NationStates Jolt Archive

In this edition of Josho Thoughts, we discuss how the player goes about running his or her nation.

There are three main parts to running a nation:

Domestic Affairs - Making laws for your citizens to obey and enforcing them.
Economy - Allocating money, helping or regulating business (tarriffs, etc, or environmental protection acts)
Foreign Affairs - Dealing with other countries (treaties, alliances), military (both defense and offense), foreign aid, etc...

How you run each part will determine what type of country you have -- democratic, authoritarian, socialism, anarchy, etc...

For the rest of this post, I'll talk about economy, because it's the easiest. We'll use the excellent formula by Nixonstan for determining the budget based upon population, taxes, and income. (Any issues about the formula should be posted in his thread, "Thoughts for an economic model for NS2.") Once we have a budget number, we can allocate it.

The general categories and subcategories for budgeting should be:

Domestic Affairs
-- Welfare, money for the non-working part of the population (old, poor, or unemployed)
-- Healthcare, money for medical expenses for everyone
-- Law enforcement, police, courts, prisons
-- Government agencies, do the work of the government
-- Education, making the young ones smarter
-- Research, making new discoveries
-- Infrastructure, roads, power plants, water, etc
Economics
-- Business Tariffs, taxes on imports or exports
-- Business Subsidies, help them out
Foreign Affairs
-- Military, We need guns. Lots of guns.
-- Foreign Aid, help out other countries
-- Alliance/UN fees, if your Alliance or the UN votes to do stuff, it need money

There may be more subcategories, but this is all I can think of at the moment.

Each category may have options or subcategories depending upon what it is. Also, for most things you can keep them as a government service or privatize them, or both. (Example: Healthcare in the USA is privatized, whereas in Canada, everyone gets free heathcare.) This option would allow you to let people take care of themselves. For the sake of NS2, local governments are considered businesses. If a townships goes bankrupt, it'll dissolve and people move to another one, same as a business. That way things like roads can be left up to lower governments. When you privatize something though, you should be able to designated whether it has to be non-profit (not-for-profit). Local governments are non-profit, so they don't compete as much as if they were run like a business, when local governments would try to steal citizens or something like customers.

Also, you can add your own headings under the sub-categories. They won't really have any affect, but it'll let you designate that for however much you allot to infrastructure, you want this portion to be spent on Water Slides, and under Education, you want to make sure every student has a Silly Hat or whatever. This way nations can customize their budgets however they like and give them a flavor.

Where you spend your money and whether you meet the budgeting requirements for whatever laws you make will determine a lot of other factors in your nation, such as the quality of your government services, the morale of the citizens, etc. What rating factors are needed will be left up to another post.

I'll write up the rest of Running your Nation tonight or tomorrow.

Any responses, thoughts about these?

I'm trying really hard to think of something to say, and I can't. So I guess no news is good news? I mean, it all looks like a pretty good system, to me. There's nothing so radical there than I wince in pain, so I guess it passes the kneejerk test!

Oh, one question. These categories and subcategories, and the funding you assign to each one. How often can you change them? I mean, in the real world, the government would have to issue an annual budget announcement, setting taxes and allocating funding to each area and so on, and it would last for the rest of the year, with a few exceptions. So in the game, first we'd have to work out how long a year is. It seems to be the general consensus that a day in real life is roughly equal to a year in game terms, right? I could be wrong about that, but that's the impression I got from a few other people. If so, does that mean you have to set the budget every day? Or would you simply leave it and just change it when you like? If so, how long does it take to see a return on your funding? I mean, if you decide to begin a dramatic overhaul of the education system, and pump masses of cash into developing new universities and so on, how long before you actually start to see smarter kids? If a day is a year, then you'd expect the majority of new facilities to be built, and old facilities equipped and improved, by the following day. Two or three days at most, surely. If that's the case, or even if it's not, then how often can you change your budget? Are you limited to one new budget every day, or more or less? If it's one a day, then it may even be necessary to have all of yesterday's spending over and done with by the following day. I mean, to use the above example, if I pump lots of money into education, and it's going to take three years (days) to get all the work done, then do I keep education spending up for those three years, or can I drop it and pump all that cash into building new roads, or whatever? If I do drop it, does the education system that's being built suffer, or is it safe since I already spent that fixed amount of money on it? By that I mean, if you spend $300million on improving the education system, and it'll take three years, is that it over and done with, and that $300million is available to spend elsewhere next year, or does it require $100million each year for three years? If the latter, can I bail out halfway through because I need the money for war? If so, what happens to the education system? Can I pick up where I left off, or is that money sunk for all eternity? Perhaps if something will take more than 1 year to finish (and you'd imagine some things would), then government funding of that area is locked until it's finished, and you can't just abandon it.

