Modding a Country

[johnnyboy]

I am currently attempting to mod a country (Portugal) and I was wondering where I could find information about the country so that I could input it into the game? Some stuff is easy enough to find (unemployment, debt, etc.) but some of the policies are quite tough to find IRL. So I was wondering where cliff got his country information (like all those policies and how much of each there was... for eg. how much tax, car usage, benefits, etc.) when he made those twelve starting countries in his game. :D

Thus far all I did was copy over the text and mission files from Spain (country its most similar to) and then tweaked the name and added new bitmaps (for the flag and the scenery pic in the new game country selection menu).


Thanks

[cliffski]

behold the site of many stats:
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php

[johnnyboy]

behold the site of many stats:
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php

Thanks. I'll see what I could do. I've currently tweaked some things such as the flag (already shown), the scenery photo (in menu screen), Population, Debt, Wealth, Unemployment, Religious Group size... (Portugal has 47% church attendance so this play through should thoroughly piss off people who hate the religious group. :D).

[cliffski]

I'll be happy to host the files once you are done by the way.

[johnnyboy]

I'll be happy to host the files once you are done by the way.

That'd be great.
A problem I noticed is that in nationmaster the single-worker tax wedge rates seem a bit weird. I live in Canada and I am pretty sure that we pay much more income tax (including social security tax) than the Americans. Their tax wedge (shown on that site) is 29.7% and ours is 30%. The UK has a supposedly lower rate than the US which I find shocking. Or maybe that's just a myth, I don't know. :lol: It sure feels like we pay a lot of tax here but in Europe tax is even more punishing in some places. :D

Here is the official Canadian tax rate excluding pension and employment insurance(I combined both the federal and Ontario provincial income tax in this chart). Note that Ontario has below-average taxes for the country though so perhaps this isn't the best example. But I guess income tax varies by the state too in the US. As you can see the rates are progressive (Alberta interestingly enough has a provincial flat rate tax but the federal portion of the tax is always progressive)

Tax %, Range ($CDN)
21.05%, $0-$34,758
24.15%, $34,759-$36,378
31.15%, $36,379-$69,517
33.16%, $69,518-$72,756
37.16%, $72,757-$118,285
40.16%, $118,286+

*Note: Canadians don't pay tax if they make less than $8,700 CDN or something like that.

I'd be surprised if tax in the US was only slightly less harsh than this considering how they have a reputation of being a strong free-market capitalist nation. Either way I'm sure that some Europeans would look at these rates and think we have it made. :lol:

[cliffski]

well I think we have a starting rate of 10% here? maybe it's 20% I don't remember. I also found the tax rate data weird, but I guess it depends upon how its classified. We have 'National Insurance' in the Uk, thats income tax in all but name, but does it count that?

[johnnyboy]

I have finished a first version of that mod. The flag doesn't have a ripple effect (I gotta find out how to do that) and I might tweak policies/data/population in the future. This mission should be a bit challenging perhaps.

http://www.geocities.com/boospectre/prt.zip

[cliffski]

It looks like you missed out the portugal main menu graphic (if you added one). Anyway, Ive applied the wavey shadowing effect to the flag, so if you upload a version with the menu graphic, ill put the two together and host them.
Nice work by the way, I presume you would be happy for these files to be added to the auto updater?

[johnnyboy]

Oh yes you are right. I forgot to paste my main menu graphic in the bitmap folder before zipping it. Alright I've re-uploaded it with the graphic. I've noticed that this particular bitmap doesn't compress well and increased the file size of the zip from 139 kb to 1678 kb (set at best compression too). Yikes. I just noticed that clicking on the link doesn't work. I guess geocities prevents hot linking. Pasting the url into your browser works though.

http://www.geocities.com/boospectre/prt.zip

Yeah it would be great to add this to the auto updater.

[cliffski]

That still seems to be the old zip?

[johnnyboy]

That still seems to be the old zip?

No I deleted the old zip and reuploaded it with the same filename. It's new.

[cliffski]

all done, this mod is now downloadable from within the game. thanks very much for doing this, its always cool to see new content.
The updater seems to not be showing a progress bar for the large file, but it does download it ok.

[johnnyboy]

all done, this mod is now downloadable from within the game. thanks very much for doing this, its always cool to see new content.
The updater seems to not be showing a progress bar for the large file, but it does download it ok.

No problem. 8)

[TiCi]

I am attempting to mod a country...

Could someone please explain to me the numbers in the mission files

[config]
population = 2000.0
year=2001
month=0
debt=196000
wealth = 1.0
name = United Kingdom
matrix = data/missions/mission1.mtx
flag = flag_uk.bmp
unemployment=0.3125
militaryspending=0.62
religion = 0.27
currency = "£"
termlength = 5

Is it okay to calculate the population of my country by using UK's stats as a guideline (50 million ppl = 2000, therefore 100 million ppl = 4000), and do I have to do the same with all the other stats, like unemployment, so 0.3125 would represent UK's 4,7%? How do the other numbers work?
Also, am I right in assuming that the rest of the numbers are figures between 0 and 1.0?

militaryspending=0.62
religion = 0.27

Are these numbers fractions of the GDP? Surely not, UK doesn't spend 62% of GDP for military???

Thanks for the explanation!

[cliffski]

Yes this part is damned confusing isnt it? basically its all a matter of relative numbers, so you might need to fiddle a bit to get it right. the figure of 0.62 only makes sense in relation to the other nations spending as a percentage of GDP. I wish I had coded this in a more obvious way, but if you find (on a site like nationmaster) the relative spending asa fraction of GDP of the UK, and compare your nation to that, you can then get the required figure, just as you describe.
Naturally in any sequel this will be dramatically easier!