The 🇩🇪 Germany map feedback and balance thread

[cliffski]

GERMANY! Is coming soon, and when the next update rolls it out, I am keen to hear peoples thoughts, especially if you are from Germany and can see where we have gone wrong!

We will be adding some Germany-specific dilemmas at some point, but apart from that, I’m looking for feedback on places where any of the policy settings or values seem wildly off, or any really mainstream policies are missing,

Obviously remember its a game that has to be balanced for fun, so we may have used some artistic license in a few places.

We can have country-specific overrides of any effect in the game, so I’m open to feedback and suggestions.

[LOgovnah]

This suggestion isn’t specific to Germany, but I think it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. Would a ban on second home ownership reduce a real-estate bubble? The increased availability of houses in the market would reduce the strain of demand. Also, I would like to point out that a flat income tax with minimum enforcement essentially generates free tax money. Except for the decrease in poor happiness, there is no negative effect caused by this tax.

[BloodySoap]

It seems a bit odd to me for Germany to start with such a high level of unemployment considering it has had one of the lowest levels of unemployment in the world for years now (3.1% unemployment rate as of 2019, the third-lowest in the OECD). Perhaps in much the same way that the “German demography” effect reduced farmer membership in Democracy 3, there could be an effect to reduce unemployment in Germany by a certain amount, hard-coded into the game?

[GovSimPlaya]

I know that immigration has been extremely high in Germany, but I still think that the initial figure for ethnic minorities might be a bit out. My new game has the total at 56.45% (47m).

[Hikoboshi]

A list of things that should (probably) change - roughly sorted from plain wrong to might need some tweaking (I’m german):

• There’s a state health service in Germany and most people have public health insurance. (around 85%)
• Term of office for the chancellor is 4 years, not 5. The head of state is in office for 5 years but they have almost no power at all. (kind of like the Queen)
• Cannabis isn’t legal. There are exceptions for medical purposes.
• The state broadcaster has an annual budget of around 9 billion EUR. It’s not this cheap (at all…).
• State water company should be a thing. There are municipal corporations. (like the state energy companies) This shouldn’t kill the energy/water industry.
• Right to privacy should be a thing. (GDPR)
• There’s state housing in Germany.
• There’s a property tax in Germany.
• Consumer Rights should be a thing.
• There’s legal aid.
• Prisoners are allowed to vote.
• Gun laws should be stricter.
• Sales tax should be at 19 %. (it’s temporarily at 16%; still ignoring the reduced tax rate)
• Corporation tax should probably be at 30 %.
• There should be some game hunting restriction.

[cliffski]

Awesome feedback, thanks everyone. I had the impression that the health servcie was private but subsidised? We have 3 setups in the game:

1. State health service, like the nhs
2. health voucher system, where the government effectively gives money you must spend on health
3. state subsidies of a private system by means of tax credits.
   Which of these best describes the German system?

unemployment & ethnic minorities likely need tweaking, but I hate just hard coding in demographic fixes, I’d rather work out specifically why these are the case. After all, Germany has hard-to-enforce borders and a booming economy. Is it cultural reasons why the ethnic minority popualtion is low?
Maybe UK/USA need an artifical immigration boost due to the English language?

edit: Just soke to my research ninja, and our conclusion was that yes, there is legal aid, but it seems very restrictive compared to the UK, where basically everyone gets it for everything (simplified but…) which is why we didnt enable it for Germany.

[Hikaru]

I’m from Germany as well, and i must say that it’s a little complicated.

Many Germans themselves even get it wrong, that the Health Industry is completely owned by the State.
The thing that is owned by state to some degree, are the Health insurances.

There are also Hospitals and such that are operated or financed directly by the Municipalities, but it’s more of a mixed system between Municipal/Charity/Church/and Private Enterprise. All the Health facilities and personell that aren’t municipal are private.

Anyways, so most people need to pay into the ‘Krankenkasse’ so to say the national Health Insurance. Self employed people and politicians among others are paying into private insurances. But People who are on the state insurance can get private insurances for dental among other things (i, who has no private insurance, would have had to pay 2k € for my Braces when i was 17, since i’m over 18 now it would be 4k € lol).

If you want to test your Google translate Skills, check out this site of the bavarian ministry of health in simple language, it pretty much is like this in the rest of germany as well: Health in Germany

I would say i woudl count this as being somewhat more in the direction of state Health service rather than health vouchers, but honestly it’s exactly in between both.

To the implementation in-game:

Maybe just let the national Health service Policy lower private health industry less, and add a effect that lowers private health industry to the free dental and free eyesight care policies.

[BloodySoap]

To put it simply, the healthcare system in Germany consists of mandatory public insurance, with mostly independently-operated hospitals (sometimes owned by a municipality, sometimes privately owned). For people who earn higher incomes, they can opt out of public insurance schemes (because it is assumed they can afford more out-of-pocket expenses) and into private-insurance ones, along with the self-employed, but the overwhelming majority of Germans are under public insurance.

There are many different public insurance providers, some which are nation-wide and some which are regional. The whole point of this system is that it provides comprehensive coverage for everyone, but it retains some competition in that insurance providers, despite being public and non-profit, do have to attract people to their plans and retain them, otherwise they can switch to a different one. It is not a perfect system, but it ensures customer-oriented, high capacity and extremely high quality care.

In terms of how to adequately portray this in-game, this is complicated. Since it is publicly-funded, but split between publicly and privately operated, it is a mix of the state health service and health voucher system. But it would be prohibitively expensive to implement both of these in-game. For the sake of simplicity, I would suggest implementing the state health service at a moderate level to represent the publicly-funded aspect of the system, and a low level of the health voucher system to represent the privately-operated aspect of it.

