Democracy 3

[Nefaro]

Also, I've been informed by other players that the word "Liberal" in Democracy 3 actually is the UK/European definition of the word and designates something closer to classical liberalism or libertarianism. Which explains why the "liberals' offed me in the game that I set up a lot of government surveillance and increased the power of the police and CIA. For "Democrat Liberal" you need to look at Socialist and for "Republican Conservative" you need to look at Capitalist (because I also think that he means classical Conservativism there too, as in people moral/ethical/social conservativism).

I noticed this situation in a couple of the screenshots I had spied.  Most notably the "Liberal" association being much more akin to what we consider a Libertarian here in the States than Liberal (Socialist).  I suppose their definition may be a bit closer to the 19th century use of the term. 

So I assume that this was developed by a British or European group and there may be some terminology at odds in an American game?  Also.. I didn't see how many or which countries you can run.  Is it just a handful specifically modelled or quite a few?

Nefaro, for some reason my beta stopped working abruptly. It worked fine before but then outright wouldn't load up. I suspect that he had a "kill switch" installed to prevent beta previews from updating to full versions. But that makes the idea of me writing a review a bit harder...

I see.  So it may have run on a timer?  You didn't pick up the latest version?

[JasonPratt]

Thanks SoM; yes, if I keep in mind the terminology differences the result looks more reasonable.

Part of the reason I ran out of time must have been because I spent several turns worth of political capital eliminating or minimizing various unpopular expenses -- which did seem to be increasing my popularity as a result -- and then going back and reinstituting them later (spending more of my waning political points) at a maximized rate because they favorably affected the Gross Domestic Product and I thought I ought to be concentrating on improving that next. Had I continued reducing unpopular expenses, increasing popular expenses, and readjusting the tax burden after the emergency cash harvest (to improve my relations with the middle class), I might have been killed for being racist later. ;)

i.e. when I start again this afternoon, I'm going to try not worrying overmuch about the GDP going down, so long as our national budget stays reasonably balanced. Also, I have a better idea now which departments I'll be implementing policies in more often (at least in the early game) so I'm not going to worry so much about trying to get experienced ministers in so many places but will concentrate more on those who can deliver political points since in the early game those seem important to stock up and spend as quickly as possible.

Also.. I didn't see how many or which countries you can run.  Is it just a handful specifically modelled or quite a few?

Great Britain, France (seriously, they're the 3rd biggest nuclear power??), Germany, Canada, Australia, the US... I feel like I'm leaving someone out... (not intentionally) The only relevant screenshot at Steam seems to show only those countries, though, so maybe it's my imagination.

I'm pretty sure this isn't "The Most Complex Political Strategy Game Ever Made", though, despite their advertising hook.

[JasonPratt]

Tonight: shortly before my re-election campaign started (again playing the US Repub Pres vs the Democrats, all starting conditions still the same of course, because there is no randomization or any attempt at making them like current situations), I had long since brought the country out of debt; kept the budget reasonably balanced (allowing for a few months in deficit occasionally, drawing on a relatively small surplus); I had regained a moderate amount of confidence in the middle class after doing so; I had gotten rid of unpopular taxes and some unpopular expenses, but my investments in technology and education were finally starting to pull the GNP out of its nosedive; my insanely low initial popularity rating had slowly eked up to a range between 50 and 60 by a carefully orchestrated number of inexpensive but popular reforms; I correctly inferred from experimentation that instituting retina scans for immigration was somehow pissing off the militant black movement, so I minimized that program and their support evaporated almost overnight; almost every single extreme advocacy group in the nation was dramatically waning in members; and I had eliminated homelessness as a serious problem.

On the turn that I also eliminated crime and poverty as serious problems, I was shot in the head by a sniper hired by a rogue group of shadow capitalists.

Upon which I called "bullshit" and ragequit the game. ...um, after the game ragequit me. ;)


After which I happened to remember that I could turn off assassinations in the option menu.

Here's the thing. I'm willing to buy that there are no less than a dozen hardcore groups representing different sympathies who would not only be willing to execute me, but might even be infallibly competent at doings so. I'm willing to buy that they can infallibly do so even after I detect their nefarious plans, and know who their leaders are, even though I don't have enough evidence to arrest them yet.

I'm not willing to buy that all these things can be true AND YET AS PRESIDENT OF THE FREAKING UNITED STATES I'm not allowed to say, "Oh, so you assclowns want to sign up to be supervillains and play with the big boys? Fine. Clear and present danger. Discover the depths of your folly."

