Ultimate Game Balance Mod

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Democracy 3 is a great game, but too easy. This mod introduces and tweaks policies in an attempt to raise the difficulty and prevent you from ever getting to the infamous utopia end-game.

My main goal is to prevent you from “winning” the game. The game is too easy, especially the socialist/liberalist path. To prevent this, I have lowered the impact certain policies have on socialists, and introduced some new policies. I have also tried to change some policies to make the game slightly more realistic. For a full list of changes, see below.

If you have any suggestions, please leave me a comment :slight_smile: The mod is still in a development phase, I just wanted to publish it to get some feedback.

New policies:

  • Retirement Age
  • Severance Pay
  • Minimum Wage
  • Wealth Tax
  • International Tourism Advertising
  • Sex Education (idea and picture from cliffski, tweaked numbers myself)

New situations:

  • Job Market Segregation
  • Foreign Crime Organizations
  • Elderly Wave

New statistics:

  • Birth Rate
  • Life expectancy

Minor adjustments:

  • Increased sales tax’s effect on black market. The black market problem barely ever appears, and I feel like higher sales tax should make it occur more often.
  • Made corporate exodus occur easier by increasing the effect of maternity leave, as well as adding minimum wage and severance pay.
  • Changed the link between GDP and immigration so that high GDP increases immigration, and not vice versa.
  • Made general strike occur easier by adjusting the impact from labour laws and unemployment. Minimum wage can be used to counter the strike. Also made general strike decrease productivity.
  • Made petrol protests occur easier by adjusting the impact from petrol taxes and oil prices.
  • Reduced free school meals’ impact on poverty. Seriously, how does free school meals do more for poverty than free health care or state housing?
  • Removed the link between membership of retired group and winter fuel subsidies.
  • These policies now have a reduced impact on socialists’ happiness: Capital Gains Tax, Corporation Tax, Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Property Tax, State Health Service, State Housing, State Schools, Unemployed Benefit.
  • Low border controls increases tourism
  • Reduced ccommunity policing’s effect on violent crime rate. I might take steps to reduce the effects of community policing even further, as it is a really strong and cheap policy.
  • Changed the link between productivity and unemployment so that high unemployment reduces productivity instead of increasing it. Must have been a little mistake by the game developers.

Future plans:

  • Big mac index / Consumer prices index
  • Add new events and dilemmas (I have a few ideas, but I’m going to need pictures and sounds and that takes a while)

Very interesting. I’ll try it out.

And since you’re on the balance question, here’s an idea I had on how to make the game more challenging without encountering the situation spam fest that usually ends up in a very early assasination: tiered situations. It’s a design concept that use the current properties of the game system.

The idea is to establish three (or more or less) categories of situations: problematic, serious and crippling. Class warfare and corporate exodus should go to the crippling situations while alcohol and drug abuse should go to problematic situations (alcohol abuse doesn’t bring a country to the brink of bankrupcy).
The concept is pretty simple: problematic situations are easy to get and are mostly there to show the early signs of the limits of your policy. They don’t have really strong effects but have some nuisance.
Serious situations either require more causes and/or are the consequences of a problematic situation you didn’t take care of. They have a more significant impact on the wellness of your states but aren’t downright crippling.
Crippling situations either require a very dramatic state of affairs and/or are the consequences of lower tier situations. They are, as the name shows, truly crippling.

This concept is based on the idea that situations don’t just show up (events and dilemmas do just show up). There are always early signs and very grave situations are usually a political failure or incapacity to adresse those issues.

Hm, interesting. How is that supposed to be added in the game though? Unless I do some actual modding, all I can do is change numbers. In the base game code, situations can either be marked as positive or as negative.

It’s mostly about tricking the game. Policies can affect situations like agricultural subsidies affects obesity. Well, in this idea, situations (conceptually tier-1 situations) affect other situation (higher tier situations) along with other factors.

For example, if the organized crime situation is on and violent crime is really high, a “gang war” situation could occur. Or “equality protests” would trigger “equality riots” which would trigger “class warfare”.

Ah… Yeah okay, I like the idea. I’ll take a look at it. The only problem I see is that once you get rid of the small problems, all related higher tier problems disappear immediately as well. You barely manage to get below the stop line for equality protests, and suddenly there are no equality riots or class warfare.

The early game is already challenging enough. What I need is more negative situations that occur when your GDP is high and poverty low and everything is going great. Elderly wave is a good example, and I did actually link that to hospital overcrowding. And maybe hospital overcrowding could lead to doctor’s strike which then would lead to general strike? I like the idea. I’ll try it out. Yay this is fun :slight_smile:

After testing, I can say that I am 100% satisfied with it. After two playthrough, I never reached the end-game utopia and I never was in a 0 problems state. Very enjoyable.
The immigration update was pretty satisfying and I actually felt stuck between a rock and a hard place when it came to solve worker shortage and racism. Something I rarely encountered in the base game. I also saw you added more interactions between situations. To see the race-related issues slowly getting out of hand and generate ghettos and race riots was pretty awesome (Wait…).

On another note, it would be truly awesome if there was some interaction with Elinor’s mods like Departement of Education and Family, LGBT rights and Disaster and emergencies pack. They work already pretty well together.

Talking about little mistakes of developers… could anyone explain me why GDP actually increases unemployment? Aren’t people made redundant during recession? The better I do for economy, the more difficult for me it gets to fight unemployment. Trade unionists are mad at me constantly :wink: I think the effect should be reversed, but it throws the game off-balance again - it becomes too easy I guess. It’s funny how easy it is to be reelected over and over by absolute majority, while being assasinated by those politically opposed so very much often. And my own cabinet is seemingly the less loyal as I gain so much support from the very people who vote on them. Jealous?

I refuse to explain yet again why increasing GDP decreases unemployment in this game. I must have answered it three times in various threads over in general discussions. Pull the formula out of the game files, plug in GDP at 0 and 1, and it’s plain as day. People get it wrong because it’s always a positive effect, but maxing GDP minimises the effect.

Cabinet members do slowly lose loyalty over time regardless of your actions, but they’ll lose it much faster if you screw over their constituents. Eventually, they really DO want to spend more time with their families.

Crumbs. I thought they only lost loyalty if you annoyed their groups. Suppose you can’t butter both sides of your bread eh?

Some suggestions:

  • The Space Program should not impact the ratio of Religious people. The United States and Russia have the world’s greatest space programs, and are still more religious than other industrial nations. Instead, the Space Program should damage the environment.
  • Science Program, Space Program, Robotics Research and Brain Drain should create Skills Shortage. They should not decrease unemployment, since skilled scientists and engineers would probably have jobs anyway.
  • Legalized Prostitution and liberal gun laws should create jobs. Alcohol, tobacco and drug consumption should have the same effect.
  • Property Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax should decrease Private Housing, since they make real-estate ownership less profitable. In the standard game, these taxes are overpowered. The Mortgage Tax Credit should increase Private Housing, but be more costly.
  • New situation: Farmer Protests. Caused by disappointed Farmers, and low police force; could be countered by Tasers and Curfews. Increases Traffic Congestion and blocks International Trade. In the standard game, the farmers are far to easy to neglect. Farmer protests are an issue in the real world.
  • Debt Crisis should trigger earlier, so the player gets an early warning before the situation gets out of hand.
  • Ghettos should be triggered by Gated Communities and lack of State Housing.
  • Availability of state and private housing should increase birth rate.