Cliffski's Blog

So today I have been in Canada fact finding mode. Would you like to know the average Canadians maple syrup consumption? or the latest estimates for moose population? Forget all that…lets get down to the nitty gritty. A lot of statistical browsing has led me to the rather worrying conclusion that getting the Democracy 3 economic model to make sense over different countries is all but impossible. I am giving it my best shot, but don’t play the game thinking ‘this is Canada’. Play the game thinking ‘this country could vaguely be something like Canada’ and you will be fine!

Right now I am torn between polishing and balancing and adding content that works in the model as a whole (I added some new policies such as flat tax), and making the different countries ‘feel’ more different. I cannot decide which is more important.

For example, Canada is big on mining. Should there be a ‘mining law’ policy to decide how lax environmental controls are? or is that already covered under pollution controls? Are there other issues or events or policies I should add that are Canada specific? or should I worry more about the core simulation and balancing the central game?

Something that is easy to do is to ‘nudge’ the countries attributes more in the direction of the real world, by adding scripts and overrides. I can make Canadians less violent and more law abiding (or vice versa), less (or more) prone to obesity, entrepreneurship or patriotism. I’m open to any commentary from Canadian readers.

BTW I am giving a talk at develop tomorrow. Do come along and say hi if you are at the show.

Democracy 3 has two crime measurements. Violent Crime and Crime Rate. Obviously they can vary massively, depending on your policies. I’ve been investigating the differences between the UK and the USA to try to get the policies to all make sense, whilst also presenting the player with roughly sensible crime and violent crime rates in these two countries. This is, of course, totally impossible. But I like to try six impossible things before breakfast, so I am trying anyway. If all else fails, i can include cultural override scripts to nudge the stats in the right direction. Some countries do naturally have a more law-abiding culture than others, so this is fairly acceptable.

Anyway…

Where I live in the UK, people think that our ban on handguns is a good way to reduce violent crime. In the US, many people think that their freedom to own handguns is a good way to reduce violent crime. I won’t get into the argument too much, except to say I can see both things making sense. If there are more guns, surely there will be more crimes using them (especially suicides). I simply cannot kill a burglar fleeing my home without a gun (although I could probably maim him given twenty seconds to grab my bow). Surely gun availability increases crime… and yet… If I was a burglar, I think I’d be far less likely to break into someones house if I thought they had a pistol under the pillow. And I’d be wary of robbing a bank if half the customers were packing firearms. Hmm…I dunno…

Anyway…

A look at the impartial (ish) world of statistics makes for interesting reading:

http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp

United Kingdom 39.78
United States 53.44

So *more* crime in general in the USA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

United Kingdom 1.2
United States 4.8

So a LOT more homicides in the USA?

I’m not trying to argue for gun control. I just want to work out *why* this is the case. Could it be cultural? is the history of the USA (more recent wild west, frontier attitude) making them more trigger-happy? Is US culture more violent than the UK (I doubt it, we watch the same movies). Maybe Britain has less inequality and more CCTV cameras? It’s a really difficult one to analyze. maybe there *is* something to the argument that more guns just leads to more gun crime, but then why is the overall crime rate not lower? Is the lower population density an issue meaning police response times are slower? maybe Americans report crime more than Brits do? maybe the US has more laws to break?

Of course, we could debate this all year. People do. It’s just one of hundreds, probably thousands of relationships in the game I’m trying to get right. Don’t yell at  me if you disagree. It’s all very very easy to mod :D. But out of curiosity, how do you explain the UK/USA crime stats differences?

I added a brand new feature to democracy 3 today. I know it probably seems a little late to be doing that, but it’s a visual, not a sim feature. It’s a new chart which tracks the initial values of everything when you first took office, and lets you at a glance see how you have made things better/worse since you took power. Spot the accidental text-overspill bug!

I added this because I found myself wishing it was in there as I play tested,. which is always a good reason to add a feature.

In other news, Gratuitous Space Battles is now dropping trading cards on Steam for steam players. Personally I don’t ‘get’ the appeal, but most people do, so who am I to argue eh? In other news, I am adding the USA to Democracy 3 starting today. I had to mod in a bunch of modifiers already. You Americans are less prone to outbreaks of socialism and class warfare and strikes than us Europeans, possibly due to the whole cold-war / McCarthyism thing. You are also a tad more religious, and sadly a bit more prone to drug addiction. A lot of drug production in the nearby south won’t help I guess. You are also a bit more obese, which I’m guessing is due to never having war time rationing?

Obviously these are huge embarrassingly broad generalizations. Such is gaming. Think of it as the reverse of the ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeyness’ of us Europeans :D

I am gradually working towards a more general press-preview build of Democracy 3, and the date at which I approach online portals. This is all mixed in with so much other stuff I’m tired just thinking about it. I need sleeeeeeepppppppp.