I am thinking that everything in Democracy 2 is text based. This makes modding pretty easy. What if you took it up one layer?
Here is the concept:
Have a program, Dem2Gen, which automatically generates a set of files:
- Single Mission file
- Attack files (specific or general)
- Event files (specific or general)
- Dilemma files (specific or general)
Implementation of objectives:
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Besides needing to win the election, you will have various constraints placed upon you. The constraints will be realized by making various policy changes so prohibitively expansive in term of political capital that it is infeasible to use them as solutions. This will represent party or positional inertia.
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Winning the election as always built into the game.
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Scenario objectives. You will have to resolve various situations to Win. For example, if the budget fails to get balance it will hurt you so much in the vote demographics that you cannot possible win. So, you will be forced to resolve some particular problems in the game.
Dem2Gen would have basically three inputs to function:
(1) Scenario templates. So, a template could represent various types of countries or situations: “Country afloat in oil wealth”, “Country under crushing debt”, “Country in the midst of social turmoil” …
(2) Difficulty slider. Determines just how hard created scenarios are.
(3) Random generator.
The idea behind Dem2Gen is that you already have a game that has a certain amount a variability. However, the variability itself is not random to the point that things play out differently each time. Dem2Gen would provide that variability by wrapping the game engine with yet a higher level. Besides variability, you would get unexpected countries, situations, and goals upon each execution. So, every playing would be a new political world to analyze and formulate a strategy for. Hopefully, it would keep the game from becoming stale after a time.
Well, I don’t intend to write it. But I think that it would not be the hardest thing to write and it would add a lot to the game. So, I am throwing the idea out.
Here is random game generator I wrote for 1830 (railroads and stock trading). Small changes in the rules/configuration for 1830 can have a very major impact strategy and game play. By writing an external generator, I make a game engine that had a lot of replay value effectively provide a new focus and style of play upon each game. The script besides randomly picking configuration options allow weighting of various choices. See below (written in WinBatch, a Window’s scripting tool):
Sample output: