Elections are too easy, and it's because of assassinations.

[thefarsidenoob]

Bought the game recently. Played about 5 five hours, done several games. Won five elections, lost one, assassinated...thrice? The game itself starts off great, but where Democacry 3 drops the ball is elections. Seeing as elections are the cornerstone of democracy, that’s not rhe greatest. And assassinations are the problem.

The only time I had a close election and lost an election was when I somehow managed to ♥♥♥♥ off most of everyone, and come off as lackluster to everyone else. This was at 150% difficulty, and these two election were probably the most fun of all I had to face, a lot more fun than the complete landslides of the other four elections I breezed through. And yet, if I didn’t somehow mage to survive an assassination attempt almost every other turn, I would have never even got to these elections that were so realistically (and enjoyably!) nail-biting. Losing 48-52 makes me feel like I gave it my all. Winning 82-18 fells like I rigged the election, though getting assassinated the next turn was almost as disappointing.

So it’s clear the game is capable of delivering exciting elections, that seem like real people are voting, and not robots. But in order for such an election to happen, you have to survive dozens of assassination attempts. This, in my opinion, is backwards.

If you are short-sighted enough to ignore a demographic, that group should not resort to assassination as the first option. Rather, they should try use the best weapon they have to get you to listen, or remove you entirely: democracy.

If a demo is green, you should have most of their support, but some should be in the opposition. If a group goes yellow, then that group should be split between you and the opposition. The further red they go, the more will vote against you, but the closer to green they get, the more will swing your way come election time.

If a group goes red, they’ll flee your party in droves and not just join the opposition, but they’ll become activists in considerable numbers. Its special interest group will rise significantly, but the extremist groups shouldn’t rise until the special interest group is mostly full, which boosts not just extremists (albeit much more slowly), but activistism even further.

Thus, just as in real life, if you ignore a special interest group for too long (e.g. NRA) they’ll be able to have a strong influence over the election. If you manage to win the election without bringing up the demographics’ happiness to a reasonable threshold, only then will the extremist groups, feeling disenfranchised by the government, begin resorting to violence.

Such a change would make Democracy 3 feel more, well, democratic. If the Socialists are only 30% happy, many first worry shouldn’t be assassination, but rather if the Socialist vote will be the deciding factor in the upcoming election. But if I’m just going to win the election with 80% of the vote regardless, it takes all the fun out the electioneering (Again I should point out I was playing on 150% difficulty, so it wasn’t on easy mode). Or if the capitalists have lost faith in my leadership, they should have the resources to fund unprecedented levels of activism before calling up the Battenberg Group. If the poor are only 50% happy, I should be worried about that: what if the opposition can swing the poor vote?!

While I haven’t played for as long as some people, reading here and watching let’s plays and in my own experience, elections in Democracy 3 are underutilized. With these proposed revisions, you could kill two birds with one stone: have the extremists stop being so trigger-happy, by having to make everyone happy and winning elections even more important than ever, and so make the mid and late game more exciting and challenging.

Feedback encouraged and appreciated. Agree? Disagree? Better ideas?

[VTitanV]

I thought this post was very funny and it had many excellent points but as a game developer myself I can tell you right now that it would have to be hard capped for drama.

The game it's self would have to trick you into beliving it was a close vote etc letting the op lead and then right at the end having you shoot up, things like that.

There is 20 groups in this game (21 including the everyone) and in real life every person has their own personality and opinion. If you wanted to make it more realisic I think you would need over 10,000 of these groups if you wanted to represent every group in society

The assassination comments I understand but I think you underestimate how often assassinations are foiled/stopped in real life and again you have to remember that the game is built on numbers.


My only closing comment is that it sounds like you figured out the game very quickly and you're possibly too good at it. You could turn the difficulty up OR you could go chase some achievements.

Have fun out there anyway.

[Ender's games]

Also, at least in the version with all the DLCs, it is possible to disable the assasinations. For me now the game is way more enjoyable.

[thefarsidenoob]

Originally posted by VChrisV:

I thought this post was very funny and it had many excellent points but as a game developer myself I can tell you right now that it would have to be hard capped for drama.

The game it's self would have to trick you into beliving it was a close vote etc letting the op lead and then right at the end having you shoot up, things like that.

Even it was only a superficial change, a cap might make elections seem more realistic.

In functioning democracies, just a 10% margin of victory is considered a landslide. In the USA, a presidential candidate has never gained more than 62% of the popular vote, and those that managed to even come close were extremely popular in their time: FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan.

