Democracy 4
Democracy 4 lets you take the role of President / Prime minister, govern the country (choosing its policies, laws and other actions), and both transform the country as you see fit, while trying to retain enough popularity to get re-elected…
Built on a custom-built neural network designed to model the opinions, beliefs, thoughts and biases of thousands of virtual citizens, Democracy 4 is the state-of-the-art in political simulation games. A whole new vector-graphics engine gives the game a more adaptable, cleaner user interface, and the fourth in the series builds on the past while adding a host of new features such as media reports, coalition governments, emergency powers, three-party systems and a more sophisticated simulation that handles inflation, corruption and modern policy ideas such as quantitative easing, helicopter money, universal basic income and policies to cover current political topics such as police body cameras, transgender rights and tons more.
Democracy 4 is the ultimate sandbox for testing out your political ideas. We all think our politicians are useless and that we could do a better job ourselves, but is that really true? With one eye on the budget, one-eye on the polls, and somehow finding time to watch out for terrorist attacks at the same time, you will find that staying in power while changing society for the better is a tougher job than you ever imagined.
Would it really be a good idea to legalize all drugs? to give the police machineguns? to ban abortion? to invest heavily in green energy? would UBI really work? can you stay elected after cutting pensions in half to pay for your science budget? There is only one game that lets you find out!
The intention in designing this game is to have no implied bias whatsoever (tricky, but we try!) so this is NOT a game that is going to lecture you about politics, or tell you that your beliefs are wrong. This is a strategy game, not a political protest :D. If you want to turn your country into ayn rand’s fantasy, abolish all public spending and all taxes, you can do that. it might work, it might not! depending on how you handle it. On the other hand if you want to nationalise the railways, the energy companies, the water companies, cap CEO pay, ban second-home ownership and put universal income in place, you can do that too. All the game tries to do is model the *likely* effects, short and long term of any action you take.
Because modders have so enthusiastically supported earlier games in the series, we are doing our best to make Democracy 4 as mod-friendly as possible too, and steam workshop support will make choosing and installing mods easy. Ultimately all our data is in text files that you can edit yourself, so if you think our analysis of the link between car tax and car usage is wrong (for example), its trivial to edit it, and share your changes with other players.
Ultimately Democracy 4 is not a game about simply winning an election, but about running the country. Losing an election is just the end-game (unless you get assassinated), the real challenge to the game is whether or not you can create a country you are honestly proud of. I hope you enjoy trying 😀
Game Discussion
Steam User 20
I like the game, its very fun and intuitive. However, I believe that if you lose a election the ai should take over for a term and manage things, during this period of time you would be able to campaign and do all that jazz. once the term is over you would be able to run again and if you won go back to the normal game and you would be able to fix/change what has been done by the ai.
Steam User 32
>Take office in UK
>Reduce poverty
>Grow the economy majorly
>Balance the books, for the first since WW2 we're running a fiscal surplus
>Have a majorly positive effect on the country
>Get voted out
"This games too hard, imma play USA"
>Take office in the USA
>Spend years running the country into the ground
>Yeah I don't know how to play this game, just press buttons
>Cause every fucking crisis
>Election coming up, I don't even realise so I don't campaign
>Re-elected with a landslide
10/10
Steam User 19
Just for the record, I am political independent. I vote the ones I think will benefit the country I live the most. Voted left and voted right.
Played several scenarios in this game and if you are Socialist, this game is for you. Also, Liberals can win here, but if you are Conservative or Right wing, don't bother to buy the game. Extremely difficult to implement something in your way.
e.g. Poland should be more Conservative and I couldn't win there with Conservative views, but could win there with Socialist views. Tried several countries and same result. Probably I am not good being right wing :-D
The game need some more development, it's pretty basic. Some more graphic stuff also, but it's a nice game to spend some free time, if you can't use the PC to more sophisticated games.
Steam User 11
Democracy 4 may look like a simple collection of buttons, charts, and sliders, but the game offers a surprisingly accurate representation of the intricate web of policies, economic factors and voter dynamics that shape a nation. While it's possible to focus solely on re-election, the game truly shines when you roleplay as a leader with a vision and long-term goals.
That said, the game could benefit from some additional features to encourage more strategic thinking. For instance, a global leaderboard comparing countries on metrics like GDP or standard of living (like in Victoria 3) could provide players with concrete long-term objectives beyond just winning the next election. Incorporating such features would significantly enhance the game's longevity, which currently feels somewhat limited.
Steam User 8
I have played the living hell out of both this game, and its predecessor; both as vanilla and modded into oblivion (with the inevitable minefield of crashes, lol).
This review is not really about Democracy 4 specifically, but about the franchise as a whole.
In my view the basic idea of a political simulator, where you get to effectively rule over a country and enact specific policies to your liking is sound. However, the way in which this has been executed in the games up til yet, could see some major improvement.
