Simulation

First to preface, the game is enjoyable to me as is, just for the strategy and escapism elements alone. But the change from the 3rd to the 4th title so far is underwhelming. I wouldve hoped that D3 Africa edition wouldve had more of an impact on the 4th title, and the changes added over, and some are. But where is infrastructure? or government wage parity? Or State revenue administration? Really wouldve like to see what was seemingly learnt from D3 Africa, implemented and furthered in the 4th title.

But my main concern is on the level of actual simulation going on, ive seen this basically brought up in previous gripes with the titles in the series, such as D1 & 2. The math as brought up by ā€œpbheadā€. Things such as the population not changing after 12 years. 12 yeas of the state forcefully sterilizing its populous after one child, average life expectancy falling 100%, executing its citizens for any transgression, and completely locking down borders, fit with a border wall, armed guards and retina scans. No matter what policies you make the population is always counted the same. In D3 Africa there was urban overcrowding at least, not sure if that made the jump over, but even then it would account for population growth if i recall correctly, but come voting time the amount of people voting was always the same, its not too different in D4 and i wonder why? Would it not be trivial to have the population actually adjust to policies? While weā€™re on the subject of amount of people voting, where is the voting game? I cant have a hand in voter disenfranchisement? seriously? The game references this in multiple places during loading or quotes, but its void from the game after 5 installments. Let me have a policy of gerrymandering. I know youre from the UK not the US, but i know the UK has to have similar things, or at least know of it.

Which brings me to another point, have you seen the US recently? Things are a little hectic right now to say the least. And you just added the US recently, so im not expecting it to be a very good representation yet. But i hope its not released anywhere as it is. Is doesnt take a very observant outsider to say that the US is in a little bit of a rough spot right now. I mean where is the pandemic? Or the issues with police brutality? There needs to probably be some adjustments to the US.

Final note is something that i doubt will ever be implemented, because this will probably never be read, let alone given a second thought, but if the other nations in the game, or ā€œworldā€ in the simulation, werent just unnamed. If you had the web layout of policies being simulated for at least like a couple of other nations, it would make the game much more immersive, at least in my opinion. Would also give an excuse to add like a map screen, to zoom out and get little visuals of what exactly is going on, doesnt have to be anything fancy, but what make a big difference to me, and maybe others, idk. But there is various advantages to siming other nations, the interactions would be much more real, and simulation esc. But i fully understand how tall of an order that would be compared to the game as it stands, but boy would that add a whole nother level to the game.

Overall would love to see more innovation on the base game idea, at least add new policies, as of right now its basically a reskin and while i still have invested some more time in the game irregardless and will continue to do so, i would love to see it continue to grow and evolve. Thank you to the developers, for the time youve already put into making this game, it has given me a fair amount of entertainment as is, and will continue to do so for a little while at least.

Hi, this is not a re-skin, (which itself implies such a thing is trivial, its a complete design of a UI to re-skin a game), but a complete re-implementation of the idea. The changes between D3 and D4 are too numerous to list in a forum post.

This game is pre-earl-access, so yes obviously more policies will be added. there are already a ton of new policies in the current version of the game.

Lots of D3 africa content, press freedom, electoral term length and limits, stability and democracy indexes are all in the game, as is corruption.

Its not our intention to model the countries at a single point in time. Democracy 3 came out in 2013, but if we focused on the USA in 2013, would it really be relevant 7 years later? Will there still be a coronavirus in 2027, and BLM protests in 2027? Maybe! We donā€™t know, but we are deliberately not trying to ā€˜dateā€™ the game by setting the whole situation around the state in a single year.

Population is an interesting one. We do actually model population now, and its affected by emigration, and immigration, and the birth rate, and the death rate, and policies such as one child policy etc.
What are you not seeing in terms of population change?

2 Likes

I guess total amount of voters should change - or at least size of voter group
Actual demographics simulation, like changing membership of young, parents and retired depending on population simulation.
0 - 1 could represent fertility rate between 1 - 3.
Fertility of 2.1 after long time would mean unchanging population.
Life expectancy between 0 and 1 could represent 40 - 100 years.

That is it should be modelled like disposable income.
This would also force unbound simulation of GDP and its growth, just like disposable income though.
1% population growth and 1% GDP growth per year means unchanging GDP/capita.
GDP of 0 or 1 would mean 10x smaller or 10x bigger economy compared to current one.
GDP growth of 0 or 1 would represent 10% shrinkage/growth yearly.
Bonus point: This would mean you could run with deficit forever, if deficit grows slower than economy.

This means those would be changing as game progresses.
population = 31523 - changed by demographics simulation
max_income = 150000 - changed by GDP/c changes
min_gdp = 800000 - instead this would be current GDP size.
max_gdp = 2400000 - maybe max GDP per capita would be 500 000 per person, reduce growth as GDP/c increases.
wealth_mod = 4.79 - changed as GDP changes
apathy = 0.4 - changed by apathy modifying policies

1 Like

I definitely would like some demographic simulation. The constancy of the Youth population seems odd to me. More parents implies more youth. Itā€™s very strange that that currently isnā€™t the case.