My 2cents after playing the Democracy 4 Alpha

This is my Feedback after playing the game now after every patch and being a day 1, maybe day 2, supporter. I like this game just as much as I liked the previous Installments and Democracy 3 + Democracy 3 Africa amount to almost 500 hours on steam. I have to admit iam similarly addicted to Democracy 4, thus playing it almost every day, trying new things. Here is, what I think can be done to further enhancing the game experience:
1.: CO2:
Ecological Subsidies for Farming should increase the CO2 levels as far as i know, as more animals start living longer thus producing more methane and CO2, both of which are measured in CO2.
Even if you get to the point, where your CO2 levels near the bottom line, the CO2 tax still should yield some return, as being CO2 neutral means, that your CO2 input equals the CO2 output, but in itself is not 0, maybe there could be a new cool event as soon as you hit the bottom CO2 line.
I wonder, why does reforestation improve the CO2 rating but not the environment. I played quite a few games, where the CO2 is on the bottom line, but my environment rating is still very bad and iam no forester, but shouldn´t more forests be better for ground water quality?
After playing Germany, i whondered whether it may be possible to implement tax credits for those commuting by train, thus trying a capitalist way to get more people to get to work by train.
The Toll system doesn´t really hurt much, when put to the maximum possible, maybe there is a way, to get more money from it, but also increase the negative sides, as other countries don´t like it, when their trucks and people on vacation need to pay tolls to your government.
Investing into Wind Energy is good for your CO2 levels but bad for your environment, as the water levels get lower and farming thus becomes more difficult.

2.: Education
After playing Germany I realized, that there is lack of typical european policies, such as the cooperative study program, where does government does financially support you, when you have an employer and study at the same time, as long as both thematically correlate.
Another missing one would be the Apprenticeship system, where the youth sets out to find a Master to become a journeyman and work in the trades, for example electricians, hairdressers and so on and so forth. This could be a policy that increases happiness with capitalists, but decrease happiness with the youth as they are forced to learn, what is offered by the market and not necessarily what they wish for.

3.: Health Policies
While it is true, that in Germany there are only a few doctors, which are employed by the government, for example military doctors, there is a policy for price control, which makes the government responsiible for setting the prices, which the hospitals and medical practises are forced to abide by.
I wonder, whether it is possible to implement a policy of forced proactive medical treatments, beginning with mandatory regular checkups and ending with forced vaccination.
In Germany there was a way of deciding whether you do mandatory military service or mandatory civil service, when we still had this system. I would like to have a policy of mandatory civil service, which maybe decreases the need for medical services and also mitigate the doctors strike.

4.: Pensions
In Germany there is a limit on the state pensions, which means you have to have worked for at least 45 years to get the full benefits of the government pension plan.
There is also the sector of private pensions, where there should be a tax credit system for private pensions, to mitigate the negative sides of the capital gains tax.
Private Home Ownership should also be beneficial for the Private Pension System, where having a house, for which you no longer have to pay the credit or the interest rates, should benefit the private pensions.

5.: Immigration
I´ve seen this in youtube posts as well as other posts, but having a repatriation system as well as a model similar to the swiss, where only a certain percentage of the current population are allowed to immigrate, should exist, to decrease immigration, but also a negative event, which happens at 0 immigration, where private companies don´t find enough employees, which needs to be offset by a strong automation.

6.: Missing Democracy 3 Africa Policies
There are two policies, which i think, would make sense:
There was a policy, that determined, how high or low the wages of government employees compared to private business were earned.
The second was the policy, where the government needs to decide, on which level the important choices are selected. This is something we in Germany have seen discussed within Media during the Coronavirus discussions. Should the local Mayor determine, what needs to be done or should this be a centralized decision from the Capital.

7.: Possible taxes
I would like to make two more policy suggestions:
The Land Value Taxation system, which should decrease the tax weight on the citizens living in the city, whereas the citizens living on the countryside have an increased tax weight. I didn´t study economics nor busyness, so i don´t really know the full extend of this taxation, but as far as have read about it, it should be a positive addition to the game.
Recently Cliff Harris posted, that he would like to make a financial transaction tax. I wonder, if it is possible to make a variant, where only the high risk trades, or the trades which can destabilize a whole busyness sector, and thus are harmful to the economy as a whole, can be implemented.

8.: Remaining Questions
Why do selfdriving vehicles no longer decrease traffic congestion?

Thanks for all those, that read this post. Iam pretty sure i mixed british englisch and american english and made a few other mistakes, so for those native english readers, i would like you to miss out on those mistakes;D

Hi, thanks for your feedback, there is some great ideas here. FWIW The financial transactions tax is now in the game.
The studies I have read suggest that self driving cars will actually make congestion much worse, for two reasons:

  1. The cost of taxi services will drop dramatically, meaning people who previously got buses etc will take taxis instead

  2. Because you can do other things like read/watch TV while travelling by car to work, lengthy commutes become much more bearable, so more people will tolerate longer commutes, thus increasing overall traffic.

Does this mean commuters and motorists are less affected by congestion when self driving laws are in place?

The cost on busses will drop dramatically too!

Perhaps. Could also redesign busses to be more like trains where this already is a thing.

Good point…traffic congestion impacts on everything should be reduced with full self driving… yikes

regarding buses: sure, bus costs would drop too, but when a car is cheaper than a bus is now…aren’t people going to prefer the solitude and flexibility of a self driving taxi to waiting at a bus stop? especially in a post-covid world where people don’t want to mingle so much with strangers.

I feel like the truth might be some transition, actually. There’s gonna be something like a phase transition. First things might actually get slightly worse because the way humans and self driving agents make traffic choices may differ and clash.
But once most cars are self-driving, you can totally revamp laws and the way traffic lights work etc. Cars can start communicating with each other, ever so slightly speeding up or slowing down so traffic lights in some situations become literally unnecessary, or so they can use their mutual wind shadows to improve efficiency (this kind of idea is a main selling point of Tesla’s trucks, and a similar idea is very much in place for huge wind farms today) etc. etc.
Lots of great tricks you could pull to this effect.
It could also function in a rather similar way to satellite road pricing, if regulations to the effect are in place, except it could be far cheaper. The cars would just automatically pool and send their data and bill people as necessary. If it were implemented that way.

Of course the precise details we’ll have to wait and see, but such considerations are absolutely going to be a thing in the future.

Still, cars take up way more space than busses or other public transport options per person, and I’d imagine one reasonable thing governments might do in the future is to tax based on that as well.

I agree with this take here:

Because you can do other things like read/watch TV while travelling by car to work, lengthy commutes become much more bearable, so more people will tolerate longer commutes, thus increasing overall traffic.

I think that with full self driving you will get a tragedy of the commons and people will fill up the roads with cars. Even though it will be easier to automate buses and trains i see people skipping them for private transport pods. The full self driving should push technological unemployment and i think make all other mass transportation (aside from planes) riderless and uneconomical. I think we see some of this already with ride hailing. It is causing congestion and making mass transportation less economical.

Full self driving should definitely increase car usage- even just in terms of licensing it’ll reduce the barrier to entry.

Also imagine all those people too old to drive safely now, they will love the increased mobility, AND the idea of me driving to the pub, getting drunk, then being auto-driven home…awesome :smiley:

2 Likes