Screenshot Democracy 3, an LP: Serenes Forest flies the Commonwealth of Australia into the [heavens/ground]

[euklyd]

While I wouldn't use the "eats babies" style argument, land mines are an economical weapon in the long run. After you planted them, who's gonna clean them up?

what part of the argument is incorrect?

it's appealing to emotion, sure, but it's entirely correct

(unless you're just saying that you wouldn't make an argument about landmines killing people long after conflicts are over being reason enough to ban them)

[Excellen Browning]

I don't think the argument is incorrect, I just wouldn't use it.

[Rehab]

Oh, forgot to mention in the last reply to Gyarados: there are indeed reserve funds in D3, but in my experience any nation that starts out with them tends to still have such a large budget deficit at the beginning that they're immediately wiped away, and debt starts a-climbin.

(At least that's what I think tends to happen. I think I've at least looked at the start of all 6 countries and they all had deficits, but I didn't check the reserves for all of them, and I probably haven't paid enough attention long enough to have actually noticed them being a factor.)

Pass the law.

And christ, the idea of religious extremists in Australia... sure, we have a generic religious conservatives party (Family First) but it was literally outvoted by the Sex Party in most of the urban southeast...

Funny thing, there seem to be unique stat boosts for every country, sometimes in relatively obscure areas, like I think France might have a penalty to immigration? Australia in turn has a 19% penalty to Religious membership, labeled something like Australian Demographics, and they're shrinking in our Australia- they can't have started at more than 10% of the population, and now they're down to 3.15%. (And apparently they can still go to the trouble of trying to kill us.)

I also found that the Ethnic Minority faction has an even bigger unique penalty, 32%. They currently make up... 0.00% of the Australian population, according to the game. Shoot, I didn't even know that could happen- I knew it's possible for a bunch of other factions to disappear, like the Motorists or Liberals/Conservatives, Socialists/Capitalists or indeed the Religious, but I assumed it was somehow guaranteed that there would always be some Ethnic Minorities around. I might guess it's the really high immigration control Australia has by default in D3 that did it.

And the unique penalty. Obviously.

(Racial Tension has also bottomed out. Imagine.)

hype 8]

imo it'd make more sense implement as few new taxes as feasible at least until your GDP recovers, but idk if the game will even factor that into your economy, so it probably doesn't matter

as far as land mines are concerned you should ban the shit out of them
also I am proposing a mandatory minimum sentence for any citizen that says something along the lines of "waaaah you're taking away my right to defend my home"
(yes I'm aware that's not the issue shut up)

it's also the option less likely to piss off the human rights society even further

sidenote: what the fuck does "minimal" membership mean if "11 members" doesn't count

pedit: wow only when looking at the full-size images do I notice that it tells you how much things change on the graph portion

Yeah, I just came really close to doing *checks in Word* a two-page rant on the economy in this game, but that actually feels like it might spoil some of the fun. The short and least-curmudgeonly version is that taxes are pretty good in D3, imo. We will attempt to take it relatively easy on poor AUS going forward, though.

(Which isn't even to try and kick a hornet's nest and say "taxes are too ___ in D3," for the record. It feels a bit more idiosyncratic, more contradictory than that.)

While I wouldn't use the "eats babies" style argument, land mines are an economical weapon in the long run. After you planted them, who's gonna clean them up?

thanks_satan('sadvocate).gif :p

We took a microscopic hit to GDP from banning land mine manufacturing, but the Liberals are a good 10% happier with us. Oddly enough, it was the Patriots, not the Capitalists who were upset by that. Maybe even the caps are of the opinion that after a certain point, the bad PR's not worth it. (not that it has stopped them before heyooooooooo)

[spoiler='TURNS 16 AND 17: ON OUR CRIPPLING ADDICTION TO MAKING THAT PAPER]Turn 16 starts with 2 positive events at once! One random, one not.

Science Funding level: Hadron Collider

(a symptom of either, indeed, high Science Funding, or maybe just a high Technology/Education stat)

And our credit rating's back up!

We only had a deficit for 3 turns, got a downgrade on the second, then the first turn we have a surplus again, we got it upgraded back. It's a little nuts. (and maybe a personal D3 record)

Now that we've managed to get a surplus with much less help from the Global Economy, I think we have a lot of leeway, but if we don't keep it up, our advantage could slip away as we increase spending. Now the challenge is keeping it going (and still making our ministers happy, which is necessary for our PC to not degrade, again)

Wotta beaut.