Same thing in the UK. The biggest landside of a 20th Century UK general election, 1997, the Labour Party earned 43% people’s vote versus the Conservative Party’s 30%. In 2012, The Scottish National Party was able to gain control 94% of Primary Seats in Scotland was a resounding 50% share of the votes.

In Germany, the only landlside election that have occurred were in 1953,1957, and 2013, when the CDU/CSU Coalition earned 45%, 50%, and 41% of the popular vote.

So if there was a maximum percentage of the popular vote you could earn (65%-70%?) and a bare minimum in size of the opposition and the number of activists they field, that alone would elections seem more close and exciting, at least on the surface.

It would also drastically reduce the speed the country devolves into a one party system, which in real life never happens to a functioning democracy. Maybe if there were soft caps instead: the more conservative/authoritarian your government becomes, the higher the share of the vote you can earn, while simultaneously lowering the minimum activity of the opposition, out fear of reprisal. I don’t think your government has all these security cameras, spy satellites, wiretappings, and mandatory IDs just stop street gangs. On the other hand, if you’ve created and extreme-liberal state, it should be very difficult to earn even 55% of the vote, as the opposition can exist without fear of reprisal.

Why is a >5% margin of victory in a democracy considered a landslide victory? Most people, even if they like the government, think a change would benefit them. That’s why Democracy is so fun! Even if you approve of your President or PM, we all think we could be doing a better job, so through the game we get to put our money where our mouth is and see if we’re right. So even if, for instance, the US government completely panders to farmers, there will always be farmers who think that if the opposition was in power, they would reap more benefits than if the current government stayed.

Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant during an election. When you make all those manifesto promises right before election day, you can imagine that the opposition, if it could, would do the same, and it would convince some people to switch from your side to theirs’. People are fickle, and to most, an election isn’t a research project, but a sales’ pitch. They can be frustrating, and illogical, but they’re what make democracy work. It's still a number's game but, people have a tendacy to not always act in their best intersts. The game should still be logical and numbers-based, but also compensate for this. Espsecially when the player has speeches, stunts, and manifestos to sway the electorate.

Originally posted by VChrisV:

There is 20 groups in this game (21 including the everyone) and in real life every person has their own personality and opinion. If you wanted to make it more realisic I think you would need over 10,000 of these groups if you wanted to represent every group in society

It’s true that if this game was an accurate real-life simulation, people would be spread across not twenty groups but hundeds, maybe thousands. But if those 21 Happiness meters are recontextualized, a similar effect might be achievable.

For instance, if the Farmers Group has a Happiness of 50%, what if instead of representing the average Farmer’s ambivalence towards the government, there was 25% chance of the average Farmer being in your Party, 50% chance having no party membership and 25% chance of the average farmer being in the opposition. So even you treated a group neutrally, some would support you and some would oppose you, which would increase or decrease depending on the happiness. If voting blocks in the yellow or even green had members in the opposition, then perhaps groups in the red would have a much strong impact on the election, as belonging to yellow or green Groups wouldn’t completely override their utter contempt for the government.

Or perhaps red Groups should just be weighted much more heavily than yellow or green when a citizen’s vote is being calculated. This would make ignoring an unhappy group during elections much riskier, and voter apathy from your Green groups much more dangerous.

In one game I played, the Capitalists had a 15% happiness rating. I expect the other group they belong to soften the blow, but getting 72% of the Capitalist vote? I don’t blame the 18% for wanting to join the Battenberg Group.

Even if most of those Capitalists belong to a plethora of green groups, this is all the more reason that most of Capitalist group should be actively looking for a new candidate to support their interests. For if complacency breeds voter apathy, outrage ought to (and in real life does) lead to voter activity.

Look at the recent US presidential election. Obama’s approval ratings had never been higher, but when the Democratic party tried to sell the Clinton campaign as four more years of Obama, this message failed to resonate with voters. Turnout was much lower than the two previous elections.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidate’s campaigned was almost entirely driven by the unhappiness of the just one group, the white working poor. Yet if you look at the election results, votes from Trump came from mostly out this particular group, and even gained support from groups that stood to gain more from the current government. All on a platform that, arguably addressed only a single group’s issues.

So, if even one group becomes unhappy with the government, you should expect a tough election. Just as in a real election, that group will draw attention from all the achievements of your government to its failings that they themselves had to endure. The groups existence isn’t the problem, it’s that others will start listening to them.