These are all things that'd have to be cleared up and agreed upon, at some point. Obviously they don't have to be agreed upon NOW, and I'm not suggesting they should. But as I said, I can't think of anything else to say. :wink:

Haha, ok. I was just wondering if anyone actually read through it and agreed by silence, or if people just go "Oh crap! Another long Josho Thought! *close window*" ;)

Yeah, that's a good point. Perhaps as a part of the custom items for sub-categories, the player could specify a custom item as an ongoing item, a project, or a one-time deal. If an ongoing item, it will automatically show up in subsequent budgets. If one-time deal, it will use up money for that time period's budget but won't show up later. An example of that might be special disaster relief or foreign aid package or something. Whether or not people actually would go through that detail would depend upon how much they want to role-play, but it'd be awesome if you agreed to a treaty that had you feeding my citizens for a year (I'm busy war-mongering) and then if I go look at your budget for that year it shows up on there. If money or aid is designated to go to another country, it'd go through the trade system (to be discussed in JT3c: Foreign Affairs) and then show up on my imports.

As far as on-going projects, it would be the same as the other two options except that you can specify the length of the project and how much the total cost is, and it'd budget it over that period ($300M total, 3 years, automatically $100M/year for 3 years). If in the second year you were strapped for cash, you could make funding for that 0% and use money elsewhere. The project would still be listed unless you canceled it, until it was finished, at which point it would just be history like the one-time items. What do you think about a penalty for incomplete funding? If we were building a new school system, building and all, and in year two stopped funding for two years, then started again...maybe there should be a percentage per year total funding required to finish it because of the pause. Example with a 25% of total budget penalty:

Initial Total: $300M (.25 * $300M = $75M)
Year:_________1_____2_____3______4______5______6______7
Funding:____$100M__$0M___$0M__$100M__$100M__$150M__Complete
Remaining:__$200M_$275M_$350M_$250M__$150M___$0M___Complete
Final Total: $450M

Using the initial total as the penalty multiplier makes more sense because if you have really massive projects that are paused, the money needed to maintain the partial construction or whatever it is is a lot more, even if the yearly payments are the same as a smaller project.

The project idea is really good Christmas... I like it because then countries can have proof that they allocated money to get the things they have. It'd prevent a lot of war-mongering and god-modding. The game can have set prices for things like "Research Space Technology" or "Research Hovercar" or whatever, and only the countries that researched the tech or shared (bought) it from allies or otherwise would have it.

It'd be trivial to suggest new technology or other projects and the content manager staff would approve it (you wouldn't want someone to suggest insanely low prices for new technology) and the player community could discuss it and set a price.

Treaties could also be made on sharing technology or not having technology.... Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty? Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? If you want to go ahead and have the programs you would be breaking the treaty...though if you actually pull out of it first is up to the player. If no one notices you have all this illegal tech, all the better...until they sanction you. haha

Maintaining a technology program would be an ongoing thing, so for example, if first I research nuclear technology (or buy the knowledge), then I'm able to maintain a nuclear program, but then if I join a treaty that doesn't let me have nukes, I just don't budget the nuclear program anymore. Whether or not I'd have to research the nukes again if I restarted the program is up for discussion...perhaps only a small portion of the initial research cost.