I almost forgot how hard increasing GDP hits the Environment, though. All the negative related stats have surged and the positive ones have been hit, and they'll end up costing us in a few good ways if we don't address them. (It's probably about time that a party partially elected on a platform of helping the environment actually got around to it, sorry about that)

Starting us off:

Good policy here: just 4 PC, good investment for both that and 4 billion. The only problem is that it implements kinda slow, and even if it didn't the environment has been taking enough of a beating that we'll need a lot of policies at once to really improve it (assuming we're doing a bit to try to increase Income at the same time).

(I actually thought this policy even increased GDP a bit, which would've made it less understandable for the Capitalists to dislike it, but increasing our Energy Efficiency stat should be good for decreasing our Expenditures anyway. Besides, our GDP is so cranked-up that the Capitalists are probably too high on life to be that angry.)

Finally, a bone for the Trade Unionists, as promised:

This policy wasn't implemented at all before. Must've been the wild west out there.

(for the record, our productivity is almost as high as it can get at this point, so the dock there won't hit us too hard)

And one more policy this turn, just one of those little 2 PC mini-boosters.

Implements pretty fast compared to the Business Council thing.

On to turn 17:

Yeah, now that we had a surplus I couldn't resist filling out the last billion. Ish sho good yuo guysh

And some environment aid stuff:

I misremembered, we in fact only have 4 bus subsidies to drop on the Asthma Epidemic's ass. Yeah, wasn't kiddin

(..."proper, approved school buses?" is there any other kind I should know about?)

Just another little 2-PC gesture.

Another day, another policy issue. Prepare to vote!

Not sure if it's the Patriots, Capitalists, or Self-Employed who're most likely to be pushing option 1, but our old pals the Socialists and Liberals are the likely ones behind option 2. Anybody's guess whether this actually has an effect on GDP, the effectiveness of our Intelligence Agency, or anything else.

[spoiler=CURRENT AFFAIRS]Turn 17 main:

We don't even have to look at the Environment stat to know it's taking a hit, we can tell by how the greens have dropped out of the green even though we've been sending them presents left and right. At least the unionists are our a little less up in our face now. (also, looks like we're polling pretty well just a few turns from the election. chew on that, Middle Incomes)

(also also, have the Liberals grown since the first turn? I think the Liberals may have grown. wonder how exactly that happened)

Finance:

Makes me wonder how good Australia needs the Global Economy stat to be at this point to stay afloat comfortably. We are indeed doing pretty well, considering the apparent rest of the world.

Security:

Aw, fer chrissake, I'm not even sure whose faction the Freedom League terrorists belong to. I'm betting on the Liberals, though it could be the Patriots too. At least we have goodies we can distribute for either of them, but I've been saving that PC for something, dang it.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Rehab

[Excellen Browning]

There are good reasons to keep databases with customer information, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with gathering and processing to find out which groups of people might be interested in what product. And considering we have elective government, what sort of information the government, outside of a few civil services, keeps on its citizens is publically available knowledge to begin with. However, as companies are not elective government with such things as freedom/availability of information acts to force them to openly state what information they keep and no direct ways of stopping them from doing this, some limited legislation should be passed, to provide a limit to company power.

Propose a digital freedom act, if maybe not as stringent as the one suggested.

[Parrhesia]

Implements pretty fast compared to the Business Council thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn_CPrCS8gs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhHCnXGf43E

igood member title and post combination tbh

Edited November 12, 2014 by Parrhesia

[euklyd]

"should not be monitored by multinational corporations with computer databases"

there are a lot of good reasons to do this; if the law was like, "corporations must seek permission before collecting info" that would be cool

so, a less stringent version of the act, as Gyarados suggested

[Rehab]

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like D3 gives us policies that correspond to the database issue quite as closely as the Work Safety Law policy did to the corporate manslaughter bill before. It seems like the policies the game gives us that come closest to addressing issues even tangentially related to the whole-hog Freedom Act decision include: Consumer Rights* (the description seems to focus a little more on things like guaranteeing the right to get a refund, as opposed to having to do with the internet directly, but then again we could just assume that it takes this whole issue into account), an Internet Tax and Internet Currency Tax (this is really reaching for stuff that's even vaguely related to the internet), Internet Censorship (mostly an extreme way to fight a couple of negative situations, so I've found, or of course to simply get the Big Brother achievement), and Electronic Direct Democracy (notable for costing a whopping 55 PC, appears to have more to do with voting than anything else).

