Ministers, Goals

Democracy 1 & 2 Democracy 2
1

I have three suggestions:

  1. It’s currently not possible to reshuffle ministers. I only have the option of dismissing them and hiring new ministers. From the potential ministers, I can’t see what their loyalty is likely to be. Since I’m dependent for my political capital on my ministers and their loyalty, being able to get a better idea of what I’ll be getting would be good. Similarly, being able to move my really good minister from transport to the economy (assuming s/he wants to do that job) would also be good. Finally, to see a minister’s effectiveness, I have to click on a policy within that minister’s area of responsibility. Shouldn’t this be shown on the “ministers” screen?

  2. It falls kind of flat for me that I govern for my X terms and then… just stop. Having some kind of goal scenario (“produce a 10bn surplus for the debt-ridden nation”, “make the liberals in this highly religious nation be at least 75% happy”) would be good. I realise that in the real world, the main goal of a politician is to get re-elected and that therefore, doing this ten times in a row in the game is accurately simulating real life. But I believe history and the population as a whole has a more nuanced and individual way of measuring the success of politicians which would be better represented by goals. George W. Bush has been elected twice and has therefore been as successful as a US President can be if we’re measuring just by elections won. A large part of the US population, though, seems to be measuring him based on some other criteria… (and history might measure him differently again, who knows…)

  3. This possibly belongs in the “tweaking” thread, but: increasing the “drugs” scale (going from “outlawed” toward “legalise all”) results in a gradual increase in crime. Greater legality should result in lower prices. Lower prices should result in less crime, since drug users don’t need to commit crime (or at least not as much crim) in order to fund a habit. There might be a slight reverse effect, insofar as more available drugs results in more addicts. But evidence from Holland doesn’t really seem to bear this out. Drugs are more available, addiction rates don’t really seem affected by that, but drug crime is lower than in many other countries with less liberal policies. I’d agree that there may be a multitude of other social, moral or economic reasons for restricting the availability of drugs, but reducing crime surely isn’t one of them?