I have almost no poverty at all in my country, but because I have a low “equality” rating I still get the “class warfare” event/situation?
This makes no sense at all. I have a large number of good social services (all public education and almost all state healthcare programs are maxed. There are also strong public transports.) and poverty barely even exists to a point that I have 89% approval rating. However because I have some other policies which allows the wealthy to make lots of money (flat income tax and tax heavens to name examples) my nation is still thrown into a communist revolution and class war? Really? The fact that there is almost no poverty in society at all doesn’t matter? Just the fact that the rich are making lots of money is a reason enough for the people in the game to wage a class war?
Ok, that’s it. I give up.
The people who made this game appear to be completely hellbent to make it so that no matter what you do you will ALWAYS fail to run your country well if you aren’t a good little communist like they are. EVEN WITH a large welfare state and strong public education and transport that makes sure nobody is poor, the game will still punish just for even daring to allow the wealthy to make any meaningful amounts of wealth.
I have given this game more chances then it deserves becaue I love the concept of it, but this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I am done.
Class warfare is the downside of huge lack of equality. Equality isn’t the same as poverty. And also… Politics? There has never been any social or political system which doesn’t encountered any problem. Do you really expect a political simulator to be about allowing your personal political ideas magically work? Any system will provoke its own issues.
And if you think a game is unbalanced, give feedback or look for mods but the game isn’t a conscious entity. It can’t correct itself by listening to you yelling at it.
No, equality isn’t the same thing as poverty. That is why this makes no sense. Why would people living comfortable lives take up arms against the wealthy simply because they are rich? Normal people don’t resort to violence in an attempt to change things if they aren’t living under poor conditions.
There is a difference between some society merely not being perfect and a society being thrown into a bloody civil war.
No, but I do expect the game to work within the realms of common sense. The idea that the public will turn into bloodthirsty revolters demanding a violent revolution even though they live nice comfortable lives grossly defies it.
Maybe because I almost always play at 100% difficulty, but I always finish the game with a 100% approval rating and with virtually no political problems, except “tax evasion” when I play Greece, or “Internet Crime” when my technology and GDP is doing too good. I probably should play at a harder level.
Nonetheless, regardless of the country I pick I always end up completely destroying the Motorist population by introducing extremely Commuter/Environmentalist friendly policies at the highest rates, and I woo the Liberals and increase their population too by introducing the most ‘anti-religious’ laws in terms of the social issues while the religious population diminishes.
In the front of social welfare, it’s negotiated, but I figured out a way to moderately please both Capitalists and Socialists virtually equally at the yellow mark, primarily by increasing welfare, tax on consumer goods, cutting defense, and slightly adjusting income tax every turn. On the other hand, I try not to piss of the rich too much by completely eliminating (or reducing to the minimum) capital gains and corporate taxes, while allowing a large degree of tax loopholes. That way I can decrease inequality and poverty without the rich threatening to leave or economic growth stagnating. Whether I play America or Germany, I end up with a hyper secular, business-friendly, Social Democratic society where virtually no one drives.
My political ideas always worked like a charm in Democracy games. About 80% or better approval rate among almost every group (except the liberals who I eliminated within a number of years anyway), no problems and a safe society with a high GDP plus a surplus and reserves.
About the class warfare, you do make some point. If we see class warfare as a full-scale civil war then no, it’s a balancing problem or a design problem. Does low poverty or high poor earnings limit class warfare?
Perhaps some form of solution could be tiered situation. For example, tier 1 situations are problems within your society but aren’t crippling. These could trigger through inertia and other factors tier 2 situations. and so forth. It probably could help to limit easy debt-free utopia.
For example: protests=>riots=>“class warfare”.
Could be very interesting to mod.
About GDP causing unemployement. Hard to tell. The fact that Democracy 3 is streamlined to keep it game-y makes some choices a bit hard to comprehend.
It depends really. If the supply of labour is greater than the supply of jobs, then you are hampering productivity and profits by maintaining full employment. Under opposite conditions, you are hampering productivity and output by not having enough workers.
In the contemporary world they have vastly increased the supply of labor by allowing freer international flows in capital, primarily by disciplining German workers by moving production to Poland, or disciplining American workers by moving production to Mexico.