In summary, by having a limit on the margin of victory, having the opposition be a constant presence, and weighting the unhappiness of groups to be a deciding factor in elections would be a substantial improvment to eclections. Just by adding/changing a few values, electioneering could become much more engaging.

The underlying structure is still there: gradually intoduce change, win elections. The only difference is game challenge is no longer tied to how many people want to kill you (as much), but how many people are willing to campaign to get you voted out. In short, democacy!

It’s still a number’s game. No new systems would be needed, just some fine tuning of the ones already in place. Granted, my knowledge is limited to modding text files and some code, but it seems like most of these changes seem doable without developing any additional features.

[GLW]

Originally posted by thefarsidenoob:

Originally posted by VChrisV:

I thought this post was very funny and it had many excellent points but as a game developer myself I can tell you right now that it would have to be hard capped for drama.

The game it's self would have to trick you into beliving it was a close vote etc letting the op lead and then right at the end having you shoot up, things like that.

Even it was only a superficial change, a cap might make elections seem more realistic.

In functioning democracies, just a 10% margin of victory is considered a landslide. In the USA, a presidential candidate has never gained more than 62% of the popular vote, and those that managed to even come close were extremely popular in their time: FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan.

Same thing in the UK. The biggest landside of a 20th Century UK general election, 1997, the Labour Party earned 43% people’s vote versus the Conservative Party’s 30%. In 2012, The Scottish National Party was able to gain control 94% of Primary Seats in Scotland was a resounding 50% share of the votes.

In Germany, the only landlside election that have occurred were in 1953,1957, and 2013, when the CDU/CSU Coalition earned 45%, 50%, and 41% of the popular vote.

So if there was a maximum percentage of the popular vote you could earn (65%-70%?) and a bare minimum in size of the opposition and the number of activists they field, that alone would elections seem more close and exciting, at least on the surface.

It would also drastically reduce the speed the country devolves into a one party system, which in real life never happens to a functioning democracy. Maybe if there were soft caps instead: the more conservative/authoritarian your government becomes, the higher the share of the vote you can earn, while simultaneously lowering the minimum activity of the opposition, out fear of reprisal. I don’t think your government has all these security cameras, spy satellites, wiretappings, and mandatory IDs just stop street gangs. On the other hand, if you’ve created and extreme-liberal state, it should be very difficult to earn even 55% of the vote, as the opposition can exist without fear of reprisal.

Why is a >5% margin of victory in a democracy considered a landslide victory? Most people, even if they like the government, think a change would benefit them. That’s why Democracy is so fun! Even if you approve of your President or PM, we all think we could be doing a better job, so through the game we get to put our money where our mouth is and see if we’re right. So even if, for instance, the US government completely panders to farmers, there will always be farmers who think that if the opposition was in power, they would reap more benefits than if the current government stayed.

Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant during an election. When you make all those manifesto promises right before election day, you can imagine that the opposition, if it could, would do the same, and it would convince some people to switch from your side to theirs’. People are fickle, and to most, an election isn’t a research project, but a sales’ pitch. They can be frustrating, and illogical, but they’re what make democracy work. It's still a number's game but, people have a tendacy to not always act in their best intersts. The game should still be logical and numbers-based, but also compensate for this. Espsecially when the player has speeches, stunts, and manifestos to sway the electorate.

Originally posted by VChrisV:

There is 20 groups in this game (21 including the everyone) and in real life every person has their own personality and opinion. If you wanted to make it more realisic I think you would need over 10,000 of these groups if you wanted to represent every group in society

It’s true that if this game was an accurate real-life simulation, people would be spread across not twenty groups but hundeds, maybe thousands. But if those 21 Happiness meters are recontextualized, a similar effect might be achievable.

For instance, if the Farmers Group has a Happiness of 50%, what if instead of representing the average Farmer’s ambivalence towards the government, there was 25% chance of the average Farmer being in your Party, 50% chance having no party membership and 25% chance of the average farmer being in the opposition. So even you treated a group neutrally, some would support you and some would oppose you, which would increase or decrease depending on the happiness. If voting blocks in the yellow or even green had members in the opposition, then perhaps groups in the red would have a much strong impact on the election, as belonging to yellow or green Groups wouldn’t completely override their utter contempt for the government.

