Chapter 6: an exploration of politics
Chapter 6: an exploration of politics
First, thanks much for all the kind and positive input - thanks folks!
Welcome back, everyone, to a fun-filled chapter of the Mexicon AAR. This chapter includes a tutorial on tweaking the economy/NF, some non-military updates, and then, the icing on top of this cake of excitement - a long and only partially successful exploration of Victoria's 2 Elecotoral Politics! Including Python code! I know, it seems too good to be true, doesn't it!
. Let the magic begin!
To set the stage, it's
January 1854, and I'm at peace, at least until the UK decides to slap me around again. I have no CBs, and my infamy is still in the stratosphere, so no wars for me.
Tweaking the economy...
It's been a while since I fine-tuned the economy, let's take a look.
To my surprise, I already have a few too many bureaucrats - that's what happens when you pay them well and don't tax them, I guess! I move their pay down a bit.
I now turn my attention to raising literacy rate.
After 15 years of encouragement, I've got clergy up to 1.34% - still well below the 2.00% 'optimal', however my clerks, who are '4.00%' optimal, are only at 0.03%! I decide it's time to switch to that focus, as this will also help my indusrial output.
The most pops (near their RGO limit), and the most craftsmen pops, and the best rail network, and the most factories, are all in Mexico - I decide to encourage clerks there.
My loss is the USA's gain....
Now that I'm no longer a great power, I can no longer throw a monkey wrench into the USA's plans, and sure enough during this period they steadily get one country after another into their SOI - first Korea, then the CSA, then Sokoto, Hawaii, and finally Haiti. Grr...
A technological note.....
In
August 1855 I finish "early railroad", and though tempted by military, decide to continue with industrial, going for "practical steam engine" - +10% output to both factories and farms! At the end of the day money drives military power, after all.
The advantage of a small upper class...
The great thing about having almost no upper class is that i get to laugh at events like these, the "Chamber of Commerce Protests" and "Aristocrats Incite the Peasantry" events.
An example of choosing a new national focus.
In
February 1858.
I happen to notice that I have a second NF! (looking through screen grabs, I see this been laying around for 2 years. Grrr....).
First i think of more clerks, but looking at my factories....
I see that most are under-staffed already - no real slack to siphon off more clerks. Instead, I decide to encourage craftsmen. The one in Neuvo Leon is in a high-infrastructure province (for me, at least), should make good money (my winery in Mexico is raking in the bucks), and is almost empty - let's do it!
Adventures in User Interface....
Whoops, where
is Nuevo Leon - the game is no help!
Why is this? Because if you look closely at the caption, you can see that this allows you to search "Countries and Provinces", but not Territories. Why? Who knows! The only way you can find it in game, that I can see, is to
Go to "territorial" mode, sweep your mouse over teach territory, and see what the tooltip says
A descent into the political system.....
In
Feburary 1858, it's time to start a new electoral campaign. Please join me on another frightening round of our game, "Trying to make the numbers in Victoria 2 make sense". I know, I know, it seems too exciting for just one AAR, but let's try it, shall we
OK, snarking aside. Here's the basic low-down on the situation in Mexico.
The franchise is "weighted wealth" (which means that a rich person gets 2 votes, middle-class 1 vote, and poor get 0 votes), and the voting system is "first past the post", which means that elections are winner-take-all - like in the US, if you get 40% of the vote in every state, that means you get 0% of the representatives.
Mexico has 5 political parties - 2 Conservative (the Partido Conversador (the current ruling party), and the Partido Moderado Liberal), 2 Liberal (the Partido Liberal and the Partido Radical Liberal), and 1 Reactionary (the Partido Imperial). Yes, the "Moderado Liberal" party is Conservative - hey, politics is a strange place
Here are their "issues":.
