I have to be fully transparent that I think both donors and ministers aren’t that well integrated. You start the game with a cabinet and donors (who presumedly supported you through your campaign to be initially elected) with random allegiances to various voter groups. To add to this, the pool in which you can replace ministers is too limited to form a cabinet which actually might help. I understand voter groups need to play a part in this, as not catering to your ministers can lead to an unstable govt. This is especially the case with donors, as not having enough donors can lead to you losing the game entirely. For example, why would a donor caring of Liberals support my campaign if my goal is to support Conservative policies?
My suggestion is another screen before you start the game, in which you pick your initial ministers (from a larger pool) and donors. At least then if they resign later on, it’ll be your fault.
I remember having a similar discussion months ago. One idea that was had was to select certain criteria that would filter the ministers and donors you start with while still being random. Eg, you choose two or three voter groups to which to cater and each of your donors/ministers would be aligned with at least one of those groups. Another alternative would be to allow a free ministerial reshuffle upon start of game, altho this affects neither donors nor selection of ministers.
I’m glad to see others talking about this, certainly I’ve taken a few cracks at it.
I get that the complexity of the game needs to be kept reasonable, and that this is particularly true of any pre-game. Keep in mind that somebody playing the game for the first time needs understand what they’re doing and why it’s important. So here’s my latest idea to sling at the wall to see if it sticks:
1 pre-game screen with a brief blurb about having choose voters to please to get elected, and that nothing happens in politics without making enemies. Then the player is presented with a listing of all voter groups except “everyone”, and must check 3 groups to be catered to, and 3 to be antagonized. Catering to any with an opposing group automatically antagonizes the opposite.
The groups the player caters to have an opinion bonus, but are more sensitive to trust effects. The antagonized groups have an opinion penalty, but no donors nor ministers will join the party if they are sympathetic to these groups.
Also, doubling the list of potential ministers would help, it’s not uncommon for there to be no good options.
Actually, I don’t think locking the player to only appeasing/rejecting certain voter groups is a good idea because the flexibility of govt is taken away. Typically a political party may have one or two main voter groups it caters to but that doesn’t mean it should be aggressively aggraevating others. I think catering to voter groups can be represented in the ministers/donors you choose in my initial suggestion. Anything beyond that I don’t believe would be fun or realistic.
Hang on guys! I have a much easier idea
Surely I can just automagically tweak the allegiances and sympathies of starting donors and ministers so they already are at least neutral, if not happy? That would be MUCH easier for everyone (and make more sense?)
That would be a good start. It would certainly clear up the misfire games where a majority of the starting ministers hate me.
There is also the issue of new potential ministers joining the party. If I have played in a way which results in religious and trade unionists hating me, then a minister candidate who is loyal to those groups should be running with the opposition, not my party.
Could we also get some clarification on why each minister hits an effectiveness ceiling? I’ll pick ministers who should like me, and wants the job, and they will max out at 42% effectiveness. Then I’ll look up potential replacements, only one wants the job, who is religious. So I’m stuck with a 42% effective tax minister, and just have to run the country with on hand tied behind my back.
Agreed. Maybe I should select ministers from the happiest 20% of the electorate. I suspect currently they are chosen randomly.
I keep meaning to make the effectiveness calculation clearer to the player, as its displayed, but hardly intuitive…
Minister effectiveness is 20% minimum plus 80% multiplied by 2 factors:
Experience
Suitability for job.
Ministers start with a base level of experience, and it goes up each turn they have a job, by an amount that scales slightly based on how the players is doing (how much they are winning).
The suitability for the job is a random value from 0 to 1. That means that some ministers can be in a job where they never get any better, because they are totally unsuitable.
You can tell the top three suitability values for a minister because they are listed as desirable jobs for them.
To complicate matters entirely the impact a minister has on the effect of policies ranges from -20% to +20% depending on that effectiveness value
I really should have a little calculations tooltip that displays all this when you hover over the minister effectiveness…