I'm recommending this game, but only as a simple, and gimmicky "number slider" title. If you're looking for something fun to waste a few hours on sometime, this scratches that itch a bit. However, if you're looking for something deeper, then you'll hit bedrock fairly quickly.
There are a number of things I would like to see in a Democracy 5, that I think would drastically improve the game, and I'll go through these now.
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Firstly, policies.
Simply put, implementing policies one by one, that each make their own little changes, throughout an entire session, is tedious, and sometimes kind of annoying. I'm not saying we shouldn't have policy variety, in fact I would like to see more policy flexibility in the future. However, I do think the process of implementing and maintaining policies can be made much more efficient and enjoyable for players. Something I would like to see is a kind of 'bill crafting' system, where players can create bills that implement multiple policies and policy changes in a single GUI. These bills should, in the core game with achievements enabled, be voted on in the respective governing chambers of the country you're playing as.
Taxes, specifically, could have their own menu, where they can be implemented, abolished, and adjusted all on one screen. This would make for a seamless experience when fiddling about with tax. Not just with tax, but with other policies as well, I would like to see more customisation, like the number of bands, their percentages, etc, and not just for income tax, but for others too, like corporation tax. I'd like to see things like being able to customise the education system, foreign policy doctrine, urban planning paradigms, etc.
I'd also personally like to see policies feel more impactful, and be a bit less predictable in their effects. I'd also like policies to be able to synergise/interact with each other, both positively and negatively. Also, something really cool would be the ability to craft your own policies in game and implement them as part of bills (and be able to export policies and share them in the workshop).
Players should also have the ability to directly experiment with different socioeconomic and political systems, with their own unique workings, and such. (Capitalism, social democracy, Socialism/Communism, fascism, anarchism, syndicalism, etc)
Next, Gameplay.
I'd like to see the political landscape be more dynamic, with parties emerging, becoming more popular, declining, disappearing, etc. Something that would go well with this would be to add a 'Movements' mechanic. These movements could influence the political demographics of the country, and could even go on to form parties (these could be subverted if you so choose, via espionage).
If things get really bad for your country, there should be an uprising/revolution event that ends the game, similar in effect to being assassinated. This might mean that you have to be more authoritarian or militaristic, or find other means of stifling the coming uprising. You could have multiple uprising scenarios, such as a socialist revolution, military coup d'etat, religious revolt, etc. While we're on the topic, opposition parties should also face threats, challenges, and opportunities, that affect their leadership and operations. There could also be scandals, that can affect both yours and opposition parties' perception and popularity.
Members of parties should also be able to defect to different parties, including your own.
Moving on from this, there is a core gameplay element that I think is desperately needed, and it's that whilst you're playing the game, throughout the session, the country SHOULD CHANGE. I mean, it kind of already does to a limited extent, but it doesn't feel nearly impactful enough, and it only has currently very limited effects on gameplay.
Populations should change throughout the game, and this should have a direct effect on GDP, housing, etc. Currently, demographic changes, to my knowledge, don't have a significant impact on gameplay, they should. For example, an ageing population should increase healthcare and pension costs, a combination of low immigration and low birthrates should affect wages/salaries, and in extreme cases should cause a labour shortage, which should have it's own effects, etc.
Political capital should be forgone in favour of a probability of a bill passing, which is affected by how many "seats" or "representatives" you have elected in your party and others. This should also display each party's attitude towards a bill, similar to how popularity is displayed currently. Parties including your own should vote on each proposal.
Interface
This. Needs. Fixing.
Policies, variables/metrics, and situations, should each have their own tabs. Currently, the interface can feel very overwhelming, and at times it can be difficult to find stuff. With tabs for each, it would keep things more organised, easier to find, and so on. Although I've talked a lot about a "bill crafting" interface, I do still think you should be able to implement individual policies, if you just want to make a small change to something. But, the implementation of individual policies should be integrated into the main UI rather than have it's own separate page, perhaps with drop-down menus for each policy area and these menus should be WELL ORGANISED and have categories and subcategories (which should, again, be customisable). This saves the player having to scroll through a whole list of policies, just to implement a single one.
I'm sure there's a lot more stuff that could be implemented, changed, and improved, but those are a few ideas I have, which I think would dramatically improve the game as a whole.
Steam User 9
The developer is a very nice person and has spent lots of time and effort to create this amazing game WITH FULL MOD SUPPORT! he even posted tutorials on his youtube channel. The base game is very fantastic but to offer all these features the game is a must have. The democratic simulation is very realistic and the game is actually fun while being challenging and realistic all at the same time. I really appreciate the effort it must have taken to do this. Please get this game you will have the time of your life especially if you like policics or simulations
Steam User 8
Democracy 4 is a great game that expands the basic foundations of a governance. It really can help you gain insight into how your actions have consequences, and how your actions can help others. My wish is that we could fight for election at the beginning of the game instead of just immediately getting placed into the highest office. It'd also be cool in the future to be able to work in lower offices!