[Mod/New Country/New Policies Plus] Canada 2008

[idealpragmatist]

Hi Gang,

Been having a ton of fun with D3 the last weeks or so (and appreciate the changes since d2).

My intent with this mod was to recreate a 2008 recession mission, this one from the Canadian POV, but i expect it is not too unlike the 2008 recession experience in the USA or most of the western world. I would be happy to work with others to get that USA / Canada simulation “just right”.

Lets call this release 0.5 - I would say it is in alpha, but it doesn’t crash and the game dynamics are intact. I’ will probably load up another version in a week. Modding is as much fun as playing eh?

The Canada 2008 Mission:
A lot of changes were made, including the
*revised country file,
*demographic tweaks - less socialism, more ethinic, less wealthy
*two dilemmas were added - an “auto industry bailout” and “end political party funding”
*4 new policies - national parks, foreign troop deployments, public broadcasting and youth exchange program (i don’t have icons for them - any volunteers?)

Global Changes - “Not Just a Mod” Mod:
*across the board “compression” of political capital values - the lowest values went up a bit, the highest came down - it brings some of the really expensive stuff within reach.
*assasinations - nerfed.
*population dynamics (how much your voter groups will change in the near term) - nerfed
*public outrage over tax hikes - boosted
*universal displeasure over a tanking economy - boosted

Whats the playability like?

While testing these modifications I have tried germany, uk, usa, canada, germany, france i would say it is generally harder (i kept tweaking it in that direction) - so without any of the bad events happening to you at the wrong time i would say it is hard to get re-elected - if bad events happen at the wrong time you are toast. Threading the needle between solvency and popularity is more difficult. That being said i just did a quick run through with france and the socialists will still keep you in power there despite the economy being in the toilet.

so there is probably a lot more balancing to do. Feel free to wait for the 1.0 version.

Included in the zip is a

idealmod folder - normal mod folder goes in the democracy3 folder. that can be tried standalone (though i can’t say i have)

“data - idealmod” - this is my modified democracy3/data folder, including only the stuff i modified: the attacks, policies.csv and simulation.csv - I don’t know any other way than altering these files “straight up” to get the effect i wanted. No new rows, just changes to effects. If you want to try these PROCEED WITH CAUTION and backup your entire democracy3/data folder first. I don’t reccomend these for folks who aren’t already familiar with modding D3, so if you have already done this kind of thing yourself dare to compare.

TTYL
IdealMods - Canada 2008 Plus.zip (348 KB)

[Bodger3]

Hi There,

I like this, but I’m not sure I’m up for outright modding myself. There’d be a learning curve that I’m not sure I have the time or inclination to tackle right now. In fact, installing and trying the mod as it is will likely prove to be less than easy for me. All that being said, I’m happy to participate in this project.

From what I can see, the vanilla version seems to be an abstraction that amalgamates much of the federal and provincial levels. For example, the starting accumulated debt is clearly all the provincial debt plus the federal debt. I think I can appreciate the thinking as, in the end, I would be very surprised to see the federal government failing to prevent a province from outright defaulting on its debt obligations. However, the amalgamating becomes a bit more complicated with respect to taxes, etc., that drive the federal government income. As it is, D3 has done a hell of a job, and I can live with the fact that not everything can be modeled accurately. But I like the idea of tweaking thngs to more closely reflect the Canadian experience. And '08 is a great place to start a mission.

I’ll try and take a crack at installing the mod and giving it a whirl in order to provide some useful feedback. In addition to that, I’ll do a little research to see what I could see as being added, etc.

[Bodger3]

If interested, I’m starting my researching adventure here bankofcanada.ca/tag/economic-models/

[idealpragmatist]

@Bodger3

From what I can see, the vanilla version seems to be an abstraction that amalgamates much of the federal and provincial levels. For example, the starting accumulated debt is clearly all the provincial debt plus the federal debt. I think I can appreciate the thinking as, in the end, I would be very surprised to see the federal government failing to prevent a province from outright defaulting on its debt obligations. However, the amalgamating becomes a bit more complicated with respect to taxes, etc., that drive the federal government income. As it is, D3 has done a hell of a job, and I can live with the fact that not everything can be modeled accurately. But I like the idea of tweaking thngs to more closely reflect the Canadian experience. And '08 is a great place to start a mission.

