General discussion regarding the mechanics of situations, and improving them

[cliffski]

Hi, I'm the dev.
In playing a lot of the game lately (also playing a lot of democracy 3:Africa), I have started to wonder if the way a lot of the situations are set up is a little too 'steep' and could be balanced better, especially regarding some of the negative situations.

Take for example, technological backwater...
This kicks in at level 0.6, and ends at level 0.4 for its inputs. So if your hidden backwater value reaches 60% it starts, but you have to go below 40% to get rid of it. I think that mechanic is fine but...

The impact on GDP (for example) is
-0.02-(0.12*x).
Which means that when this kicks in, you will get
-0.02-(0.12*0.6) which equates to -0.092, or a 9.2% drop in GDP. (actually not that simple, because its a 9.2% cut in 0-1 terms, which if GDP is, for example 0.5, that would be a 18.4% overnight drop in GDP).

Looking at it backwards, when you beat the tech backwater, assuming a GDP value of 0.5, that
impact on GDP just before it drops is
-0.02-(0.12*0.4) which would be -0.068, or 13.6% of current GDP.
Thats a sudden jump up and down of GDP in double digits, which seems huge, given that its a fairly arbitrary measure.

What I'm trying to avoid is the situation where you GDP just flatlines or is 100% all the time, rather than being more interestingly poised between the two and shifting more realistically. Which countries GDP ever jumped 13.6% in one quarter? I'd say few:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG

So...if you are still reading..well done :D. What I'm suggesting is that maybe the situations such as these need to be tweaked a bit so that the 'entry' and #exit' top the situation is less drastic, and that, for example 'reducing' a situation like tech backwater becomes more relevant than the current situation where its a bit binary and a bit of a 'its active or not' mechanic.
Thoughts welcome!

[cliffski]

oh BTW more details (and graph!) here: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2016/05/08/democracy-3-and-its-situation-mechanics-broken-in-implementation/

[54x]

Yeah it probably make a lot of sense if once you get below the "start" criteria, the effect smooths away based on how close you are between the "start" and "stop" criteria- so if you're exactly halfway between them, you get 50% of all the negative and positive effects of the situation, (or 75%, or whatever feels right) instead of the full effects, and if you've just about stopped the situation, it should have a negligible impact.

It would also be a cool flavour thing if sometimes (or even always) the opposition would criticise you for risking the situation cropping up if you're between the "start" and "stop" criteria, but the event hasn't triggered yet. (as situations can be very surprising and feel more unfair because of that until you're familiar with all of them) If you make it random whether the player's warned, you could also make it tank your popularity with groups impacted by the situation for having ignored the warning, and give you a bonus to popularity if you get the problem below the "stop" criteria after being warned/criticised without it ever having triggered. But that might be getting too advanced.

I agree that GDP seems way too "sticky" at 0% and 100% in general, even in many of the good overhaul mods out there. It would probably make for better gameplay to have to sacrifice a lot to get to 100% GDP, but to be able to stick at 50-80% much more easily. (especially given some of the situations that can be caused by high GDP)

[RabidIBM]

A lot of policies have a time delay to take full effect, such as the 24 turns for compulsory foreign launguage training. How hard would it be to code in a time delay for the effects of good and bad situations? (Actually asking, when I re-read that I realized my tone might come off as sarcastic)

Also, while we're on the topic of rapidly changing GDP, I find this to be a common problem throughout the game. In general, too many things that affect the GDP affect it too much, and too quickly. This has especially been the case with Democracy 3: Africa, where I find that the GDP will remain pinned to the bottom of the chart for most of my first term, until I get rid of enough red situations, then it will slam to the top of the graph in a couple years and remain pinned there.

General solution I propose: Reduce the total effects of everything that affects the GDP, and increase the time delays.

As a final note, I find that for money taxed and spent, stimulus spending policies improve the GDP vastly more than taxes hurt the GDP. This doesn't really make sense to me, as if you tax a dollar out of me, then give me a dollar back, I'm not any richer for it. I'm particulary speaking of Income tax, which is often generating more than 50% of my revenue, does very little damage to the GDP when you consider the amount of money it removes from the economy, thereby preventing a lot of middle class investment.

[rocknroll1051]

As a final note, I find that for money taxed and spent, stimulus spending policies improve the GDP vastly more than taxes hurt the GDP. This doesn't really make sense to me, as if you tax a dollar out of me, then give me a dollar back, I'm not any richer for it. I'm particulary speaking of Income tax, which is often generating more than 50% of my revenue, does very little damage to the GDP when you consider the amount of money it removes from the economy, thereby preventing a lot of middle class investment. [/quote]

Econ 101: Taxes reduce GDP less than Spending increases GDP. For example, the multiplier for food stamps is 1.5 and for income taxes is -.75. Therefore taxing and spending is sound economics in theory.
https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/why-tax-increases-can-be-expansionary/

[cliffski]

true, but it is a fair point that high income tax SHOULD hurt GDP, with government spending then boosting it. After all, if the government takes all your money and uses it purely to pay off foreign debtors, then yup, the economy will crash and burn. This is a whole area that the simulation sadly does not model, but may be beyond the scope of tweaking D3, that might be a topic for a sequel.

