Political Science 101

[Minister X]

Has this been tried before? A simple made-up map with seven continents:

• Democracy (or Capitalism?): any four of seven terts gets the bonus of 6
• Communism: hold all seven terts for a bonus of 9
• Socialism: each of the seven terts autodeploys one
• Monarchy: own the capital plus 2, 4, or 6 for bonuses of 4, 6 and 8
• Dictatorship: the capital autodeploys 5 but the surrounding terts auto-remove one each
• Anarchy: random assortment of auto-deploys and -removes (averages plus-one)
• Theocracy: capital auto-removes 2 but is needed for bonuses with 2, 4 or 6 terts of 6, 8 and 10

The idea is for each continent to be roughly equal in the ratio of difficulty to reward. As XML gets more features, this game can be revised to reflect their use. The reward systems I've thought up will certainly work with current XML. Neutral starters will be used as appropriate. Can you think of better reward systems for any of the continents? Or can you think up an eighth or ninth continent?

Terts can be named DEM0 to DEM6, COM0 to COM6 and so on, or (short) names that are somehow associated with the political style/system can be used. I can't think of how that might work, however. Use Iran for theocracy, N. Korea for Communism, and so on? What's the largest true monarchy left on the planet? Here's an idea: find seven real countries to represent the seven systems and then somehow fit them together into a landmass for the map.

I have roughly 49 terts in total but there can be quite a lot of flexibility on total map size. Since no historical map has to be considered, it should be easy to fit more than 49 onto a standard sized map, but quite a bit of room will be needed for wordy explanation, much like my seven bullet points.

Thoughts? Ideas? Support? Trash?

[lostatlimbo]

Heh. Clever concept. Might be really tough to figure in all the starting positions so there aren't huge disadvantages. Quite an ambitious project though.

You have a little bit of politics and a little bit of economy here, which could be confusing. I think Democracy would need to be Capitalism as there are Democratic Socialist states. There are also Dictatorial Communist states, Theocratic Capitalist states, etc - so its a little messy in that way.

But perhaps that is a better direction to take this. Instead of one continent with one system, create a map where you have to build up a nation and can choose different paths in regards to politics, economy, military, foreign policy, etc.

That could be a lot of fun and you wouldn't need to worry about specific countries. It could be like Sim City meets Conquer Club. Start with a village and then acquire all of 5-6 policies inherent in a constitution in order to solidify your nation and win the game?

[Tismypueblo]

I think the best way might be to have everyone start in a given capital and have everything else be netural. I'm imaging a set-up kind of similar to feudal wars in this sense, as I think it will be the best way to have a relatively even deploy.

Edit - On second thought, maybe just have everyone start as one of the territories in each, but not the capital as that would give some an advantage over others.

[MarshalNey]

This idea tickles me. And particularly I like the Dictatorship and Communism bonus structure.

For other political systems, consider that "Democracy" is as easily subdivided as you did with "Dictatorship" and "Monarchy" (which is a dictatorship, btw, since that is a one-man rule... unless you mean Monarchy to imply Feudalism, which is more of a confederacy than a dictatorship, in which case I would replace Monarchy with Feudalism).

Democracy is technically defined nowadays as every citizen voting upon every law- which doesn't exist in the US, for instance although the term is bandied about here constantly. The US is a Republic (a body of citizens elect a handful of representatiives to vote upon laws), and even more specificially it is a Federation (national power is centralized in a single government). During the Civil War, the US fought against a Republic in the form of a Confederation (national power is shared among various governments).

From this alone, you could split "Democracy" up into Confederation and Federation, or more simply Democracy and Republic (I think the former pair is more useful). For another tack, you could explore the difference between a Republican Democracy and a Parlimentary Democracy, for instance, but I don't think that would be enough of a difference to be useful for this map idea.

[initus]

It would be kind of cool if the map was a city, or at least a collection of people that each "ideology" is fighting over the hearts and minds of, perhaps a revolution of sorts...

[Gillipig]

Has this been tried before? A simple made-up map with seven continents:

• Democracy (or Capitalism?): any four of seven terts gets the bonus of 6
• Communism: hold all seven terts for a bonus of 9
• Socialism: each of the seven terts autodeploys one
• Monarchy: own the capital plus 2, 4, or 6 for bonuses of 4, 6 and 8
• Dictatorship: the capital autodeploys 5 but the surrounding terts auto-remove one each
• Anarchy: random assortment of auto-deploys and -removes (averages plus-one)
• Theocracy: capital auto-removes 2 but is needed for bonuses with 2, 4 or 6 terts of 6, 8 and 10

The idea is for each continent to be roughly equal in the ratio of difficulty to reward. As XML gets more features, this game can be revised to reflect their use. The reward systems I've thought up will certainly work with current XML. Neutral starters will be used as appropriate. Can you think of better reward systems for any of the continents? Or can you think up an eighth or ninth continent?

Terts can be named DEM0 to DEM6, COM0 to COM6 and so on, or (short) names that are somehow associated with the political style/system can be used. I can't think of how that might work, however. Use Iran for theocracy, N. Korea for Communism, and so on? What's the largest true monarchy left on the planet? Here's an idea: find seven real countries to represent the seven systems and then somehow fit them together into a landmass for the map.

I have roughly 49 terts in total but there can be quite a lot of flexibility on total map size. Since no historical map has to be considered, it should be easy to fit more than 49 onto a standard sized map, but quite a bit of room will be needed for wordy explanation, much like my seven bullet points.

Thoughts? Ideas? Support? Trash?

I'm for the idea but Communism is Dictatorship, Monarchy can be either Democracy or Dictatorship, Socialism is Democracy and Theocracy is Dictatorship as far as I know. Anarchy is valid though.
If you want to go with forms of governments I suggest you use the following terms; direct democracy, representative democracy, anarchy, dictatorship can't come up with any more exclusive terms. I suggest you go with ideologies though; Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Capitalism, Anarchy, National Socialism.

[lostatlimbo]

I'm for the idea but Communism is Dictatorship

No it isn't. Dictatorship is a singular leader by force. Communism may be historically forced, but not always by dictators.

[Minister X]

It's been fun reading the comments but frankly few have any real value to me as the mapmaker. I'd remind some that we're not writing a textbook, we're designing a game that 8-year-olds can play.

Try this: if you were going to divide 20th and 21st century states into just seven political systems, and you wanted the simplest possible names for all seven, what seven would you list? Once you're done with that, try this: name seven political systems that can be programmed using XML!