Government

The Government score (sometimes known as the Democracy score) is a measure of how democratic a nation is, with a score of 0 representing a totalitarian dictatorship, and a score of 10 representing an idealized democracy. It has an impact on a range of other national characteristics, as well as Foreign Relations. For the real-world scenarios of 2003, 2022, and 2026, the Government score is simply the real-world values of the Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index for the nearest available year.

Government scores range from 0 to 10:

Government	Score range
Totalitarian	0-2
Authoritarian	2-4
Anocracy	4-6
Flawed Democracy	6-8
Full Democracy	8-10

Changing the Government Score

In a nation with 50 million Population:

• Each completion of the Government Priority adds 0.001 Government per Education.
• Each completion of the Oppression Priority removes 0.0025 Government.
• Each completion of the Spoils Priority removes 0.0005 Government.
• Every month, if the nation is at war, then remove 0.01 Government.
• Every month, if the nation has less than 4 Cohesion, then there is a (1 - Cohesion / 4) chance to remove 0.01 Government.
• Every month, if the nation and all of its neighbors are not at war and all of its neighbors have higher Government than the nation, then the nation gains 0.01 Government.

In nations with smaller or larger Population, these changes are sped up or slowed down. See Population Scaling for more detail.

Impacts of the Government Score

Base Cohesion

Government impacts Base Cohesion:

• For Government scores of 0.0-3.5, base cohesion is increased by (3.5^1.285 - Government^1.285) × ((10 - Unrest) / 10)
  • Note: 3.5^1.285 = 5.0018, so the maximum possible impact on base cohesion is +5.00, if both Government and Unrest are exactly zero.
• For Government scores of 3.5-6.5, base cohesion is reduced by 3 - 2 × |5 - Government|
• For Government scores of 6.5-10.0, base cohesion is stabilized by 0.5 × (Government - 6.5)
  • Stabilization will draw the final score closer to the research-maximizing level of 5.0, after all other factors have been considered. It will increase scores lower than 5, and reduce scores higher than 5.

Control of hostile regions also has a base cohesion penalty of 1.6 × Hostile Population Fraction × Government score, in addition to the above effects.

Other Internal Effects

• Higher Government lowers the national Corruption level, making the Coup d'Etat mission less likely to succeed for low Spoils Priority levels. It also slightly reduces the income from Spoils.
• When using the Economy Priority, the base improvement to per capita GDP for each completion is increased by +0.5 per point of Government score.
• When using the Oppression Priority to reduce Unrest, the impact on unrest is linearly reduced by the Government score, with it having no impact at all for nations with a Government score of 10. (However, the Oppression priority also lowers the Government score, so it will have an effect if it is continued anyway). If the Government score is 5.0 or higher, each completion of the Oppression priority will also damage Cohesion.
• Similarly, the impact of armies on unrest is linearly reduced by government score. However, the unrest penalty for controlling regions where your claims are hostile is also linearly reduced by a high Government score.
• Lower Government increases the effectiveness of the Oppression Priority and armies at reducing Unrest. It also increases the Money output of the Spoils Priority, and the Public Support Cap.

External Effects

• Any friendly claims will be treated as hostile if the claiming nation has a Government score that is at least 1.5 points lower than the current owner.
• If two nations are unified in any way, and the population of the newly added nation has a lower Government score as a result, this will cause a one-time increase to Unrest.
• When regions are checking to see if they secede due to high unrest, the Government scores of the current owner and of potential new owners are considered.
  • For detailed mechanics, see Foreign Relations.
• When an army dies, its owner will lose (Government/10) Cohesion, and the owning faction will suffer negative propaganda with strength equal to the Government score.

Other Impacts of the Government Priority

The Government Priority is used to turn hostile claims into friendly claims. This requires 200 completions per region in most scenarios, and 100 completions per region in the Broken Earth scenario.

If the Government priority finishes when the Government score is already 10.0, then the nation will receive the above claim-legitimization effect, and will also receive an Education bonus equal to one completion of the Knowledge Priority as well. (Note that this is only possible when there are hostile claims, as a nation with no hostile claims and a Government score of 10.0 will not be able to invest in the Government priority.)