*probably the closest to what we're looking for, imo

I may end up flipping a d2 again on this one, though you guys can feel free to change your votes if you'd like, now that the choice is known to be between "nothing" and "palls to the wall Freedom Act" (and/or maybe Consumer Rights)

(also, sometimes the same policy events can come up again, so you may wish to know that our decision here isn't necessarily final)

it's also the option less likely to piss off the human rights society even further

sidenote: what the fuck does "minimal" membership mean if "11 members" doesn't count

pedit: wow only when looking at the full-size images do I notice that it tells you how much things change on the graph portion

Oh, forgot to try to answer this before: Yeah, I found myself search for a site with the game's code guts splayed out to try to find an explanation for some things like this, along with what exactly influences terrorist group membership/the numbers for all groups mentioned on the security page/what the interest groups really do/what exactly makes an assassination attempt trigger, and could only find the developer's forum, which just had some scattershot answers to random questions and more than its fair share of less-than-insightful back-and-forths on politics. I think it's a pity this game/franchise doesn't seem to have the equivalent of a CivFanatics (for the crazies who write pages explaining the actual implications to be drawn from a game's code, and the mere obsessives who love them, like me), or much more than a sparse-if-not-entirely-bare wikia.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Rehab

[Rehab]

Dang, it was the State Employees who got a happiness boost, the caps, S-E'd and pats didn't bat an eye.

Liberals are relatively livid, happiness took a 13 point drop. Dang it, I was hoping to save this PC.

[spoiler=TURN 18: ON CURING OUR CRIPPLING ADDICTION TO MAKING THAT PAPER]Ended up enacting this before turn 17 ended, partially for our consensus and partially because we really do not need a 13% penalty with the libs going unchecked right now:

Probably not a policy you'd want to enact any old time (unless it's for personal reasons), but the downsides aren't anything we can't handle. The thing I appreciated least is the 14 PC cost.

Turn eighte-oh fucksake

"Small update today, huh."

Taking a look at the new negative situation, Water shortage:

So, this is new to the game with Clones&Drones, never had to face it before. Appears to cost more than half of all the ones I've ever seen, and the Farmer happiness penalty is fairly respectable. There are a lot of policies that increase Farmer membership, so I might imagine if we had been building them up this might've been an even ruder shock, both in situation intensity and in happiness lost. They're sure not gonna be green much longer.

I have so far found one policy that deals with this directly at all, one Climate Change Adaptation Fund. It costs 15 billion to enact even the cheapest version, and goes up to a my-jaw-dropping 57 billion at the far end. And the only thing it appears to do, aside from decreasing the severity of this situation (but not on the lowest setting! have to spend like 27 billion to do that), is to make Farmers and Environmentalists happy and to decrease Unemployment (before this situation triggered, I didn't see it affect anything except those 3 things. I was like "at least 15 billion just to hit unemployment? Yeah, right. this is a situation-fighter, huh"). Although I can imagine there may be other as-yet-unrevealed Negative Situations it might help with and/or prevent... tricky stuff, D3. Or, maybe we could just improve our Environment stat by a fuckload. Either one is gonna take some serious investment...

Trivia: Clones&Drones is sorta marketed as a "near-future" addon, but a year or so ago I'd already heard this kind of thing had started happening in California, at the least, and I imagine it's not the only place in the world experiencing it. Heavy stuff.

Before I get to the policy question, our PC spent for this turn:

This policy was already in place, and it's only 3 PC to raise for what might be one of the single biggest Environment-boosting policies in the game (like 26% or something? A single policy breaking 15% is pretty dang good), albeit a slow-acting one. (An incentive to enact it before shit starts going down, of course...)

I'm still pretty sure we can handle another little GDP hit. I have to wonder if we're actually going to get the results we want, with GDP increasing at the same time as we're frantically enacting green policies, though.

Saving up for a near-40 PC one next turn, just popping off a couple more:

Policies which affect the Environment stat directly aren't quite difficult to find, but they're not all that common either, so every bit helps. Also this is relatively cheap and quick-acting. (And it was already in place, I'm just maxing funding)

Last, the first of 2 2-PC lil bike policies:

Decreases the shit we use oil on a little, improves health a little, under 0.3 billion, only 2 PC to enact. Not bad! Not big, but not bad.

