I think Democracy 2 needs to be flexible rather than fixed, example: Eliminate car usage by raising the taxes and boosting public transport = not neccessarily true.
The effects on people with your policies are too for lack of better word, restrictive, it needs to be modified to be more flexible for the situations.
Dilemmas need to be spread out and there needs to be over several hundred rather than the limited amounts avaiable at the moment. This is a difficult task for one person, but getting the community to help out with ideas and suggestions is a good way to getting a better game, a minimum of 5-6 dilemmas need to be unique to the country at hand “Royal scandal” for example is a brilliant one for the U.K.
In terms of a “New country” scenario that I believe was brought up way back when, “unique” dilemmas could be the borrowed by selecting your governance and history in the “options” before setting up such a country, for example, stating that your country is run by Prime Minister with a Monarch would enable you to borrow the UK’s dilemmas as well as all the standard ones.
Policies also need an overhaul, more policies for each section, a minimum of 20-50 policies in each section of the government would allow for a more complex immersive game. The easy way out is to cut down on blanket-policies by breaking them down into several mini policies, but the better option would be to brainstorm and think outside of the box when it comes to each “department”.
If a “party cabinet” is to be added, choosing members a la Hidden Agenda or a la Kudoes Rock Star is also a decent idea. Members should have a loyalty rating and personality traits “backstabber”, “Charismatic”, “Industrious”, “Patriotic”, “liberalist” et al that influence how they are in enforcing your policies and suggesting them, for example a Minister of Foreign Affairs who was Patriotic would fight tooth and nail to ensure that the country got the better end of the deal while an “appeasive” minister would probably be welcomed more by foreign powers but would get your country in a worst state. Industrious ministers could perhaps cut the time a policy takes to get enforced by 25-50%, while Charismatic ones could get out of any scandal and/or increase the votes coming your way. A “Financial” minster would ensure his department runs at or near profitability not by cutting corners but by actually making sure that none of the money goes to waste.
Foreign Affairs is an area of the game that could be expanded on dramatically, it would of course be difficult to incorporate every single country in the game, so by doing a representive area the affairs could be dealt with neatly. For example a “European bloc” headed by France and Germany, an “North America” bloc influenced by the United States and a “British bloc” covered by the UK (I suggest this as I think personally the UK has bugger all to do with Europe). Your foreign minister could improve or destabilise relations, policies of free trade, alliances, cold war or even just a “pressure” option to pressure countries into changing their way of rule (i.e. The Government of Britain is putting pressure on this country to improve their human rights etc etc)
War is a viable option that would require a set of rules to determine it, and the U.N would have to be incorporated some how, I’d like to see an influence rating allowing countries to become more powerful or less powerful over time depending on their actions and relations in foreign affairs or militarily.
Obviously, I understand that all those ideas and suggestions are incredibly difficult for a one man job, but to be brutally honest I’d rather Democracy 2 attempted to do a jump from it’s simplicy to become a large true game in it’s own right, I do fear that Democracy 2 will just be a slightly updated polished version of the original with one or two new features, it would be more interesting I think if the game was rewritten from the ground up with a much larger database, policies, dilemmas, countries/create country mode, in-depth foriegn affairs, in-depth economic affairs and ministers/cabinet members, with the option to continue for election even after being voted out and a lot less of the “you pissed us off so we’re going to bomb you” which, I really don’t see as a viable occurance -_-;;
A big project? Sure, bit too big? Possibly, but I’d sure as damn well pay for that and I mean no disrepect when I say Democracy is too restrictive and standard, it’s a good game but the potential for the second one to be a gem in it’s own right is there and I’d really really like to see Cliff pull it off =)