All this is really cool because players who want to can justify everything they claim, economy, tech, or war-wise. Note that this doesn't mean war will get easier, or that everything is geared towards war...if anything it will make war harder because in order to say "i 4tt4ck j00 w/ a zillion g3n34ic soliders with laser beams on their heads!" you would first need to research the appropriate techs, maintain the tech programs, stockpile the zillion head-mounted laser beams, grow (genetically engineer) your population to a 40,000 zillion to be able to have 5% population in your military and half of those actually on front lines, then have them allocated to an army and move the army to whichever octet you're attacking, establish how you will reach the target country (sea, land, neighboring country base), then attack. Sounds fun! (haha, even if NS2 was free and all the n00b griefers don't have to pay, they might leave anyway because they can't just godmod themselves in charge of the world).

===========

As far as time periods, probably a game-year should be longer, like two weeks, because if you can move an army anywhere in the world in a day, you shouldn't be able to rebudget your funds or complete projects that quickly either. The time periods could be adjustable on a per-world basis though, so some games could be normal speed, and some could be super-quick.

One possibility would be to leave the budget open for change all the time, and you can plan and create next year's budget whenever, but it has a specified time when it replaces the current budget.

In your current budget, perhaps each day the allocation for all the budget items is used up evenly over the time period (so if 14 day cycle, out of the $100M allocated for something that year, $7.14M is used each day). If you REALLY wanted to screw up your nation and interrupt the current budget or if you had an emergency or something, you could reallocate out of the remaining funds, but there'd definately have to be a penalty and lost funds, and this would definately affect the approval/morale of the people.

========

Obviously they don't have to be agreed upon NOW...

Oh! So this didn't have to be done now, oh well. ;)

There should also be a way to procure "emergency funds." You know, so you can appropriate, lets say, oh, 60 million for a war effort before waiting till the next budgeting session. Since budgets are public knowledge, wouldnt want any potential attackee to get a heads up :wink:

but there'd definately have to be a penalty and lost funds, and this would definately affect the approval/morale of the people.

I was thinking about this earlier, but it didn't seem a big enough thing to mention. Still doesn't, really, but I've got nothing else to say. Max has already stated that it's very important to him that your citizens don't just constantly complain about things they need and things they want, like they do in Simcity. When I first read that, before I created my country, I was really, really pleased, because I absolutely hate it when my citizens in those games are just constantly annoyed at my rule, now matter how much I've improved their poxy lives over time. But having said that, I also think there should be no winning or losing in the game, and that there should ALWAYS be something you can improve in regards to your nation. So any talk of the approval rating and morale of your people sets alarm bells ringing in my head. I do think there should be some form of morale and so on, but I also think it's very important that the populace don't ever get so unhappy that they're constantly rioting and leaving the country and so on and so on. There has to be a balance between 'unrealistically happy citizens' and 'just plain annoying gameplay'. You know? I was thinking of some kind of Standard of Living variable, which was basically synonymous with citizen morale, but didn't really devote enough thought to really turn it into a proper idea. Heh. Oh well.

There should also be a way to procure "emergency funds." You know, so you can appropriate, lets say, oh, 60 million for a war effort before waiting till the next budgeting session. Since budgets are public knowledge, wouldnt want any potential attackee to get a heads up

Hmm, that's true. If you're in dire need of cash, I suppose you could request a loan from a friendly country. They do that in simcountry, and I must admit, I absolutely hate it, but that doesn't mean that it can't be implemented well. What I hated about the loans in simcountry was that I seemed to start my country with over $200billion debt, from loans I'd never asked to take. That annoyed me. Especially since they kept accruing interest, and had a time limit on when I had to pay them back. It just seemed very stressful. Whilst loans would have to have SOMETHING to make sure you paid them back (either an interest rate or a time limit or something), I don't think they should be so stressful you're racking your brains trying to work out how the hell to pay them off. Simcountry was just far too economical and irritating. If you can take loans from other countries in NS2, then it has to be easy and simple to pay them back. Actually, the same goes for the entire budget, but I'm sure I don't need to say that. Fun is the name of the game! Or at least it would be, if it weren't already Nationstates 2.

how about the two nations determine the conditions/term limit of the loan. However much is budgeted to pay the loaner nation back should be automatically payed into the budget of the nation, and subtracted automatically from the loanee's budget.

