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So tried playing this game again, and once again, I got assassinated pretty quickly into my term. This happens every game for some reason. What can I do to stop getting assassinated? :-S Here are the choices I made: quote:US default everything
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Aug 4, 2014 05:11
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If you're going to spend so much PC pissing people off then you'd better put your money towards getting a proper police state. Don't underbudget your secret police. 
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Aug 4, 2014 07:14
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alcaras posted:So tried playing this game again, and once again, I got assassinated pretty quickly into my term. This happens every game for some reason. Most of these are extreme shifts, and that's what gets you shot. Keeping your country happy takes playing mostly centrist while you gently push whichever agenda you have in mind. Moving gradually gives voters time to adjust and evens out the spikes in hostility which would militarize them.
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Aug 4, 2014 15:56
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Hmm. I played a few more games and, though I had similar choices, managed to create a techno/educated paradise and win re-election. I'm curious if it's possible to successfully play a hands-off libertarian strategy (just canceling programs left and right). So much of the game seems built around implementing policies that people like... not many people seem to care about getting rid of policies.
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Aug 4, 2014 17:48
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I just read this LP beginning to end. Leave it up to goons to recreate an even more messed up DDR out of Germany. Total equality at the cost of universal poverty, comrades  . All industry destroyed and all economic activity reduced to digging holes and immediately filling them back up just to keep people occupied. People drinking themselves to death from despair. The state cant keep up with public housing demand due to resource shortages, and whatever apartment blocks do get built are of poor quality. The criminal black market, germinated by supplying un-taxed alcohol, has by now eclipsed the official state-run economy. Food stamps and rationing are introduced due to shortages. The only consistent stage policy from the beginning was to increase the Stasi police funding. Yet still, almost all state control has been lost with organized crime gangs settling score with each other, endemic strikes and weekly student protests. Health services have also broken down. All religion is banned. The middle and upper classes are jumping over barbed wire to get out of the country. I can almost smell the revolution in the air.Neue Wahlen für einen neuen Weg! 
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Aug 5, 2014 05:29
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Hey guys, just a heads-up: I've currently got no internet connection at home, since the router mysteriously died during a thunderstorm. Hopefully I'll be able to get the update to you this weekend, at the latest 
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Aug 5, 2014 13:10
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Covski posted:Hey guys, just a heads-up: I've currently got no internet connection at home, since the router mysteriously died during a thunderstorm. Hopefully I'll be able to get the update to you this weekend, at the latest I feel your pain. I've had to have my router replaced twice this summer due to thunderstorms. 
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Aug 5, 2014 17:39
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In this game, is it even possible to run an internet libertarian paradise that has almost no policies and the lowest taxes possible while providing no government services? The litany of assassinations I've suffered seems to imply otherwise. People really don't like you cutting their guvmint programs.
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Aug 5, 2014 17:41
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alcaras posted:In this game, is it even possible to run an internet libertarian paradise that has almost no policies and the lowest taxes possible while providing no government services? People like food, work and housing. Not so much liberty at all cost. 
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Aug 5, 2014 17:42
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  Shortly before the election, the LFAP declared that all drugs were once again to be made illegal, a full reversal of their early efforts to perform a full legalization of all recreational substances. For the next few weeks, the gloating of every political commentator who had opposed legalization in the first place was unceasing.  At the same time the popular state housing program was completely gutted, cancelling the projects still in the planning stage and letting private entrepreneurs take over what few constructions had already begun.  When reviewing the four years under the LFAP as elections drew close, most agreed that they had at least been rather ideologically consistent if nothing else, holding a firm course of social-liberalism, although many of their most ambitious social programs had been rolled back during the economic turmoil of the last year of the term.  A final look at the state of Germany before the election. Many LFAP members expect the worst as election day closes in.  ELECTION DAY      The worst arrives, on cue.  The LFAP manages to get only 20% of the electoral vote, and the only voter group to give them even a slight majority of their votes are the poors. Not even the traditional environmentalist supporters come through. Interestingly, the LFAP actually manages to have a larger party member turnout than the opposition. After the LFAPs landslide loss, the triumphant leadership of the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän Partei promises a hasty reversal of many of the LFAPs flagship policies in order to save Germany from ruin. In the year following the loss many former members of government flee Germany due to threats from all sides of the political spectrum, and the Lederhosen für Alles Partei is formally disbanded. The wearing of lederhosen in public is frowned upon for decades to come. Post election review    Some quite drastic changes have been made to Germany. Most of these can be put down as direct effects of the ruined economy and extreme poverty, but seriously: Middle earnings dropping by 63.18%? That's impressive. Half the private housing sector disappearing is quite notable as well. Technology actually improved though  Just ask if you're wanting to know what caused any of these changes!So, this is almost it for this Let's Play. I'm planning to do a short write-up of what our greatest mistakes were, and possibly do a quick run starting from the budget fixing update, to see if the game is winnable from that point. (I think it is) I hope you've all had fun running Germany into the ground! Covski fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 10, 2014 14:38
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Covski posted:we lost Well at least we tried to fix it. Thanks for the LP, OP. I'm definitely going to look into picking the game up, now that I seem to have a grasp on the mechanics.
