World Factbook Entry for Apolytonia

[Reddawg]

Well with this current trend of more and more supplementary information being created, I think some sort of official may be needed to coordinate it after all. But as they would have no authority in the gameplay itself, it wouldn't be a Cabinet official. It would be more of a, well, a board official. Can we even create such a position?

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Reddawg
it wouldn't be a Cabinet official. It would be more of a, well, a board official. Can we even create such a position?

I don't see what's stopping us other than ourselves.

[Reddawg]

maybe some serious consideration should be put into creating an Intelligence Ministry as a full cabinet position. but I think in order to legtimize it should have some actual powers in the game delegated to it. they should be the ones to seek out investigation of foreign cities and, later in the game, use of our Espionage abilities. then on top of that they would collate the stats, the world reports, and the maps. i think this could end up being a highly vital position.

[GhengisFarb™]

Hey quit trying to muscle in on my new intelligence agency! I'll have to send the Shadow Service after you.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Reddawg
maybe some serious consideration should be put into creating an Intelligence Ministry as a full cabinet position. but I think in order to legtimize it should have some actual powers in the game delegated to it. they should be the ones to seek out investigation of foreign cities and, later in the game, use of our Espionage abilities. then on top of that they would collate the stats, the world reports, and the maps. i think this could end up being a highly vital position.

As I stated somewhere in another thread, there's really nothing that an Intelligence Agency could do that anyone with a copy of the save file and a patched version of Civ3 couldn't in terms of intelligence *gathering* about other civs.

What this intelligence outfit COULD do, however, is to collect from all the intelligence gathering sources and organize their reports and perform intelligence *analysis* upon the data. Because this is Civ3 (a computer game), we'd need both people who are good at geopolitical thought in general AND people who are good at studying Artificial Intelligence behavior (and the specific ways in which it tends to differ from the logical conclusions of traditional/human geopoltical calculations). As with real intelligence agencies, the purpose of such an agency would not be to suggest *specific* foreign policies to the Foreign Ministry or war strategies to the SMC (in general, this strictly forbidden for intelligence agencies in RL democracies...), but rather to do three related things:

1. Provide data and analysis of general characteristics about foreign civs to the appropriate decision-makers
2. Analyze AI civs and attempt to determine what their strategic thinking is and what they are currently up to... (whether in general or in specific areas, such as geoplotical decisions or infrasructure development, or even how the AI is likely to execute its moves in a specific war campaign, etc.) and provide this information to the appropriate decision-makers.
3. Take different potential Apolytonian courses of action and evaluate how the AI might respond to each of them. Provide this information to appropriate decision makers.

Now, there are two factors which would make things easier in Apolytonia than in a real democracy concerning an intelligence agency:

1. Because there is no risk that intelligence analysis shared with the general populace is going to leak back to foreign intelligence agencies and thus affect foreign decision-making, we don't have to worry about anything being classified (nice, eh?) . Obviously, this would be different if we were playing a multiplayer Civ3 democracy game, say against Civ Fanatics or something (and in which case developing an intelligence *gathering*outfit would be a *real* possibility).

2. We don't need to worry as much about prohibiting the intelligence agency from making policy suggestions to decision-makers, as we obviously have no fear that the intelligence agency would (or even could) use this as a means of establishing undo influence over decision-making... this is because of #1 just stated... the reason this is necessary in a real democracy is that intelligence gathering methods are kept strictly secret and not shared with the general public, thus making it so that the public has *no voice* on the evaluation of such material. This isn't an issue here because we can afford to make all intelligence material fully public, thus allowing the general public to their *own* conclusions and everyone being on equal footing with suggesting courses of action based upon the intelligence information. Once again, things would be different if we were to have an intelligence outfit in a democracy game against another website...

So that's how I think an intelligence agency might be workable in this environment. It would be difficult to make it meaningful other than as a center for gathering reports and information and putting it together into something sensible and conducive to policy-making.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
Hey quit trying to muscle in on my new intelligence agency! I'll have to send the Shadow Service after you.

pfft!

[Reddawg]

But wouldn't it be expedient to also include internal intelligence in the same domain? why just on foreign civs.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Reddawg
But wouldn't it be expedient to also include internal intelligence in the same domain? why just on foreign civs.

Good point... this is another area where Apolytonia (as an online community) greatly differs from a RL democracy... in real life democracies, intelligence agencies (the CIA is a good example) are very strictly prohibited from spying on their own citizens. If anything akin to the intelligence information collected on foreign countries needs to be known in one's own country, different agencies are responsible for this so that the dilineation between foreign intelligence gathering and anything internal is made VERY clear...

However, in Apolyton, this isn't really necessary... the intelligence agency isn't actually going to be doing any spying or trying to figure out and predict what decision-making over here will be in a different set of scenarios (as that would be an enormous waste of time... WE are the ones making the decisions here!) .

