I thought it was about time I announced the fact that yes, there will be another expansion to the game, and it will be adding additional playable countries. The countries planned for this expansion are:
Greece
Ireland
Poland
Switzerland
Turkey
Brazil
Here is the current progress and todo list:
Initial statistics for each country 100% DONE
Country descriptions 100% DONE
Map icon and flag icons 100% DONE
Initial policy positions: 55% DONE
Extra dilemmas TODO
Extra Events TODO
Extra Situations TODO
Country specific simulation overrides TODO
Translation of all text into all languages TODO
Testing TODO
Suggestions relating to these countries are most welcome. The majority of the work is researching appropriate values for all of the potential policy positions for the start of the game, which I am gradually working through. Its definitely another few months work to get everything done, tested and balanced.
Switzerland has a very unique election system, you see, presidents only have 1 year turn and serve as representers of their country but doesn’t have legislative powers, only citizens can come up with a policy and get citizens to vote for a law. There’s political parties but they don’t quite matter and don’t even have to rival against each other.
Also switzerland have separate laws for its cantons (It’s like the states from USA).
The current design of the game does not map very easily onto Switzerland democratic model, but i think the country is interesting enough that it should be included, and the way the different cantons have different laws etc is just going to be hand-waved away in the interest of making the game work!
I am giving a boost to the value for ‘Democracy’ for Switzerland to reflect their use of referenda, and other peculiarities of the country, but TBH even without it, the value is almost 100% for Switzerland anyway