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Aug 10, 2014 15:45
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We did a spectacular job, I'm proud of each and every one of you! The capitalist and religious voting results were especially hilarious but the fact that more people preferred to stay home (?) rather than vote for us was the best.
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Aug 10, 2014 18:51
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At least the poor won us the election of President of the Poor. I'm surprised we even got 1% votes from the religious though. Explain this craziness.
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Aug 11, 2014 20:34
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Mogren posted:At least the poor won us the election of President of the Poor. I'm surprised we even got 1% votes from the religious though. Explain this craziness. We could only afford voting machines that didn't have better than a 1% failure rate; also we rigged failures to default to us.
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Aug 11, 2014 21:00
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I find the large increases in equality and racial tensions together rather interesting. Goon Democracy had some positive impacts on the country! Not enough to offset how much the economy got tanked, but there were things that are better than when we took over.
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Aug 11, 2014 23:29
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Just caught up on this and I hope you will please run a second country after this one is done.
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Aug 30, 2014 23:34
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Nietzschean posted:Just caught up on this and I hope you will please run a second country after this one is done. So do I actually. The rules have been polished throughout this first LP and I joined a bit late.
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Aug 31, 2014 06:30
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Perhaps we can -not- totally destroy a country this time 
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Aug 31, 2014 15:05
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Ahundredbux posted:Perhaps we can -not- totally destroy a country this time Let's not lie to ourselves here.
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Aug 31, 2014 19:35
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This LP was pretty awesome and I'm hoping someone does a similar one sometime soon. (if you're not!)
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Aug 31, 2014 19:53
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Hey guys! The last updates are still being delayed due to ongoing internet woes at home. I'll probably get the "what mistakes were I'll most likely be up for doing another play-through with a different country sometime later this autumn, depending on how much free time I have. Maybe next time we can at least win the first election without dying horribly!
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Aug 31, 2014 20:53
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Ahundredbux posted:Perhaps we can -not- totally destroy a country this time Well I can already see I won't be supporting this party's platform.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:11
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I like how car, rail, AND bus usage all went down, simply because nobody had a job to commute to anymore.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:54
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Covski posted:I'll most likely be up for doing another play-through with a different country sometime later this autumn, depending on how much free time I have. Maybe next time we can at least win the first election without dying horribly! Really hope you have time for this. It was an enjoyable, but too short of a ride. I wonder how many games will it take until we win? If there was just one person playing, that wouldn't be too much of a hassle, but this participatory LP creates some new challenges. Namely: democracy is too hard.
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Sep 1, 2014 10:58
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Hazamuth posted:Really hope you have time for this. It was an enjoyable, but too short of a ride. I wonder how many games will it take until we win? If there was just one person playing, that wouldn't be too much of a hassle, but this participatory LP creates some new challenges. Namely: democracy is too hard. If coordination becomes a problem, the LPer could always retake control of the game every few turns to keep things somewhat on tracks. I prefer full viewer control with advices though, it's still more manageable than twitchplay democracy (what isn't?) so we've got a fair shot at winning this.