Yes it is definitely combining all levels of govenment, in the interests of fun and simplicity. I had considered making an “ontario” or “toronto” scenario. It would take more modding but you could change the higher level programs to “blue” icons (as in those policies are givens) and then add some more for the municipal or provincial levels.

I’ve also thought about modding an "input-output model where there are four or five sectors to the economy instead of just one (GDP).

Installing this mod is really just a matter of backing up your folders, running the module installer and then placing the additional downloaded files overtop of the existing ones in your D3/data folder.

Happy to assist - you can direct meeage me thorugh this forum i suppose. There is also a serious side to my interest - good luck with the reaearch.

[Bodger3]

A couple of quick questions…

*revised country file,
*demographic tweaks - less socialism, more ethinic, less wealthy >>> based on any stats or more of an eyeball approach?

Global Changes - “Not Just a Mod” Mod:
*across the board “compression” of political capital values - the lowest values went up a bit, the highest came down - it brings some of the really expensive stuff within reach. >>> just to make policies easier to get at or is there some more reasoning behind that one?
*assasinations - nerfed. >>> does that mean reduced or outright eliminated?
*population dynamics (how much your voter groups will change in the near term) - nerfed >>> same, not sure what you meant by nerfed
*public outrage over tax hikes - boosted
*universal displeasure over a tanking economy - boosted"

[idealpragmatist]

@Bodger3

A couple of quick questions…

sure here is more explanation . . .

*revised country file,
*demographic tweaks - less socialism, more ethnic, less wealthy >>> based on any stats or more of an eyeball approach?
The socialsim level was reduced to %25, which roughly corresponds to the current support for the NDP (a social democratic party). Of course whether this is accurate depends on a number of highly subjective definitions - e.g. what does socialism mean in this game? As far as i know the citizens are either socialist or capitalist. I interpret that to mean capitalism is a general (but not ridgid) preference for non-interference in the markets.
ethnic was raised to %40, wealthy down to %10

Global Changes - “Not Just a Mod” Mod:
*across the board “compression” of political capital values - the lowest values went up a bit, the highest came down - it brings some of the really expensive stuff within reach. >>> just to make policies easier to get at or is there some more reasoning behind that one?
it was mostly to bring certain policies (which cost 40 PC more more) down to about 30 - which puts them within reach for most late round situations. In Canada, of course, the Prime minister is not prevented, in any meaningful way from implementing any policy they choose to implement.

The number was scaled using a fomula that was something like (x+5)^.7 so the smallest values went up but most went down.

*assasinations - nerfed. >>> does that mean reduced or outright eliminated?

the threshhold for assasination was boosted from 40 to 200. The intent was to make assasination quite rare except in cases of absolutely reckless disreguard for opposition groups.
*population dynamics (how much your voter groups will change in the near term) - nerfed >>> same, not sure what you meant by nerfed
this was done “by hand” but i took every policy that altered the composition of the electorate and either quadrpled the length of time it took or reduced the effect by about 75% - in my view it was too easy to “grow” a desired population of supporters to dominate the electorate.

*public outrage over tax hikes - boosted
done by hand, the breadth and depth of opposition to tax hikes was roughly doubled. In canada it has been shown (by Brian Mulrooney, for example) that hiking or introducing a tax gets you annihillated in the next election.

universal displeasure over a tanking economy - boosted"
similar to the above. the general thinking was that it becomes impossible to get re-elected if your economy is in the tank.

[Bodger3]

I can get the most recent public accounts easily, but I’m having a hell of a time getting my hands on the public accounts for 2008. The gov’t isn’t publishing them and any links to a PDF are dead. I’m being directed to one of about 100 public depositories (basically public and university libraries) that ‘might’ have a copy.

I had a thought. Would it be possible to make a bunch of Canadianized policies and disable the vanilla policies for the mod? This way we could give it flavour and use terms like CRA, CMHC, etc.