Big fan of the game here (playing it a lot since Democracy 3), and now I have feedback regarding Democracy 4:
In a nutshell, I’m under the impression that Democracy 3 was actually harder and more challenging than Democracy 4 is as of right now. I am not really sure whether it was because of the mods that I used, such as having a really hard debt crisis, inflation, etc. I am aware that the US and the UK are not third-world-countries, but I believe right now it’s too easy to have high popularity, win an election in a landslide and completely annihilate the opposing party/parties.
Which brings me to my next feedback: I don’t really believe it’s realistic, first of all, to have such massive swings in popularity (+40%, -30%, i.e.) within three months, and on that note I would love for it to be a little bit more accurate. And I also think that, specially considering the current global political situation, it’s kinda unheard of, for a president/PM to have 80% or 90% approval rating.
And, on that note, I also think that it should be, for reality’s sake, kind of impossible for your to win an election with a majority of 80% or 90%.
Normalize voter group happiness (exclude cynicism/complacency from calculations)
Shift normalized voter group happiness by complacency and cynicism.
Voter approval would be calculated as weighted average of opinions and memberships.
Shift voter approval by electioneering stuff like perceptions, ministers and funding.
This way not only voter happiness would be tempered down to average if there are very strong influences in one or other way (almost certainty for some voter groups even in early game), it would be easily shifted by cynicism and complacency too,
Then those would be averaged for voter approval - its more realistic than adding opinions.
This way you would really try hard to have popularity below 30 or above 70.
Yeah, @cliffski could make it even stronger as I suggested (like full normalization once positive or negative influences exceed 100%).
I wonder if its is possible to implement following thing:
List of all influences, that affect happiness, membership and income of voter groups
Essentially it would be like lists in voter group screen, but containing all voter groups.
That thing there could be put where voter stuff is like disposable income.
For example happiness changing list:
x - +90% - socialist
y - +87% - religious
…
z - -80% - middle class
Or income:
x - +10% - farmers
y - +3% - commuter (actually flat increase displayed as percentage change)
…
z - -40% - wealthy
This would be pretty handy or at least be nice statistic to look at.