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Sep 1, 2014 14:59
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Working on the post mortem writeup now!Khisanth Magus posted:I find the large increases in equality and racial tensions together rather interesting. Goon Democracy had some positive impacts on the country! Not enough to offset how much the economy got tanked, but there were things that are better than when we took over. Yeah, for all of the fluff about how the increase in equality was caused by everybody being equally poor, it was mostly a direct effect of our policies - namely our quest to tax the absolute hell out of everything. Are you implying that in increase in equality is a good thing, though? Mzbundifund posted:I like how car, rail, AND bus usage all went down, simply because nobody had a job to commute to anymore. This is somewhat of an accomplishment, yes! Looking closer at it now, the game seems to be smart enough to actually base these statistics on the number of people in the "commuter" voter group. (and this group of course shrank a lot due to unemployment) Otherwise, bus usage should actually have increased, since rail usage went down and poor earnings actually improved a bit. Hazamuth posted:Really hope you have time for this. It was an enjoyable, but too short of a ride. I wonder how many games will it take until we win? If there was just one person playing, that wouldn't be too much of a hassle, but this participatory LP creates some new challenges. Namely: democracy is too hard. Heh, I'm not sure you're allowed to call half a year "too short"  Mogren posted:If coordination becomes a problem, the LPer could always retake control of the game every few turns to keep things somewhat on tracks. I prefer full viewer control with advices though, it's still more manageable than twitchplay democracy (what isn't?) so we've got a fair shot at winning this. Yeah, I might be a bit more generous with reinterpreting the policy proposals for better effect next time around, rather than implementing them to the letter, as well as stepping in with rules like I did with the austerity measures, to prevent really game-ending mistakes. I actually initially considered running the LP by having a number of different logical "sets" of policies people could vote for each turn rather than proposing legislation themselves. This would have made it easier to succeed and alleviated the problem of the relative lack of information you guys had to deal with. In the end though, I think this way was more fun. At least for me, watching goons arbitrarily proposing whatever piece of silliness strikes their fancy at each particular moment is the most amusing thing about participation LPs, especially the part when everything goes down in flames. Still, I must say I'm a bit surprised by the relative lack of goons banding together to try to implement some form of long-term agenda! (but I guess this is still preferable to clusterfucks like the Crete LP)
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Sep 5, 2014 21:41
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Post-mortem analysis - Where did we go wrong? Mistakes were made. Let's take a quick look at our most grievous errors, and see what we could have done better.  The big one. Unlike the situation for real world governments - balancing the budget is a huge deal in Democracy 3. This is mostly because of the how interest rates increase really quickly as your credit rating is downgraded - making it even harder to achieve a surplus. Once you hit the budget crises event, as we did, it is nearly impossible to win an election since it makes everyone hate you, and at this point the only realistic way to recover is pretty hefty cuts which will probably only make people hate you even more. In most games of Democracy 3, you can expect the global economy to take a nosedive quite early on. If the budget isn't at least balanced when the economy is stable, you can expect to have some trouble when the recession starts. I honestly believe that we could have won the election, if only we had kept the budget in check. As you can see from the chart above, we ran a surplus at exactly three points during the entire run - one of which was after I used my emergency powers of ignoring political capital to clear up the mess. In retrospect, I could have been clearer on how dangerous debt was, but I wanted to give you the experience of learning first-hand In conclusion: Goons are terrible at holding on to money.  In the same vein, we were pretty bad at pandering to the voters. We did well at keeping the socialists happy - they were the biggest voter bloc and therefore important. Unfortunately, we also managed to piss off many of the groups that supported us to begin with, while not making many new friends. Really, there were few groups that liked us more in the end than they did at the start, especially losing the support of the liberals and the trade unionists hurt us a bit. Still, we might have been okay had we balanced that budget. In general, you can do pretty well either by pandering to a few large enough groups, and taking measures to help increase their numbers or sticking to the middle of the road and not annoying anyone at all (but where's the fun in that?) - we did neither. Even though it is almost unavoidable to piss off some groups, you want to make sure that they aren't angry enough to take violent action against you by throwing them a bone once in a while. Our policy of "gently caress the rich and the religious and the conservative and the middle class and sometime also the poors" didn't really mesh with this principle. In conclusion: goons are p bad at making friends  The whole poverty thing, you know?  This was the big one: Generally, we loved our regressive taxes (taxes that aren't based on your income, thus hitting poor people harder), and the alcohol tax was the big one. This early piece of legislation really laid the foundations for our poverty spiral as well as our budgetary woes. Remember, the extra income from the booze tax made us overspend leaving us in a spot of bother as the income started to decline, as the booze tax itself made people consume less booze, thus making the booze tax earn us less money over time. Also, at such an high level it was hilariously ineffective as a measure to stop alcohol abuse, as the the increase in poverty made people more prone to alcoholism. In conclusion: Goons are awful at holding their liquor.  Doing the same thing with the drugs also didn't help, of course. Still, the poverty could have been manageable if it hadn't been for all the unemployment...   Oh, what's that? We drove out all the business owners and addicted our entire workforce to heroin? Well, that isn't exactly great for the productivity, or the GDP. Y'know, the factors that keep unemployment down. And again, the debt crisis wrecked the GDP once and for all preventing a last-minute recovery. You know, for all the harping on the stupidity of legalizing heroin, it was far from our greatest mistake. If it hadn't been for all the other problems, we could probably have been able to abide the drug addiction issue. I'm not saying it was a good idea, but it was far from the thing that made us lose. Really, trying to break it down I find it hard to point to any one thing as the root cause of our troubles. Whether this means that the game is good at simulation the complexity of real world economics, or due to the sheer amount of stupid mistakes, I'll let you be the judge In conclusion: Goons are pretty bad at governance Still, if I have to point to any single problem that hurt us the most, it has to be the lack of a balanced budget. As mentioned, I'll do a quick play-through from after the whole budget sanitation and see if I can win from that point - and I'm thinking keeping the budget in the black will have to be my main priority. We'll see if I'm right about that. Hopefully, this huge spergpost has given you a bit more insight about the game, and particularly the many ways we messed up! Just ask if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on
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Sep 5, 2014 22:44
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If we hadn't lost the election, what would have been the effects of our abrupt hairpin policy reversal? I mean the take-my-toys-and-go-home decision to suddenly ban drugs and such. Are voters savvy enough to get cynical at such a move?
