So, I keep getting killed by the Moral Crusade.
I’m playing as Australia on default settings (100% difficulty) and have tried a few things.
Most recently I’ve tried just doing absolutely nothing… I get the threat message within about 5 turns.
So how am I supposed to figure out what they want / how to placate them?
Game looks quite interesting, but I’m bouncing off this assassination thing a bit
Ok, so I guess I figured out (I think) that the Moral Crusade is the Conservative’s terr’st branch.
Makes sense, the conservatives start off hating your guts in Australia, I did a bunch of police state stuff, which made them happy and solved some crime problems at the same time, then I had trouble with the Religious Terr’st branch, I had to give em the gays to avoid death, which really upset my girlfriend 
She also complained about the link between legal drugs and crime (seems to be a theme here)
After that I made it to one turn off election with a 56% approval rate, but in 3 turns the Liberal freedom group had gone from inactive to a 150+ membership base and blew up my building. I’d just kicked the creationists out too 
too little too late
Still liking the game, but, along with many, I’m a little unsure about the assassination mechanic.
I quite like how it taught me that you can’t really ignore minorities, which forced me to play balance a little more, but it seems a little heavy handed.
Maybe if instead of instant game over for the pres every time, they picked other targets which destabilise your policies and dramatically change the voting landscape?
Assasinations do not always succeed, if you have decent intelligence services and other ‘police state’ style measures, you will be quite well defended. But generally its best to try to reduce the influence and support for groups like that rather than just surround yourself with guns 
What most people do is try to move ‘ahead’ of social change. In other words, its not safe to carry out policies or decisions which really upset the religious (for example) if they are too big and popular a force in the country. You need to gradually erode their support before you can do that.
Yep, I tried another game using community policing, and it had an outrageously beneficial impact for Australia.
I kind of like the way it worked too, in that it had positive effect, not only directly on crime, but on some other features that led to crime, which makes me think it may not be as powerful for other starting positions. I hope that’s the case
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. Making the laws appropriate for the society I want, rather than the laws I need to manage the society I have.
It was non trivial (about 8 games, some quite short) to learn how to do the latter, and I still get shot at by capitalists with disturbing regularity (only 44 members, but apparently they got a bulk discount on snipers)
Interestingly enough, now that I’ve learned to manage I’m actually finding the opposite problem, people change too quickly. I stopped teaching creationism in schools and the religious voting block was down to approx 1% within a 5 year term… My understanding is that such a turn about usually requires a generation of entrenched positions to expire.
I think it’s a good balance for a game though, instant enough gratification that I feel like I can play with things, and the disasters make enough difference for me to not feel too much like I’m in sandbox mode (damn you market crash!)
I think the Australian game needs alot of work … right wing religious fanatics and terror plots ??? really ??? try islamic and it might be a slight bit more realistic … but only just.
aw
“Interestingly enough, now that I’ve learned to manage I’m actually finding the opposite problem, people change too quickly. I stopped teaching creationism in schools and the religious voting block was down to approx 1% within a 5 year term… My understanding is that such a turn about usually requires a generation of entrenched positions to expire.”
That’s going to be something you just have to deal with. Otherwise, social engineering would take terms upon terms and stretch out a given game. And really, to me whole point of the game is policy-making and social engineering.
Imagine that people are a lot more malleable than they are in real life. They are only stubborn about certain things when they belong to a certain voter bloc. Change their group affiliations & environment via policy and you change their minds, in just a few years!
An established modder, Elinor, was working on an over-ride mod with a voter aging mechanic that would play out those generations you’re talking about. But, I’m sure it’s very complex and requires a lot of coding and re-writing. They may have given up on it. I think Cliffski said he considered it but decided to focus on other elements as he thought it might make the game too laborious and complex to be fun, not to mention the programming hours!