good point on the workload. I must say I'm not entirely sure if 1 person could handle the workload of Minister of Domestic Affairs. Perhaps we should simply give it a try and split the responsibilities over 2 ministers if it turns out to be too much work (Infrastructure & Imperial Expansion and Domestic Policies & City Management)...

as for the consitution: stay away from C3DG. it's too long, and unnecessarily complicated. the ACDG's started with the 1st 3 articles, and the others were added later. you should take a look at it as a reference; it's pretty straight forward

Makes sense, C3DG is of a much larger scale in all areas anyway, so I think our game will turn out to be much more similar to ACDG anyway...

[mapfi]

I can see the workload of a Domestic Minister increase a lot later in the game - but since we'll be stuck with city caps of 10 or 15 for quite a while, it'll be long until that

[Lemmy]

Another option is too create minister once they're needed, for example, you won't need a diplomacy minister at first, and later in the game, you may not need a colonozation minister, or let it merge with the domestic minister.

Some suggestion for ministers:
Minister of Infrastructure:
Controls what happens to the PW pool, has to mediate between other ministers

Minister of Internal Affairs:
Control the the empire settings: ration, production, wages.
Set's the science goals.
Can take over other minister's job if there isn't much to do,

Minister of Production:
Controls what is being built in the cities

Minister of Defense
Control the units

Minister of Exploration:
One of the positions that is very usefull early on, controls all the exploring units (released for exploring by the MoD), this could be done by the MoD, but it could become too much if there is a war going on, and there is still some exploring to do.