Political Capital as an abstract currency doesn’t feel like it accurately models how Democracies actually work. I can save up political capital and enact policies that would never have any possibility of happening in that political system.
For Example: As England I can repeatedly gut the NHS with absolutely no consequences, when in reality I would have to get enough MPs to agree to this. While the NHS can be defunded in real life, it would never straight up be abolished in a year or so. (I just played as England)
Instead of using political capital to broadly enact policies I feel like it would better exemplify real life if political capital was used to manipulate representatives.
For Example: In the United States there are 100 senators and 435 representatives. In order to actually pass legislation capital is used to move the individual members of Congress.
Idea: This also allows for dramatically different playthrough depending which government is being played. I am familiar with the US government, so I will list some cool benefits I think this would bring to the game.
1: Other ways of gaining political capital, ie not vetoing/vetoing legislation - (not legal anymore but “pork” added to legislation to get votes)
2: Interaction with other political leaders - Leader of the House and the Senate Majority leader. It is straight up impossible to bring up legislation in the the US without the support of those members.
3.This means it is much easier to pass legislation while your party controls the house, but allows for elections “referendums” as representative are elected every 2 years, Presidential elections are every 4 years, and Senate elections are every 6 years.
4. There can be local disasters - Texas representatives are very happy to support hurricane relief if its for Texas - not so much for other states.
5. Countries are not homologous. If California is doing well it will have much more noticeable effects than if, for say Montana is doing well. This goes for health, economy and everything else.
6. More accurately represents the conflicts the of individual governments - by that I mean rural populations are inherently more represented in the US government which causes conflict with more populous states and their legislators.
Overall I love the game and look forward to more content