here are some policies on my todo list, feel free to comment
Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Angers environmentalists, whilst increasing the oil supply (and indirectly lowering the price) by encouraging oil drilling etc.
Mansion tax
A property tax on expensive houses, effectively a wealth tax. Angers the wealthy, and the retired to some extent. also angers capitalists, please socialists.
Fuel Efficiency Standards
Reduces C02 emissions, annoys capitalists (regulation!) and has a very long run reduction of oil demand, and thus prices.
Foreign Investor Tax Breaks
Boosts GDP by encouraging inward investment, boosts foreign relations, but patriots and socialists dislike it.
Robotics research grants
Boots technology and also productivity over the long term, but also causes a rise in unemployment.
The more the merrier I guess. There is no limit to the imagination of politicians (see: Beardtax). Why should you restrain yourself? ^^
But what happens when you add too many policies? As I understand every policy is represented by a circle pictogram (what’s the technical term?). May the UI become overcrowded eventually? A possible solution could be to shrink the pictocircles in normal state and enlarge them when the mouse arrow is moved into the general direction of one such circle. The nearer the mouse, the larger the circle should be. That way it would look pretty organic and cool I think.
Unlike democracy 2, which had fixed size icons, the icons in democracy 3 automatically re-size to fit the available space, so it should be less of a problem. I’m hoping a lot of policies give the player more choices, rather than encourage them to implement everything, especially as some are contradictory, and most have their financial burden, and enlarge the state.
Compare to existing policies (if all of D2’s are to be carried over). Beware of redundancies (or be clear what distinctions are).
Might please motorists even before they see a change in fuel prices.
In other words, a progressive property tax.
Definitely upsetting motorists by raising the prices of cars. Might slow car sales and the economy too. Also, one unintended consequence is that the most miserly of cars tend to be the very lightest, which turn out to be death-traps in collisions with larger cars and trucks.
In another example of unintended consequences trumping good intentions, fuel efficiency doesn’t necessarily reduce CO2. Since better efficiency makes bigger pickups and SUVs more “practical”, some people shift buying patterns to larger vehicles. Research shows that nearly all motor efficiency gains over the last few decades have been eaten by vehicle size upgrades.
This might work better done in the opposite direction. The neutral situation would be that all investment is treated the same (the gov’t is equally friendly or hostile to all investment, both foreign and domestic). The tempting, seductive policy is to cater to domestic magnates (and irritate foreign relations) by imposing some disadvantages on foreigners (taxes, limits on owning property etc). Many scenarios would start with some level of this protectionism in place. The “tax break” or other enlightened policy would then be the repeal or reduction of the initial nationalistic restrictions.
Robotics should advance regardless of whether or not gov’t pushes it (but gov’t might hasten it slightly by wasting a big pile of money).
There should be no direct link to unemployment. Robots might fill some jobs, but they also make whole industries viable. They might create more jobs than they fill. This is a case for indirect connections. The net short and long term effects on employment should be difficult even for you to figure out except by running the model with no randomness and changing just one thing (this sort of mystery via multi-path indirection should be a recurring theme).
Even so, because of the mistaken belief in a direct connection (because you can see the job filled by a robot, but it’s hard to see the jobs created by a robot), labor union Luddites should have an anti-robot labor policy of their own that they can cry for.
Another important consideration for robots is that they take over the most dangerous jobs and the most monotonous of jobs.
By improving mass production and extending it to more products, robots drive down prices, making more good affordable to more people. What were once luxuries become common among the middle class. What were once middle-class goods become available to all but the poorest of the poor.
The indirect effects of robotics are already modelled, because the robotics boost to technology will result in stuff like technological superiority which boosts GDP and thus also employment, so the final effect on employment will indeed be complex. Good point about unions & robots
Will it be possible, to make one equal tax for all the people?
For example, I think, it is immoral to make the income tax, will I be able to make one equal tax for all? For example 100$, I know, it would make the socialists really angry, but on the other side, it would increase the employment.
How about some policies like privatization or nationalization of certain industries?
Or how about the option for a Voting Fee Policy?
Only people who strongly care about the issues will vote. Angers some factions, increases others, etc. Can change voting results based on fewer people turning out to vote, or people valuing their vote more.
I have a suggestion for a Country statistic. Road Deaths. Contributed to by car usage, alcohol abuse and low education.
I also suggest the legalization of cannabis reduces alcohol use.
A suggestion for law and order policy would be mandatory sentences. Decreases organised crime but angers liberals.
The slider for prostitution could go from illegal - illegal to buy - illegal to buy outside of certain areas - only legal in brothel. I suggest it increases the health of a nation and lowers organised crime but increases petty crime.
Just a few ideas I came up with on my last playthorugh.
I love the idea of drugs taxes, but technically they are tricky to implement within the games structure as they are taxes conditional on the existence of another policy. I can see how this would be done with hidden variables maybe, so the level of legal cannabis consumption could be modeled , and this act as feed-in to a tax on it. Hmmm… this is a very interesting idea.
Or a black market. The cost of tobacco, alcohol, prescriptions and legal drugs could contribute to this. You could also have a dilemma question about a copyright issue that could contrinute to it. Obviously the black market would have a bad effect on GDP, crime and organised crime as well as capitalists.
a) Asylum: was implemented via a mod in Democracy 2.
b) Urban Planning
c) Car share promotion (reduces car use)
d) Nuclear Arms Policy
e) Bank Holidays
One further idea, maybe implemented but I didn’t find it: censorship
Better “Censorship Regulations” more or less a policy like at the moment implemented in Hungaria (unfortunatley), with impacts on “Foreign trade”, negative influence of liberals and socialist, Positiv for Patrioits, negative for foreign relationship, negative for education, … and maybe more.
By poll tax, do you mean a tax per head? Oh, I’d love to see that in the game. That’s something we could probably use here in America, for real. Not sure what effects it could have though. It’s almost like bringing back an old favorite of ancient governments to fund their nations.