Or perhaps red Groups should just be weighted much more heavily than yellow or green when a citizen’s vote is being calculated. This would make ignoring an unhappy group during elections much riskier, and voter apathy from your Green groups much more dangerous.

In one game I played, the Capitalists had a 15% happiness rating. I expect the other group they belong to soften the blow, but getting 72% of the Capitalist vote? I don’t blame the 18% for wanting to join the Battenberg Group.

Even if most of those Capitalists belong to a plethora of green groups, this is all the more reason that most of Capitalist group should be actively looking for a new candidate to support their interests. For if complacency breeds voter apathy, outrage ought to (and in real life does) lead to voter activity.

Look at the recent US presidential election. Obama’s approval ratings had never been higher, but when the Democratic party tried to sell the Clinton campaign as four more years of Obama, this message failed to resonate with voters. Turnout was much lower than the two previous elections.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidate’s campaigned was almost entirely driven by the unhappiness of the just one group, the white working poor. Yet if you look at the election results, votes from Trump came from mostly out this particular group, and even gained support from groups that stood to gain more from the current government. All on a platform that, arguably addressed only a single group’s issues.

So, if even one group becomes unhappy with the government, you should expect a tough election. Just as in a real election, that group will draw attention from all the achievements of your government to its failings that they themselves had to endure. The groups existence isn’t the problem, it’s that others will start listening to them.

In summary, by having a limit on the margin of victory, having the opposition be a constant presence, and weighting the unhappiness of groups to be a deciding factor in elections would be a substantial improvment to eclections. Just by adding/changing a few values, electioneering could become much more engaging.

The underlying structure is still there: gradually intoduce change, win elections. The only difference is game challenge is no longer tied to how many people want to kill you (as much), but how many people are willing to campaign to get you voted out. In short, democacy!

It’s still a number’s game. No new systems would be needed, just some fine tuning of the ones already in place. Granted, my knowledge is limited to modding text files and some code, but it seems like most of these changes seem doable without developing any additional features.

turnout wasn't sharply down though... http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-voter-turnout-wasnt-way-down-from-2012/

[Kilgore]

This post is dead on. I constantly get assassinated by black power groups no matter what I do. I've made the racial discrimination act happen first turn, turn DOWN police powers, lower taxes, but the second I get rid of race riots and crime I get assassinated by black power groups. This game makes no sense because of assassinations and it sucks because the rest is really fun.

[Ender's games]

Originally posted by Science:

This post is dead on. I constantly get assassinated by black power groups no matter what I do. I've made the racial discrimination act happen first turn, turn DOWN police powers, lower taxes, but the second I get rid of race riots and crime I get assassinated by black power groups. This game makes no sense because of assassinations and it sucks because the rest is really fun.

At least in my game, with the DLCs installed, there's a setting to disable assassinations.

[thefarsidenoob]

Originally posted by βαßγ£ση:

Originally posted by thefarsidenoob:

If the Socialists are only 30% happy, many first worry shouldn’t be assassination, but rather if the Socialist vote will be the deciding factor in the upcoming election.

If you don't have many socialists, then it doesn't matter how unhappy they are. They'll never have enough to organize into a movement and become militant enough to assassinate you. :-P

True enough, in the same way the Ethnic Minorty group wouldn't be as big (and so as big a problem) if I closed the borders. But that's not very democratic :P

[ScarletDuke]

Originally posted by VChrisV:

There is 20 groups in this game (21 including the everyone) and in real life every person has their own personality and opinion. If you wanted to make it more realisic I think you would need over 10,000 of these groups if you wanted to represent every group in society

I think, in theory, you can boil down basically all people into these twenty groups, but most won't fit into only one. So, religous liberal socialist, or something like that. Environmentalist capitalist everyone. You don't need a separate group for each combination, you just need the general ideas reflected.

[Kilgore]

Originally posted by ender_vlc:

Originally posted by Science:

This post is dead on. I constantly get assassinated by black power groups no matter what I do. I've made the racial discrimination act happen first turn, turn DOWN police powers, lower taxes, but the second I get rid of race riots and crime I get assassinated by black power groups. This game makes no sense because of assassinations and it sucks because the rest is really fun.

At least in my game, with the DLCs installed, there's a setting to disable assassinations.

Where and how?!?!?

[Ender's games]

Originally posted by Science:

Originally posted by ender_vlc:

At least in my game, with the DLCs installed, there's a setting to disable assassinations.

Where and how?!?!?

Options -> Assassinations, it has a checkbox.