One thing I would like to see is a little bit more nuance in terms of the policies and the nations’ starting situations. Like the U.S. should start out with free school meals partially implemented. And there should be healthcare policies like “healthcare vouchers for the elderly” or “healthcare vouchers for the poor” to reflect policies tailored for the elderly or the very poor as opposed to universal policies. The U.S. also has a housing voucher program (section 8) which is not reflected in the game since the U.S. does not build public housing directly as much as it did in the past. It would also be nice to be able to reduce zoning regulations for construction, which contribute a lot to high housing costs.
we do tend to do as lot of checking with real people from each nation during early access to ensure our starting situations look right. Both designers are from the UK, so thats the starting mission, and the one we will be most familiar with. Even that changes over time though.