Yeah, that would be ok. If it's automatic, then I have no problem with it.

Although...hmm. If it's automatic, which department does the loan get paid out from? I mean, let's say I borrow a billion dollars from you, and we agree I'll pay it back after 4 weeks. I set my budget so I'm spending all of it, split throughout all the different departments. It'd probably be frugal to stockpile enough money each week (or whatever period of time the budgets last for) to have the billion ready to pay you back immediately, but if I don't, and I allocate all the taxpayers' money, what happens then? I mean, presumably the billion dollars would come out of the next budget, but if I've allocated it all, and presumably those allocations carry over from one budget to the next (so that you can just leave it if you want to), then where would the money come from? Would the billion dollars be taken from ALL the government departments, say a tenth from each? I guess that'd make the most sense. But if so, then any long-term productions you'd have in the works, such as the education overhaul I mentioned earlier, would suffer due to the shortage of funds.

I suppose that works, actually, since it would mean taking loans is more of a desperate tactic than a sensible one, and it also encourages you to allocate slightly less funding than you can, so the excess cash is stored for loan repayments. If you see what I mean.

Yeah, I think that'd work.

Loans would be the same as long term projects. The loaning country would make a new loan item, label it "Loan from (country) to (country)", fill in the amount, and how long it till repay and maybe a starting grace period, and maybe an interest rate or something. Then, when the loanee accepts the loan, it would show up under foreign affairs of the loanee as a project item, and also as an income item (either one time or over some time, depending upon how the loaner set it up). The loanee would be able to allocate money to it as he or she wishes. It would tell you what the target plan is...like $0 for five years then $200M/year for five years. If you set the allocation to full, it'll be paid off automatically, no worries, no micromanagement. If you don't have the money though, you have to make some hard decisions.

There should also be a way to procure "emergency funds." You know, so you can appropriate, lets say, oh, 60 million for a war effort before waiting till the next budgeting session. Since budgets are public knowledge, wouldnt want any potential attackee to get a heads up

Yes, like Christmas said, through loans from friendly countries or random countries or maybe a UN organization (mock IMF?) if such a thing is set up by players. It'd just be a subcommittee of the UN and receive UN budgeting. (The UN would receive funding from member nations or however they set it up.)

Max has already stated that it's very important to him that your citizens don't just constantly complain about things they need and things they want, like they do in Simcity.

Yeah, the purpose of approval isn't to state "You have a 20% approval rating...citizens riot!" but to say "Today you satisfied or dissatisfied this percentage between -10 and 10% say." Approval only exists to have an easy method of changing citizens morale. Morale ONLY affects those things I specified... if morale is very low, it doesn't necessarily mean that your citizens will overthrow you or you can't make laws or something, just that your economy will suck, and they won't make as many items. The purpose is more to reward players that can manuever their citizens into higher morale by having a better economy.

As far as issues, they would be written so that every issues has a counterpart that would even it all out. So, if you are being perfectly consistent with your type of government, one issue might give you a negative approval rating, but another would give you a positive rating. It would be your job to make sure this stays about level, and take advantage of the times where you can get the bonus approvals to boost your economy. So, in short, no complaining citizens, just, like you said, less productive or more productive citizens.

Standard of Living would be a good way to instantiate the whole morale variable, but citizens can have a high standard of living but be really apathic and non-productive. I think Standard of Living, if it isn't too complicated, could be another variable that is affected by economic and equality issues, and for a high SoL you might be bonus approval/morale or something.

