Democracy 2 Dev Log

Wow! That looks fantastic!

Todays considerations:

Immigration -> what are the effects?
At the moment I let high GDP influence immigration positively (as a country becomes wealthy, more people want to live there). If immigration gets too high, I have it affect racial tension, which can lead to crime.

I’m thinking that certain welfare benefits may also encourage immigration. Should immigration reduce average earnings, and make a housing shortage more likely?

hmmmm, nothing is simple is it?

Wouldn’t immigration effect public schools badly due to overcrowding but production would turn higher due to poor immigrints willingness to work at a lower wage?

Immigration is of course likely to put a strain on welfare systems, and could increase unemployment, but could also give a boost to the economy if unemployment is low and there’s a shortage of workers.

Speaking of which, work hours should have a greater effect on the economy. Policies like Maternity Leave, Labour Laws, and National Service should reduce work hours and thus indirectly hurt the economy, which they already do to some extent. On the other hand, Childcare Provision and a good health situation should increase hours worked.

that’s a very good point, about childcare provision increasing productivity. I need to check my recursive code works before I add too many more links.

Hurrah I think the recursive stuff is working right now.
The link that forced me to implement it was this…

GDP rising led to more immigration
immigration rising reduced average income
average income falling reduced car usage
car usage falling increased air quality
air quality rising reduced pollution.
pollution falling increased lifespan
lifespan rising boosted productivity
productivity rising raised GDP.

yikes.

so GDP is up, hurrah, but that’s no compensation to the people on low wages, who resent the foreigners I guess :smiley:.

Todays progress:

Got political parties to have proper names now
Improved political party membership dialog
finished the new full screen interface for showing situation details
Added feature for the effectiveness of policies to be scaled by ministerial competence
Changed the way inertia works so it isn’t a delay, but more of a gradual fading in of effects.
Added inertia to a whole bunch of simulation links

hello! can you get something like gulags, genocide, minorities, different groups of believers, gay people, different racions? left wing and of course right wing? facist? possibility to turn whole state into warmachine into war with other state? and something similar to problems in Israel? make it more complex? with all things like this? thank you

ps: this games helps me alot in school :slight_smile:
I should write review or something…

I have to say it would be nice to be able to create a state with an economy run by democratic worker’s councils…

How? Unless lifespan was low to start with, it doesn’t make sense. What is the retirement age? Or does increased lifespan mean working-age people are healthier and work harder? The problem we have here at the moment is that because of inadequate pension provision, we will have to work longer even though it is already difficult for people in their 50s to get or keep jobs. I don’t see that the age discrimination legislation has had time to work yet.

when i say lifespan, its not lifespan as such but an index of population health. so a healthier workforce are more productive, less time off sick etc.

Is it possible to have a sample population where individuals actually are born and later die? Then you can keep track of how large the workforce is, how many retired people you have, how many are parents right now, etc.

Will there be a policy regarding retirement age? And what effects do you think the policy would create? My opinion on the policy is as follows.

Increase retirement age = Lower pensions expenditure, higher unemployment due to new young people entering the jobs market, upset people who did not want to work longer.

Lower retirement age = Higher pensions expenditure, lower unemployment due to more jobs available, happier people who wanted to retire early.

The employment issue would eventually level out due to the economy adjusting to the new length of working life. What other effects do you think there would be?

interesting, I had not considered retirement age as something for the game. That’s the problem, there is just too much that could go in.

Also worth looking into is a school leaving age policy.

Increase age = Higher level of education but also increased costs, slight reduction to unemployment but with the possibility of a truancy dilemma. Could be cured with a subsidy policy.

Decrease age = Lower level of education, reduced costs and a slight increase to unemployment but with the possiblity of an education dilemma if population is very under-educated.

ultimately the effects of this would depend on the countries skillset and industry base. if you are running a high-tech country with a highly skilled workforce, thats very different from running a 3rd world country where almost all industry is unskilled.
Because there is so much to polish, improve and update, I doubt Democracy 2 will change the basic structure of the economy to include industry splits, but I’d love to work that sort of stuff into the game in the longer run. (maybe democracy 3 or mods?)

If the program continued to update immigration in relation to GDP wouldn’t that cause a loop where GDP just continues to rise without player intervention because immigration repeats the loop. Maybe a negative effect could be created to stop the possibility of such a loop. Not all immigrants would find employment which would effect the economy in a negative way. Patriots would probably appreciate an immigration control policy.

a good point, although I think the way the equations work will just result in an equilibrium being reached. plus all those other things are affecting everything else, so the overall equilbrium will be much more dependent on external values. but yes, this will be a swine to balance. extensive beta testing may be required.

actually average income falling… would that reduce car usage? yes people may have lower salaries, but there are more people here due to immigration… so would there be more cars, but cheaper ones?

hmmmmmmmm. the difficulty is finding answers to these questions which don’t include “you need to model this other new thing”

[quote=“cliffski”]
actually average income falling… would that reduce car usage? yes people may have lower salaries, but there are more people here due to immigration… so would there be more cars, but cheaper ones?[/quote[

Wouldn’t that depend in part on what initiatives your government has funded? If you’re in the pockets of the big fuel industry, you’d expect more cars. If you’ve funded alternative fuel sources, you’d expect fewer cars with more efficient fuel mileage, and perhaps lower cost in other respects, too. You’d expect more competition if you actively worked to decentralize the auto industry, though that would have other ramifications, too.