[cliffski]

Ok...we made some changes to the beta branch: http://steamcommunity.com/games/245470/announcements/detail/692804835910979205

[Trixi]

shouldnt the water supply effect the water shortage?

im at this position where the factor of the year is to high to get rid of the water shortage event.

here some screenies of my situation:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687636915
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687636933
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687636968
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687636992
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687637023
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687637944

[RabidIBM]

The beta is giving me crash issues. Once I installed beta material I tried to lauch Democracy 3, and steam locked up. After a minute I got a message saying "steam client bootstrapper" was not responding, and did I want to wait for the program to respond or close the program. I tried waiting a while, but it became clear that it was locked up. Once I closed and re-opened steam it would insist that Democracy 3 was already running, and would refuse to start it because of this, even though the task manager couldn't see Democracy 3 running. I ended up having to re-boot the whole computer to convince it that Democracy 3 was no longer running. I went through this whole process twice, then opted out of the beta material and Democracy 3 is working again. Not sure why I'm having this problem and others aren't though, as some people are posting replies to your beta.

[cliffski]

That water shortage stuff is from a mod isn't it? Defionitely not something I recognize.

[blitzthedragon]

Originally posted by cliffski:

That water shortage stuff is from a mod isn't it? Defionitely not something I recognize.

It's in Clones and Drones, ya doof. xD

[54x]

Originally posted by cliffski:

true, but it is a fair point that high income tax SHOULD hurt GDP, with government spending then boosting it. After all, if the government takes all your money and uses it purely to pay off foreign debtors, then yup, the economy will crash and burn. This is a whole area that the simulation sadly does not model, but may be beyond the scope of tweaking D3, that might be a topic for a sequel.

Tax doesn't so much affect GDP as effective income for various groups does, and a lot more goes into that than just tax.

A high progressive income tax is unlikely to tank GDP, (if anything, the direct effect would likely to be a stimulus to the economy, so long as you're putting that money into social services and not paying down debt) but might cause a brain drain if it's not translated into government services that raise effective income for the wealthy sufficiently, as other countries might offer higher effective wages. It would make a lot of sense to actually leave the effect on GDP through taxes purely to the relevant events, Brain Drain and Corporate Exodus, which are already punishing enough.

[RabidIBM]

Perhaps the various earnings should have more effects? That would create some logical representation of the impact of raising or lowering certain taxes. Certain sectors of the economy would be very sensitive to the earnings of specific categories. For example the Auto industry would be strongly affected by middle earnings, as the poor are not buying new cars anyways, and the rich will still drive new cars even if their earnings fall by 5%, but the middle class will start either replacing the car a couple years sooner, or trying to squeeze a few more years out of it depending on their earnings, greatly affecting sales. Other manufacturing sectors such as personal boats and airplanes would be much more sensitive to high earnings.

On that note about the auto sector, the "car usage" condition in game would make more sense to me if it were affected by middle earnings than by GDP. If middle earnings fall, 2 car families become 1 car families, and cars that die get replaced by bicycles and bus passes instead of a new car.

[cliffski]

Originally posted by blitzthedragon:

Originally posted by cliffski:

That water shortage stuff is from a mod isn't it? Defionitely not something I recognize.

It's in Clones and Drones, ya doof. xD

Ooops. I think I may have overworked on the day I checked that and couldn't find it. My mistake :D

[cliffski]

Originally posted by Trixi:

shouldnt the water supply effect the water shortage?

im at this position where the factor of the year is to high to get rid of the water shortage event.

here some screenies of my situation:

Hi, can you email your save game that shows the issue you are experiencing to cliff AT positech dot co dot uk with a link to this thread?

[cliffski]

Originally posted by HMRD RabidIBM:

Perhaps the various earnings should have more effects? That would create some logical representation of the impact of raising or lowering certain taxes. Certain sectors of the economy would be very sensitive to the earnings of specific categories. For example the Auto industry would be strongly affected by middle earnings, as the poor are not buying new cars anyways, and the rich will still drive new cars even if their earnings fall by 5%, but the middle class will start either replacing the car a couple years sooner, or trying to squeeze a few more years out of it depending on their earnings, greatly affecting sales. Other manufacturing sectors such as personal boats and airplanes would be much more sensitive to high earnings.

On that note about the auto sector, the "car usage" condition in game would make more sense to me if it were affected by middle earnings than by GDP. If middle earnings fall, 2 car families become 1 car families, and cars that die get replaced by bicycles and bus passes instead of a new car.

This is very interesting stuff, although of course its also true that wealthy people might buy a second or third car,. and made buy higher-spec luxury cars. The real question is the extent to which modelling individual industries would really increase the fun of the game, versus how much additional complexity it adds. Although it would lead to some interesting decisions, I can also see it scaring off more casual players.