I don't want this to become really complicated though. For the player, it's not micromanaging things. The budget you can drill-down into and customize if you like, or you could just let it take care of itself and auto-allocate max funds to whatever is needed. A lot of the things like the morale and SoL and such are behind the scenes things that go into formulas, so the player doesn't necessarily have to even know that they exist to play.

Yeah, that would be ok. If it's automatic, then I have no problem with it.

Although...hmm. If it's automatic, which department does the loan get paid out from? I mean, let's say I borrow a billion dollars from you, and we agree I'll pay it back after 4 weeks. I set my budget so I'm spending all of it, split throughout all the different departments. It'd probably be frugal to stockpile enough money each week (or whatever period of time the budgets last for) to have the billion ready to pay you back immediately, but if I don't, and I allocate all the taxpayers' money, what happens then? I mean, presumably the billion dollars would come out of the next budget, but if I've allocated it all, and presumably those allocations carry over from one budget to the next (so that you can just leave it if you want to), then where would the money come from? Would the billion dollars be taken from ALL the government departments, say a tenth from each? I guess that'd make the most sense. But if so, then any long-term productions you'd have in the works, such as the education overhaul I mentioned earlier, would suffer due to the shortage of funds.

I suppose that works, actually, since it would mean taking loans is more of a desperate tactic than a sensible one, and it also encourages you to allocate slightly less funding than you can, so the excess cash is stored for loan repayments. If you see what I mean.

Yeah, I think that'd work.

Loan repayment would be taken out of the estimated funds for the fiscal "year" before it budgeting begins in any way shape or form. The money for the loan repayment, therefore, would not even really be a part of the budget. It is "untouchable," subtracted from the Nation's gross income prior to budgeting. Remember, this is really one budget, split between many different entities.

Loan repayment would be taken out of the estimated funds for the fiscal "year" before it budgeting begins in any way shape or form. The money for the loan repayment, therefore, would not even really be a part of the budget. It is "untouchable," subtracted from the Nation's gross income prior to budgeting. Remember, this is really one budget, split between many different entities.

But what if I want to build my country like my idol country, Brazil, and default on all my loans? I should have the option to not pay my loans, especially if the other alternative is not having any money to pay for civil services, food, welfare, whatever. I think loans should be just like other items, except that you can't delete them once you agree and accept it. Instead of "budget split between different entities," it'd be more accurate to talk about flows of money. Each nation allocates money (in it's own separate budget) depending upon what money it has, what is flowing into the country (loans, aid), what it need to flow out (loan repayments, etc), and what is coming from the citizens.

Liken the budget to a family budget. There are loans outstanding (unless you're wealthy), health and welfare, etc... The money for repaying a loan would just be another area of the budget.

Yeah, that's what I was saying originally. The budget has the three main categories, each one has permanent sub-categories, and then you can add whatever you want under those... Loans would fall under foreign affairs and should be a permanent sub-category.

Loan repayment would be taken out of the estimated funds for the fiscal "year" before it budgeting begins in any way shape or form.

Well, yeah, that's what I was saying, but it gets more complicated than that if you've already allocated your entire budget the previous year. I mean, we've already said that budgets will just carry over from one year to the next, if you leave them, right? It'd be a bit annoying if you had to log on every single day (or whatever) and redo your budget. Even if it was once every week, it'd be a little irksome. So it seems almost completely necessary that, if you leave your budget, it will just take the same allocations as the previous fiscal year, right? So if I take out a loan, and I allocate ALL of my budget to the required areas, and then I go on holiday or something...what then? That's what I was trying to get at. If ALL my budget is assigned, and then the loan is automatically taken out of the overall funds for the year, then each and every department is going to have less funding. Because the total budget was less than it should have been. Do you see what I mean? That, coupled with what we've previously talked about regarding on-going projects receiving less money than they need, means that taking out loans could be a pretty risky thing to do, unless you pay pretty close attention to your finances and really plan ahead, several years in advance of the repayment.

