The 🇺🇸 USA map feedback & balance thread

The next update to the game will include the USA as a playable country. Note that I am aware that there are several aspects of the game that require better balancing, but I think that its good to have multiple countries in before finishing the balancing in order to ensure any tweaks are not improvements just for a single mission.

I’ll unlock this thread once the new update is out, and its for people who are fmailiar with US society, economics and politics to point out whats really badly wrong.

NOTE: The game has to be a vague approximation of each country because they are all so vastly different. This means none of the actual figures will be exact, and a lot is open to interpretation. Our goal is merely that the UK feels like the UK and the USA feels like the USA.

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how do I download the update?

The USA update isnt out yet. Plus, any and all updates just overide your old game. So redownload via humble as you did the first time, reinstall and play. When a new patch launches, once the game is launched a notice will pop up and inform you that, that is the case.

thanks! are updates put out on a routine basis? new around here and learning the landscape lol

From what iv seen ATM they are once a week. Though 1 of the 2 main devs is/was on vacation and is back this week. So all things going well updates, and progress will double in the weeks to come.

This might be interesting https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21358814/coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-unemployment-600
It turns out under the not even that high unemployment benefits the US has given out due to the pandemic, lots of people actually ended up being better off than usual.
There’s also lots of further links to various related topics.

No it is, you just gotta redownload the game, version 1.07, from the humble store link.
@mbalaj

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Ok so having played US for a bit, I gotta say the state of racism seems off for now. Seems to be a MUCH larger problem in the real US than in the game for now.
Totally forgot it’s only got two turns though. That’s so annoying, lol. Given that short time I did manage to make quite some fundamental changes, but still…

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You can push that up by changing executive term length and amount of terms.

I’m aware, I just forgot to do that in time. Had to deal with lots of other problems that might be expensive to solve, so…

I haven’t yet played USA, but the political capital of these things would have to be pretty high – since amount of terms is in the constitution. It is true only two thirds of each part of congress is required to propose something, but to ratify amendments, three-fourths of the state legislatures must approve them, or ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states must approve them, which is pretty hard.

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Actually, come to think of it, I’m not even sure the US should have a two term limit.
I understand that this is modelled after the president, but since the game is mixing all kinds of government levels anyway, and since the president doesn’t actually do that much compared to congress, and you also kinda conflate governors and state-level legislature on top, what the precise term limits ought to be seems to me to be more complicated, and likely actually slightly higher than “simply pick the president’s.”

On the other hand, actually changing those term limits, given how hard this would be irl, currently seems kinda cheap.

Also note specifically the Impact secion on that page. IMO, and research seems to confirm this, it’s a bit shaky as to whether Term Limits actually reduce Democracy. Maybe that’s the perception. But in reality, things seem to be better if you just leave those limitless, but instead lower term lenghts so people can more quickly give feedback.
If people like you, maybe you just should keep being in office. Seems silly to cut short a good run.
(Of course that doesn’t change that the US definitely shouldn’t have such unlimited terms already, but still, arguably, two terms isn’t right)

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First important thing to highlight, Latino population in the US is not currently reflected, but in reality it’s probably ~18-20% of the total population. Ethnic minority membership should probably be somewhere around 40%, current value is 28%.

Some mechanic to represent handing things off to a successor when you hit term limits might be nice.

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Some people disagree with conservative/liberal axis - this may be right for Europe but not USA.

Political compass seems to be rotated and tilted in third dimension compared to European compass.
So there is Capitalist - Socialist (economic).
Original 2D compass that game references is Libertarian - Authoritarian (personal and political).
In game its Liberal - Conservative
Some variants have Progressive - Conservative axis too (cultural).
US Liberal seems to be mix of liberal socialist.
Also Libertarian in US is Capitalist.
Neoliberal is Progressive Libertarian using US terms :wink:

So compromise would be something like Progressive - Authoritarian.
I guess non-ecomonic stuff is too big tent on both sides :smiley:

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Agricultural Subsidies in the US are actually quite high, probably a starting value between $15-20 billion is a good number.

Ive seen so many different figrues for agri subsidies. I think they have varied a lot over time, but this source:


Says around 11 billion in 2017.

We handle bio-fuel and organic subsidies seperately, which also confuses matters.

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