And I mean that as a perfectly legitimate response, not even counting the fact that they get to have infallible secret shadow operations but I'm not allowed to call my housekeeper and tell her "Remember those stains in that room we talked about on Tuesday, Nana Vrou? I want them gone now, kthxbi," and the little old lady totters off to remove them.

(Note: Nana Vrou may or may not be a character who shows up in my series of novels at some point.  8) )

So yeah, if I can't pre-emptively retaliate in the game, even when my well-paid security services know who they are and when they're coming, they can't either. New rule.

[son_of_montfort]

Jason, I actually have to agree. I had put in some pretty severe government programs to specifically combat "evil associations," and yet my vast security network failed to protect my life. HOW? I had literally given the CIA and FBI unbelievable funding and nearly unfettered authority. My programs made the NSA snooping in real life look like the budgetary equivalent of buying a candy bar. I should have been able to order a SWAT team the moment these guys left the building to go discuss their plans, not to mention crack down hard after two failed attempts against me.

That seems unrealistic.

Nefaro, I haven't picked up the full version. If they offer me a review copy, I will review it, but typically previews come with that attached. Otherwise, I will wait for a sale.

[JasonPratt]

...not to mention crack down hard after two failed attempts against me.

Wait, you managed to get them to actually FAIL? TWICE??

That seems unrealistic.

(...um, I may have missed putting in a quote BBCode tag there somewhere...)

[JasonPratt]

As I somewhat suspected, turning off assassinations allowed me to survive ticcing off various people long enough to win everyone over (although the game seemed to still be threatening assassinations, with nothing directly I could do about it). By the end of the game I had eliminated most starting US problems (with a couple more slated to disappear in another few quarters), added the high productivity trait, brought the Gross National Product back from an initial slump inculcated while I repaired the national debt, repaired the national debt with a nice surplus to run on for a while as I built a deficit (the idea being that every once in a while I would increase income tax for a quarter or two); superfunded a bunch of culture-building welfare state liberal things; superfunded a bunch of capitalist business-growth things; and essentially eliminated the opposing party membership by dint of sheer voluntary popularity.

Incidentally, out of seven or eight restarts, only one ever started as something other than the "Liberal" (player) vs the "Jehovah" parties -- I forgot to change to Repub vs. Demos for my winning game, but I don't know what if anything that contributed to my win. (I couldn't keep my cabinet members happy to save my life, so to speak, despite almost everyone liking me reasonably well before my re-election.) That seems too regular to be random, although then I can't explain why one restart involved two different parties out of the list of 20 or so.  ???


My advice is to wait for a sale, or possibly look into a different game. I noticed that Geo-political Simulator 2 has released what amounts to a patched re-release of GPS2, under the label Masters of the World: GPS3. Still seems a bit dodgy as a game from early reviews on Gamersgate, but a lot more complexly in-depth than this game.

[Nefaro]

My advice is to wait for a sale, or possibly look into a different game. I noticed that Geo-political Simulator 2 has released what amounts to a patched re-release of GPS2, under the label Masters of the World: GPS3. Still seems a bit dodgy as a game from early reviews on Gamersgate, but a lot more complexly in-depth than this game.

I believe the DRM on Masters of the World is also a point of contention.

[JasonPratt]

Are there some other reviews for it elsewhere, Nef? Someday I may want to wash the taste of Democracy out of my mouth (figuratively and/or figuratively speaking), and I guess it'd come down to this or the latest iteration of Supreme Ruler? (Which is what, Cold War?)


Incidentally, before I deleted Dem3 from my system last night, I saw that the most recent update added randomization as an option on the main option screen, which I regard as a major step forward for replayability.

[Nefaro]

Are there some other reviews for it elsewhere, Nef? Someday I may want to wash the taste of Democracy out of my mouth (figuratively and/or figuratively speaking), and I guess it'd come down to this or the latest iteration of Supreme Ruler? (Which is what, Cold War?)

The word of mouth I've read about the other game is that it's still too random and regularly doesn't make sense.  Like you'll see Algeria declaring war on Japan for no big reason, and things of that nature.  That seems to be pretty normal in these kinds of games, though. 

