Been working hard on democracy. I did a little 'playtest' imagining myself as really conservative and right wing and lost almost immediately, so I had to tweak a lot of stuff to balance it right. Also its currently WAY too easy to get a really effective economy, so I'm balancing that too.
A new feature that got put in today was the global economy. At the moment it only affects GDP, and its basically a 6 year(ish) cycle represented by a sine wave that modifies your own GDP.
This was put in because some times you can do everything right but international circumstances just drag your economy down anyway, which gives you the extra gameplay of handling your slip into mini-recession.
I've added numerous new 'links' between neurons. I'm still on the fence on the possibility of adding hidden neurons to make the simulation more accurate. Part of me thinks this will help, part thinks it will make it impossible to balance.
The problem is, when you start thinking politics and economics, nearly everything effects nearly everything. That makes for some great existential psychology, but nightmare game design.
No wonder nobody has ever tried to make a game like this before.