I’ve been looking at stats for this stuff today and collected some interesting data.
If I look at all elections in the latest version of the game, and check some stats on election turn:
Average Complacency 6.31 %
Average Cynicism 1.03 %
Honeymoon 96.56 %
Those are the three mechanics that are supposed to ensure late game challenge. Essentially the political honeymoon should fade down to nothing over successive terms, complacency and cynicism should likely rise with terms. Collectively, they provide a squeeze on the late game difficulty. They obviously need adjusting.
If I look at the first election:
Average Complacency 2.28 %
Average Cynicism 0.61 %
Honeymoon 100 %
second election:
Average Complacency 14%
Average Cynicism 1.9 %
Honeymoon 89.99%
So its pretty clear that political honeymoon degrades WAY too slowly… and voters do not get cynical enough!
This is exactly what I needed to balance things, I just was not able to collect the right data until the latest version.