To make it more realistic I’d like to see the political capital cost of policies being dynamic - they could be dependent on who the major voter group in society is.
Examples:
When there are lots of patriots, it could be “cheaper” in terms of political cost to introduce national service / compulsory military service.
When there are lots of religious voters, it could be “cheaper” to raise creationism / lower stem cell research (-and the other way round when there are lots of free-thinking “liberals”)
When there are lots of capitalist (or self-employed?), it could be “cheaper” to lower corporate tax or cancel it.
When there are lots of poor, it could be “cheaper” to lower sales tax, introduce public housing etc.
When there are lots of environmentalist voters, environmentalist policies could be “cheaper”.
When there are lots of motorists, it could be “cheaper” to build more roads (- in terms of political capital - as in all examples).
I admit I don’t know how it affects balancing, or if it is possible to find opposing pairs for everything. In the political capital cost for every policy as is in D2 there are already some assumptions baked in: that it is always easier to introduce subsidies, than to cancel them. I wondered how you balanced political capital cost in D2… - often it’s high for things that cost/save a lot of money, and sometimes it’s high for things that are highly emotional (handgun laws, religious issues) - where I wonder if the “return” I’m getting is worth it… (- is the voter turnout of affected voters higher with more (political) costly policies?) - I mean: did you try to balance returns on political cost, or where you trying to imply, that some political battles are not worth fighting them? (Because they are “too costly”)? - I guess you wanted to make a realistic, fun game, and not make politics with it on the meta level
P.S.: as someone already proposed, Dilemmas could also lower the cost for policies: after a school shooting you could lower the cost for stricter handgun laws etc.
P.P.S.: While I admit that in reality there could be rich people in favour of higher taxes on the rich, or poor people that don’t care about politics at all (low voter turn out), I have to say that economic models usually use the “homo oeconomicus” where each individual is supposed to be absolutely rational and egoistic maxing his/her own benefit.
Edit: If you don’t want to make political capital cost dynamic from a game mechanics point of view (tied to voters majorities), you could at least make them different for different “countries”… - e.g. changing hand-gun-laws in the US surely is costly - here in Germany it wouldn’t be much of an issue (- but you would probably face harsh resistance / need lots of political capital if you wanted to introduce a speed limit on the autobahn… - which would hardly be a an issue in most other countries…).
There’s potential here, but one must avoid accounting the same force twice. Cliff must decide what plays into political cost versus what plays into political strength. While some of your examples may well lower resistance to some changes, others might be better modeled as increasing strength (or offering cabinet members who bring strength to those who favor their policies).
Indeed, targeted handouts always build specific constituencies who become better organized than the broad base of those who must pay. This creates a political bias that is one of the weaknesses of most or all democratic forms of government. If the game creates a worthwhile model, then the only way to swim upstream will be to discover where there are indirect benefits (such as economic gains) that can outweigh the political hazard of goring political sacred cows.
What I discovered in D2 is that length of term of office is critical. Short terms motivate short-sightedness, while long (5-year) terms open a secret door to success using wiser long-term policies. To succeed in a 4-year term requires a high degree of good luck with timing the economic cycle.
What would be ironic is if the dilemma not only lowered the cost of a policy, but if the policy then increased the chance for the same crisis to repeat. The school shooting is a prime example: Each school shooting motivates politicians to further disarm people in and around schools, guaranteeing that the next suicidal maniac knows exactly where to find loads of victims and no opposition.
Each “individual” in the game is actually a group average where outliers are masked. Also, each “individual” belongs to multiple groups (as well as the whole), so the reactions based on one set of priorities are added to the reactions from some others, sometimes creating infrequent ironies like you describe.
Agreed. Countries’ differences in game demographics (distributions among interest groups) don’t (yet) translate into realistically different costs for related policies. It might seem simpler to just give each country its own set of policy costs, but then one gets a headache realizing that country data knows nothing about policies added in mods. Hmmm… what to do?
Another thing about countries: Is it possible that each country might have an idiosyncratic pressure group or two? How about lacking a common group or two?
One of my plans regarding D3 is to allow subfolders for countries with over-ruling policies, so for example if there was a folder for Germany, I could add a new IncomeTax policy in that folder, and when playing as Germany, it would take over from the default. I think that is essential to getting a decent variety between different real-world countries.
I don’t know whther this has been mentioned, but what about the scaling political capital costs based on the amount you change the policy by. Raising a tax by 1% is much easier than trying to raise it by 10%. A policy could be slowly increased over time, though still costing the same in the long run. There could also just be a base cost, representing the capital required just to enact changes, which is then added to a scaled amount.
Oooh, incrementalism! I like it! If you can’t get the policy you want, then at least get the camel’s nose in the tent. A similar tactic could be implemented for first enacting a policy: It could have a starting price to be enacted at a default setting, and then the price would increase for moving the slider in either direction.
On the other hand, there are limits to such proportionalism. Certain political groups become fully activated at a rather low level of provocation (which may be any initial enactment), so making a big change is often not much more expensive than making a modest one. Along those lines, if a group is “all-in” opposing one measure, then maybe it should have no more energy to oppose other measures. I wonder if it could be possible to “saturate” the opposition and get two or more related policies for the price of only the most expensive one.