Sorry, I'm probably not wording all that very well. Hmm.

Perhaps the budgeting could be set to your chosen default budget unless a significant change occurs - economy collapse/skyrocket, loan repayment, etc. At that point, you'd have to re-work your budget to accomodate for the changes, thus allowing each player to decide where the loan repayment capital is taken from, rather than arbitrarily fuck all their programs.

Good idea. I like it.

Agreed, me too.

So now, any other issues about running the economy or budgeting? Or have we beaten this one to death? :wink:

I wish I had the will to read all that, but I don't. Over on the ISS thread, we generally use one day is equal to one month. So about two weeks is a year.

Ha. So your population increases by 2 million every month? Man, what is it, like, one giant frat party?

More like a colony with half drugged hippies and half IT staff.

Dear god. The humanity!

Think of the children!

Sounds like a good time...free pizza? Cuz if there is, I'm there!!!

As far as time periods, probably a game-year should be longer, like two weeks, because if you can move an army anywhere in the world in a day, you shouldn't be able to rebudget your funds or complete projects that quickly either. The time periods could be adjustable on a per-world basis though, so some games could be normal speed, and some could be super-quick.

:?: a per-world basis? Are you suggesting that there will be more than one NS2 world :?:

If you'd read the other topics in this forum, please, there's a lot of your questions that could be answered without you even having to take the time to ask :wink:


Yes, NS2 will have multiple worlds.

Yes but you should also remember that some of us have real world jobs to do and lots of other forums to read.

I did find some suggestions elsewhere that NS2 would have multiple worlds. But there is a lot to read here and I hadn't read it elsewhere before I made this post.

Just because you know the answer... doesn't mean that it is always obvious to the rest of us.

I agree. There are plenty of us players that have real world jobs and plenty of other forums to Mod/read.

I apologize for sounding impatient. I am somewhat frustrated with the seemingly influx of players that dont seem to even read one of the stickied topics before posting their personal opinions on NS2. And while I in no way wish to disallow their freedom to voice their opinion, it becomes frustrating when questions that are answered elsewhere, multiple times, in multiple topics, are repeated.

it becomes frustrating when questions that are answered elsewhere, multiple times, in multiple topics, are repeated.

Haven't we had this conversation before....?


;)

Should people bother with IMPORTS/EXPORTS?

With this comes the question of Terrain and Luxury goods! What will you be able to produce on your lands?...Should we introduce the concept of terrain?...should your types of terrain expand as your country get's larger? Should you have to manage food supplies?...Can you end up starving your people to death...and if so...here's another question....

Should there REALLY be a way to lose? If so...shouldn't N2 get it's money from ads (people who don't want ads should pay) instead of getting it from people who pay only to face chances of losing and getting nothing...if there is a way to lose...should there be a RESET of the game...where losing players are revived...if we already have the customised settings for our nations...should we keep these customised settings next "Age" only with an option to change them?

Should we introduce the concept of terrain

I think we talked about this somewhere.. but since the search feature doesn't work for older posts anymore... and I'm lazy...

I think that nations will have a main type of terrain, such as forest, rainforest, desert, etc... and you can do stuff with it.

shouldn't N2 get it's money from ads

We've said this many times before.. ads just don't work. We've talked about it in this (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14607) thread, ads won't cover the cost.

One thing I have to mention on the idea of loan repayment - you should be able to modify the amount of the loan that you pay off. And you should be able to refuse all payment.

And if this chaps the hide of another nation? Well, they would have a few options - diplomacy of some sort (and I'm not clear on the mechanisms of this just yet), economic sanctions (either you cut off trading, of you impose high tarriffs), or military action (threaten to attack to enforce the loan, or just attack - the NationStates equivalent of Repo Man, or the paperboy from the old 80's movie Better Off Dead - 'I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!').

