3. Self-Employed population has a small modifier effect on reducing unemployment, as self-employed people do at times employ other people.

4. Would be great if we could see the parameters of the Democracy model... for instance, track the starting supply/ capacity levels of water, energy, housing, food and track the changing demand and supply.... also see how policy decisions raise or bring down levels; for instance, building a hydrodam, water supply and energy supply should increase ... furthermore supply can be distinguished from capacity... concept of capacity utilisation could add an extra dimension to the game play.

Framework/ Ecosystem:
Starting Capacity - building up capacity - Supply - supply utilisation - demand changes - price changes - effects on voters, economy, outcomes - voting

Hope that helps,
Gaurang38

5. Pick your cabinet members' ideology. I know it seems like cheating, but in real life, you could find people who match your beliefs to fill your cabinet if you really wanted to.

6. Negotiate a basket of policies with donors… more policy match, more party donation
7. Foreign & Defence Policy areas should be separated
8. VAT or Sales Tax … VAT is hidden away
9. Quarterly numbers are almost like annual spend numbers… perhaps distortion here could be looked at

10. Situation Room

More forms of income, such as lotteries or leasing of public lands.
In the US, Peace Corps (helps with foreign relations) and Americorp (helps to pay for college).
Educational Vouchers (to pay for the type of schooling, k-12, that a family wants)
Funding of Science Fairs (to encourage young inventors or entrepreneurs)

Great ideas Jim, Chantern15 & Rabid ... might create some policies on these!

Ursprungligen skrivet av Gaurang38:

Great ideas Jim, Chantern15 & Rabid ... might create some policies on these!

Thanks, sounds good! :)

I would love to see opposition parties and interest groups be more active. As of now both are just there. The interest groups only function as a gateway to terrorist groups and the opposition only appears during elections and MAYBE in a coalition. I would love to have parties with actual ideologies, who try to push policies and perhaps change perception of those. After all all policies have a "popularity with voters" stat, which seems to be only affected by the current societal structure (I am not entirely sure however). The stat affects how many political points you need for a policy, so it would actually impact gameplay, if oppositional parties keep arguing for certain policies, while discrediting others.
Perhaps the opposition parties can also affect societal structure. After all one of the goals of political parties is to win hearts and convince people of their approach and by campaingin relentlessly they can change the agenda or at least influence it. If the opposition keeps screaming "the pensions are too low" eventually some people will simply repeat "the pensions are too low". Repeat something long enough and people will subconcsiously start believing it or at least be more open to it.
This would also give players a reason to do well in elections, since this effect could be coupled with the results of the opposition parties. A 20% party is more likely to be heard than a 5% party. It could also be coupled with media freedom as they do need platforms for their arguments.

Interest groups could work similarly, where they can endorse policies or reject them. Maybe the implementation of a policy can be delayed due to protests by interest groups with events where you need to handle this.

Now, I undestand that these things take away from the power fantasy side of things. They add possible obstructions, but they can also help to alleviate your "Standard starting moves" and add more things to play around with.

More policies is always a thing. Democracy 4 as a base game already offers a nice variety, which is very welcome (although the cooperative commonwealth mod is a must have for me! :) ). It already allows different playstyles and as a roleplayer I really like when a game allows that. But of course there is always something someone will miss. I would like more variation in welfare policies. Gøsta Esping-Andersens three worlds of welfare capitalism could be a fantastic reference. He makes the case that there are three types of welfare state with a tendency to cluster. All of them have different goals and different policies.
To keep it super short:
The social democratic welfare state has the goal of including the entire population in society and uses tax-funded and generous benefits, usually without needs testing (he wrote his book in the 90s, things have changed since then sadly). Often the benefits are flat, though some benefits coppled to income were introduced starting with the 50s. Also called scandinavian welfare state, because, well, it clusters in nordic countries.
The liberal welfare state merely wants to keep people alive, but still incentivise them to find any work as quickly as possible. As such they also have tax-funded benefits, but they are significantly lower and always means tested. The process to get those is also difficult and humiliating on purpose, so people take any ♥♥♥♥ job rather than get unemployment. Sometimes called anglo-saxon welfare state, because it's most prominent in the US and Great Britain.
The conservative-corporatist welfare state differs the most. There the goal is to keep the social hierarchy intact. So benefits are usually linked to previous income. As such the benefits aren't tax-funded, but often use social insurance, so those who pay more can take more when they need it. There will be a flatline of tax-funded benefits for those with really low income, but this concept believes in the principle of subsidiarity, meaning the state only takes action if it needs to and before that any other groups has to take action if possible. This one is quite dominant in continental Europe (and screams Bismarck).

