I’m a new player of the Democracy series, I brought the beta yesterday and played it over-night and made UK into a democratic capitalistic self-sustaining utopia and here is some of my early thoughts:
Internet Censorship - this seems to be the only policy that can tackle Internet Crime (aside from destroying your tech advantage), I would suggest adding Internet Spying / Tapping (ala NSA) as a seperate entity that can do so as well. The reason being the penalty for Internet “Censorship” is and rightly should be much greater (to liberal and youth) than spy agencies covertly tackling crime over the internet.
Electric cars / vehicles subsidy - I think there should be a set of policies for electric vehicles to switch energy dependence away from oil without affecting car/vehicle use.
UI - dates/timeline - the graphs are great but it I think it would be even better if I can see the plots in relation to time more clearly (i.e. have year divides?)
Depth - I don’t know what I should “expect” since I never played D2, but I feel that the current depth of the game is not quite deep enough to be challengingly fun in a replayable way, so here are a few things maybe you can consider if the game’s features aren’t frozen yet…
Unemployment / workforce management - It is too easy to get unemployment 0% - but in reality unemployment never would reach 0 since the distribution of job skills vs population skill varies. I feel this area of the game is quite lacking. For example the US in reality has a shortage of tech workers which is why the big tech companies lobbied for better immigration to allow them to hire from overseas more easily. I would think if the workforce is divided into different categories that is linked to education (upbringing) it would give the game more depth.
Foreign policies, trading and competition - I would also like to see more influence of policies from foreign countries affecting your own which in turn affects your local popularity. This will ensure the you have to adapt to the world around you as well and not just reach a state of equalibrium utopia.
Energy - some specific energy details would be great, such as playing the division between nuclear vs fossil/oil vs renewable and how environmentalist are against nuclear and fossil/oil but doesn’t care about the economics involved. That may fit in well with going down developing electric transportation route well too - as you transition from oil based economy to an advanced economy with electric vehicles.
Best, R