I know this is an important topic in this game, and is the general justification for it having an interventionist bias, meaning that the capabilities of government are deliberately overstated, and the capabilities of anyone to accomplish anything without the government are deliberately understated. This way the player’s choices produce results within a reasonable time frame for a game.
With this in mind, I find it incredibly annoying that the main source of challenge in this game comes from something completely outside of the player’s control. The thing that costs me the most elections in this game is something I could not have possibly done anything about, and I’m being randomly punished. Alternatively, when I’m winning, it’s usually because this thing I’m talking about didn’t hit me too hard because the dice gods were feeling nice this time, and my success has nothing to do with my own actions.
I’m talking about the gigantic red bar that is my “strong leader” perception, which is being caused by
-Minister resignation
-Major donor abandons party
-Minister resignation
-Major donor abandons party
-Sports star gagged
-Major donor abandons party
-Major donor abandons party
-Minister resignation
Even if I luck out and win most of the media events, I at best can get this bar back to neutral by my first election. This is caused by the combination of most of the voters starting the game outraged, combined with the fact that my starting ministers and major donors have a random draw of loyalties.
I’ve noticed that the game difficulty has increased in the last couple patches, which on it’s own is a good thing, it was too easy, but the challenge needs to be something that the player’s actions can do something about without being completely at the mercy of dice. I’m an experienced player, who also played Democracy 3, and in the last couple weeks I’ve been running about a 90% loss rate, usually because of this.
I’ve made specific suggestions on this topic, some of them months ago, and not seen them implemented, so this time I’m not going to ask for anything specific. Instead I’m going to ask: Can winning and losing please have more to do with player actions and less to do with RNG? Thank you.