(L) Partido Liberal - Free Trade, Laissez Faire, Moralism, Limited citizenship, Pro Military
(R) Partido Imperial - Protectionism, State Control, Moralism, Residency, Jingoism
(C) Partido Moderado Liberal - Protectionism, Interventionism, Moralism, Limited Citizenship, Pro Military
(L) Partido Radical Liberal - Free Trade, Laissez Faire, Moralism, Residency, Anti-Military
(C) Partido Conservador - Protectionism, Interventionism, Moralism, Residency, Jingoism.
Still on the 'politics' page,
Note that the pop and the voters are both plurality/majority conservative. It's a bit odd to me that the disenfranchised population isn't liberal - don't they want to vote? Anyways...
Let's see if we can figure out
why the pie charts are as they are.
First, remember that only two groups vote - the rich, and the middle class. Let's take them each in turn.
The Middle Class.
Going to the population chart, and only selecting the middle class (it would be nice if there were a 1-step way to do this, oh well), we get the following chart, for the 406K middle-class people in Mexico:
And right away, if you look a little, things seem odd. There is one 'reactionary' party, the 'Partido Imperialista'. If 12.8% of the middle class will vote for it, then why are they shown as '19.4%' reactionary ideology? Why do the two yellow liberal parties add up to 36% of the electorate, but 45% of the 'ideology'?
Let's see if drilling down to 'issues' helps - after all, the manual and strategy guide both say that it's really issues that matter, that issues determine which party a POP will support. OK, fine. Here are the 'Dominant issues' for the middle class, from the pie chart to the left of 'Electorate vote':
pro_military 14.4
wealth_voting 13.6
interventionism 12.0
jingoism 11.0
moralism 6.5
free_trade 6.3
laissez_faire 5.5
anti_military 4.6
state_capitalism 3.8
planned_economy 3.2
full_citizenship 3.1
pacifism 3.1
limited_citizenship 2.3
secret_ballots 2.3
residency 2.1
atheism 1.8
pluralism 1.8
protectionism 1.3
secularized 1.1
OK, how does that map to party support? The natural way would be to 'dot product'. If party X supports 'pro_military' and 'jingoism', for example, it would get 14.4 + 11.0 = 25.4 'points'. Do this for all parties and normalize, and it seems like you should get the 'Electoral vote' column. Well, if you do this (I did, here's the Python, which also includes the Rich):.
Code:
conservador = { "name" : "Partido Conservador", "score": 0.0, "issues" : set(['protectionism', 'interventionism', 'moralism', 'residency', 'jingoism'])}
liberal = { "name" : "Partido Liberal", "score": 0.0, "issues" : set(['free trade', 'laissez faire', 'moralism', 'limited citizenship', 'pro military'])}
imperialista = { "name" : "Partido Imperialista", "score": 0.0, "issues" : set(['protectionism', 'state capitalism', 'moralism', 'residency', 'jingoism'])}
moderado_liberal = { "name" : "Partido Moderado Liberal", "score": 0.0, "issues" : set(['protectionism', 'interventionism', 'moralism', 'limited citizenship', 'pro military'])}
radical_liberal = { "name" : "Partido Radical Liberal", "score": 0.0, "issues" : set(['free trade', 'laissez faire', 'moralism', 'residency', 'anti military'])}
rich_issues = { "pro military": 21.1, "interventionism" : 10.6, "jingoism": 9.8,
"state capitalism": 6.5, "anti military" : 6.4, "moralism": 5.5, "wealth voting": 5.3,
"free trade":4.9, "laissez faire": 4.1, "full citizenship": 4.1,
"planned economy": 4.0, "pacifism": 3.7, "atheism": 2.9, "limited citizenship": 2.2,
"plualism": 2.2, "secularized": 1.9, "secret ballots":1.8, "residency": 1.5 }
middle_issues = { "pro military": 14.4, "wealth voting": 13.6, "interventionism" : 12.0,
"jingoism": 11.8, "moralism": 6.5, "free trade": 6.3, "laissez faire": 5.5,
"anti military" : 4.6, "state capitalism": 3.8, "planned economy": 3.2,
"full citizenship": 3.1, "pacifism": 3.1, "limited citizenship": 2.3,
"secret ballots": 2.3, "residency": 2.1, "atheism": 1.8, "pluralism": 1.8,
"protectionism": 1.3, "secularized": 1.1 }
