Is it possible? I hate the fact that ever damn one of my ministers are either socialist or in a trade union. And seeing as how I’m a Libertarian, and play my game as such, it really sucks since of course they aren’t going to like my policies. So I was wondering, is there a way to mod or do something where the ministers actually randomize their affiliations. And also if we are going to do that, to have a lot more of them.
Yes I accept this is a bit of a pain. The ministers are chosen from the actual population, so their distribution across voter groups actually reflects them, so if you start in a socialist country, the ministers tend to reflect that (for example). I agree this is a feature that could do with some tweaking, maybe a way to expend political capital to recruit some new candidates?
The original poster’s problem is why I am here looking around too. It is a big deal being forced to appoint ministers that are ideologically opposite to my administration. When running high-tech free market economy, it would literally make more sense to hire my plumber to be a minister than a “Socialist, Trade Unionist”! My plumber might not have their experience in creating and navigating bureaucracies, but he’d learn eventually and at least he wouldn’t be working with all the would-be assassins plotting my downfall!
I’m shocked that more people havent posted about this or wanted some workaround on this. Everyone who plays Democracy 3 runs an empire friendly to socialists and trade unionists? … /sigh
The odd thing about this set up, is that Cabinet positions are not a ‘walk-in’ job. A cross-section of your country doesn’t just fill out job applications. You choose your Cabinet from your own party, so they have similar views. You recruit lawyers, judges, “People of Industry”, whatever, but they are handpicked, you go to them generally.
I agree there should always be a bit of a mixed bag with your Ministers, perhaps spending capital to specify a voter group to pull the potential members from. This way you are guaranteed that all your cabinet choices support, for example, motorists, but you still might be stuck with the annoying Chancellor that also supports Commuters, which you are trying to remove from your population. You will still get unhappy chancellors, resignations, etc. You could, buy pulling new ‘decks’ from your preferred voting groups, eventually build a perfect cabinet, but you will have used so much political capital your infrastructure could suffer (as well it would from you constantly courting new Cabinet members instead of working on policy.)
It could potentially allow for game events based on choosing your cabinet. If your primarily Labour cabinet suddenly see you courting Conservatives, they may suffer a steeper drop in loyalty, voting demographics might be affected by who you are choosing, accusations or expectations of nepotism, even events where a member might have a change of heart, or be ‘born-again’, or whatever, leaving you with someone handpicked that no longer may agree with your policies (and of course instantly firing the cabinet members would harm your rep with whatever voting group they had just joined.)
Sorry, I’m sure I could go on for pages. I hope I can figure out how to mod 
Democracy 3 is wonderfully moddable and with decent XML save game files instead of binary anti-haxor blobs; but I’m unclear if certain modding options are available.
For example, I’ve been having difficulty to figure out how to get ministers whose sympathies either reflect the underlying populace (the US starting sympathies should include considerably more conservative, capitalist and religious ministers) or at least update the potential minister pool’s factions/voter pools after each election. I didn’t notice the problem when converting Australia into a socialist paradise (rather faster than I thought, 50 years of social progress in less than 10 years); but when aiming to convert the USA into a Theocratic Autarky (no implication, just thought it would be a fun thought experiment) I found none of the minister sympathies that should exist in a mostly conservative starting state.
Still, for those wanting to tweak some more realistic ministerial factions/voting pool sympathies so they don’t leak loyalty and political capital like a submarine with a screen door - you can edit your save game file (preferably earlier in the game and closer to the starting ratios would be less “cheaty” if that matters for a thought experiment game like Dem3).
- Locate this file in the equivalent location for your operating system:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Games\democracy3\savegames\<save game name>.xmlFor example:
C:\Users\solarfalcon\Documents\My Games\democracy3\savegames\norsefire.xml-
Record the applicable faction/voting pools of interesting from …</></>
-
Search for the tag and change the voter pool sympathies (sym1 and sym2).
Try not to be too tempted to tweak the other settings until you enjoyed Dem3 in the usual game play style first. That said, since I don’t think there is an event script method to change the term limit - you might want to tweak the value to -1 if you a role playing and feel that your police state should no longer have a term limit after winning two term with a totalitarian agenda.