New to game, 2 questions

Democracy 1 & 2 Democracy 2
1

I got an email from Positech today (based on having bought GSB a few months ago), was offered to buy Democracy 2 for 5 dollars. Best damn five dollars I ever spent, no discussion!

Now, to learn the game… I have two questions:

  1. I like changing things a lot. This means I need lots of political capital. I start out (playing as USA) with 3 political capital per minister, seven ministers, 21 total. Apart from letting them stay on office so they can experience, is there any way for me to gain capital faster? After about 3 turns (9 months out of 4 years in office) my most experienced minister started giving me 4 capital per quarter. If I wait 2-5 quarters more, most of them might give 4 per quarter.

But is that all I can do? I want POWER! Yet I don’t want to disable the political capital change cost system so I can make unlimited changes. I just want to know if there is anything I can do, without cheating, that gives me more power faster.

  1. What can I do against terrorist threats? I’ve raised Intelligence funding to the max, and am happy with that, but it seems there isn’t anything else I CAN do. What have I overlooked?

(I realize there’s a delay factor. Maybe my increased funding hasn’t kicked in fully yet. Still, I’m sitting here being nervous, and not knowing WHAT I can do. There’s no terrorist threat icon I can click so I can see what causes terrorism and how I can squash this ugly and dangerous phenomenon.)

  1. Oh, one more: Back in the mid 1990s, I had some vague ideas for an “Afrika” game (including a sort of power points gained per year, each change made costing 1 power point, pretty similar to Political Capital, except simpler), a political simulator about the player being president of a poverty-stricken backwards country (typically African) and heroically dragging it out of the mud. Between Tropico, Tropico 3 and now Democracy, I seem able to get my itch scratched without having to program it myself, but if I wanted to get closer to “Afrika”, what’s the official scenario or unofficial mod-scenario that I should look for?

(Actually my game idea involved democracy being optional: Usually you’d start as a dictator, friends with the army, and then hopefully after a couple of decades in power, you had fixed some of the shittiest problems, to the point where you could reasonably assume people would vote for you if you let thm, so you’d hold a free election. Is there any way to do that in Democracy 2, maybe with a mod? It sort of defeats the purpose of the game’s title, but would be realistic and if done right, would be fun.)

2

I still haven’t found solutions to #1 and #2.

Also, to my horror I’ve discovered that those 21 politcal capital points that I get per quarter, initially, are eventually (after 4 or 6 quarters?) lowered to 14, after the “honeymoon” period ends. Terrible!

So one more question:

  1. What are the crowd pleaser policies I can implement 2-5 quarters before an election, in order to improve a really poor poll statistic so I can win myself one more term? In Tropico 3, it’d be something like the “Social Security” Edict. Expensive, but it WORKS. I’ve looked through many parts of the game, and haven’t found anything yet. Massive lowering of income tax could do the trick, except I tend to be heavily in deficit already.

Looking at the 21 voter groups, and how large each is, there doesn’t seem to be much else that has a really big impact, even if I’m willing to post billions and billions into it. Also none of the voter groups seem to be particularly big. The biggest tend to be 30%-50% of all voters.

3

The dos game Hidden Agenda would suit you nice if you haven’t already tried it. I think someone made a web version sometime ago.

4

Other dos games that the op might like - Crisis in the Kremlin, SimHealth, and Balance of the Planet.

5

This is old post, but I figured I’d reply for the new lurkers out there.

#1: I’ve found that you can implement pretty drastic changes as long as you are patient with your political capital. Wait a couple turns to build it up and most things will be available, like turning your military force from massive to a ceremonial only outfit.

#2: The key to reducing terrorism is to placate the political group that it draws its members from. So if the Green Brigade is angry, placate environmentalists.

6

Ok, in response to question #1, at the start menu, you can go to “options,” and click on a setting called “enable limited power.” It’s enabled by default, so you have to uncheck it, but if you do, it will give you unlimited political capital, even after the honeymoon.