Thanks for the changes made to the new version, cliffski. I haven’t had time to test the game itself yet, but the main menu really is better now.
Another issue is the voter groups interface… I don’t have a final idea yet, but I think it could be improved with a more clear layout. Maybe by arranging political views, wealth and social roles in seperate columns (if it fits with the number of groups). I’ll have a look at it.
I’m currently fiddling around with that American flag graphic. I don’t like the US-centricness either, so I’m trying out a montage of classic political posters with a sort of orangey color etc. I’ll post screen shots soon.
I LOVE this idea. I often have to hunt around to find a group – where’d he stash the liberals, again?
I’ve noticed that the manifesto has a really limited number of possible promises that I can make. If I play the same country through three elections, there’s usually nothing on your list that I want to promise by the third election, even though there’s plenty of stuff that I’d like to promise in general.
Would you like a list of promises that aren’t included in your list that I’d like to be able to make?
How about this?
Socialist Wealthy Religious
Capitalist Middle Income Parents
Libreal Poor Motorist
Conservative Retired Commuter
Patriot State Employees Drinkers
Trade Unionist Self Employed Smokers
Environmentalist Farmers Everyone
Column 1: Schools of thought
Column 2: Employment
Column 3: Paths of life
Well, if we’re talking about the manifesto, here’re a few that I’d like to propose.
State Schools Spending
State Health Service Spending
Abolish Luxury Goods Tax
Abolish Internet Tax
Reduce CO2 Emissions
Increase Energy Efficiency
Introduce Smoking Ban
And with the last promise, I’d also like to ask if you could introduce a policy that effectively bans smoking, with varying degrees…
NO BAN----ONLY IN MARKED AREAS----BAN IN ALL ENCLOSED PUBLIC AREAS----BAN IN ALL PUBLIC AREAS----COMPLETE BAN
Decrease Hospital Overcrowding (Inertia - 12? Something moderately large)
Decrease smoker votes
Increase lifespan
Decrease liberal votes
Decrease capitalist votes
Increase environmentalist votes
Increase parent votes
Lowers smokers membership
How’s that?
I like the proposed layout but I think ‘trade-unionist’ should be switched with ‘religious’ because trade-unionist issues are basically material and practical demands, like the rest of that column.
Edit: and to clarify what I said before, I think it should be Retired, Aristocracy(?), Professionals, State Employees, Self-Employed, Workers and Farmers.
The game just crashed for no apparent reason. I got one of those pop-up boxes that said “Democracy 2 has encountered an error and needs to close.”
I have the debug.txt file, but it’s pretty long, so I can’t post it here.
if you can post the last half dozen lines that would help. I like the idea of rearranging the voter stuff. I should definitely do that.
I agree that Trade Unionist and Religious should be switched.
But then I’d also switch Retired and Trade Unionist. This will place Retired with Parents (two different groups of age) and Trade Unionists with the work-related groups.
Then I’d switch Capitalist and Liberal to make it fit with the traditional left-right spectrum (though this spectrum over-simplifies things).
For the same reason I’d switch Religious and Environmentalist, as the first is usually associated with rightist ideologies and the later with leftist ideologies.
Lastly, I’d switch Retired and Parents, for cronological reasons.
This is the result:
Socialist Wealthy Parents
Liberal Middle Income Retired
Capitalist Poor Motorist
Conservative Trade Unionist Commuter
Patriot State Employees Drinkers
Environmentalist Self Employed Smokers
Religious Farmers Everyone
I’m not sure what you’re aiming for in the left hand column.
I think a better order may be:
Socialist
Environmentalist
Liberal
Capitalist
Conservative
Religious
Patriot
What I was trying to get at for the first column was how the voters thought. Such as being a capitalist means that you highly value capitalism (obviously).
I think (personally) that being a trade unionist is a simply a way of thinking and not a state of employment, so I put it with them. And being relgious isn’t a state of thought in that matter as it is how the voter thinks the state should be run and not just how they conduct themselves. The way the voter conducts themselves should be in the last column. So I stick by my original proposal. But the decision of how it should be ordered is still in cliffski’s hands.
I think the reason why everybody keeps on putting trade unionist in the middle column is simply because they see it as the ‘work’ group, but that’s not how I thought everything out… 
And also, on the arrangement of socialist, capitalist, liberal, and conservative, I decided to put them in opposing pairs. It’s easier to see the differences that way, instead of having a spectrum that doesn’t actually work in the game. This is because socialist policies tend to upset capitalist and vice versa. The same applies to liberal v conservative.
Well I understand your reasoning, but I see trade unionism, as I’ve said before, as a very materialistic thing. It’s not a choice through conscience but a tool to gain more rights.
Religious groups, although in the real world religion is seen as a personal choice, in this game they are very much centred around the idea that the state should follow religious laws, much like capitalists believe the state should follow capitalist laws.
Yeah… I can understand how everybody’s thinking now.
And one thing not about the re-ordering…
As you know, in D1, you could have overlaps of non-intersecting groups… well, it’s still around…
I had 52% of my population retired. And 56% were state employees! You surely can’t be both retired and employed, can you? So will there be any way to fix that?
Yeah I’ve noticed some overlaps before. Amusingly, somebody on the group census was both self employed and a state employee at the same time - me?
maybe they were a contractor working for the state? Think about it, you run your own mini-business as a military consultant, but your only customer is the military. So you are keen on high government spending on those areas because it keeps you in contracts 
I think that’s an adequate explanation for why it didn’t occur to me to worry about that stuff
Heh, okay. What happened to the post-election screen from Democracy 1? I thought that was really neat.
By the way, what do you make of my more… radical proposals? Too time-consuming? Too much of a change?
Edit: Oh, and please introduce a backstory generator for ministers. I’ll help you do it if you like. It’s just that I’m beginning to invent backstories for them myself, which is kinda sad…
I guess I should put in a post election screen, especially as I have far deeper stats to work with now. My main concern has been the code stability of the main game, but it sounds like apart from an exit crash on certain setups, the game is running ok.
I’ve been working on making the GUI a bit nicer too.
Did you sort out the crashes, Cliff? Using the escape key, entering the tutorial twice, etc.
I’m not aware of any crashes in the current version, but I’m not sure how many I’ve fixed and haven’t updated yet.
tomorrow hopefully I’ll nail down any dodginess with the party membership code, then put together a new build with the newer graphical bits etc, and let everyone hammer away at that.
That reminds me, Tobacco Tax instantly changes the amount of smokers. Also it’d be nice if population increased with immigration and decreased with the Brain Drain. I’d like to see the Brain Drain get rid of the Wealthy mostly, but also a small proportion of Liberals. That way I can use it to help build a socialist dictatorship…
Along the same lines, ‘church attacked’ should reduce the amount of religious by a very small proportion, ‘contagious disease’ should reduce the elderly and parents, ‘vigilante mobs’ should have some effect on crime without bringing it below crisis level, ‘class warfare’ should improve equality in the same way, and so on.