I can’t believe there isn’t a thread on this yet (is my search-fu failing me?). Was anyone else here a huge fan of Democracy 2 back in the day? Well cliffski has been working on a sequel and it looks fabulous.
All in all it looks very promising, and if Tony Abbott wins the Australian election in a month I will need this game for political escapism over the next three years.
A few comments based on the video though:
Once he got through the initial hurdles it seems the game got too easy for him. I am not sure how this can be fixed, but perhaps more external shocks to GDP or random bad events could help this. I think in politics there needs to be that feeling that in every quarter you are trying to put out fires simultaneously as also trying to slip through an ideological agenda, it can’t just be the latter.
I hope that there is an option to make things cost more political capital (or nerf the rate of political capital accumulation). I think it would be a missed opportunity not to simulate the idea that as a head of a democracy there are only a limited number of big things you can do in any given term (of course this is already in the political capital mechanic, but at least in the beta there is too much in my view). I am not sure if this is already a feature, but I think at the start of the game and only after winning elections should there be large injections of political capital. Otherwise it should be minor accumulation, or determined by events or positive phenomenon (like technological advantage appearing).
Why does there need to be an extra click when going through to the next quarter? You could just use that as a loading screen and bring people to the quarterly report screen without clicking.
I played Democracy 1, though it was great, then played Democracy 2 and felt a bit let down by it. I can’t remember why… perhaps it was the made up countries? (Then again, I imagine cliffski made such countries as more real life states are dull, boring and practically identical).
I’ve been looking forward to Democracy 3 for a while! I’m glad to see real life countries are back, mostly because I like playing with a real flag in the background. (Shallow, I know)
Will there be ‘goals’, or is it still sandbox? I definitely remember a bit problem with the games is that I always try to make hippy utopias in almost every place.
I’m also curious what you guys think. I played a bit of Democracy 2 and while I liked it at the start, it didn’t take too long before it just became an exercise of optimizing variables to jack up support. For me the groups and issues could have had any names and it would have played the same. It didn’t feel like a realistic simulation where I’d get enjoyment out of playing my real beliefs to see how far I could go.
Been playing this quite a bit the past 24 hours. On the whole, I am liking it a lot. The myriad policy choices (and realistic interactions) are amazing. A couple concerns might be
playing as US president, I am not finding liberal voters respond to liberal policies. Other groups react as I would expect, but I am wondering whether the game maker has a handle on US liberals’ views? We’ll see, probably turn out I’m overlooking something.
Every game (as a given country) seems to start with the identical situation. I guess I don’t mind that, as the US, I’m always faced with problems with alcohol abuse and a skills shortage. But I don’t see why I always start with the liberals extremely upset with me an my government. Again, maybe I am overlooking something, but some new presidents (think Obama) start out with liberals quite pleased and conservative groups upset. Hopefully, there is more to this, and I am just not seeing it.
I bought this yesterday and have put about 4 hours into it. I’m definitely enjoying it more than D2, which got old very quickly. I really love the UI, which makes getting to the root of problems as easy as possible.
Unfortunately, there are minimal variables from one game to another. I really dislike that the US always starts out with the same problems. You should be able to tick a “randomize” box that mixes things up and makes things interesting every time you play. As it is, you’ll probably get a few hours from each scenario (6 total) and be done with the game. The game (on default settings) is also quite easy. I managed to hit 99% approval rating on my 4th or 5th try as the US. That just would never happen in reality.
Anyway, if you’re a fan of political sims this is definitely a buy, otherwise I’d wait for a sale on Steam.
I am not normally interested in politics, but theres Oh, so much wrong in the world to fix :D
Sometimes I think about presenting myself to elections, but I know nobody would vote me.
Possible on-topic:
So whats the people opinion on Democracy 3, it is fun?
Yeah it’s good fun. I feel that it’s improved on Democracy 2 quite a bit. Overall there feels to be a more polished and complex interplay between the various policies and variables. It’s certainly more immersive, with a number of cool features like comparing the state of the country from when you started to the present (which, if memory serves, I originally suggested be implemented in Democracy 2. If he actually remembered that when it came time to develop D3, it’s my one tiny indirect contribution to the game :D). A very easy recommendation for anyone into politics and strategy games.
The one thing I want added is a scenario that is a complete sandbox. You start with as few policies implemented as possible so that you can try and mold a new country in your direction. Perhaps I should try to mod one into the game.
Hi all, I’m the developer.
Actually allowing scenarios to randomize is just a minor thing I could easily add… although it would need some testing. I’m currently working on the first post-release patch…
Regarding liberals… this is a really complex one, that I keep typing on various forums, here is the quick version:
In Europe, a liberal is pretty much an American libertarian except they don’t like guns as much.
In USA, a liberal is generally another term for socialist.
So to us Europeans, Obama isn’t a liberal. he is a ‘moderate’ socialist. he isn’t legalizing prostitution and recreational drugs, revoking the PATRIOT act, closing guantanomo, and having more open government. Those would be European ‘liberal’ policies.
The problem is if the game calls that political group ‘libertarian’ Europeans go ‘wut?’ and if you call them liberals, Americans go ‘wut?’.
I did seriously consider detecting the players location and renaming liberal libertarian for US players. I know this is a vast generalization, such are the needs of a multi-country political simulation, but hopefully it explains things a bit more.
If you’ve already got country-level scenarios in place, would it be possible to have the labels change with the scenario rather than player locale? And then add an option to randomize the labels just to mess with people’s heads? That way, everyone can learn a thing or two about foreign political taxonomy while they play?
I’m sorta tempted to pick this up since it’s 50% off, but from what I remember I thought Democracy 2 was cool for a couple playthroughs then I lost interest. I think if you play to win, it wasn’t too much of a challenge. If you examine all the relationships and start figuring out if I do A then it helps B & C this much, but hurts D. Once you get the relationships down it is a matter of balancing the tradeoffs. Anyone know if I’m remembering correctly?
Edit: Deja vu, I asked a similar question back in October. The mind is slowly fading away…
Maybe it would be a challenge now.
This expansion for Democracy 3 adds new dilemmas and policies which allow you to exert subtle change upon your country. Income taxes and Economic policy are big blunt instruments, but with social engineering you get to influence the population in far subtler ways.
