Are you going to add any Socialism Policies like Nationalization? Or any Policies relating to Socialism?

Heh, you know to be honest it always gets on my nerves when people don't know the actual definition of socialism so now that you mention it I might just change the current situation called socialism to something like progressive paradise and then make a new socialism situation that activates when you have government owned means of production. But that would require quite a bit more effort because I'd need to make a bunch of new policies.

Sounds like a great plan, because I doubt a country could turn Sociallist within a day or so, i'm liking what you've planned out...

Hi I'm not sure if this is simulated but i think it would add an extra dimension. Its the idea of apathy. If someone has free housing, free health care, free schooling and benefits for disposable income then why would someone go to work and try. This creates a group of people who contribute nothing to society. The idea being any free service given results in a laziness that hurts productivity. I would imagine you could do some sort of policies to encourage people to contribute, create a society where being unproductive is so frowned upon that no one does it.

The main thing that would bring it down would have to be social inequality, however this has other problems associated with it. Now the player has to strike a balance rather than just try and max something out. Another related issue which would form a triangle between apathy, and social equality which would be social mobility. Which is how easy it is for a poor person to become wealthy. Obviously free schooling and grants to set up businesses would be key here. So if you have inequality of wealth, but you have social mobility then its not so much a problem.

Hope you like the idea, I think it would be interesting.

Just dropping by to say that I saw your idea superfish. Apathy sounds like a really interesting mechanic that could help balance things but I'd have to put a loooot of thought into it so I'm not sure that'll happen. The reason being that there's conflicting research on this subject and my personal opinion is that people react differently to having their needs covered for free. Some use it as an opportunity to do more, some use it as an excuse to be lazy.

Social mobility sounds like a simpler thing to implement and could be useful as a hidden simulation though. And yeah, it would be from things like free schooling and business grants, wages vs cost of living, etc. High social mobility could make capitalists and liberals happy, and have other boosts maybe.

edit: Giving serious thought to the apathy mechanic and trying to figure out a way I'll be happy with implementing and feeling like it's realistic enough. It's way too easy to play as a progressive right now and I'm sure my personal bias is at least partly to blame.

Thanks for the comment, glad you liked the idea. My idea was essentially social mobility helps am unequal society prosper. I think there is a group of people at least here in the UK (my partner has experience of them in her work) who have been on benefits for years, never had a job despite being able. Many have loads of kids for more benefits, some families are "earning" £40,000 a year in benefits for having 6 kids. I totally understand not all people are like this and its not the kids fault their parents are using them as a money earner, but benefits do get abused by some people, hence the apathy. I thought maybe to counter the apathy you could have campaigns to make people want to use the benefits they are given to make the most of themselves, rather than abuse the system. At the end of the day there are only so many fun jobs out there, someone has to do the other ones.....

with the social mobility, along with education and health could again have campaigns to make people believe they can aspire to be "higher" in society. things like business start up campaigns, adult education etc. think it would be nice to have a green and red social mobility event.

I also have another idea if you are still reading, is the idea that better health care instead of just making people healthier, makes some people healthier but other people live along time with essentially disabilities, like diabetes and obesity, essentially the doctors are keeping them alive with drugs, but as they have not chosen to live a healthy life, they are alive but unhealthy. Healthy eating and exercise would combat this.

Lastly i played you mod and it certainly added a challenge, so much so i couldn't get passed the 1st election, i played as the UK. Only thing i would say is it seemed my country was in a pretty good state when i lost: healthy 70%, education 90%, crime 0%, violent crime 0%, poverty 10%, productivity 90%, unemployment 10%, GDP 90%.

My environment was terrible thought. And i still only got 20% of the vote. In fairness i only just managed to fix most of the red events, my popularity was rising quickly. if i had had another year i would have been ok... Any advice? i tend to try and invest in education, technology and things that raise gdp. Here i also invested heavily in law and order, getting nearly everything there maxed, to get rid of all my problems. Health was also heavily invested in. I'm finding it a little tricky.

