Dev Diary #46 - Political Parties

[MrMineHeads]

SMH this game is getting too political

 

[neondt]

Do party names change at all in-game (i.e. will the Whigs ever become the Liberal Party)? Can we rename parties?

Also, can we influence IGs to switch party?

It's possible for parties to change their names throughout the game, if the conditions for enabling a different name are met.

You'll have some degree of influence over this - we plan on exposing exactly why each IG has chosen their party, so you'll know what you need to do to get them to leave.

Ok but I do have a question, what happens when a particular issue has split support among a party in government. Let's take your example of The Liberal Party with both the Intelligentsia and the Industrialists whom are divergent on the issue of child labour. If you begin to pass a law outlawing child labour, what happens to the party? Does it split?

Your laws will be more likely to stall or be debated rather than advance when you reach an enactment checkpoint. Conflict within the government over the currently enacting law makes it a lot harder to pass that law.

I'm quite surprised there's no Labour Party on the list, since the birth of labour movements was rather a big deal in the period. Or is labour lumped in with one of the others, so if there's a strong enough labour IG it'll effectively take over one of the political parties and make that the de-facto Labour Party?

Labour parties are essentially Social Democratic parties. I believe that some countries will use "Labour Party" as their dynamic name for the Social Democratic Party.

How moddable is all of this?

Extremely. You can define new political parties, change the attraction and repulsion factors, add or change dynamic names, etc. You can mod every aspect of the party system.

So if the Conservative Party receives a majority of votes in a UK general election, can I, as the player, ignore the result of the election and put a Liberal-Anarchist-Social Democratic government in power?

You absolutely can, but your government will not likely be very legitimate!

Will the government of an AI country affect its AI ambitions? I hope so, since a Fascist France ought to be more prone to conquer e.g. Belgium compared to if ti's agrarian

AI countries are strongly influenced by the IG's they have in power.

 

[LucasG21]

Do party names change at all in-game (i.e. will the Whigs ever become the Liberal Party)? Can we rename parties?

Also, can we influence IGs to switch party?

 

[Aretii]

Interest Groups must be added or removed from government as a single bloc

I think this should be "Political Parties", given the context.

I don't suppose you can talk a little more about Ideologies and which ones are permanently associated with particular IGs and which ones are dynamic (leader-based or otherwise)? They seem to play a large role in syncing up Parties with IGs, but I don't think we've heard much about them.

 

[LucasG21]

Also, can we ban parties? This feels very important, especially for Oligarchic/quasi-democratic republics.

My first planned playthrough is as a Ind+Int combo, and I'd like to discourage the Intellectuals from joining any leftist parties that might appear.

 

[UmbrellaWork]

nice job

 

[CorneliusBottomly]

The Republicans didn't exist in 1836...

 

[DominusNovus]

There are 11 potential Political Parties that your Interest Groups can join. At any given time, any combination of these parties might exist or not exist. Parties emerge and disband dynamically, so the political landscape can be very different between countries and playthroughs. The following Parties can emerge throughout the course of the game:

• The Agrarian Party
• The Anarchist Society
• The Communist Party
• The Conservative Party
• The Fascist Party
• The Free Trade Party
• The Liberal Party
• The Military Party
• The Radical Party
• The Religious Party
• The Social Democratic Party

Many of these parties are aligned primarily around a particular Interest Group’s core ideologies, which other IG’s may join under the right circumstances. The Liberal Party for instance is the natural home of the Intelligentsia due to their Liberal Ideology, but they may be swayed towards other Parties under various circumstances. Other Parties are aligned more strongly with Leader Ideologies that emerge throughout the game, such as the Communist Party and the Radical Party. Each of these Parties has a variety of dynamic names based on national, cultural, and religious factors - for instance in Great Britain the Conservative Party is localized as the Tories, while in the USA they are known as the Democratic Party.

