How does Democracy 1 & 2 compare?
I have the first one and am considering getting the second?
Why not download the demo of 2 and see if you like it?
2 has a different system for the simulation, which works more realistically. In 1, certain things could not affect certain other things, but in D2, anything can affect anything. Also, in 2, voters aren’t just members of groups, but members of groups with varying degrees of loyalty. Also in 2, voters may or may not vote, based on party strength, a personal preference, whether or not its illegal to not vote, and how strongly they feel about the government.
2 has much better graphics and specially commissioned music.
2 also has some new simulation complexity, such as foreign trade, oil supply etc.
2 has ministers, which are entirely new and affect the simulation quite strongly. It also has a more sensible system for deciding when terrorist attacks and other game-ending scenarios happen. 2 also limits your countries debt levels.
2 lets you pick a term length and term limit at the start of the game, and choose your currency. It also has a variable level of political capital needed to perform different action, so its easy to lower taxes and hard to raise them. 2 has a nice focus group thing that lets you see how individual voters feel.
There are probably lots of other things I’ve forgotten 
.
Thanks people!
Can I customise countries and events too?
There are even more modding possibilities in 2 than there are in 1. You can edit and create events, dilemmas, countries, situations, and much more. See the modding forum for this game to see what some people (including me) have done in terms of modding.
i was at gamestop today and noticed a box for dimocracy 1, i currently have 2 and never bought 1, but on the back of the box of 1 i saw a picture where it says can you gain control of congress. why is that not in 2 i think that would be awsome.
I believe that the Cabinet Ministers replaced the Congress in Democracy 2 as their support represents the people’s support (like Congress). All Congress did in the first one was make policy changes more difficult on you if you had low support. I think the Ministers are much better!
However, wouldn’t hurt to implement a sort of Congress based on your parties control or something, that’d be cool.
But yes, as Tom and Cliffski have said there is a LOT more realism and options in Democracy 2 and a LOT of new features while it is still the same core game.
I think that the Congress only applied to the US in Democracy 1, and the US does not feature in Democracy 2.