Its cool your responding

EDIT: Ohh with the health one the most interesting policy you could add would be tax cuts for healthy people. E.G. they get tested for fitness etc and then get less tax. this would be unpopular but directly counteract unhealthy but alive people. I cant think of a better name for it.

Only have a moment here but as far as tips for beating elections with this mod:

If you're playing as UK try the new update and let me know if that's easier. If not, start with the 2nd UK (there will be two, pick the one on the right). You'll start with Election Laws and Lobbying Restrictions that will make it a lot easier for you and more representative of UK politics.

Other than that:
-Focus on a few of the large voter groups that aren't already going to vote for you (yellow or red)
-Prevent political corruption and lobbying from getting out of hand as early as possible
-If you're still having trouble, raise taxes or GDP and then lower taxes somewhere else to make people happy
-And feel free to think creatively because some stuff is hidden and complex in this mod so you can try creative strategies to an extent.

Oh and I'd also love to watch you crash and burn sometime using steam broadcast if you're up for it. Especially if you're playing more capitalist than I do, because I need it to be balanced for that style of gameplay too.

edit: I think I've got something worked out for apathy and social mobility. It's just in my head for now, but I'm thinking social mobility will make inequality less unpopular or will directly boost liberal and capitalist approval. This will make it easier to play as a capitalist. Meanwhile, apathy will make it harder to play as a socialist.

Social Mobility will be made up of various policies like we were talking about.
Apathy will basically be an inverted version of the Values scale, and will affect productivity among other things. A bit of explanation: this mod has a couple hidden simulations that I use to approximate culture and broad policy trends. Currently, there is a Values scale that you can basically think of as selfishness or individualism vs collectivism. Provide lots of free services to every citizen? You'll have a Values scale close to 0. Do nothing for the poor? It'll be close to 1.

Apathy will be Values inverted, so when you provide lots of free stuff Apathy is high. To lower it, you'll need to introduce policies like welfare fraud checks, etc. Things like self employed membership and policies like enterprise investment scheme could lower apathy as well.

To tie it all together: Inequality will also increase apathy, but social mobility will lower it to balance it out. Because that's the flip side, if the issue is that people's efforts aren't given feedback then it should apply in cases where people get something for nothing and in cases where people give something and get nothing.

Thoughts?

edit edit: I may also consider using Equality to help determine Social Mobility and making a new equality scale for wealth, because I'm pretty sure the one in the base game is supposed to represent income equality, not wealth. If I do that and tweak socialism like I was talking about with gamingpunchos, then I could have actual socialism and communism situations that fit the correct definitions. So I'll probably try to do that eventually.

sounds really interesting! and makes sense, pretty much how i thought of it. I guess you could create a few equalities, like wealth, income, standard of living, opportunity. This might make the game more compete, but would be a bit complex. I'll see if i can work out steam broadcast, never used it before.

view>settings>broadcasting>optimize encoding for>best performance

And you should be good to go. Oh and the privacy settings, either add me or set it to anyone.

I also set up basic versions of everything last night and they don't do much because they aren't balanced so I'll have to prioritize certain policies and make them more influential markers of what kind of country you're running. Things like food stamps, unemployment, mortgage tax relief etc that affect the general population more. Will probably upload it in a few days but no promises, these things take time.

I, um, still managed to get a religious lobby with no religous people in my country. :I
perhaps there should be a slight debuff to the lobby when there are a few/no people in them, enough so that you could implement all things the (non existent) religous hate without triggering the lobby?

thx
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457886606

Haha good find, it's a little difficult to balance it perfectly. I'll look into it. Screenshot is bonus points haha thanks.

edit: Yeah I'm pretty sure I can fix this fairly easily, just a matter of reducing the effects from policies. I never really do much to upset religious people so I didn't test it very well.

perhaps there should be a body camera policy for law enforcement to reduce the abusive police situation. liberals like it a little, state employees dislike it somewhat