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Sep 7, 2014 19:27
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Mzbundifund posted:If we hadn't lost the election, what would have been the effects of our abrupt hairpin policy reversal? I mean the take-my-toys-and-go-home decision to suddenly ban drugs and such. Are voters savvy enough to get cynical at such a move? In the experience I have with this game, if you've hosed up this badly there's not much you can really do except to try to slowly guide things back on track. Making drastic reversals will usually just make things worse.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:12
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Mzbundifund posted:If we hadn't lost the election, what would have been the effects of our abrupt hairpin policy reversal? I mean the take-my-toys-and-go-home decision to suddenly ban drugs and such. Are voters savvy enough to get cynical at such a move? Yup, cynicism when reversing a policy is definitely a thing. However, I'm pretty fuzzy on how this works mechanically, ie how big the change must be in order to cause cyncism or whether it only applies when cancelling policies outright, and if voters care how long time passes between implementing the policy and cancelling it, etc. But as AnoHito said, drastic changes are often inadvisable unless absolutely necessary. This sort of becomes a balancing act though, as there is no difference in political capital cost for raising a tax 1% or 20%, giving you the choice of one drastic tax hike, or doing it incrementally at a higher PC cost. It's pretty weird sometimes. On the flipside it's almost always more economical to lower the funding of a policy to the absolute minimum than actually cancelling it, as this allows you to keep the policy at negligible cost and effects, for a much lower PC cost. This feels a bit cheesy to me though, although I enjoy the idea of my government secretly moth-balling programs by gutting their budgets, rather than facing all the negative public attention that would come from actually cancelling them.
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Sep 8, 2014 16:48
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Covski posted:This feels a bit cheesy to me though, although I enjoy the idea of my government secretly moth-balling programs by gutting their budgets, rather than facing all the negative public attention that would come from actually cancelling them. If it were a bit more realistic, then you could gut the program, then be cheered when it was cancelled because of how "ineffective" it was
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Sep 8, 2014 17:29
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Who would've thought running a flip-flop government could fail?
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Sep 11, 2014 20:36
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Heads-up guys, Democracy 3 is on sale on Steam this weekend - it's definitely worth a spin at that prize if you were on the fence! (the alternate run is still on hold until I get at least reasonably stable internet at home again, I haven't forgotten though)
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Oct 3, 2014 13:00
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Covski posted:Heads-up guys, Democracy 3 is on sale on Steam this weekend - it's definitely worth a spin at that prize if you were on the fence! Thanks for the update in both regards. Hurry up with that next run, I'm eager to get in on the ground floor.
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Oct 3, 2014 17:45
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Covski posted:Heads-up guys, Democracy 3 is on sale on Steam this weekend - it's definitely worth a spin at that prize if you were on the fence! I was on the fence about buying this game until finding this LP. drat you, Covski. 
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Oct 4, 2014 03:49
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Another heads-up! Since I'm borrowing a friends apartment which has an actual working internet connection, I'll be able to get the bonus alternate run stuff up in the next few days, to finally be able to finish up this thread. That will be nice. In other news a new DLC for the game came out today, and it looks like it includes some potentially pretty fun stuff. I'll be sure to try to pick that up for the next LP run of Democracy 3, whenever that happens.
