I've played this for a few days, I've found it pretty fun and I don't feel like I've wasted my money. But I haven't played Democracy 1 or 2, or any other similar game aside from Fate of the World. I can see why people might want to wait though, and it's not without its problems.
Ugh. Also, meh. Very dry, very limited options, ridiculous assassinations(got killed by a "Black Power" group who thought my policies were racist...), etc. If you want something like this, go for Masters of the World/Geopolitical Simulator instead. It was buggy and had a rather unrealistic and slow simulation last time I tried it, but even so it's many times better than Democracy will ever be.
Were your policies racist? I remember being warned about an assassination threat once by them and decided to do something about it. Then I wasn't assassinated.
I might give Masters of the World a go, but how is it buggy, unrealistic and slow? And how does it differ from Democracy? I'd probably play it anyway, but if I'd find it annoying I'd leave it until I get through some more annoying games that I have in progress already.
There is very few ways to play the game correctly. Sure you can pick the "bad" way to play and then get murdered at all times. And you see the devs political opinion in the game:
Capitalists are evil (always)
Liberal people hate crime but hate ALL crime fighting systems. (They will always hate you).
"rich" or corporations flee from your country the moment you have more then 5% taxes. Heck the moment you tax anyone they get angry at you.
Conservatives kick kittens for fun.
Atleast thats the general impression you get from the devs political view point.
That's how those groups act in the real world though...
I didn't get this impression at all, more like it's rather what it is in real life: some people like some things, other people don't and you have to try to maintain some kind of balance to keep things ticking along.
I've played and won the game as a pseudo-socialist and as a pseudo-capitalist, and managed at least one "win" from both strategies. Granted, you can't play as a pure capitalist, or as a pure socialist, but Malakal already covered that. Besides, we've had a good real-world example with the US government shut down what happens in a democracy when you do start going for an extreme position.
Then in the game its easy to min/max. You can be at a few 10000000bilion of debt and no one will care at all. What you ruined the entire worlds economy? Its fine dont worry about it.
Your credit rating does go down, but I never really let it get that much of a problem, so I don't know if there's any action taken against you. Then again, most of the countries you play as are pretty powerful, so you probably could get away with being greatly in debt... just like the real world.
If it doesn't have an affect, then that's probably not as good as it should be, but it might be possible to mod one in.
There is no voting system in the game. It would have been great if you had multiple parties that worked together / back stabs each other when you made decisions (and you get to vote for the things they put forward) instead you just spam the politcal points each turn to buy everything you need.
Well, you do have to "play politics" with your cabinet in order to get enough points to do what you want (since they affect your maximum and your per-turn political point income). Also, you do have to be a bit shrewd with your political points if you want to save up to do things like remove intelligent design from schools or introduce a carbon tax.
But yeah, more inter- and intra-party machinations would improve the game. And most certainly have more cabinet members: there's only one or two more "conservative/right-wing" candidates in there, so trying for that kind of a government is difficult, even in the US game. (Either that or my game bugged out or something, as I always seem to get the same ones).
There are way to few events and way to few policy's in the game. The events repeat after a while there are only a handful of them. Sometimes you might see something rare when you have 0% taxes like china invested in your country (or whatever). Then there is not enough things to put forward.
Yeah, there definitely should be more events. I think the event repetition is more of an issue due to the fact that if you're successful enough and don't rock the boat, you end up government basically forever when there isn't a term limit.This isn't what happens in the real world. Eventually governments screw up too many times, get used to having power for too long, and get turfed out.
But a wider variety of random events would have been good. (Then again, I got sick of the constant global economy collapses and bird flus in one game, so maybe he didn't want to add too many in the case the randomness upset people?)
After that... The population dont change. its static no mater what you do. You can have the "worlds" best childcare/benefit system but no one cares.
People do seem to care: when your country is doing well, you usually get an increase in immigration, which leads to other problems (like racial tensions and such).
The problem is, is that it's too easy to handle those issues.
Short version: To easy, repetitive, to few events, very short, expensive for the game, once you know what to do you faceroll over it, money have no value, the dev's political opinions.
Maybe mods will fix it... It would probably need a major overhaul but for the price righ now (unless it have changed) then no its not worth it.
I agree the game is easy and somewhat predictable, but then I've not changed any of the default sliders yet, so that might make some changes. I also agree on too few events, and if money has no value then that's a problem (but I've never done anything about that, so I can't talk about it).
I don't agree that the dev's political opinions are as big of a problem as you say: it's certainly doable to play as any type of government you like, but it's difficult (in a lot of the ways that doing it in real life would be difficult in a democracy). Probably more difficult to do for right-wing governments, but I think that just might be an oversight with the selection of available cabinet members than anything else.
Also, I think the dev priced it at $25 because it's not really a game that everyone's going to like, as there's lots of numbers and sliders and interconnections involved. I think he's probably surprised it did as well as it has. And it's relatively easy to mod, and there's already a few mods out so hopefully it gets a good base going.
If you guys want a more challenging game, play Fate of the World. Even if you don't believe in climate change, just treat it as a challenging sci-fi game. It should kick your ass (after the first tutorial campaign, at least).
. Playing FotW made me want Dem's web and info/graphics so I got it instead. No wait it was the match card with crisis repeat 20 times game play.Pretend there is a dept cap and socialism will look a lot less promising. I played the fishtank sim mod in Dem2 and it was awesome!
