Hi,
After playing a few Games in various countries (Mainly Germany and the US) I thought i would collect all of my suggestions in one thread, section by section. Many of these may have already been mentioned, in which case i apologize for reiterating them.
Law and Order
- For some reason Firearm laws seem to have different effects depending on the country played. specifically when playing as the US the increase in violent crime from very lax gun laws appears to be absent. (at least if the interface is to be believed) Is this intended?
- Having an extremely large police force should apply an exponentially increasing opinion penalty for Liberals with higher funding levels, as in general i dont think liberals would approve of “police on every street corner” as the policy description describes.
- I feel the “Intellectual Property Rights” policy fails to adequately portray the downsides of extremely strict and long copyright laws. Maybe the policy could actually have the Bonus toward Technology follow a Bell curve instead of a linear increase, with the maximum bonus for laws which are towards the middle ground. Maybe also a small penalty to equality at very high levels to simulate large corporations holding all the copyright and stifling innovation.
- The Policy “Proportionate Fines” should start implemented in Germany. (See Section 40 of the German penal code. translated to English) The policy should also slightly increase poor earnings, as these people will likely be paying less.
Transport
- Shouldn’t High-Speed Rail Subsidies increase Rail Usage (indirectly reducing car usage and to a limited extent bus usage) rather than directly reducing car usage?
- I don’t think Bicycle Subsidies and the Cycling Campaign should have an effect on Rail Usage (or at the very least a much smaller one) due to the different use cases for these Systems. I doubt many would substitute their hour long train commute with a bike ride.
- Many of the Car Oriented Policies which affect the Enviroment should have their effects scale with Car Usage and/or Electric Car Transition (A Clean Fuel subsidy won’t have much of an impact if no one is driving or Everyone is driving Electrics).
- Policies which make the cost of running petrol cars cheaper (Such as Fuel efficiency Standards and Fuel Subsidies, should have a reducing effect on the Electric car transition)
- The policy “Hybrid cars Initiative” should be moved from the Tax section to the Transport section, or the “Electric cars Initiative” should be moved from the Transport section to the Tax section.
Foreign Policy
- I my Opinion Immigration has Far too large an Impact on the Membership of Ethnic minorities with High Immigration Driving the percentage of minorities as High as 98%. It also Double dips into Healthcare Demand (Once directly and once indirectly by increasing Population) and Wages (directly and inderictly via Unemployment) Causing a presumably larger than intended effect on these aspects of the country.
Welfare
- With the Introduction of the Disposable income Graph i feel that Equality can be more meaningfully measured by the total spread of incomes within the graph, (A lot of people spread around a similar level of income equates to high equality) rather than the effect of individual policies and conditions. It also feels like many policies which affect equality are the result of inequality rather than the cause. For instance gated communities are more of a symptom of inequality, (if everyone was equal it would be something anyone could do/couldn’t do) than a direct cause of inequality.
- There doesn’t currently seem to be capitalist solution to housing ingame. It would be nice if similarly to Healthcare and Schooling, there were housing vouchers and housing tax credits to allow poorer people to more easily afford private housing without rent controls.
- Universal Basic income should have a reducing effect on private pensions. (Saving up money for retirement is kind of redundant if you can live just off of UBI)
- Plant Based diets should reduce the impact of the Antibiotics ban on the Income and Opinion of Farmers. (Farmers wouldn’t raise Animals, if there was no market for them). On that note, I’ve seen Farmers with several tens of thousands negative total disposable income just becouse of the Antibiotics ban and synthetic meat subsidies. Surely this could only happen if the Farmers kept buying Livestock and then selling the Meat at a loss over and over again, which doesn’t make much sense.
- I’m not sure the “Democracy” Bubble is best placed in the Welfare section. It would seem more sensible to me to place it in the Law and order or Public Services section (Where most of the Policies which affect it are)
Economy
- I feel a lot of the energy oriented policies would benefit massively from the simulation of Clean Energy Transition as well as Energy demand and Energy supply much like is already done with Oil and the Electric car Transition. This way different game aspects can better interact with the Environment. For example, instead of a high GDP directly affecting CO2 Emmisions and the Enviroment (as much) it would rather generate a large amount of energy demand, which would then Generate CO2 Emmisions and Environmental impact relative to the level Of Renewable Energy Transition. Policies like Nuclear Fission and Clean Energy Subsidies could then influence the Level of Clean Energy Transition, with Micro Generation serving mainly to reduce Energy demand. Electric cars would also increase Energy demand, limiting their Environmental Effect without the proper Transition to Clean Energy sources.
Tax
- Personally i would move the Microgeneration Grants Policy to the Economy Section.
- Unlike the Tabacco and Alcohol tax, which, at high levels, have massive impacts on Tabacco and Alcohol consumption respectively, the Recreational Drugs tax has only a comparatively small impact on Drug consumption. I think it would be better, to have the Drug tax be brought inline with the other taxes, and have a larger impact.
Public Services
- The Reforestation policy feels far to strong, to the point where it’s essentially a no-brainer in every run where you aren’t intentionally trying to destroy the Environment.
- The difference (if they aren’t supposed to be representing the same policy, in which case get rid of one of them) between Compulsory Foreign Language classes and Compulsory Language Lessons isn’t adequatly explained ingame. In addition, the Compulsory Language Lessons policy is almost never worth it, due to the negatives currently associated with immigration ingame.
- The effects of the “Ban Foreign Church Service” policy become rather ludicrous when contemplated on more than a surface level. Looking at Religious Ethnic minorities its hard to see why they would like the policy (“As a religious person im glad the Government banned Church service of my Religion”). Similarly its hard to see why a non-Religious, non-Liberal Ethnic minority would object to the policy anymore than the average person.
I might Expand and Update the List, as the Game is updated. All in all im really enjoying the Game and would Love to hear what all of you think about these suggestions.
EDIT: various spelling and grammar mistakes