I would love to have the ability to fine-tune the welfare state according to these concepts. As of now you can only do tax-funded benefits and while you can change how high they are, you can't really do the means testing (even though one policy implies it's there). There is no way to do contributions-based policies, even though they are very common in continental Europe and increasingly more common in nordic states as well. Pensions in particular! I actually thought about adding a few pension policies for some years now, because the game only offers one pension policy: A flat state pension. Nothing to incentivise private pensions (Riester-Rente anyone?), no occupational pensions, no sign of a typical contributions based social insurance state pension, no stock-based pensions. You can introduce compulsory work for the unemployed, but you cannot really set how unemployment benefits work. What about the Ghent system? What if I want to introduce that? I would love it.


Apologies for the wall of text, I could go on a bit more, but I've made my point. I love Democracy 4 and I am quite curious what a 5th game would look like. 4 was already much more polished than 3 (which becomes messy if you own the DLCs as some starting countries are not tuned to them at all).

Interesting suggestions, thankyou :D. I agree that the opposition parties are just something that really act during an election. I guess the events system is the way in which external forces can generate shifts in opinion which you have to adjust to.
The most obvious example I can think of is the UK independence party in the UK, which has never governed, or even had many members of parliament, but nevertheless managed to force major change in attitudes of all parties to immigration (and eventually caused Brexit).

As with everything in the Democracy games, there is always a trade off between adding depth and realism vs scaring the hell out of new players. The initial UI is scary enough!

Expand into solid diplomacy with other countries and having the capability to track production of major goods for trade, negotiation and partnership. Also having the ability to build up a military force for war based on events etc.

Ursprungligen skrivet av cliffski:

The most obvious example I can think of is the UK independence party in the UK, which has never governed, or even had many members of parliament, but nevertheless managed to force major change in attitudes of all parties to immigration (and eventually caused Brexit).

Exactly that's the kind of stuff I've been talking about. The same thing is happening with the AfD in Germany with every party (except DIE LINKE) constantly shifting towards more restrictions on migration due to the immense pressure they are dealing. And before that it was the Greens and the environmental movements, which made the parties adopt more green policies or at least do some greenwashing. I would love to see opposition parties and interest groups have this effect in the Democracy series. It makes the world feel more alive and gives the player actual opposition, who they cannot control... unless they manage to go massively authoritarian. It also has the added benefit of authoritarian games feeling much more different from regular democratic ones, since the lower pressure from legitimate, non-terrorist groups goes down significantly, while the freedom fighters, pardon, the "unsavory elements who happen to have guns" are much more prominent due to having no other outlet anymore.

I'm biased, because I studied social science and focused a bit on political science, so I keep thinking of all the things that can influence policy making. I love political games that manage to make their society feel alive. One big thing I adore about Democracy as a game is that multiple factors and policies affect each other in really roundabout ways, which reflects real life political complexities quite well. But aside from voter group shifts the society feels a bit... stiff, shall we say.

But I fully understand that this would change a lot of the game and its coding. It would be difficult to implement, even in a fifth game. And yes the UI is a bit overwhelming at first, but it has a clean, slick look to it. Also I've seen the UI in Football Manager, which is basically glorified statistics, so... Democracy 4 UI doesn't seem nearly as scary anymore. ^^'

Another idea could be what was discussed in the positech forums, nested policies on the UI start page to make the UI less intimidating for new players (also works thematically as no leader is immediately made aware of all the policies in a country, he has to look, the bureaucracy handles that at the backend, only when the leader looks, does he see) and more granularity on tax policy sliders like the game, the political process.


We also need more religious, patriot, conservative and socialist policies.

I also hope that some day we can get rid of the random things that you have no control over. I get that it happens in real life, but maybe the random events won't be as crippling as they are now. Something I've noticed is that the random events happen more if you don't do anything during a turn. But the only reason I don't do anything is because I'm done and I'm just waiting for the term to be over.

Ursprungligen skrivet av 19th Century Jim Dandy:

I also hope that some day we can get rid of the random things that you have no control over. I get that it happens in real life, but maybe the random events won't be as crippling as they are now. Something I've noticed is that the random events happen more if you don't do anything during a turn. But the only reason I don't do anything is because I'm done and I'm just waiting for the term to be over.

A lot of those processes run in the background, there are thresholds ib the code that trigger events, since all these are governed by various curves on a graph, it's more an issue of balance, unless we revamp the entire system.