And here's the policy question. Prepare to vote!

I believe the Capitalists face both the greens and Farmers in the opposition here. No idea what the stat impacts might be, honestly.

[spoiler=CURRENT AFFAIRS]Turn 18 main:

We've been losing a lot of greens lately, haven't we. Wait no come back

We've been making bank, time to spend some of it. Capitalists probably aren't going to be too happy with us by the time we're done. Here's hoping we can spend the PC efficiently in a short enough time.to prevent more bad shit happening.

Oblig finance:

GDP... levelling off. Another thing we may need to take a look at fixing.

Security:

Will you guys go home already

Edited November 13, 2014 by Rehab

[euklyd]

a year or so ago I'd already heard this kind of thing had started happening in California, at the least

this is the case it's pretty lame

it's especially bad this year

also I say build the houses because I doubt there's an option for high-density housing

also "waaah dreadful impact on the rural communities" sounds a lot like all the assholes running for city council saying they want to preserve our "small-town feel"

not petty at all

what would it take to make the "climate change adaptation fund" feasible? we should set that as a stretch-goal imo

[Parrhesia]

Yeah, a water shortage is nothing futuristic.

Surprised there's no straightforward Water Restrictions measure of some kind you can put out to help. Given that. It's how it's fought in real life.

Keep the planning restrictions. ... Not that fussed, so if it's a draw, cross my vote out.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Parrhesia

[Rehab]

this is the case it's pretty lame

it's especially bad this year

also I say build the houses because I doubt there's an option for high-density housing

also "waaah dreadful impact on the rural communities" sounds a lot like all the assholes running for city council saying they want to preserve our "small-town feel"

not petty at all

what would it take to make the "climate change adaptation fund" feasible? we should set that as a stretch-goal imo

We have just enough surplus to enact the least-funded implementation of it now, but that would do very little for such a still-sizable investment other than pay lip service to the greens and Farmers (and maybe have some (small?) part in preventing some as-yet-unseen negative situations, but anyway). Implementing the highest-level version of it, though I might guess it would take care of at least the Water Shortage situation by itself, would either require an overall spending reduction of like 12% (which is probably a lot harder and more costly than it sounds), or, of course, a fair bit of growth, in order to still have a surplus at the end. (which, as we continue to pluck the low-hanging fruits that D3 offers, is not only in a sense making our job protecting the environment harder by shifting the goalposts, it's also getting more and more expensive to do- one such yet-unimplemented investment policy in particular that I have my eyes on costs 24 billion to fund fully.)

You can see the dilemma. I'll add it to our checklist, regardless. it would be really helpful if the game at least gave the CCAF policy some direct bonus to the Environment stat, grumble grumble

Edited November 13, 2014 by Rehab

[Excellen Browning]

Honestly if there is a policy for increasing investment into housing, I'd take that over relaxing the restrictions. The reality is that housing shortage is a very direct problem, and relaxing the restrictions will not be even close to an immediate solution.

[Rehab]

Honestly if there is a policy for increasing investment into housing, I'd take that over relaxing the restrictions. The reality is that housing shortage is a very direct problem, and relaxing the restrictions will not be even close to an immediate solution.

Indeed, there are two.

[spoiler=JUST FOR FUN, A PREVIEW OF HOUSING IN D3]Australia starts with the State Housing policy enacted at halfway, costing ~17 billion, and we can put as much as 30 billion into it.

There's also Mortage Tax Relief, which doesn't diminish the impact Private Housing has.

They basically please and annoy the opposite factions. (Not sure which would be more proper to call "investment.")

Also since we're already here, a checkup on how the Homelessness situation's going:

Whoa. Looks like all the Unemployment-fighting we've been doing has almost licked the thing without us even knowing. I think we could actually beat this situation just by enacting one more policy in particular which actually makes money.

Oddly, I'm not sure what relation this planning policy question has to any of it.

[Rehab]

Sorry for the lack of an update tonight, took a bit long and there's a lot to write up for turns 19 and 20. A preview:

[Rehab]

AGH FUCK hit post accidentally, ignore

(deleting me would also be cool)

Edited November 14, 2014 by Rehab

[Rehab]

We ended up keeping the planning restrictions. Other than a tiny dock to Capitalist happiness, and a tiny boost for the Farmers and greens, the only stat affected I could find was the Homelessness situation, which got a tiny boost, unfortunately, but it's still just a shove away from ending.

