Alright, I don’t know if I’m maybe not playing the game right or not understanding it but I’ve played a little now and what bothers me is that my GDP is all the way up all the time. I have no room for growth anymore. It baffles me that GDP is measured in a percentage chart when it should be unlimited. Also population never changes…immigration has no effect nor lifespan. Would also recommend introducing death and birth rate being influenced by various factors of course.
This might not be the best place to suggest this, but Im thinking it would be nice to split up the trade a little more… turn it into 2 groups, and introduce a new factor in the economy section.
trade turns into:
Trade Import Level (Causes as it increases) - decrease poor earnings, happy capitalists, increase capitalist membership, anger patriots, anger conservatives, decrease GDP
AND
Trade Export Level (as it increases) - increase poor earnings, angry capitalists, increase socialist membership, happy patriots, happy conservatives, increase GDP
They would both be in play and effectively counter each other. if both sides are even then the effect of each is zero.
Both of these would be affected by the following: Foreign relations, unemployment (higher unemployment means more exports because of competition for cheap wages), Ratio of Socialist to Capitalist population, and “Real Wages”, which brings me to my suggestion for the economy section:
REAL WAGES: (Causes as it increases) - Trade imports go up - trade exports go down, high earnings go down, demand for cars goes up, Middle class membership increase, Lower class membership decrease
Obviously there are many more effects to real wages but I figure theres a limit… it would be nice to have more control on that aspect of the game, however.
only with an expanded model of trade could the game really incorporate inflation which would be pretty cool too. A sudden drop in taxes could cause consumer spending booms, and if domestic industrial production was low, an import boom and all kinds of balance of payments fun.
Its a fascinating system to model, but then again this is where a lot of people start to think the game might get too academic and complex.
Good call. The learning curve can get steep. How difficult would it be to make a difficulty system where each level introduces more elements? How badly would that screw up the models?
Speed Cameras might also have a tiny impact on crime, since it allows The System to track the movement of cars, though that might be a different policy altogether.
Although not quite the same, Red Light cameras have been shown to increase accidents (and revenue, of course). I’m linking to Slashdot articles because every discussion has some fantastic, insightful gems - and lots of flaming, whining, and trolling, of course. (o;
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/11/1550231
Also, CCTV cameras apparently aren’t very helpful at solving crime:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/20/2318220
But that doesn’t stop people from doing it anyways:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/27/1536219
Speaking of cars and Big Brother, this article from a while ago talks about Texas wanting to add RFID tags to license plates. I’m not sure if they ever did:
Something i would like to see is vice presidents. or some multiplayer form like that but the Multiplayer would probley have to waite to Number 3 but still a vp would be cool.
Not necessarily so, this forum and the encyclopaedia in the game provide convenient places for game tutorials.
Hi guys !
I’d like to know if there’s a way to give Ministers a name from their own country because, you see, I don’t like playing Italy or Russia with anglo-american names…
May any of you help me ?
All done with names different from english. If any of you wish to receive a file with italian names, please ask it and I’ll send it to you.
Hey guys,
first of all thanks cliffski for a great game! I started playing it just a few days ago and I’m also new to the forum. While reading the posts (and playing the game) I also encountered some terms which seemed to contradict each other (see above quote) however since some terms have aquired different meanings depending on the political and economical system in a given country, they might not contradict each other after all. E.g. the term conservative generally means “support for the status quo” thus a tendency to leave the current situation unchanged. Hence someone being satisfied with a socialistic system (which was around for a long enough time to be considered fully established) and not wanting a change would be socialist conservative.
What might help avoiding confusion in the game is a short definition for each term which can have several meanings, or even better for all voter groups just to be on the safe side =)
cheers!
Edit: I noticed there *is a short description for each voter group in game (amazing how statistical graphs can divert the attention from such things 
) however it does not clearly solve the above mentioned problem conserning conservatives/socialists.
Technical colleges, apprenticeship schemes, workers compensation scheme, university grants and co-determination should reduce wasteful economy instead of technology grants.