I've not played Supreme Ruler: Cold War since shortly after release.  It's been updated a few times since then so I don't know what condition it's in.  One of the developers recently told me, here on these forums, that they've fixed the slowdown that had been one of the issues in SR:CW on release (and SR:2020, IIRC).  I've not yet checked it's latest condition - too many games not even loaded yet.  :-\

Incidentally, before I deleted Dem3 from my system last night, I saw that the most recent update added randomization as an option on the main option screen, which I regard as a major step forward for replayability.

Heh.. so it's uninstalled for good?

[JasonPratt]

The word of mouth I've read about the other game is that it's still too random and regularly doesn't make sense.  Like you'll see Algeria declaring war on Japan for no big reason, and things of that nature.  That seems to be pretty normal in these kinds of games, though. 

Reviews on GG suggest manually dialing down the tendency for the AI to go to war, in order to alleviate those problems, btw.

Heh.. so it's uninstalled for good?

I may reinstall it someday after the devs have patched it up some more and the modders have taken some cracks at it.

[Nefaro]

Democracy 3 is 50% Off at Steam until Feb 10th.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/245470/?snr=1_620_4__47

I'm debating picking this up, even though I probably wouldn't play for awhile. 

Just wondering if it's been updated and how much Economic gameplay it has (or whether it's mostly focused on massaging social groups - bleh).

[BanzaiCat]

^ I'm thinking about it, too...at $12.49 it's not too bad a deal.

[JasonPratt]

I haven't played it since release, so I don't know about any recent upgrades; but I played through two or three campaigns pretty quickly.

Economics are important because without cash you go into debt trying to get things done and being in debt makes various social groups unhappy. Aside from that I don't know that economics are really important unless you want them to be. I was always trying to recover to operating at a net gain for the year but I don't recall the game penalizing gameplay for spending trillions of dollars you don't have.  ::) :P

Massaging social groups is functionally more important because you have to have political clout to get things done, and you can only generate political clout by keeping and improving the happiness of various social groups. Those action points are the real currency of the game (you can spend money you don't have until hell freezes over but if you don't have the political clout to implement a policy it isn't going to happen period), and over time they'll generate less often even if you're pulling administrative miracles out of your a$$ on a regular basis.

The last time I played there were several aspects of gameplay that seemed broken by game design, so to speak -- for example the possible cabinet member pool is both limited and fairly small, and your cabinet members tend to burn out over time even if you're playing a great game, which leads to highly unrealistic results. But they're how you generate political points for taking any action. Also, the game has a mechanic (which can be turned off, thank God) where any of a number of radical activist groups will infallibly assassinate you once they become annoyed enough, and it's literally impossible not to annoy at least one of them enough.

You may also find yourself strenuously disagreeing with how various policies are likely to affect other things; and aside from this the game designers definitely don't have a neutral slant about what kinds of policies do what, so the idea of playing the game as a social experiment is somewhat undercut. (Just try playing the game as a "capitalist utopia". JUST TRY.) Part of that may be an inadvertent result of the game design since if you as the government aren't doing things to affect the country then there isn't much of a game, naturally resulting in a lot of big government action policies.

That sounds like the game sucks, but I've been thinking about reinstalling it for another play or two, and I'd probably buy the $5 expansion if I did. Is it worth $12.50 plus the expansion? (I don't know that the expansion adds anything you can't just as easily play without.) That depends entirely on how much you like the basic game mechanic, and you can get an idea of that from the screenies and the promo videos. I like the game mechanic, but I can see people being very annoyed by it. (The interface could stand some tweaking last time I played it, as it isn't always easy to navigate back to previous screens, often forcing me to start over again tracing a trail of proposed effects. This may have been fixed with a back-screen button but I don't know.)

I recommend thinking of it as a Euro board game with an unusual playing style for a Euro. If you know what I'm talking about, and you know whether or not you like that kind of game, go with your consequential instinct. Just be aware that the game is EXTREMELY GAMEY often for no good reason other than to have a game. (In my playthrus I routinely started with an assigned average approval of around 24%, meaning it should have been literally impossible for me to be elected in the first place. But that gives you something in the game to aspire to improve, you see!)

[Nefaro]

Yeah, the "gameyness" of it makes me hesitate, especially after reading some forum feedback on it. 

If nothing else, it will eventually be even cheaper on a future sale so I'll probably wait to get knocked off the fence in the future.  Since I've been in a flight sim mode lately, I probably wouldn't touch it for awhile anyway (and I still have the EU4 and CK2 expansions to check out sometime).

[steve58]

$6.24 on GOG for another hour...tempted  :-\