[spoiler=TURNS 19 AND 20: GOD DAMN IT, I WAS REALLY HOPING THAT I WAS DONE MAKING NEGATIVE SITUATION PROFILES. (ALTERNATE TITLE: THE INHERENT RISKS OF GETTING SWOLE/MAKING THAT PAPER)]As if we didn't have enough to deal with,

We know, we know.

And as if that wasn't enough to deal with,

Turn 19, everybody.

On the brighter side:

Australia: 2-year(?) reigning Nobel champions of Chemistry

And introducing Negative Situation 10: Internet Crime

Man, do I hate this one. Really wishing I had increased funding for Intelligence Services before.

Okay, so, Intelligence Services actually starts out almost fully funded for Australia, but the amount it helps to counter this situation jumps way the fuck up just in the last bit the we didn't fill in. This is one cheeky motherfucker we really do not need right now, but unfortunately it could be difficult to finish off- Intelligence Services takes time to implement, and it might not even be quite enough. We may need to implement the Internet Censorship policy temporarily to kill it, galling as it may be.

Also on our plate:

*pinches brow*

Fortunately, some select policy changes can hit several of our problems at once.

Not the best development for our bottom line, or our relationships with the libs and caps, but that should be enough for the moment to get the Religious off our backs, and now Organized Crime has become a higher priority, since it's boosting Internet Crime.

Another one to fight both of those:

We're gonna need something to serve as a makeup present for the Liberals, but this is worth it for the impact on both situations, and probably on security in general.
(seriously, we were at 5.12 billion, and raising it up just that much, from "high tech spy agency" to "spy satellite netw[ork]," nearly tripled the projected impact on Internet Crime. this fuckin game sometimes, man)

Fortunately, we have just such a something lying around.

It'll even likely pay itself back in both Tourism and, indirectly, International Trade. Eventually. (It'll just take forever to get going)

Also, since this was just lying around, and only costs another 2 PC and ~0.4billion:

Could take a couple turns, but it should push Organized Crime over the edge, which should help to push Internet Crime over the edge, best-case scenario without enacting Internet Censorship. (Again, my apologies to Tryhard for the constant derailing from tackling the Asthma Epidemic)

Turn twe-

...-nty, everyone.

Aaaaaallllllll right, I've had aaaaaalll's I can stands, and I can't staaaaaaaands no more. Screw waiting for big policies at the moment- if we don't attack just about everything at once right now, we're just gonna keep getting attacked by everything at once. It's time for a blitzkrieg of little things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcOrSWr2HLU

(Pictured: us destroying the Economic Girly Maroon Party on every issue in the upcoming election debate, and subsequently knocking over a domino chain of negative situations with a rapidfire salvo of policies)

Introducing- nyergh- Negative Situation 11: Obesity.

This is one of the less worrisome of the negative situations; it's not dreadfully damaging or expensive, and the treatments are both relatively cheap and fairly numerous. It is, however, catching me in a revengeful mood. (kinda wish the bike investment policies did something for it, though)

Negative Situation 12, Cyber Warfare, on the other hand:

To hell with this one in particular.

Despite the nasty dent in our GDP, our budget surplus actually got larger somehow, now sitting at 24 billion. As we'll see when we check this turn's finances, this is because the Global Economy just shot up uncharacteristically. Of course this means that we could've gotten an even bigger surplus if it weren't for this fucker.

Obviously, this means war.

In a manner of speaking.

So. You may be wondering how the hell I could think this is a good, or even remotely justifiable idea, especially At A Time Like This. There are 2.5 reasons. The level of our Foreign Relations stat corresponds directly with our International Trade stat, which boosts GDP, which means that Foreign Aid in D3 can be thought of as fairly direct investment. Also, our Foreign Relations stat being so low is exacerbating the Cyber Warfare situation, and I want to kill that pest as quick as we can. And the Patriot happiness penalty may look nasty, but if they actually decide to get uppity about this, I have a policy in mind that should quiet them back down.

(We could also increase funding for our military by as much as 20 billion, and get a ~15% hit to the situation for our troubles. That's right, it's literally cheaper to just give the other countries a ton of what they want than it is to try and play their game here.)

