There was some discussion at the old boards, can't seem to find the thread now. As most will not be recieving the game until Christmas, there's really no reason to start a DGame until then, perhaps even wait until the New Year. But it doesn't hurt to get it on people's minds, especially when there is an empty forum about it.

As far as set up goes, there was some good ideas that would experiement with different concepts (Roadkill's emperor game, what have you). But in my mind, the simpliest way, and perhaps most democractic, would be to go back to the Sentorial system with Executive and Legislative branches as well. However, it need not be exactly the same as before, I think a committee system with chairman leading the different sections would work a lot better than the departmental system, provided there is enough participation in the Senate to begin with. I'm pretty sure that won't be a problem if it's hosted here.

Anyway, I was just looking for some confirmation from the higher-ups that a 1BC DGame is more than a possibility.

I agree, with the new tech tree and complex religous and cultural aspects there will be alot of diversity and the need for elected officials will be much greater than on the civ3 dgames.

Great idea! The game also gives you an in depth chart of where the different religions rank in your civilization. This could be a deciding factor for which party is in control. Then once a state religion is decided on by the citizens the parties would begin to lose there influence. Paving the way for political parties.

I think that one area that will factor in, and may become a basis for political discussions is the different civics. In that sense religion may enter the political realm. I think there would be cause for debate among Organized Religion vs Theocracy vs Pacifism vs Free Religion vs Paganism more then we would see debate among Buddism vs Judaism vs Confucianism vs Islam vs Christianity vs Taoism vs Hinduism. Unfortunatly such changes will be few and far between, but it shouldn't stop those that favor a different civic from debating the merits of thier prefered civic.

As far as political parties, I don't really see a place for broad ideology based parties. A party that declares a prefered civic for all five catergories (such as Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation, Free Market, Free Religion) will potentialy alienate prospective members that may agree with 4 but disagree with the fifth (such as an Enviromentalist that otherwise agrees with the previous example). If political parties do form up, they will either be generic or embrace one specific civic from one catergory (possibly a combination from 2 catergories). Just the number of civic combinations will either deter political parties from forming at all, or dilute them so much they have minimal effect with several citizens joining several to represent all of thier favorite civics, or the parties will be generic non-ideology based.