Democracy 4. Month One Roundup

It’s been a long time since the wildly successful Democracy 3 (2013), and less well-received follow up, Democracy 3 Africa (2016), released; and naturally the world has evolved as politics are more prevalent now than ever before. So naturally, to reflect this, Democracy 4 is going to be the newest game from Positech Games lead designer Cliff Harris and Jeff Sheen, with all new policies, events, UI, etc. Cliff has started doing developer blogs to explain what the game is, and here we are going, to sum up, the first four. 

 First off if you don’t know what Democracy as a game is about, “It’s a game about politics, but it’s not a political game” explains Lead Designer Cliff Harris in his Developer blog. This game is not taking a stance about what is right or wrong, it simply puts you in charge of a country, and gives you policies from both the right, left, and center and lets you run the country, and it affects voters as it would in real life. There are no political stances taken as Cliff explains, it’s just simply a game about policies in politics. Also, the first thing is first, this is very early on in development, so everything is subject to change and the game is not finished.

List of Changes so far:

• The first most noticeable changes are the fact that the voter groups and their opinions of you have been moved from the middle of the screen to the left. This change is to make more room in the “policy area”.
• Some of the other big changes, that they are extremely proud of is the fact that the policy bubbles now resize depending on if you choose to sort by finances, value, influence, or default. You can change the whole color pallet of the menu to whatever you want, and it even has dark mode by default so you can choose to not be blinded if you wish.
• Another change is to move the ministers to the middle of the screen, this is to signify their importance and show how much of the game they truly affect instead of them being hidden away on a screen somewhere else. There is all new minister artwork, and now you won’t run out of ministers if you go through them, the game will keep generating some.

Additionally, all the policies and content from both Democracy 3 and its DLC, and Democracy 3 Africa. The Game will also feature many more policies and situations, brand new achievements and artwork. Some of the new things that have been added so far are

• Universal Basic Income
• The ability to Nationalize State Water, Electricity, and Telecommunications, with all of them being modeled in the background
• Internet Speed now modeled
• Healthcare Demand is a background policy
• The Minimum Wage is now a policy
• A Right to Privacy policy where the government isn’t allowed to track people
• A Right to Die law
• A Gender Transition Policy, which affects whether the state accepts this or frowns upon it
• Prison Regime Policy (Which affects whether prisons are about rehab or punishment) and an added scenario that can come up of prison overcrowding
• Reforestation is a new policy added to combat climate change
• Veganism is a new background policy
• All Population will be modeled, and the average lifespan of your citizens is now visible
• State Broadcast Policy, like the BBC, has been added
• Business Confidence is now modeled, which Cliff is especially proud of. Business confidence is how confident the people are to invest in business, and it will affect things like GDP because if people are confident in the economy it will be high, but if there is a recession it will be low
• Generation Wealth Gap now added and modeled
• New events have been added, such as a deadly virus outbreak
• Luddite Riots added as a new situation
• Workers on Boards Policy added it makes it where real workers are put on boards of companies to help run it since they’re on the front lines. Makes Trade Unionist Happy and Angers Capitalist I assume
• Some policies have been re-balanced, like free eye test for example since it makes the rich irrationally mad and affected their opinion of you way more than it should have
• Electric Car Transition is now modeled
• Empty Homes Tax, Diverted Profits Tax, and Frequent Flyers Tax has been added to the available policies list

Some other things to note that aren’t being added (as of now) is making separate legislation systems for each country since they would have to spend time looking them up and modeling them correctly, and then the player would have to learn the countries legislative system if they’re playing them, which is too complicated and “could potentially turn it into an election game rather than a politics game”, so they are sticking with the same political capital from cabinet system of Democracy 3. So far, this is all the information we have learned from four weeks of developer blogs, stay tuned here and we will keep the Democracy 4 news covered for you! The game is set to release into early access “some time this year” on PC, Linux, and Mac.