(Also, I think at some point in the tutorial something was mentioned along the lines that better Foreign Relations will make terrorist attacks less likely, but, assuming that meant assassination attempts, I'm kind of confused what the rationale would be for more Foreign Aid making The Moral Crusade less likely to have tried to kill us, for example. Not sure what the game meant by that.)

Next on the agenda: LIGHTNING WAR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye0hOlGRki4

Hits Obesity hard and has good economic benefits for its small size, but only acts over time. More is needed. (3 PC)

Decreases use of all transport (except planes) which use oil equally, thereby reducing CO2 emissions and aiding both our environment and our health indirectly, and also gives a direct little boost to health on top of that. (2 PC)

Increases Energy Efficiency, which both directly increases GDP and reduces our dependency on oil, which means a reduction in Expenditures. (4 PC)

It's a 2-PCer. Does what it advertises.

Also we could use always use some more direct income gained by politically popular (overall) means. Sorry, The Poor, we'll get you guys something soon.

Another policy question right before our (re)election. Not sure if I've ever gotten this question before, could be an addition from Clones&Drones. Prepare to vote!

Not sure what factions might be upset by allowing it, other than the Religious, obviously. The way the game approaches cloning, I'm speculating that the Technology and Equality stats might possibly be affected. And/or maybe Health? Maybe.

[spoiler=CURRENT AFFAIRS]Turn 20 main:

We're not at peak popularity (which I think was like a couple of turns ago :smith:), but we should still win a second term next turn without trying very hard, especially since Australia has Compulsory Voting by default. The Capitalists are back to being the biggest grumblers. I'm afraid I can't imagine things will lighten up for them any time soon very easily, though we still have one or two relatively easy presents lying around for them.

Turn 20 finance:

Eeesh. That drop in (relative) GDP made my legs cross. Thank fuck the Global Economy's climbing up to pre-crash levels. I really hope it levels off, though, as opposed to popping all of a sudden or something. (is there any point in the business cycle that economists aren't supposed to be nervous at?)

Security:

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Rehab

[Parrhesia]

ghh cloning's never sat right with me but i have no real reason for it

i shall abstain from the vote

[euklyd]

Who can deny these are exceptional times? Exceptional times demand exceptional measures! Exceptional measures demand exceptional men!

How could we possibly fight the cyberwar but with our very own clone army?

[Rapier]

As much as cloning sounds interesting, I think we shouldn't piss the conservatives and religious any further, lest we want to be done with this run!

So, refuse.

[Excellen Browning]

Cloning is a simple case of affecting genetic diversity in a negative way. Ban human cloning.

[Rehab]

We chose to ban. Or was it that we retained an in-place ban? Regardless the Liberals took it with relative grace, with their happiness docked just 5%, and the Religious got a boost twice that size. No other stats affected, as far as I can see.

[spoiler=TURN 21: FIVE MORE YEARS. FIVE MORE YEARS]It has been 5 years (20 turns), and our first term is ending. Time for a checkup on just how we're doing with the people and the country.

The people:

Pretty damn good for having started out with, what, literally 2% popularity? Some fucking how? Pretty good, I should think. We were always in the lead as the votes were counted up.

(sorry about the patches of light occasionally blocking the view, when we win an election there are some fireworks effects and sounds of applause that last for a minute or so. should've waited until they subsided to take screenshots, my bad)

To recap: Democracy 3 has a system for voting where every voter cares about the issues of several different political factions, each to varying degrees, and their net happiness when all of those are added up determines whether we get their vote (illustrated in this picture, spoilered deep within the first post). So the percentage of the population that a given faction holds doesn't necessarily mean "you have to make that faction happy to get __ percent of the vote," it means "__ percent of the population will factor that faction's happiness into their vote decision." So what this page of data shows us is "how many of the people who were at all influenced by a given faction ended up voting for us." Which explains how we seemed to get a favorable turnout overall with every single faction, despite some of them being not-that-happy with us. (/SYDNTK, sorry)

(The gray bar for Ethnic MInorities is what it looks like when, uh, there's nobody influenced by that faction around to vote. *airs out collar, sweats a little*)

The country:

(the change in productivity is about +24%, sorry about that again)

So! This is, at least for me, kind of a predictably mixed bag. It could just be what amounts to my playstyle, but I usually seem to spend a lot of my first term balancing the budget and then increasing income. It sometimes feels kind of easy to put off combating a lot of the negative stat increases until the second term, when I at least usually have enough money to throw at them.

