Hi and just a short question

Hello everyone,

I am new to democracy 4, had now a long time an eye on it and I finally bought it.
I am someone, probably like you, who really likes to politics in on the meta-layer. For a long time, I was spectating the Democracy series. Now I finally joined in and some questions have arisen for me.

Sorry if they are already answerd somewhere else.

  • Do I understand it correctly that Positech Games is a one-man company by Cliff Harris?
    Therefore, my respect and great work!
    Well interface (Clean and organized, quick understandable presentation of effects)
    I really like that voters are not just a group but present on the individual level.
    What I already tried out to mod (mainly policies) is quite easy to do. And I have really little programming/scripting experience. So, thanks!

  • Since the game is a simulation of politics, to what extend is political knowledge/concepts are in/played a role in building the game?
    (Eg. how are the voters calculation)

  • According to the Trello board the most of it are “simple” Adjustments.
    Is there more content planned?
    I could imagine many new features and aspects to be introduced to the game.

Now some more modding questions that I want to ask.

  • Are new policy areas modable? Like creating a Ministry of X (Space or whatever)
    I saw part of the parts are in the open csv and strings, But I assume there are also Gui dependencies, or am I wrong?

Following the previous, question is the game GUI modable or planned to be moddable?

  • Do I understand it correctly that all variables are between 0 and 1? Nice for statistical Analysis but for interval variables like GDP in a game.

  • Are is the Icon limited in display (eg. no pictures with some more color) (svg)
    A possible better visualization of Law and I just like colors.

Thanks

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Oh, if you have a question towards @cliffski don’t forget to tag him, as he might not sometimes see the thread post.

Actually I think you could theoretically just add extra policy areas, although I have not tested it. It might break some GUI layout stuff maybe.

Yup, all variables have to be from 0-1 or -1 to 1 in the game. Thats intentional, otherwise the maths behind the game become problematic!

Think of GDP as GDP growth. I wish I’d called it growth initially. that would stop the endless debates…

the svgs can be colored in theory but we render them as black if they are on white and vice versa. We do this so we can support dark mode.

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I just took the ambiguity of GDP, whether it’s a total amount or a growth rate as part of the necessary simplicity to make this game manageable. Another example would be foreign relations. I’m pretty sure that the U.S., China, France, Saudi Arabia, and each of the Koreas might have different opinions on things, but “foreign relations” is one bubble. This is not a complaint, just an example of where simplification was needed to get the ball rolling.

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Not too late!

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It’s even funier, because it would be GDP growth per capita ajusted for inflation.

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Honestly renaming it to “Economy” might be more elegant. None of the other sims use statistical language.

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For gameplay purposes it would make little diference, i was saying that because those 2 terms in real life can be used to reduce the debt to GDP ratio.

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This is so tempting…

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Thank’s for the replays,
I currently had no success in modding an extra policy area. The game just crashed. But I also tied it just once, I experience currently a high workload so I don’t have much free time right now…

Second, I didn’t had in mind that the svg needs to be colored differently for the different themes , my fault.

A question that I still have in my mind is whether the GUI is moddable? I thought of adding something like a constitution that limits the policy possibilities.

An alternative was to just add a new policy are and place the constitution in that one.

Thanks.

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