Low income would directly affect car usage as lower earners and the unemployed voters would not be able to afford a car. Will you be using several variables for the employed voters percentage, something like, part-time, minimum wage, middle earners and top earners.
That way car usage could be calculated with regards to income. The majority of top and middle earners would probably own at least one car. Minimum wage could be say 50/50 using a car maybe with a random variable to alter the percentage so its not so even. Part-time, minimal car usage due to cost.
I know that there will be other variables to alter car usage with regards to taxes and environmental policies but earnings is always a good base with regards to cost. It wouldn’t matter about how cheap car tax is and other policies if you could not afford to buy a car in the first place.
Ok, I’ve considered adding lots of new simulation data, but have decided to skip a lot of them. some new simulation values that currently are in the game are:
Racial Tension
Immigration
International Trade
Foreign Relations
C02 Emissions
Air Travel
Energy Efficiency
so there used to be 14 values, now there are 50% more (so far). I may decide to balance these, and add appropriate situations, policies and dilemmas before going any further,
Right now, the game is hard coded to 1024 by 768 res, but the more I think about it, the more I have to accept that I will need to support more resolutions, especially 1280 1024 (although 1024 768 will be the minimum)
Will the new simulation values be displayed or will some be hidden values that will affect the main displayed values?
For example, immigration and foreign relations affecting racial tension. Air travel and energy efficiency altering co2 emissions.
I think the graphics for Democracy look good enough at 1024,768 as the game is playability driven so i would not see any need to increase the resolution. If it were in full 3D and needed a top of the range graphics card then i could understand wanting higher resolution but personally i am just looking forward to playing the game.
Variable political capital needed for each change.
Political capital is assigned each turn, based on your majority in the last election. In Democracy 2, it will be able to be carried over to the next turn. Also, each policy will have its own political capital costs.
Say you want to outlaw firearms, or legalise them if they are outlawed already. This takes LOTS of political capital. it might require a huge government majority, or maybe several turns worth of effort to get it through. This is to reflect the intense lobbying that will be involved.
On the other hand, if you want to change the rate of luxury goods tax, increase spending on community policing, or maybe raise the subsidy for bus lanes, these are all very low-lobbying activities, and you can probably get these done with no real opposition (although you may still upset some voters).
I think this will be a great addition to the game. I might also change the ministers so they come with various stockpiles of capital too.
I’ve been working recently on the protests and attacks. In the original game, you basically get a ‘warning’ from a group that is really annoyed, then an actual attack, which may or may not be foiled by security services.
I’m expanding this to make it more accurate.
In Democracy 2, there will be various pressure groups ranging from the peaceful (heritage society, secular society etc) to the extreme (global jihad army etc). Every single citizen of the country will consider each turn if he is annoyed enough, and in the right groups to affiliate themselves with such groups, and you will be kept informed as to the size and threats from these groups. If one of them builds up enough support, they may carry out a variety of different actions to either destabilise your govt, kill you, or maybe cause economic damage somehow.
It’s all good fun .
Hopefully this will make that portion of the game feel more realistic, and more closely tied to your policies, because only angry people can carry out such attacks. For example: if you have REALLY upset religious people, but most of them are doing quite well (good economy, measures to reduce poverty), then you won’t have enough poor religious people to build up the required support for terror attacks.
On the other hand, you could actually have the religious people slightly happier with religious issues, but have enough of them unhappy about other things (maybe the environment and poverty) that they do join extremist groups.
Also, its easier to persuade people to join an extremist group, that it is to persuade them to leave. so if you really antagonise patriots, you will have a lot of patriotic maniacs, and you will have to reverse gears pretty big-time to get them to disband entirely.
It’s all good fun to model anyway.
Hi. Really looking forward to the new game having read this.
How about if you lose an election you carry on playing but in opposition. You can then continue to edit your policies but they will not have any effect on the country - they will just be policies of the “opposition party”. You will see GDP, satisfaction with the Government from various groups, etc. etc. change as the party in power makes a mess of running the country (or otherwise) and you will hope that by putting forward policies that you believe will solve these problems you will win over support to your party for the next election.
At the moment its a catch-all number that is affected by certain policies such as border controls, certain dilemmas, import tarrifs, foreign aid and even your C02 emissions. it affects your level of immigration and levels of trade.
just changed some code to allow multiplying of inputs to a policys income.
Sounds obscure, but what this means is I can now say that income tax earnings are equivalent to a base value, multiplied by GDP, and then multiplied again by some other number relating to tax evasion.
In the past tax evasion had a set cost, regardless of tax levels, which is rubbish. So the new system should be much better.
Something I’m currently working on is adding new effects, policies and dilemmas to allow the player to control the membership of group more.
We know that introducing school prayer, teaching creationism and subsidising faith schools will increase the number of religious voters,(and vice versa) but what are good policies to affect the change over time of other groups?
Such as liberals, conservatives, trade unionists, commuters etc?
I’m going to try and add lots more policy options to the sequel, so all ideas are appreciated.
Traditional vs non-traditional schooling maybe? You could have several sliders to change the emphasis of education, from, say, pro-life to pro-choice and so on. You’ll have to make sure it takes a long time for education policies to affect groups though.
Government promotion or persecution of different groups may change their numbers.
You could perhaps add a few events that effect group sizes. For example, a victory in a sporting event could, in the short run, create greater numbers of patriots.
Trade Unionists could increase and decrease in accordance with state employees. I work in a hospital and lower band staff get treated like garbage so i joined the union and quite a few other people i know have done the same. I would assume under-spending on healthcare would increase trade unionists with all the lay-offs and bad management.
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