parties = [conservador, liberal, imperialista, moderado_liberal, radical_liberal]
def ClassToParty(cls, name):
total_val = 0.0
for p in parties:
p['score'] = 0.0
for key,val in cls.items():
if key in p['issues']:
p['score'] += val
total_val += val
for p in parties:
print '%s score for %s is %d' % (name, p['name'], 100.0*p['score']/total_val)
ClassToParty(middle_issues, "Middle Class")
for p in parties:
p['middle_score'] = p['score']
ClassToParty(rich_issues, "Upper Class")
total_val = 0
for p in parties:
p['rich_score'] = p['score']
val = 406*p['middle_score'] + 152*2*p['rich_score']
total_val += val
p['total_score'] = val
for p in parties:
print 'total score for %s is %d' % (p['name'], 100.0*p['total_score']/total_val)
You get these results:
Middle Class score for Partido Conservador is 21
Middle Class score for Partido Liberal is 22
Middle Class score for Partido Imperialista is 16
Middle Class score for Partido Moderado Liberal is 23
Middle Class score for Partido Radical Liberal is 16
Which compare to the 'pie chart', as follows:
Partido Conservador: Python says 21, Vic2 says 30:
-9
Partido Moderado Liberal: Python says 23, Vic2 says 21:
+2
Partido Liberal: Python says 22, Vic2 says 21:
+1
Partido Radical Liberal: Python says 16, Vic2 says 16:
0
Partido Imperialista: Python says 16, vict says 13:
+3
(Neither quite adds up to 100, because of rounding). Overall, not bad, close enough that I think that with just one tweak (assume that the party in power gets a bump), this pretty much matches up.
It's a mystery how 'Electorate Vote' and 'Ideology' relate, however, let's leave that for now, and move on.
The Politics of the Rich
If you do the exact same thing for the rich, by the way,
you get this:
Partido Conservador: Python says 20, Vic2 says 32:
-12
Partido Moderado Liberal: Python says 24, Vic2 says 25:
0
Partido Liberal: Python says 23, Vic2 says 19:
-5
Partido Radical: Python says 15, Vic2 says 12:
-3
Partido Imperialista: Python says 16, Vic2 says 12:
-4
A similar pattern to the middle class - the ruling party gets a big bump, and the others suffer a bit. I'm sure other factors are probably counted here, too, like militancy or something, but it seems like we're close.
On to election night.....
OK, now that we think we more-or-less understand, which parties the voters will prefer, and why, let's head on to the general election and see what happened!
If we know how many middle class voters there are, and which parties they like, and how many rich voters there are, and which parties they like, and we know that each rich voter gets 2 votes and each middle class voter gets one vote, we should be able to do a good job of predicting election night results. Here's what our friend Python predicts:
total score for Partido Conservador is 20
total score for Partido Liberal is 23
total score for Partido Imperialista is 16
total score for Partido Moderado Liberal is 24
total score for Partido Radical Liberal is 15
Which should be quite the dogfight. Python says the Partido Conservador should finish 3rd, however with the ruling paty bump, they might squeak it out, ahead of the "Partido Moderado Liberal" and the "Partido Liberal". The election night results are coming in.....
WTF? Anyone have any idea here? I know that "first past the post" should penalize minority parties, but this is ridiculous! Anyone, anyone? Anything other than massive electoral fraud??
One thing that
didn' cause it - my decisions during the electoral campaign. There were two that favored "limited citizenship", one that favored "full citizenship", one that favored "pro military", and one that favored "planned economy" -
none of which are issues the Partido Conservador has.
Oh well, let's move on.
And now back to our show....
In
July 1858 oh joy, I get DOWed by the UK, and USCA and CSA both ditch me. Going in, my infamy is 44.01, my prestige is 12. For UK, it's infamy is 5.39, it's prestige is 422 (gulp).
This seems a natural place to stop for now - wish me luck, until next time!