(Also, this is my first time dealing with the Food Price and Average Temperature.) (dear fuck do I hope the temperature didn't literally rise by 34.45% in just 5 years)

Turn 21 starts out pretty mundane, except oh shit our income just dropped by 30 billion. I'm guessing that I've been reading the economy chart a bit wrong this whole time, and that the most recent dot on the line first come into effect the turn after?

Anyway. The available selection of not-yet-enacted Policies that amount to investments in Income are getting more scarce, more expensive, and more long-term, and we need some surplus fast. I'm also not sure what new things exactly to expect from Drones&Clones, but the couple of reviews I looked at on the steam product page said it makes the game more challenging, particularly in the lategame. We may need to dig in our heels for a storm coming in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bWCyi9F1nY

(would be especially nice if we had some more PC per turn to do it with right about now. cough ministers step it up cough)

Starting with the D3 equivalent, imo, of Goku asking the planet for energy with which to form the spirit bomb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h14BUrjE1WU

And next, the Democracy 3 equivalent of turning your couch upside down looking for the quarters you need to pay the parking meter:

Pro tip: I believe that the PToS can be jacked all the way up and not agitate any Negative Situations, aside from the negative situation wherein the Capitalists lose their shit. Theoretically, we might be able to jack it all the way up without any real consequences at the moment, aside from the opportunity cost of pissing off the Capitalists enough that doing something else afterwards to piss them off would piss them off too much, but we are auditors of honor and restraint who will do without.

(Also; I don't actually know how to translate an exact increase/decrease in GDP into an exact increase/decrease in Income, but this should be at least close enough to worth it to save us from a deficit the coming turn, everything else equal.) (everything else is never equal in D3, of course)

And wouldn't you know it, first turn of the new term and we already have a policy question. Prepare to vote!

Another tiff between the Capitalists and Liberals. I believe this one does indeed have a teeny GDP bump/dock, respectively, though I'm not sure what else. Technology rating, maybe?

[spoiler=CURRENT AFFAIRS]Turn 21 main:

Looks like those pro-environment policies have started taking effect, given the greens are in the green again. Thankfully, the foreign aid increase merely pained the Patriots deeply, as opposed to turning them into a time bomb.

Finance:

Can't see the first turn on the chart anymore (when all we did was enact anti-discrimination law).

Also, the Global Economy is indeed levelling off. I hope it takes its time...

Security:

>Membership: Minimal

>Still a threat

Also, Business First appears. Might want to watch that.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Rehab

[Excellen Browning]

The interesting thing about superstores is that a negative economic effect of them has never been proven, and that their presence somewhere - overall - leads to a slight increase in available jobs. Or at least in the case of Wal-Mart. As far as as being a negative influence on sales for small business, it's not like everyone buys where something can be gotten cheapest - not even the large majority. Not to mention superstores are not at fault for the increase in car usage; it's a really pathetic excuse to tax them extra over it. Besides, congestion charge exists to cover that. I'm overall opposed to taxing superstores more than other conventional consumergoods stores.

On the topic of software patents, it is my belief that the inventor of something should also be the one to reap the monetary rewards of it - for some time. Even if this inventor is a large company. Now, patents are per definition given to concepts, rather than a specific device. This allows patent holders to still pursue legally the copycats who try to change some nuts and bolts and try to sell it off as - legally - not the same piece of tech. Software is in essence not a different concept than something like a machine. It has parts that perform a range of functions and deliver a set product. As such, there is no logical - and actual legal - precedent to ban software from most current patent law. (Albeit the speed of software development should limit the period in which the patent applies) As such I approve of software patents being granted

(this post about patent law does in no way reflect my feelings about the US patent system and its tendencies to patent any- and everything, but there is patent law that makes sense, like the EU patent law)

Edited November 16, 2014 by Gyarados

[Parrhesia]

Tax the shit out of big business, everywhere, all of it. Cripple them. Break them.

I don't really know enough about patent law to have a stake.

[euklyd]

I don't really care enough about superstores, so I am going to sheep Parrhesia, since he happens to be the Australian around here.

Being spiteful and petty, partially for personal reasons, I support the war on patent trolls, of the software variety in particular.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Euklyd

[Excellen Browning]

You both are the cancer that's killing this country