Hello everyone and especially Cliff,
I have a pretty specific concern/problem, but maybe it’s easier to solve than I thought. First of all, I have no programming skills whatsoever, please keep that in mind. Also, I really enjoy the game and would like to use it for educational purposes.
Some context: I am a teacher of political science at a high school in Berlin, Germany, and currently teach an advanced course. The current topic is the structure and political system of Germany. Democracy 4 provides a fantastic hook for a variety of topics that students should learn. As you may know, Germany is not exactly a pioneer in the digital equipment of schools, so the computers available at our school cannot run the game despite the manageable system requirements. So acquiring sufficient school licenses does not make sense. So it’s a very German problem, hence “specific”.
My idea is to have my students, as “government experts” discuss in class what policies they would implement and have two or three moves at the end of each week of class. Then the impact is evaluated, discussed, and new moves are planned, etc. This is underpinned by the various lessons so that the decisions become progressively wiser or better - or not. For this to take place in a time-effective manner given the complexity of the game, a tabular (?) overview of the different policies implemented in Germany in the game, as well as the policy ideas including costs and target group impacts (excluding the variable impacts, of course) would be great, so that students can decide at home which policies to then discuss and implement.
Long story short: Is there such an overview or would it be possible to generate one? That would be a tremendous help.
An alternative, which would probably be more complex but great, would be the option to run the game in a kind of “multiplayer”, by which, however, a kind of spectator mode is meant: students can hover over the different icons and see the information. Perhaps they can even click on actions to see the costs, but cannot apply changes. Only the “group leader” (the host of the session) can do that, who will make the moves after the discussion.
I hope this makes sense and again, I have no idea about the programming side of things, I’m just looking for concepts to integrate a great game into the classroom.
Oh, and to avoid save scumming, the “Iron Man” option would be awesome - no autosave and only save when leaving on a slot. This way the students would have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Or does that feature already exist hidden somewhere?
If all of this is impossible, I guess I just have to take a bunch of screenshots and wait for new PCs. Yay for Germany!
All the best from Berlin!
