SE4 Democracy Game??
 

first, does anyone here know what a democracy game is?

If you do, would it work with SE4? i think it would, just replace the AI ministers with real players.
If you don't...i'll try to exlpain that later..

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

You mean where you get several players all controlling different parts of a single empire?

It could be done hotseat. I would suggest that instead of having different players taking the parts of ministers, it might work better to have players control individual planets, or systems. There is a lot of overlap in responsibility between minsters.

For a PBEM or PBW game though there is no way to do this. Unless you fudge the idea a bit and have actual separate empires, but all with the same shipset. In that case it would just be another type of team game.

Geoschmo

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

i think it could work with ministers, each minister would only control specific type of ships or planets, they would have to agree on certain things offcourse.

Possible ministers:
Minister of Defense
assigns ships to to the different ministers, for example during peace, some warships could be assigned to the Minister of Exploration and Colonization to explore with.
Minister of War
controls tactical combat, or ships/fleet strategies, and warships
Minister of Exploration and Colonization
controls all colony ships and exploration ships
Minister of Production, per system
controls what is being built on the planets within the system, Minister of Defense can requests ships to be built from this minister.
Minister of Research and Design
controls what is being researched, and designs ships, would have to coordinate research and designs with other ministers
Minister of Diplomacy and Intelligence
controls all treaties with alien empires, and intelligence projects, could also control a few cloacked ships for spying on other empires

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yes, you got a few ministers, who decide waht happens, but an unlimited amount of citizens who can vote for the ministers and certain actions, for example should we declare war, or let them colonize our system, once the citizens have voted, it is up to the minister to follow that vote, or go against it.

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Well, whether you do it by ministers, or governors it still can't be done unless you are playing a hotseat game. There is no way to give partial commands like you would need for this in a game unless all of you are sitting at the same pc. Unless you all look at the turn and tell one person what to do. That could work I suppose. But only one person could actually be the one inputing the orders.

Geoschmo

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Sounds like a lot of hard work to me... I think I'd prefer to have everyone else as my enemy. Why
can't we all just (not) get along?

Mind you, there was a thread a while back about modding the game so that two empires exist in a symbiotic state.

I can't really remember the details, but one suggestion I think one empire controlled all the ships and units, but had no resource production or construction.

The other empire handled all the planets and diplomacy and could build ships, but handed them over to the military as soon as they were built. They have to keep gifting resources to the fleet to pay the maintenance.

It looked quite cool, and had numerous other advantages over normal play. I think the thread might have been titled "sybiosis", if anyone fancies running a search. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yep, that would be the president, after each turn he should post the savegame, so the minjister and citizens can see what happening, and decide what should happen next, after the minister have decided what they want done, they tell it to the president, and he does everything.

this setup does work, as far as i know there is a civ2, civ3, and smac democracy game, they all got their own forum, where everything is debated, i'm only participating in the smac demo game now.
link to the smac demo game forum
http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisp...s=&forumid=157

[ August 12, 2002, 16:12: Message edited by: Lemmy ]

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The empires were called "War" and "Peace", but I don't remember if that was the name of the thread as well.

Geo

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Hmmph. Here's the symbiosis thread

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=003573#000000

but it doesn't seem to contain the "war & Peace" theory, which was a much better idea (and closer to the "democracy" topic of *this* thread).

Anyone know where the war and peace discussion might be found?

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Here it is...

"War and Peace" Link

[ August 12, 2002, 17:27: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Perhaps a Version of this might be more interesting. We are all pretty decent at slamming the AI, given somewhat acceptable starts. But could a group...say ten or eight of us beat the AI working together.

I'm not so sure.

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

ok, hers's a more detailed explanation on what a demo game is, and how it could work.

First, there is only one player who actually plays the game (move ships, give build orders etc.), that person is the president.
Ministers can only advise the president on what to do next, but if the president ignores that advise too often, he could get removed from office by vote.
The ministers and president are all elected by the citizens, for the duration of one term, usually one month.
A citizen is everyone else who participates in a demo game, but isn't the president or a minister.
Like-minded citizens can join and form political parties, to get things done the way they want it.
As stated earlier, only the president plays the game, after each turn, or a number of turns, he has to make the current savegame public, for eveeryone to look at, and form an opinion on what should happen next.
The ministers can then hold polls to see what the citizens think about possible courses of action. Again, the minister can go against the poll results, but he also could be removed from office.

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

You know, if this was a sequential-turn game, you could save the partial orders, and pass around the savegame to each minister in turn.

The minister of War would have to process the turn, in order to fight the combats initiated by AI forces.

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

i think it would be better if all combat was strategic, seems kinda weird, a minister directly commanding a war fleet.
And it would even things out a bit for the AI, cos i think we would actually be playing better together than when playing alone, because now it would be almost impossible to forget to give a ship/fleet orders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

[ August 13, 2002, 16:07: Message edited by: Lemmy ]

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Im gonna cap myself before I go too far with my views on this one. But I will say this about being a Minister: Talk about ******* boring, Good God.

"Hey uhh... President, can I see what it feels like to click Move and select a sector? Ive done it before and all, but you know, I'd like to do it for real on the game all 6 of us are watching you play."

*lmao* Gawd, this sounds slower than Proportions and more abstract than "Magic Mod SEIV: Spaceships meet Spells and Staves"

Not my cup of tea, can't imagine how one person (let alone 5 or 6) could have the patience to put up with that crap. But it is a strange and rather unique idea...

It reminds me of a total failure of an RP game called Bridge Commander *laughs* I dont wanna even get started on that piece of trash.

[ August 14, 2002, 00:18: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif i think you're missing the point here, this isn't about who actually get's to play to game, but to work together and sort of roleplay as one empire.
This shouldn't involve just 5 or 6 players, but more like 50+.
What would take the most time, and also be intersting would be the debates on what to do next, those things *could* take a few days before even a turn is played, and playing the turn would only take a few minutes.
And this isn't really a unique idea anymore, there are games like this going on for a while now for other games.

[ August 14, 2002, 00:19: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

Holy fooken eh, 50?? LOL

Heh, definately... Don't get me wrong, I love how sick politics can get in games like that; internal struggles are always interesting. I don't think it transfers over to SEIV very well, but it would be a sweet web-based thing. Would be nice for players to have a little more hands on, at least if only to (as someone said -- prolly you) view the game file and cast a vote via some kind of interface ;-).

50 *l* damn, time to break out the S-video cables.

Re: SE4 Democracy Game??
 

The old Avalon Hill board game _Origins of World War II_ was originally developed as a teaching aid. The rulebook suggested running a classroom game with different numbers of students teamed for each position, depending on how unified that country's government was in the time period; they recommended one player each for Germany and Russia, two for Britain, three for the US, and five for France.