Technology backwater should deal with plant and equipment, technology, specific industries etc, and general issues in relation to regional isolationism like literacy and creationism etc.
Wasteful economy should deal with employee based issues like education and training, workplace safety and employee consultation and participation in decision making, and also issues relating to government waste in expenditure and regulation like maternity leave, unemployment benefit etc.
Not banning fox hunting upsets conservatives for some reason…
Rail strike does not affect car usage
Hello!
This is my first posting here. I am very excited about the possibility to write directly to the game designer, I neved did such a thing.
- I liked the idea and the game very much. I am enjoying it, and it was for sure the money worth.
- It looks a bit buggy. When I load a game, sometimes I get new levels of the different politics. Politics I did not change. (PS: Do, I did not pirate the game, I can write here the order number if needed.)
- On “Esc” in the main menu, the game closes withouth warning (“Do you really want to leave the game?”). This has led to some games lost.
But my main problem is with the population. With the amount of population in each section.
- There is no way to increase or decrease some population sectors. For example, there is no way to decrease the number of farmers. A possible solution for this would be to make some groups mutually incompatible and/or allow policies which increase and make an “automatic reduction” if none of such policies are applied. No Agricultural Grants? Slow decrease of the number of farmers. For example.
- Some population sectors should really be mutually exclusive. Capitalists and Socialists, for example, and also Liberal and Socialist, and even Religious and Socialist - you can’t be both. Self-Employed and State Employed. Farmer and State Employed. And so on. This way, increasing one sector would imply decreasing another.
Anyway… great game.
do agricultural grants not boost the numbers of farmers? If not, that’s something I should tweak.
Yes, yes, it does! But there is no way to SINK the number of farmers, as much as I know.
Sorry for my English.
Already exist in Democracy 2 but…
In the game engine (not in real life), Liberals seem more concerned about promoting social equality, while socialists seem more interested in promoting economic equality. So a Liberal Socialist would make sense. Actually, a Socialist should be more likely to be Liberal.
It might be a little bit of work, but it’d be nice to have a bit clearer documentation on modding. I’m seeing a lot of numbers and such that I’m not sure what they’re for (especially with policies.) Or is that just formatting marks since I’m using notepad?
Also… it would be nice if we had a government efficiency value (if there isn’t one already that I’ve missed.) Basically it could be a measure of effectiveness of spending, amount of red tape, corruption, etc. Also, a way that in game votes and policies could affect term length and maximum number of terms.
If you open Policies.csv (Democracy2\Data\Simulation) in Excel or another spreadsheet program you’ll see a list of policies in nicely sorted columns, including little headers of what each number means. A .txt file is the exact same thing, but instead of being arranged in columns the policy has every cell right after each other separated by commas. If you compare a .txt file and the .csv file you can get the hang of what each space between commas represents. In formulas for policy effects, “x” is the amount the policy is in effect (i.e. the slider from left to right is a low-to-high number).
1: Where are the libertarians? - Right now you have socialists, conservatives, liberal, patriots, missing libertarians. Plus some policies like ID cards, no warrants, CC cameras, carbon taxes, have little negative effect, adding libertarians would fix this. I can also think of pretty much all of the government policies that will have negative impact on libertarians, while things like lower taxes, less regulation, less spending and less military would benefit them.
2: Gun laws - Why is it the more gun laws you have the less crime there is? This is just not the case at all. No amount of government regulation can keep criminals from illegally getting weapons, by relaxing or removing gun laws you would actually have less crime.
3: Military - I don’t see also how military spending reduces terrorism. You can say it increases security and reduces war possibility, but we all know that military intervention is what causes terrorism, so by reducing military spending terrorism chances should lower. Plus I’d like to see negative effects of too much military for all categories of voters as too much military represents oppressive regimes and while people want to feel safe and secure, too much military makes them feel like prisoners in their own country. So I’d like to see negative effects on all if too much military spending.
4: Welfare fraud - Should reduce worker productivity. In all places where these kind of programs exist they literally end up wasting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars/euros for frauds worth few thousand dollars or euros. In essence a massive waste or money and productivity.