Rather, it really would be little more than an analysis outfit... an analysis of internal trends and characteristics is valid along with analysis of foreign trends and characteristics. We don't need to create the same firewall between external analysis and internal analysis that RL democracies do.

[adaMada]

With the exception of Reddawg's thought about collecting Internal Information (which is currently done by the MoE anyway), I don't see why this couldn't be a part of Foreign Affairs (not trying to consoldate power or anything , but we have the people to do it, and we already do a lot of this stuff now).

Looking at Arnelos's Three Points:

1. Provide data and analysis of general characteristics about foreign civs to the appropriate decision-makers
2. Analyze AI civs and attempt to determine what their strategic thinking is and what they are currently up to... (whether in general or in specific areas, such as geoplotical decisions or infrasructure development, or even how the AI is likely to execute its moves in a specific war campaign, etc.) and provide this information to the appropriate decision-makers.
3. Take different potential Apolytonian courses of action and evaluate how the AI might respond to each of them. Provide this information to appropriate decision makers.

1. Foreign Ministry already does it, through GePap's report, Togas' report, E_T's many reports, public threads, and other things that we'll probably start doing in the future.
2. I did a lot of that last term, and we'll do SOMETHING about it again this term... if we created an Intelligence Substructure, then we'd probably do a lot more on that issue.
3. We don't do much of this, but we could, especially if we added a bit of substructure.

Basically, all I'm saying is that we already do number one, and two and three would be trivial to start doing if it became one of our functions... We have the manpower, and could add more if it was needed (I mean, look at the Deputy Minister(s) wanted thread...) -- I don't see the need for an independent organization. It'd be far more efficent to add this to the Foreign Ministry, especially since there's no power attached, so it wouldn't create a balance problem.

As for internal intelligence, the Foreign Ministry doesn't do anything in that area, but the MoE does, the IE Minister just created a branch that seems to dabble in that issue, and I can't think of much else to do there. Does anyone have ideas for reports that an Internal Intelligence Agency could put out? It'd be cool for roleplaying purposes (perhaps even publishing 'secret personel files' about prominant citizens in good fun) but I don't see a matching practical purpose within the game.

Any thoughts?

-- adaMada

[Aro]

All we need is a deputy, or something like that, able to put the pieces together, and cross the info. We have many sources, and sometimes is difficult even for the government to track it. His function is understand the big picture, based on those sources, and advise the government. And the citizens, too...
It's simple, I guess.

[Arnelos]

I have to agree with adaMada that the foreign ministry can handle the issue of external intelligence (both gathering an analysis) on its own with a sub-departmental branch of some sort. I also agree that it makes sense, especially given the movement toward *consolidating* rather than splitting ministries chosen by the constitutional reform group.

So in all, adaMada's argument is convincing.

Given the points he raises, here's what I'm thinking:

Yes, the Foreign Ministry might gain some effectiveness if it added deputized positions for specifically handling analysis of the AIs and evaluation of potential policy options (though the second of those two *might* actually be better done by a team including the Foreign Minister as the head in our case).
2. You shouldn't have a problem with people wanting to do the work (there are plenty of people who'd like to work in various capacities for the Foreign Ministry), but the problem with analyzing the AI is that some people are probably more qualified than others. People who understand how Firaxis wrote the AI or at least can reason out (somehow) how the AI "thinks" in specific situations would be a priority (though I think most of us can probably, if we take the time, reason out what the AI *might* be considering).

As for Aro's comment, this is also valid. It might be useful for the report on foreign civs *already* being done by the Foreign Ministry to be combined with reports from other parts of the Foreign Ministry (like the trades report, etc.) into a more comprehensive report. Personally, I think this can easily be done by the same person who does the foreign civs report, simply incorporating the appropriate information from other parts of the Foreign Ministry or other ministries into a larger version of their own report. The only potential problem there is if this particular person doesn't have the time, in which case he could very easily deputize someone else to help him collect the info while he concentrates on the original foreign civs report information.

Just some thoughts on the issue.... As I said, adaMada has a very good point there, certainly augmented by the fact that (from a broader perspective) we're trying to consolidate branches of the government rather than split them up. An independent agency is, indeed, not necessary.

[zeit]

As Arnelos and adaMada said, we don't need another branch, but i think we need a person to compile a comprehensive intelligence report, as Arnelos said, that would include all the principals of such a report, as Arnelos stated: the civs characteistics and speculated AI course of action, this would be the head of intelligence, who would collect info from the various branches, discuss with his selected experts and give his reports to the foreign ministry.
All the citizens and the ministers will have access to these reports, and would be free to act upon them at their own discretion.
I think adaMada should hold an election for this head of intelligence role.

[Nimitz]

So whens the next Fact book on us going to be alot has changed

[Arnelos]

I was planning to wait until the new admin came into power... that has now happened

However, I'm working on a project concerning the NewCon at the moment... I'll hopefully get a new edition of this out by th end of the week.