Its a good start, and I appreicate that the IGs within the parties can shift about, but I do hope that, sometime after release, the parties can become a little more dynamic. In particular, in the US, while the Democrats were the more conservative (in Vicky terms) of the two parties throughout much of game's period, that was not entirely true. In particular, in the final 1/3 or so of the game's time frame, this started to change quite a bit. During the 1900s-1920s, both parties were re-aligning around just which one would embrass the Progressive movement (and what that meant) and it was ultimately the Democrats that more wholeheartedly did so, which de facto made the Republicans the Conservative party.

The Republicans didn't exist in 1836...

Good point! Another reason to hope for more dynamic parties!

 

[Fallofthepurple]

I think this is a pretty elegant solution though im a bit sad that different electoral laws dont seem to have made it into the game. Generally speaking I would be very happy if the political system was expanded upon down the line.

You mentioned that parties can have localization depending on the country that they are in, are they always predefined at game start or would it be possible for modders to change party names via triggers if certain conditions are met i.e time.

 

[Skales]

Not a fan of the idea that political parties have to be treated as a bloc when joining the government. There should be the possibility to represent a situation where one wing of the party ends up being ascendant in the new government and the other wing(s) get sidelined or betrayed.

Edit: A more detailed explanation here.

 

[Nawolith]

Will Parties have custom names based off of which country they are from, perhaps in the native language?

Yes. Reading the Dev Diary in full would have told you that at least the former one is happening.

 

[MrMineHeads]

Ok but I do have a question, what happens when a particular issue has split support among a party in government. Let's take your example of The Liberal Party with both the Intelligentsia and the Industrialists whom are divergent on the issue of child labour. If you begin to pass a law outlawing child labour, what happens to the party? Does it split?

 

[commissar roach]

This comment has been reserved by the community team to gather up dev responses for ease of reading.

LucasG21 said:


Do party names change at all in-game (i.e. will the Whigs ever become the Liberal Party)? Can we rename parties?

Also, can we influence IGs to switch party?

It's possible for parties to change their names throughout the game, if the conditions for enabling a different name are met.

You'll have some degree of influence over this - we plan on exposing exactly why each IG has chosen their party, so you'll know what you need to do to get them to leave.

MrMineHeads said:


Ok but I do have a question, what happens when a particular issue has split support among a party in government. Let's take your example of The Liberal Party with both the Intelligentsia and the Industrialists whom are divergent on the issue of child labour. If you begin to pass a law outlawing child labour, what happens to the party? Does it split?

Your laws will be more likely to stall or be debated rather than advance when you reach an enactment checkpoint. Conflict within the government over the currently enacting law makes it a lot harder to pass that law.

aantia said:


I'm quite surprised there's no Labour Party on the list, since the birth of labour movements was rather a big deal in the period. Or is labour lumped in with one of the others, so if there's a strong enough labour IG it'll effectively take over one of the political parties and make that the de-facto Labour Party?

Labour parties are essentially Social Democratic parties. I believe that some countries will use "Labour Party" as their dynamic name for the Social Democratic Party.

Thure said:


How moddable is all of this?

Extremely. You can define new political parties, change the attraction and repulsion factors, add or change dynamic names, etc. You can mod every aspect of the party system.

mattkidd12 said:


So if the Conservative Party receives a majority of votes in a UK general election, can I, as the player, ignore the result of the election and put a Liberal-Anarchist-Social Democratic government in power?

You absolutely can, but your government will not likely be very legitimate!

Ninking said:


Will the government of an AI country affect its AI ambitions? I hope so, since a Fascist France ought to be more prone to conquer e.g. Belgium compared to if ti's agrarian

AI countries are strongly influenced by the IG's they have in power.

 

[Dio_Brando_WRYYYYY]

Its a good start, and I appreicate that the IGs within the parties can shift about, but I do hope that, sometime after release, the parties can become a little more dynamic. In particular, in the US, while the Democrats were the more conservative (in Vicky terms) of the two parties throughout much of game's period, that was not entirely true. In particular, in the final 1/3 or so of the game's time frame, this started to change quite a bit. During the 1900s-1920s, both parties were re-aligning around just which one would embrass the Progressive movement (and what that meant) and it was ultimately the Democrats that more wholeheartedly did so, which de facto made the Republicans the Conservative party.

