I've been getting some work done on democracy again. I'm quite happy that the main game mechanic of selecting and tweaking policies to get re-elected is sound, so now im working on the gui that presents all the data in a way that gives the player some direction.
I've added two new systems, and advice manager and a news manager. The advice manager sorts a list of items of concern for the player, such as "This policy is very unpopular" and so on. The news manager tells the player what has changed since last turn, so you get stuff like
"The average journey time has fallen by 2.5% since last month"
I havent got anything close to final GUI for these two systems, which may meld into one anyway.
I'm still not 100% happy with the visual design for the game, even the buttons dont look right to me at the moment. That kind of stuff is easily tweaked once I have a playable simulation up and running. The current simulation isnt anywhere close to being balanced or complete. I reckon only half the data is in there at the moment.