I think having things like '5-year-plans' would be good. It would be nice to be able to insititute economic reforms etc when you want to. Of-course it would require some pre-requisites, possibly the increasing of taxation? Its just an idea.

If the budget was set and money was borrowed. Players as it has been said should decide whether they want to pay the loan instead. If they don't pass the alloted time then maybe sanctions could be issued by the country that is lending the money and fines could incur from a separate body e.g the UN could issue these compulsory fines perhaps.

I like to add that any system that is based on current economic laws will be biased, and most importantly will also by an incredable amount of work.

The basis of nationsstates the big fun, to do anything you like. You kinda throw that hard away.
There are formula's that result in equality however. Though not realist they create great fun to play.
You also need a simpel basic formule, instead of trying to fill in your dreams. Demand of the consumer is suppost to be unlimited. Well though that can be questions, dreams certainly are :)
(sorry that is just debating lanugage, actually dreams might not be unlimited either, just bigger than demands. Anyways)

This basic formula should be able to cover everything, and be easily expandable. You got that, and you got the goose with the golden egg. Especially because it is a community program. People will have good idea's during the game and this will result in improvement of the game.

For example, in the beginning there where only 30 issues. Now there are lots and lots more :)

I think having things like '5-year-plans' would be good. It would be nice to be able to insititute economic reforms etc when you want to. Of-course it would require some pre-requisites, possibly the increasing of taxation? Its just an idea.

This idea sounds great to me... And perfectly particularly dictatorish for my tastes ;)

i don't get it how do i change things i can't do shit what you all just said

i don't get it how do i change things i can't do shit what you all just said

That is because it is for the next NS game. What you ar currently on is NS1. What we are talking about has nothing at all to do with this NS but the next! :wink: :P

Woah! eazy boy!!! :lol:

:) :) :) :arrow: to SImon's USA. :lol:

Woah! eazy boy!!! :lol:

I will haunt you
Remember Daikerta.

:) :) :) :arrow: to SImon's USA. :lol:

I will haunt you
Remember Daikerta.

For some reason a mod locked my thread about adding new sectors, and a link led me to here, so I'm guessing I should post the new suggestions?

ne way here they are:

think it would be a great idea to expand as many elements as possible in NS2, and I think having sectors outside of the usual agriculture, arms manufacturing, automobiles, gambling, etc. would be a good addition. It also leaves more material to work with when forming issues. Personaly I'd want to see

Genetic Research
Tourism
Movie Industry (or just Entertainment if you prefer)
Recreational drugs (Greatly depends on if hash is decrminalized )
Slavery (In feudal countries or states with no civil rights)
Robotics

Anyone else have other ideas for additional sectors?

and these two additions from philopolis:

culture and art (such as ancient greece and rome which lay the foundation for western civilization) and electronics

And to ne1 else, do you have any other ideas for additional sectors?

Parental level regulations, citizen health, and immigration policy affect population growth/decline right?

Arms manufacture
genetic and biological research
nuclear research
complex electronics

All these, and other, are areas in which investment brings access to military and social capabilities unavailable to less advanced countries. For example heavy investment in genetic research could lead to: super-soldiers, an extended average lifespan and other attendant health benefits or advanced viral weaponry. Or none of the above.
This begs the question, already asked elsewhere no doubt, will NS2 have atech tree? Will investment in specific areas of research or industry bring concrete rewards? How will this be administered?

Arms manufacture
genetic and biological research
nuclear research
complex electronics

All these, and others, are areas in which investment brings access to military and social capabilities unavailable to less advanced countries. For example heavy investment in genetic research could lead to: super-soldiers, an extended average lifespan and other attendant health benefits or advanced viral weaponry. Or none of the above.
This begs the question, already asked elsewhere no doubt, will NS2 have atech tree? Will investment in specific areas of research or industry bring concrete rewards? How will this be administered?