Each group could have its own small pool of political capital, so it could be mostly depleted on the turn after losing a big fight, partially depleted on the turn after that, and fully recovered on the third turn (if it hasn’t fought more). Consequently, by pushing a hot-button policy through on one turn, a player could also buy some temporary discounts on related policies due to opposition fatigue.
Assuming that the government’s capital recovery rate is several times that of any single pressure group, I can then envision a divide and conquer legislative strategy: If you want an expansive policy (i.e. opposed by multiple groups), then on one turn, choose some other policy that isolates one strong opponent. Push a change that deliberately goads that opponent into flushing its pool. On the next turn, with one of your opponents depleted, ram through the truly controversial policy that you couldn’t afford otherwise.
Dang. I guess politics isn’t my strong suit but I like the games anyway. It’s fun and passes the time. Is it at all possible to make the income tax a removable object rather than one the player just increases and decreases occasionally? I mean, if were talking about Libertarianism here why not allow players to go all the way to the bank with a Libertarian philosophy with the ability to remove the income tax entirely and implement other Libertarian policies and still hold office? Normally, if I just try to cut my country into a Libertarian utopia of prosperity I get voted out on my backside. Lol. Like, there are times when I just feel like ending State Schools, State Health Service, and State Pensions but I still expect to keep winning. Either that or I’m just not good at it.
Imagine though being able to run your country without an income tax at all.
Here are some suggestions to strengthen democracy 3. Do you support these changes? Are
these changes likely to happen? Give your reasons for each of these.
UN General Assembly should become like a world parliament with representatives from each country
in proportion to the population of the country. These representatives should elect a world government.
Individual countries should not have armies. The UN should maintain task forces to bring about
peace in case of conflict between nations.
A UN President should be elected directly by all the people of the world
That would be great… if I were in sole command of the UN army and navy. Then I would push the UN to enact a world wide gun ban, which would be followed closely by my declaring myself world dictator for life. By the time you figured out what mistake you had made, you would no longer have any power to fix it.
In game terms, a whole-world government would just be a very large country with no foreign policy or foreign events. On the other hand, as a crisis for a normal country, the threat of having UN hegemony thrust upon you could be interesting.
Hi,
First post but enjoying Democracy 2 and Fate of the World :Tipping Point recently purchased from Steam.
Seeing as you are developing from “Scratch” I would like to see the following implemented.
1) Files in XML format. I find these a lot easier modding than comma separated files in text format.
2) Have a load mod option or mod screen so that original scenarios aren't overwritten. Same with simulation files same name loads mod not original.
3) The game seems to be in a period/time limbo. It would be nice to have simulation in 70's, 80's etc with Dates shown.
4) I like the format of tipping point with cards (Policies) this would enhance Democracy 2 bland visual style. Might attract card players.
5) Not sure about this has haven't really got under the hood of the game but being invaded should really be game over?
6) Might be nice for Ministers to offer suggestions similar to SimCity, ministers at the moment seem almost irrelevant. Might be nice to pick ministers when initially taking office, also give ministers more "oomphhh" by having more stats, background and style to distinguish them.
7) News items could do with something like FOTW images, maybe incorporate dilemmas into headlines from papers.
I suppose what I am after is a little bit more of an immersion factor.
The actual implementation of the Pie Chart and connections with the central groups is a ground breaking piece of design.
Well that’s it for now.
Being conquered would be game over, but being invaded could cause the populace to rally around the flag (support the pres) unless the president is so awful that the people would rather be ruled by foreign conquerors.
The minister interface should be improved. From the view of the whole cabinet, I’d like to be able to open up one office and see both the current cab member and all aspiring replacements. I’d like to have multiple candidates for any post I view in detail, and I should be able to make a change right there.
I’d also like to have a way to move a minister from one post to another without firing (and angering) him/her first.
Ministers have been re-jigged a bit for the new game. There are many more candidates for the posts, and more visual variety for them. Also, you can implement a cabinet reshuffle and change everyone (which costs some political capital). They will also have greater impact on events, and that impact will be displayed more prominently than before.
Would it be possible to beef up foreign policy a bit? Maybe introduce options like questions of military intervention, nuclear proliferation and international terrorism?
I know this is out of the present scope of the game, but I’d really love to see an opposition phase. So when you lose election it wouldn’t mean game over unless you are a certain threshold, you’d just play the opposition until the next election. I know this is basicly a new gameplay, but do parties really disappear if they are not reelected once?
Does that mean that we can make lateral moves for free? I often want to move a minister from one post to another, but D2 forces me to fire and rehire (with consequences). I should be able to fire bozo from post1, move John from post2 to post1, and then hire Jane in post2.
One suggestion only. Make everything modable. UI, Policies, Population Archetypes, (Random Events?). This way you can work on your next game after release and leave the addons to us… the modders… Possible addons from developer side should mainly deliver new features (eg. wars or crisis), not more content (eg. starting countries or hats).
Not completely free, you have to reshuffle which will cost political capital, but there will not be repercussions in terms of negative opinions from ‘firing’ someone.
Sweet Jesus… If you also make it possible to alter the pictures for the policies (the round thingies) and the people which represent the citizen archtypes, you will make me the happiest man on earth… The possibilities! Rome Mod, Game of Thrones Mod, Star Wars: The Republic Mod, Star Trek Mod, Holy Roman Empire Mod… just tell me when to stop ^^
