Good game but could be much better

Democracy 3 General Discussion
1

I really like this game as it has a generally pretty good UI and the general gameplay is fine. It is also pretty unique. There aren’t many political simulations out there. However, I feel the game is too gamey. I mean a political simulation game should ideally be more complex and realistic imo. Hopefully, we can see that in Democracy 4. Here are some issues I have with the game:

  • Tax system is unrealistic. I mean I play with like 40% income tax + 70% flat income tax at the same time. What does that even mean? Even if both policies weren’t allowed at the same time, their effects are too low by themselves. A 70% flat income tax would wreck the economy and cause massive riots immediately if you try to implement it in a capitalist country like the US. Maybe you could pull it off after spending decades social engineering people into socialism but you certainly shouldn’t be able to do it immediately. In the game, it just makes people unhappy which can be offset easily because now you have a crap ton of money with no real downside. This is the biggest problem with the game imo. You can always win very easily even on 200% difficulty by implementing flat income tax.

  • There should be a lot more difference between countries. You can always succeed VERY QUICKLY with the same strategy in every country which is ridiculous. Just implement flat income tax, carbon tax and go full socialist with the stupid amount of money you make. There isn’t much replayability or challenge right now. I mean don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the game until I figured it out but there really should be more viable strategies some of which just won’t work in certain countries, at least not so quickly. It should be a long-term struggle in higher difficulties where you are forced to implement “save the day” policies just to win the election. Being able to turn the US into a hardcore communist country in 1 or 2 terms makes no sense at all.

  • Assassination system is weird. How can socialists assassinate the president in the US? That’s not going to ever happen. Multinational companies might assassinate you sure but socialists? No. I think there should be some sort of riot, revolution mechanic. If people are hungry and homeless, they will likely revolt, not assassinate you. Also, intelligence services, going all police state etc. doesn’t seem to affect your chance of being assassinated.

  • Maybe there should be more foreign relations stuff with more drastic effects and this needs to be country-specific too imo. You shouldn’t be able to just remove military spending and/or intelligence services spending without very serious consequences if you are playing as a superpower like the US whereas you could probably get away with it if you are playing Australia or Canada.

  • More random events with more significant effects would be good. There should be events that force you to change your policy plans and make you have to adapt to the situation. This is again a replayability problem.

  • I would like to see the effects of a new policy before I implement it( UI issue ).

Anyway, thanks for making this game. I enjoyed it despite the problems I mentioned but I hope it is made more realistic and complex in future releases/expansions.

2

We (a group of modders) are working on a huge modpack that can make the game more challenging. It is easier Vanilla as is than what will be when the huge modpack is released.

Here is why:

The “unrealistic-ness” of the taxes will be fixed, and more taxes will be added. It may also happen that tax system depends on each country rather than as something for everyone. Example: It’ll be easier to place more Taxes on Germany that’ll be on the U.S

Because the Modpack includes policies that apply to some countries but not to others (like estabilization plans for greece, or the pro.create plan for Argentina) you’ll start with some policies in some countries that you won’t in others. Another thing we are trying to do is to make a constitution type of dillema. Example: In Argentina, abortion is penalized by the constitution so legalizing eat will make people say your government is anti-constitutional. That, together with the difference on voter type groups should make the difference.

Yes and no. We are still not sure how it works, but it’s true that you shouldn’t get assassinated by a small group. We are going to include revolts and riots for each voter type in the Modpack, but also on a separate smaller pack which will be the “Riots & Revolts” Pack. Also there’ll be polices like the Nazi SA or other which they are currently active which help protect you against assassinations, take note that the security of assassinations value is not shown.

JoseRuela5 is currently working on a “a mod with foreign relations with major world nations” which he posted on our closed modding community (which is specially made to create the modpack i’m talking about). You can find the link to the board here 8ch.net/demcom/ .

You mean…? Depending on what you mean, depending on if it’s already made or not. Natural disasters do happen, specially in a new mod called disasters and emergencies stuff. If that’s what you are referring to, then that’s made. If you are referring to dilemma’s, there are plenty of those and more will arise.

We would all like, but you can actually see it; the problem is you are actually implementing it and you are wasting political capital. Think about this, in real life, you wouldn’t know what the effect is until you actually implement it. But anyhow with the UI we are going to bring a re-design but we can’t actually change it in the game, but rather give it to Cliffski or another Positech member to work on it as a Dlc/Mod.

Something else?

3

Which modpack is this?

4

Hey remi, was the modpack you are talking about released or is it still in development? It sounds pretty interesting and I’m waiting for it.