In reference to the official country modding guide (here), I was hoping I could get some clarification on how setting up a country works and how Democracy 3 interprets the country information file.
For starters, I think the min_gdp,max_gdp information may be incorrect or out of date. It states that “only the max works” (implying that the min does not?). While trying to get my own country set up, I was having difficulty in getting the results I wanted following only that information. When I started tweaking both the min and max, I found that I was able to get results much closer to what I wanted. I’m assuming that there have been some changes in the game logic since this guide was written?
Debt was relatively easy to setup (except it’s missing a title in the guide), although it would be helpful if the guide mentioned what the conversion rate is - I think it’s like a factor of 100,000 from what you type in to what the game interprets.
My primary complaint is that it’s difficult in general to get a real country accurately setup in Democracy 3. It’s very easy to find a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio and nominal GDP online, but apparently this isn’t how min and max GDP work. If you were to try and just straight copy-paste the nominal GDP into the config file, chances are it will be totally off when you start up the game.
In the future, I think it would be really helpful if Democracy 3 supported reloading a mod from in game (so you don’t have to quit to get changes to take effect) and if a tool was provided that helps taking in real world information like Debt to GDP ratios, GDP, debt, etc. and outputs that information in a way Democracy 3 can understand.