Five Ways to Make Your Mark in Democracy 4: Console Edition

Democracy 4: Console Edition is a political simulation game where you take control of a country and run it as you see fit. While in a position of power, you will be able to implement new laws, and take actions which will appease a group of voters, while angering another. The ultimate goal is to gain more votes than your opposition in an election and continue running the country in your vision.

Picking a Country to Lead

When starting out in Democracy 4: Console Edition, the first decision you must make is which country to lead. You are able to become the President/Prime Minister of USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. Each country has a difficulty rating out of 5, and it would help on earlier playthroughs if you were to stick to countries such as Canada, USA, South Korea, Australia, or Germany, who are all rated 2 stars and below. This will help you learn the game and be able to effectively lead 5-star difficulty countries such as the UK and Japan.

Surrounding Yourself with Cabinet Ministers who Share Your Intentions

As you begin leading a country, you will inherit the cabinet ministers who were there from the previous regime. These individuals will have their own thoughts and biases towards the direction of the government. It will be up to you to bring in new cabinet ministers which align with your values, should you choose, or you could try implementing policy changes with the existing cabinet and see how things go.

There are seven cabinet ministers in office and their departments are law & order, public services, tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, and transport. How you deal with your cabinet ministers and policy directions can define your time in office.

Introducing New Policies and Changing Existing Ones

Much like inheriting cabinet ministers from your country’s previous leader, the country you are leading will have existing laws and policies you can tweak and new ones you can introduce, depending on the direction you wish to take your leadership in. You can spend Political Capital, which you gain via your cabinet ministers. How much your ministers get behind your decisions has a big impact on how many changes you can make at any given time.

Should you decide to make a lot of changes from the start and your cabinet members not be fully behind them, then you may not be able to make the necessary changes as you may have intended to. Having your cabinet be behind your decisions is only part of the way of making your reign as leader a success, however. The key part of staying in power is to get people to vote for you and you need to keep them on your side.

Keeping Most of your Constituents Satisfied

While you may not have been voted in when your term first started, public opinion is the biggest barometer for success in Democracy 4: Console Edition. Each decision you make will positively impact one type of constituent, while negatively affecting another. It’s impossible to keep everyone happy all the time, but some opinions may be more impactful than others.

To ensure your campaign and time in office are a success, there will be financial backers who will try to influence your decisions by endorsing you further if your leadership is to their liking or threatening to remove their backing if they aren’t behind you. Those won’t be the only threats you’ll have to deal with, however.

As your direction for the country takes shape, there may be people inside or outside the nation you’re governing who wish to have you removed permanently. This could mean threats of disruption or even against your life. Between these and random events cropping up, such as headline news topics and discussions, there’s no shortage of ways for the public to support or oppose you.

Being Re-elected and the Future of Your Country

If you make it to the end of your first term, it will then be time for elections. Your public perception up until this point will be pivotal in getting re-elected. The public aren’t only interested in what you’ve done so far, however.

As the election approaches on the horizon, you will be asked to confirm your manifesto. How you meet these targets can be the difference between winning or losing the election. Promise too little and it could make no difference but promise too much and not reach it could spell disaster in the polls.

Democracy 4: Console Edition will let you play out your ideas for a perfect government. Play in any way you wish. But will you be able to see your campaign through to the end and beyond? The polls are now open for Democracy 4: Console Edition on Xbox consoles. We wish you great success in your political future! 

Democracy 4: Console Edition

Auroch Digital

☆☆☆☆☆
10

★★★★★

$26.99

Democracy 4: Console Edition lets you take the role of President or Prime Minister in one of ten countries. You will then govern the country as you see fit, while trying to retain enough popularity to get re-elected.

• Choose to lead one of the following countries: USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, or South Korea
• Select cabinet ministers that align with your vision for the future of the country
• Introduce new laws or tweak existing ones to carry out your plans for change
• How you deal with random events can either increase or decrease your favourability with the public
• As election time approaches, lay out your manifesto and aim to deliver a campaign that will take you to victory!

Democracy 4: Console Edition is the ultimate sandbox for testing out your political ideas. We all think that we could do a better job ourselves in running a country compared to politicians, but is that really true? With one eye on the budget, the other 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.

This is a strategy game, where the outcome of your policies and laws reflects on your success. If you want to 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, energy and water companies, cap CEO pay, ban second-home ownership, and put universal income in place, you can do that too. Democracy 4: Console Edition models the likely effects, short and long-term, of any action you take so you can see what kind of country you can run.

Built on a custom-built neural network designed to model the opinions, beliefs, thoughts and biases of thousands of virtual citizens, Democracy 4: Console Edition is the state-of-the-art in political simulation games.

Ultimately, Democracy 4: Console Edition is not a game about simply winning an election, but about running the country. Losing an election is just the endgame (unless you get assassinated). The real challenge is whether you can create a country you are proud of.