Unemployment,0.9-(0.7*x) is the effect on unemployment from GDP.
Intuitively, you would think that a higher GDP with a commensurately booming economy would lead to lower unemployment.
If we set GDP to 0 for full economic collapse: 0.9-(0.7*0) = 0.9 boost to unemployment.
And GDP to 1 for a roaring economy: 0.9-(0.7*1) = 0.2 boost to unemployment.
Therefore, increasing your GDP decreases unemployment. It’s always a positive effect, which is what confuses people.
Cliffski can probably give a much better answer as to why he chose to make it work that way, but my speculation is that while there are a plethora of policies which reduce unemployment, there are very, very few that raise it (unemployment benefit being the only one I can think of). We therefore get the state of your economy setting a ‘base’ level of unemployment, which you can then modify with other policies.
Ok, I will admit that I probably overreacted. Its just that I had spent so much time on my game that I got very pissed when the game threw a class warfare situation into my face even though I was doing fine. This game is still suffering from some bad balance problems however, and I am still of the view that its biased towards the left and only really plays properly with mods. That said, I’m sorry if I made somebody angry with my OP.
The phenomena where people see GDP creating unemployment is confusing a lot of people, and I should change it when I next patch the game. Allow me to explain:
GDP does not cause unemployment in the game. The equations are set so there is a default high level of unemployment, which GDP reduces. This works perfectly in game, but it makes the mistake of thus looking like that default is assigned to GDP, when it isn’t. This is just my coding brain taking over from my design brain
I know it would make so much sense to stick that value as a default instead. It makes zero difference to the simulation, just how the visuals appear. My bad.
Perhaps a way to make that more comprehensible would be to introduce employement (private and public) as a statistic?
State policies would increase public employement (happier… state employes and moderately socialists) while GDP and grants would increase private employement (happier capitalists) and both would diminish unemployement.
It could make for much more subtle policies and modding. I think it would also be more interesting than the three oil statistics for example.
“Good little communists”? Really? Lol. XD The designer sold you the game which you purchased with money, so communist goes out the window (unfortunately ;). I’m glad you admitted to over-reacting and how gracious of you to apologize to anyone you may have offended. I have ran a capitalistic, conservative state that was completely contrary to my crazy left-wing political ideologies (as a challenge) and did just fine. Many other players have done this, too. Also, there are one or two libertarian mods which change most of the game’s formulaic relationships and values to fit that model of reality. Like you said about mods. That’s kind of part of the game, though.
See, Cliffski has admitted bias even though he tried to be as objective as possible. But a lot of this stuff is theory and is highly prone to subjectivity. I agree that your situation seems a bit extreme. A lot of players report situations like this as a possible balance issue. He will either admit that he has biased reasoning and what he was thinking or he will consider if it is a balance issue and how he can rectify it.
You could easily fix your problem yourself by fiddling with the formulas. Unfortunately, it’s a very volatile and controversial game. Which is probably part of the reason why the designer and publisher thought it would be great as a highly moddable Steam game.
It appears that the factors which mitigate Class Warfare are the security policies like CCTV, Police Force, and the dreaded Police Drones. You didn’t say what they were set at in your game. If they are low or not implemented, your inexplicably high inequality is not being tempered. Now, even though you have great social programs and low poverty because of it, your other policies may be causing the pay gap between the bottom percentile and the top percentile to be unimaginably and infuriatingly huge. It has angered the lower classes even though they are being cared for. And with no proper authoritarian measures to keep the malcontents in check, they have taken to the streets to even the score. That would be my understanding, although I agree that they would probably just deal with it if everything else is copasetic. I know I would. If there are no homeless and hungry, then who cares about the rich getting richer? At least not to the point of starting a bloody civil war, as you pointed out.
You could simply raise the threshold in which inequality sets off Class Warfare in Situations.CSV. The formula is Equality,0.9-(1.2*x),3. This means that if Equality is 0, Class Warfare will be fed a .9 which definitely sets it off. You can change this formula or the start and stop triggers, raising them to 0.9 which should end the situation in your game; unless you have absolutely no security measures in place at all. You can even change how much the related policies you have implemented to lower or raise equality more. You can change it all to fit your understanding.
“Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it.” -Willy Wonka
