Hello everyone!
After the announcement of the political update, we continue to receive messages from you with questions: “- Well, when already?!”, we answer - in the first quarter of 2021. Those maximum until March 31 (probably earlier), you can try out the functionality on which we have worked so hard recently.
What will the elections look like in the end?
We have implemented more than 5 full-fledged ideas, all of which we, in the end, dismissed. But in the form of concepts, at least 50-60 ideas died, and this is 2-3 concepts per week during 6 (!) months.
The programmers barely opened their eyes from lack of sleep, the artist fell into a creative crisis, the tester tried to go crazy (but was stopped), and the game designers continued an unequal battle with paper prototypes in the hope of getting a more interesting and playable version.
For example, this is how the elections looked in the alpha version:
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We lacked energy and complexity in them!
The elections were too boring and predictable. Therefore, we started by completely revising the entire concept of politics in the game from scratch. And now our final idea is at the last stage of implementation, which became the apotheosis of six-month development!
In addition to completely redesigning the entire concept and game mechanics of elections, lobbying, and laws, we had to introduce additional characteristics to the characters in the game, the main of which are Renown and Political Potential. This enriched the gaming experience and added more realism to the candidates' campaigns. There are more factors influencing the success of candidates in the elections.
Renown is the recognition of a character among the population. The higher this indicator, the more people will know about your character, and the more effectively you can increase the electorate's sympathies for your candidate, and, consequently, his rating. Moreover, Renown is serious baggage with which you can safely grow from your protégé, first a regional, and then a larger politician, as his level of Renown in society grows. After all, whether your candidate is even the most charismatic speaker in the country, without renown among the people, he will not achieve success. And this should be taken into account at the early stage of the game - it will be a desperate attempt to immediately shove an unknown assistant to significant posts in the country.
Potential is the initial sympathies of the population for a character. The point is that all groups of the population tend to vote for the character that belongs to their group. So, for example, believing candidates will receive a bonus to sympathies among the believing part of the population, and those from the middle class - a bonus to sympathies among the middle class.
This is important to consider when choosing your assistant, whom you decide to make a politician. The characteristics and beliefs that do not coincide with the majority of the population will create difficulties for him in the struggle for the post and will require much more resources to win. And in the event of a strong rival, they may even put an end to your political ambitions.
To correctly reflect the essence of political potential, we have introduced 7 social groups into the game. They are divided into race, faith, education, political orientation, financial status, gender, and age. Any character belongs to some 1 stratum of these 7 groups.
In elections, candidates compete with each other to win the sympathies of different groups of the population and take their place in the sun by entering parliament.
There are 3 groups of decisions available to influence the outcome of the elections:
The first group of actions is diplomatic. With its help, you can increase the sympathies of a particular group of the population for your protege.
The second group of actions is economic, or financial. By financing pre-election events, you can increase the visibility of your candidate among the population. Agree that there will be little sense from the sympathies of the population if no one knows the candidate.
The third, last and special group of actions is reputation. You can sacrifice your candidate's reputation to get various bonuses in front of your opponent. However, let's keep the intrigue and leave this part for independent study!
The laws
And now let's move on to the next important aspect of the upcoming update - the laws, which we also had to undergo a deep modernization in comparison with the alpha version.
Laws directly affect the life of the country's population, as well as the well-being of companies.
In the "Laws" window, you see a list of laws, their status, and you can also put any law to a vote.
To put a law to the vote, you will need a lot of influence, as well as an assistant in the lower or upper house of parliament (depending on the type of law you intend to introduce). Also, some laws cannot be submitted to parliament until the related laws have been passed. For example, a law to strengthen the role of trade unions can only be introduced after their activities are regulated in a state or country.
The influence you have to spend on getting the law to vote depends on the popularity of the law. The population loves higher education and health spending and labor laws restricting companies, so you will have to fight for the laws you need to be passed in parliament.
We have also taken into account the party aspect. For example, if your assistant went to parliament from the Democratic Party, then his party is unlikely to be happy if he introduces law to reduce corporate taxes. You will have to push assistants of various views and parties into parliament to skillfully manipulate the legislation of states or an entire country.
For the entire system of laws to work correctly, we had to significantly revise, and in some ways even correct the errors that have not yet been identified in the current economic model. And this greatly affected all many game modules, which led to a significant slowdown in the development time. But today, we can please you that the most difficult thing is behind us, and in the future, after your feedback, we plan to significantly increase the number of laws.
Afterword
In addition to the political part of the game, we have done a lot of work on adding secondary mechanics - researching companies and characters, hiring assistants, etc. This is what we talked about last time. Therefore, we will add them in one big update along with the politics.
At the moment, we are at the final stage of the update development, when minor changes are made to the functionality and balance, the notification system is being finalized. As soon as we understand that we are more or less satisfied with the result, the build will be uploaded to Steam (we repeat - this will happen in any case before the end of the first quarter - March 31). We hope for your understanding of our desire to make a high-quality upgrade to the game.
Thank you all and see you in the next diaries!