Don't worry man, they'll be fleshed out in the future, just locked behind a DLC paywall of course!

 

[Emperor8428]

I think this is an acceptable implementation of political parties for the first iteration of the game, but I hope that greater dynamism is added over time. It should be possible for interest groups, especially the most powerful ones, to support multiple parties at once. And in countries with primary systems like the US, there should be some kind of competition between IGs for dominance over a party's goals and ambitions once in power. Were such a system of competition between IGs in the same party be implemented, there should also be delay on the time it takes for voters to realign to a party that is closer to their preferred IG if an IG is kicked out of its party

 

[grommile]

Please do something about the UI.
It s simply awful

This is not actionable feedback. It only conveys one piece of information: you don't like it.

Say what's bad about it, and why you think it's bad.

 

[Brownbeard]

Pretty decent DD, only thing on top of this that I would like to see are minority parties, esp in multi cultural nations like Austria-Hungary.

 

[DominusNovus]

I think one reason why this implementation is somewhat “meh” (as in: we’re happy to have something, but we all pretty much agree its the bare minimum) is because it mis-represents the nature of parties. They are not necessarily alliances that arise organically from the common ground of given interest groups. They are institutions through which people attempt to control the government, and the way they do that is to appeal to said interest groups.

For example, take the Republican Party. It was started, first and foremost, as an abolitionist party. That was its entire purpose. Look at its 1856 platform:

Republican Party Platform of 1856 | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

9 Resolutions, of which 2 are pretty much fluff, and 5 are explicitly about their opposition to slavery (the remaining 2 are both about infrastructure). So, 70% of the GOP's entire stated substantial for existing was opposition to slavery. From there, they basically reached out to various groups that they thought they could bring on board (in fact, their last resolution, which I described as fluff, was basically this pitch) to their party. The inclusion of infrastructure investments into the platform was a pretty obvious pitch to the industrialists - we'll help direct federal funds to making it easier to transport your goods to market.

In short, this is the difference between the Industrialists asking to join the Republican Party and the Republican Party asking the Industrialists to join them. Its a subtle distinction when you put it in words, but it matters quite a bit, because it means that, in theory, every election, every interest group is up for grabs by each party in reality, whereas, in the game, it looks like it is taken for granted that the groups are, by default, going to align with given parties and only move over under specific circumstances.

Look at what the Democrats did in the latter portion of the game's time period: Under the Bourbon Democrat era, the party made a successful pitch to the industrialists to syphon away much of their support of the GOP, and then, when they decided that wasn't effective enough, electorally, they made a successful pitch to the progressives to secure that group's votes. Thus, between 1870 and 1900, more or less, one of the key groups in American politics was courted by both parties.

If this were modelled in the game, rather than the other way around, parties in every democracy would automatically become dynamic, because, over the course of succeeding elections, they would always be tweaking their platforms in order to win over interest groups. There would be no official 'liberal party' or 'conservative party' just parties that looked at the electoral map and said 'we have a better shot of victory if we appeal to conservative (or liberal) voters.' Obviously, sheer inertia means that it is generally easier for a party to be consistent in said appeal, resulting in many elections in a row where you can de facto say 'this party is conservative/liberal,' but it also means that, when there's a major shake up, the parties can shift their coalitions dramatically. Just as, in the US, they did so repeatedly.

 

[CrusaderKingsFan]

Not a fan of the idea that political parties have to be treated as a bloc when joining the government. There should be the possibility to represent a situation where one wing of the party ends up being ascendant in the new government and the other wing(s) get sidelined or betrayed.

Since when do wings of parties form government instead of whole parties? The strength of the individual wings (= the IGs) is reflected in which laws get passed.