[jmski]

I think it will be important to separate health care insurance from health care provision. UK owns hospitals and pays doctors as public employees. My understanding (not high confidence) is that Germany has a largely private provision of health care but a universal insurance system. The insurance is mostly government insurance but also private insurance and employer provided insurance.

I think this can be implemented by taking the in game health care vouchers system and tweaking or renaming to to government health insurance. Then set it to 70% to simulate Germany.

[AvianOverlord]

@jmski

I think this can be implemented by taking the in game health care vouchers system and tweaking or renaming to to government health insurance.

This should also be how the US is simulated IMHO.

[kram1032]

Concerning health care systems, this might be useful:

(it’s a playlist. Might no longer be accurate seeing as these videos are like six years old by now, but it compares nine countries’ systems, three of which are already in the game, some of the others you might consider adding in the future)

[EcSupport]

Hello there, I have suggestions for some changes, because I live in Germany and like to help improving the Game. Many things have already been said, so I apologize for any duplication (I did work some time on this)

First, I start with Tax:

-Arline Tax: There is no direct Percentage, we just differentiate since 2011 between 3 categories, but the “Tax” was increased in April 2020 (short distance fly now 12,90 €, middle long fly now 32,67 € and long fly now 58,82 €). The income from this tax was 1.193 Bn Euro in 2018
-We have in Germany a Debt around 2.096 Tn Euro
-Trough the Covid-19 Crisis the Deficit raised to 33 Bn Euros
-We do have an Alcohol Tax (Income 674,4 Million (2018))
-I did not knew that, but wen you buy cigarettes for 5 Euros, you pay 3,75 Euro on taxes. That is 75% on the buying price.
-Trough the Eu we have a Carbon Tax which is very effective
-We do have a kind of a property Tax, but it is mainly depending on how big your property is and where you live, not on the actual size of the house

Economy

-We do not have a State Energy Company
-Even though we have a State Railway, there are also normal Railway Companies
-In most states we have a State Water Industry
-Antibiotics ban is more in the Low, because in many livestock there is used to much antibiotic. In 7 out of 10 Discounter Chicken where founded antibiotic residuals.

Law and Order

-We do not have widespread CCT Cameras, just in some city corners
-Firearm is more in the area between “licence & Min age” or “strict control”, because you need to have special demand to get some (like a hunter-licence)
-We do have Legal Aid in Germany (Yes, in every case, even when the accused want to defend himself. And: For compulsory defense, it is irrelevant whether the accused can pay a defense attorney or not.)
-We also have some Game Hunting Restrictions (how many animals you need to kill on which type)
-We do have many Speed Cameras
-We do use Tear Gas
-We also use Water Canons

Public Services

-We have a pretty high lifespan
-We do not have “School Prayers”, our highest Court said that State and Church needs to be separated, so the Secularity of Education is more like “Secular” or even Atheist
-Our state Broadcaster gets around 8,32 Bn Euros, but not from the State. They get it directly from the people every month, so the State can not control it so easily
-We do not have a hospital overcrowding because that is one of the reasons why we got so well trough the Covid-19 crisis
-We also do not have Free School Meals, it is only in discussion because of high obesity problems in some social focal points
-We do have Organ Donation, but only if you did request it before you died, or you family members decide it after your death

• We do have a State Health Service, everyone gets the treatment which he needs to get (even the unemployed an Emigrations)

Welfare

• I would not say that the Unemployed Benefit is high, because we give them the first year around 70% from their old income and after that time, we pay like 417 Euros for people who do not work.
  -We do also have a Welfare Fraud Department (especially in the welfare department)
  -We also have Childcare Provision
  -We also have State Housing
  -Executive Term Length is only 4 years not 5 years
  -We do have a Genital Mutilation Ban

Transport

-We do have higher Emissions Limits (through the EU called “Euro Norm”)

Some Ideas for extra Laws:

-I would really appreciate when you could add the law Balanced budget amendment (in Germany called “Schuldenbremse” or “Schwarze Null”)

PS: Sorry for my bad English

Have a nice day

[cliffski]

Thanks for the data. We realized today the debt was wrong, I think we had it in the wrong currency, it will be more accurate in the next update.
With some policies, if they are only implemented in a minor way, we do not activate them in the game, so they are effectively a chocie for the government to really focus on. For example the UK has some armed police, but they are so rare its not enabled in-game.

The state broadcaster funding thing is interesting because its the same in the UK, but because paying for it is compulsory, we treat it in-game like a tax and a service, because separating it out to a new payment would overcomplicate things.

[AvianOverlord]

@cliffski

The state broadcaster funding thing is interesting because its the same in the UK, but because paying for it is compulsory, we treat it in-game like a tax and a service, because separating it out to a new payment would overcomplicate things.

I’d say D4 should generally lean away from baking in funding models with policies. Everything should go in and come out of one big bucket.

[jmski]

I think it works ok. This is a thing in many governments. The largest example in my mind is social security in the united states. It is both a tax and a service

How is Social Security financed? | Press Office | SSA

[anarky1892]

Yeah, but maybe there is still a way of simulating this effect.

My idea is that if you put in these taxes, such as the license fee for the BBC or a special social security payroll tax for the US, and then have an option to tie it to the spending for those services.

It shouldn’t complicate the back end nearly as much as directly simulating different payment schemes, but still create the same effect and be more realistic to how government operates in the real world.

[Kazum]

My default options Germany game started with more than 90% of ethnic minorities. Now I am up to 98.3% of ethnic minorities.

As a German, this seems a bit off…