Despite making minimal policy changes to anything, in the four games I’ve played thus far (I just bought the game today) within 7 turns a) my ministers have no loyalty and just quit and b) I get assassinated. I’ve played four games now and I’ve been killed in everyone. Is this really what the game is like?? Play 10 turns and get killed?
Welcome to the forum!
Which country you played? Which difficulty level?
I have finished over 15 game (100% difficulty and only 2 assasination).
Ministers generally lose loyalty over time as you keep them on. This is just a thing that happens. The job kind of sucks, and politicians aren’t drawn from the most trustworthy parts of the population to begin with. Don’t fire them, but don’t let them resign. Reshuffle your entire cabinet when you need to replace one of them. Note that if the groups that a minister sympathizes with are absolutely in love with you, that minister will gain loyalty instead.
This won’t solve the assassination issue. To avoid being assassinated, keep the assassination-happy groups out of the red. The gun icon at the top-center-right of your screen in the game will open up your Intelligence Briefing. That will give you threat estimates. The green threat estimates are factions that will campaign against you and supply activists to your opponents during elections. The red threat estimates are factions that will try to kill you.
You can also try instituting a total police state. Law and Order policies delay assassination attempts and reduce their odds of success. If you go that route, make sure you reduce Liberalism by any means possible, because police states trigger Liberal assassination attempts. That means seizing all civilian firearms, killing art subsidies, ending all attempts at community policing or anti-discrimination, and setting up the death penalty to murder people like it was going out of style. This will rapidly terrify people into (claiming to be) conservatives.
I’m playing the USA. I’ve dropped the difficulty level by 25% each game. I was assassinated after 10 turns at difficult level 25 despite balancing the budget, creating a surplus, and growing the country to a AAA credit rating. 
Why does the developer make assassination a game concept?? I think it’s in poor taste to implement something like that in a game - there is enough murder and violence in the word as it is, we don’t need a political game to champion suck tactics.
I’ll try the ideas you suggested. But if this assassination thing is going to be so frequent, I’m going to stop b=playing and warn others via FB and Twitter not to play.
The USA is one of the harder scenario. There are lots of liberals and they start out hating everyone who gets elected to office. None of the groups like you except the Retired, Patriots, and State Employees. None of these groups are especially likely to be liberals, so there’s nothing to mitigate the hatred of freedom-lovers. To top it off, the USA starts out with hideous debts, high crime levels, international unpopularity, and a skills shortage. Check out the American Finances thread for more advice here: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=8713
I played at zero difficulty, 100% Apathy, 0% Socialism, 0% Liberalism, and was assassinated by the Black power Group half way through my term despite a) enacting every policy I could to make them happy while b) beefing up as much security as I could to ward off the possibility of an assassination. This game is no fun if I’m going to be assassinated every damn game. I wish I hadn’t spent the $29
Sure that we all play the same game?
Tried to reduce racial tension? Tried to introduce “community policing”?
Assassination is only a result of an ignored situation. You check every turn the “changes” panel? The blue statistics? It’s a very complex game! For a turn I can meditate even 35 minutes before going on.
Black Power? I’ve never even seen them activate. o.O That organization has literally never taken any action in any round I’ve played of the game, even in sequences where race riots came (briefly) into being.
I got assassinated a couple times by Black Power. It’s pretty easy to avoid though. Just max out the Racial Education (That’s not it’s name. It’s in the law and order policies with the YinYang symbol) and avoid messing too much with your borders policies. As far as I can tell, the liberal and capitalist groups are the scariest in this scenario. Even in my most successful campaign, I still had to dodge a few attempts on my life. I agree though that this is one of the hardest ones I’ve tried.
I haven’t encountered assassination attempts, but then I haven’t played as the USA yet.
Still, there is no reason to rage-quit on your $29. This solution should work:
-
Goto
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Democracy 3\data\simulation\attacksor your personal equivalent. -
Modify the *Assassination.txt files to have a SuccessChance of zero. Alternately change the success chance of the *Plot.txt files as I believe all assassinations have plots as a prerequisite.
Or more simply, disable assassination from options menu…
Huh. Seems obvious now. But then I wonder what Eadan was referring to?
Although… If you want inept clowns for assassins it could be fun to fiddle with the values anyway. 
Thanks for the feedback. I’d like to achieve the same success you are all having without having to disable options.
Let me ask - when a red bar is protruding on the left side of the center mark, is that a positive or a negative? I find it particularly confusing on the CAUSES bar.
It depend: red bars in “poverty” causes are positive because they reduce “poverty”. Red bars in GPD are negative because they reduce GPD.
In the manual this is explained.
Remember it this way. Red means it makes something go DOWN. green means it makes something go UP. These are not the same as good and bad. RED lines pointing at bad things are good, like pollution. It’s ok once you get used to it 
It has to work this way because otherwise, as the game designer I’d have to make a decision as to what was good and bad. Is a rise in private pensions a good thing? (for example).
I just assassinated for the first time while playing as Greece. I think the way things are now is fine.