You will find details here:
positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2013/0 … e-will-be/
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Excellent news for politics nerds everywhere.
Please give us glimpses of the new simulations so we can offer feedback.
BTW, It would be nice if the new game would recognize simulation.txt in My Documents\democracy2\mods\data\simulation\simulation. Right now, I think it’s necessary to edit the original in the program installation.
Even better, I wonder if it is possible to set up the file loading so that same-named objects coming from “mod” files will supersede their originals. Then it will never be necessary to edit an original file to make a mod, even to change parameters in an existing object.
PS: The Congressional budget office has models for estimating economic impacts for proposed legislation. Many millions of dollars have been spent on those models. I wonder if the staff there would be interested in providing input and/or visibility to this game because of its possible value for educating “the public” (and the press, and congressmen, and activists). If you strike the right chord there, you could tap into a bottomless revenue stream that could fund the model of your dreams (and put the finished work in the faces of some very influential people).
Excellent idea re: the CBO.
Are you frigging serious? I have been WAITING for a sequel for years, thinking that it would be just a dream. Sign me up as a buyer right away!
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Knowing that you created this awesome and intelligent interface that makes the connections and interactions brightly visible, even for beginners, I hope that you ARE NOT going to fundamentally change it. Simpler is better!
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I do wish though that one could implement or change policies easier without having to close the policy window all the time.
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And please fix POLL BALANCING. It can’t be that you always either win or lose the elections by a landslide, just because 1 group remained unsatisfied and thus pulls down the whole election. I’m talking about Zambeezia, you all know what I mean.
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Please make it easier for fans to add their countries and dilemmas. Some kind of cheap editor would be alright, so that we can extend our fun significantly.
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Certain countries have institutions like the FED, who from time to time play dick and inflate the money supply, or hated neighboring countries who like to send invasion troops. It can be just a small perk like the assassinations, just an end scenario meaning that you lost, thus be kept simple to program, but it’s a hell lot funnier than just getting shot by some green radicals for building dump factories.
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One of the things that I like about Democracy is the strong interrelations between policies. It kinda reminds me of Settlers 2 and 3 in terms that you have to think about the network, not the single event. But what I miss about democracy 2 is that, you are forced to play the good guy. You can’t play a dick. I would like to see what happens when you overturn a democratic country like the Weimar Republic and turn it into a dictatorship, or what happens when you cut public school funding with all the reactions, without getting kicked or killed in the next election. I can then decide whether to fix it later or not, this is something I really missed in simulations.
On another note: You can apply for research and education grants for UK, Germany and USA as well to finance your development, since I can see this becoming a MAJOR tool to teach kids politics in middle and highschool.
Thx Cliff, I have to say I LOVE your games. Keep it coming!
Wow, count me in! I’ve been waiting for a Democracy 2 sequel for ages.
I read your blog post, and it sounds like the new version will have some real changes. It will be especially interesting to see private market effects. Is there a mailing list we can sign up for?
Glad to see, I think this game (and the genre more generally) still has a lot of untapped potential. I’ll certainly buy a copy.
I’ll resist taking the opportunity to post a wish list (though I might do that another time!), but there is one point that I believe it is very important to address: in the current game, one size fits all.
That is to say, almost regardless of the scenario or starting conditions, the course of action that leads to success is basically the same: kick-start the economy by investing in business and education, then tackle crime and security, then tackle the environment which is now an issue because the economy has taken off. All of the available policies are the same, all of the effects are basically the same, and the fact that group membership is rather plastic means that the society even ends up looking more or less the same at the end of it. At best, you just have to vary the order of some of them to get through the first election. In fact, has anyone EVER lost a subsequent election after winning the first? It doesn’t even seem possible.
So in a nutshell, it needs far more variety - not just different starting conditions, but different effects and different policies being available in different scenarios, and to differing degrees.
Just my 2 cents. I think it’s a good game now, and Democracy 3 has potential to be a really great game.
Will there be possibility of government control of industry (e.g. nationalization and privatization (government gets money) options)?
Also chosen party could affect the cost of the policies (e.g. socialist party will implement socialist pleasing policies for half of the cost of political capital, but policies that socialist don’t like would cost twice as much).
Another good idea (already mentioned somewhere in the forum) would be changing the system of policies political capital cost to relative - e.g. adjusting policy only slightly would cost significantly less political capital than extreme change.
I personaly would also appretiate possibility of coalition government (proportional voting system). But that would require quite complex changes to the game.
Also - few policies ideas - abortion rights, economic regulations (preventing market crashes but upseting capitalists), culuture, sport and church subsidies.
(Sorry for my english.)