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Oct 28, 2014 10:38
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Covski posted:Another heads-up! Since I'm borrowing a friends apartment which has an actual working internet connection, I'll be able to get the bonus alternate run stuff up in the next few days, to finally be able to finish up this thread. That will be nice. I was pretty unhappy with the DLC on offer so far. Mostly since it offers stuff on par with what you find in mods, and are expected to pay out the nose for it. It never really offered new challenges, just new ways to break the game even more in one direction.
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Oct 28, 2014 12:19
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So, that took a bit of experimenting to get done. Turns out the Budget Crisis situation is a bit of a loss criteria, especially when it hits you that close to an election, and I wasn't able to do anything to recover the situation from the point where we did the budget cleansing. Instead, I had to go back to the turn before (before the budget crisis struck) and do the same thing. The result:    It's a bit unbelievable how I managed to get a whopping 8% of the capitalist vote.For comparison, the result in the real run.  I even earn a snazzy achievement for my trouble.  The polls, on the turn after the election. The polls in the real run.  The budget, on the turn after the election. The budget in the real run. The things I did, turn by turn: First turn: The big old budget cleansing sans the cuts to the health service (since that turned out horribly last time), instead taking the axe to some other less vital areas (mostly transportation) and raising the income tax more instead of more harmful taxes such as carbon and petrol taxes. Second turn: Street gangs appeared. Didn't ban same sex marriage (gotta keep those liberal voters happy!) Implemented food stamps - as seen in the LP, this is a relatively cheap, popular, and effective way to lower poverty. Brought alcohol tax down a bit, since it caused us a lot of poverty problems. To compensate for this, I started an alcohol awareness program. Third turn: Those cheeky vigilante mobs appeared. Some priceless art was stolen. I didn't implement Stop and Search, way too late to be throwing bones to the conservatives at this point. I actually didn't implement anything this turn, waiting to let the budget stabilize. Fourth turn: The obesity problem ended. By now the surplus was big enough that I felt comfortable implementing free eye tests, food standards agency and free school meals. All these are relatively cheap policies aimed at keeping health up and poverty down (as well as buying some votes). Fifth turn: Our credit rating improves! This is great, since the sudden decrease in interest payment makes the surplus huge. Achieved an egalitarian society. Still a good surplus, implemented childcare provision, youth club subsidies (good for crime prevention) Sixth turn: Race riots become a thing, for some reason. The religious condemn me. A minister resigns, hurting our popularity. (I totally missed that she wanted to talk about it last turn. Whoops!) There was a hostage situation event. I put more money into the state housing. I remembered that I still had all drugs legal, and promptly put it down to only cannabis. (I probably should have done this earlier. Whoops again!) Election! At the same time, the street gangs and drug abuse problem ended. So there's that. I'm quite unsure how far back you'd have to go to climb out the hole we dug for ourselves, without using any cheating shenanigans by disabling PC costs. Still, even in our case winning the elections wasn't all that hard after fixing the budget and rectifying some of our most stupid decisions. (jeez, that alcohol tax) Well folks, this is it for this LP, and I hope you all enjoyed it! I'll leave the thread up for a week our so for general discussion and in case any of you want to see some final screenshots or something. Since there seems to be a bit of interest, I'll probably run another LP of the game with a different country at a later point, so keep your eyes out for that. Feel free to let me know if you have any feedback on changes or improvements that could be made to the format for the next run.Thanks to all of you that participated, I had a grand time!
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Oct 29, 2014 13:54
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Should probably link the new LP as your final post before closing this thread (or put a link in the OP) for those interested in later reading both of them back to back.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:08
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evilmiera posted:I was pretty unhappy with the DLC on offer so far. Mostly since it offers stuff on par with what you find in mods, and are expected to pay out the nose for it. It never really offered new challenges, just new ways to break the game even more in one direction. Yeah, I'll agree that the DLC has been rather underwhelming in terms of changing how the game plays, although at least the trailer for this one seems to hint that it will have a bigger impact. Still as I've mentioned previously the game is most fun for me when I'm futzing around with the intention of seeing what kinds of weird societies I can create, and the DLC have provided some fun tools for that. And hell, 5€ is about the price of a decent beer at a pub, so I'll probably give it a buy sooner or later (at least before the next LP) Nietzschean posted:Should probably link the new LP as your final post before closing this thread (or put a link in the OP) for those interested in later reading both of them back to back. Good thinking, I'll do that provided this thread is still in the live forums when the next thread goes up!
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Nov 8, 2014 00:17
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