{"id":3881,"date":"2016-05-15T11:26:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T10:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=3881"},"modified":"2016-05-15T11:26:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T10:26:45","slug":"autobalancing-democracy-3-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2016\/05\/15\/autobalancing-democracy-3-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Autobalancing Democracy 3 (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

So it turns out that we already have about 2,000 games of Democracy 3<\/a> being played every day by actual players, rather than some hacked-together AI of mine, so I thought step 1 might be to grab data on how those games are being played to see if I could spot any obvious balance issues. I started collecting a few basic stats at the point of elections yesterday and already have a ton of data here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/democracy3\/stats.php<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a few pieces of data I was interested plus a snapshot at elections as to which of the best known situations are active during victories and during defeats. So for example 1% of people who won the election have gridlock, but 10% of losers do. Average GDP during an election is 51% but 55% if you win, and so on…<\/p>\n

Actually extrapolating balance issues from this data will be a bit tricky though, as I likely need more data to back up my assertions, but right now, from the current data I am tempted to proclaim the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The game is too easy (85% of elections are won. Granted some people get assassinated beforehand…but still..)<\/li>\n
  2. Unemployment at victories is still 28%. Maybe unemployment is not having enough of a negative impact?<\/li>\n
  3. 20% of people have eliminated poverty entirely (got it to 0%). That seems high. This should be harder.<\/li>\n
  4. Gridlock is only a problem for 1% of victories. Maybe this should be harder\/slower to fix?<\/li>\n
  5. Teacher shortage never seems to be much of a problem, this should trigger more?<\/li>\n
  6. Armed robbery is generally very rare, even when losing. This should maybe trigger more?<\/li>\n
  7. Corporate exodus is actually higher during victory. This may actually make sense, as people are ‘buying’ the public support despite a huge debt?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Its going to be pretty difficult to get the exact data I want. For one thing, the game NEEDS situations that are *bad* but only crop up in later terms, and I don’t currently track which term we are in. Democracy 3 Africa has a very cool mechanic where people arent bothered about some issues until more pressing issues have been fixed. I suspect I may need to introduce an element of that here.<\/p>\n

    My main worry, a bit like a doctor is that I need to ensure I ‘do no harm’. Its better for me to leave Democracy unbalanced but hugely popular than tweak it and break it…so I#’m nervous of any big changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So it turns out that we already have about 2,000 games of Democracy 3 being played every day by actual players, rather than some hacked-together AI of mine, so I thought step 1 might be to grab data on how those games are being played to see if I could spot any obvious balance issues.<\/p>\n

    Continue Reading… Autobalancing Democracy 3 (part 2)<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,117,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democracy-3africa","category-democracy3","category-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3881"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3883,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}