Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #6 - Interest Groups

[lachek]

In the image of the Landowners Interest Group, does the blue Ideology indicate the personal Ideology of the Interest Group leader?

Yes, exactly.

1. It seems like IGs are not considered the same as ideology, that's pretty cool. Is it possible for my armed forces to become partially communist?

The Armed Forces' typical Ideologies favor laws that help sustain a strong national defense and keep the populace loyal, but it's entirely possible for the Armed Forces to gain a Leader that has a different ideological bent. In that case you can indeed end up with an Armed Forces that is strongly pro-Communist, which may be beneficial or problematic for you.

2. It seems like IGs are a zero sum game, unless I'm mistaken. That seems a bit odd to me, in a sense. Surely a landowner can also be a member of the Anglican church and provide his sizeable political clout to both causes?

While each individual within a Pop is considered to support a single Interest Group in this tooltip, functionally there's no difference between 150 people in a 1000-strong Aristocrat Pop giving all their support to the Anglicans and all 1000 individuals providing 15% of their Political Strength to the Anglicans. You can look at it however you like.

 

[lachek]

How do the views of an IG change? Is this mostly dependent on the (hopefully then not fully) RNG based leader?

Outside of major events, yes. Leaders are randomly generated but this is strongly influenced by the Interest Group in question and the state of your country. You might end up with an Abolitionist as the country's religious leader, and this might be much more likely depending on what your state religion is, while you're not going to get an Anarchist Leader of the Armed Forces.

 

[lachek]

Can different interest groups potentially overlap on certain ideologies?

Definitely, there are many cases where Interest Groups both share ideologies (the Armed Forces and Petit-Bourgeoisie are both Patriotic, for example) and where the Interest Groups' ideologies make them ideological allies for the purpose of changing a certain Law but not another. For example, the Intelligentsia would rather have Religious Schools than No Schools, and so would the Devout - but once enacted, the Intelligentsia would usually prefer a more secular school system while the Devout would loathe dismantling Religious Schools in favor of some other flavor, and would rather get rid of organized education altogether.

 

[lachek]

I would like to ask whether elections will be in the game and if so, how will they be implemented?

Elections will be in the game for sure! We will cover the mechanics of those in a separate dev diary, but for now I can say that while non-democratic systems tend to experience political shifts gradually as Pops change and update their preferences in response to (mostly) economic forces, elections will have the possibility to be major turning points for a country as mass political strength is redistributed all at once. They also tend to (but don't have to) grant relatively more political strength to the lower classes, which shifts the political balance of power.

 

[lachek]

So what happens when women's suffrage occurs? Is it simply a Dependence decrease, and an increase in that affected Pops social consciousness?

More Dependents get to cast a vote, which makes the piece of the Political Strength pie made up of Votes even larger. This in turn tends to grant more political strength to the common folk.

 

[lachek]

I hope these are fully moddable from the ground up

They definitely, certainly, 100% are.

 

[lachek]

Yeah, why haven't we seen any good pie charts yet?

There's no such thing as a good pie chart
(yes we have pie charts)

 

[lachek]

Are you able to confirm whether you are able to remain as conservative/religious country throughout the game? Or is it inevitable that you shift away from Piety and Conservatism towards liberalism.

You definitely can! One of the design pillars of Victoria 3 was to not treat liberalism as an inevitable progression but rather something that emerges organically from your actions and which you could try to hold back, or encourage, or revert. There are certainly forces (mostly economic) in the world that encourages the trend towards liberalism but you can try to build a perfect pious agrarian society if you so wish.

 

[lachek]

To try to address a couple of other questions all at once: Interest Groups only represents the "conventional" political forces in your country, those who could at least be marginally heard in the halls of power. While they can rebel against the government if they dislike where the country is going, not all rebellious forces in your country are represented by Interest Groups. So in the case of cultural nationalists / secessionists, minority religious groups, colonial subjects, and other Pops who are systemically disenfranchised in the country, there are other (usually more direct) ways in which they can influence you.

 

[lachek]

Aristocrats have wifes as well though, so womans sufferage should really not change the influence of the common folk or what am i missing?

Even under democratic systems Aristocrats gain most of their political strength from Wealth. So while women Aristocrats will gain as many votes as the same number of women Laborers (under universal suffrage at least) proportionally the resulting Clout of the Interest Groups they support will be quite different.

 

[KaiserJohan]

How dynamic are such interest groups. For example, can I create a slavery interest group or the monarchists in the US?

How much can the player influence the perks of the interest groups?

It is definately moddable!

 

[KaiserJohan]

Can laws affect the power and attraction of IGs? So if you have Trade Unions banned (or just a single, State-controlled Trade Union) would they have less influence in your politics?

Yes, for example Religious Schools increases Devout pop attraction

 

[KaiserJohan]

Also on this subject is it possible, with a sufficiently homogenous and pious population to get just as much benefit out of religious schools as out of publics schools or will public schools be more expensive but ultimately superior to religious schools in every instance (at least in terms of education provided)

Public Schools will provide more literacy/be more expensive but there are more side effects (like Devout attraction, IG approval, etc)

 

[lachek]

1. How different will the desires of different IGs be from country to country? For example historically Southern aristocrats in the USA supported slavery, whereas British aristocrats generally did not (and vice versa with having a monarch). Can these change over time, for example would a monarchist USA eventually be able to create pro monarchist aristocrats?
2. Will we have the same interest groups regardless of government? For example will we still have the landowner IG in a communist country?

While Interest Groups in all countries follow the same broad templates, there can be local variations. From your example, the US variant of the Landowners (Southern Planters) do support slavery, while in other countries where slavery has already been abolished the Landowners tend to be ambivalent to it. In some countries they might even oppose it as uncouth and barbaric.

However, while it's possible for Interest Group types to differ from country to country and for Interest Group Ideologies to change in response to events or temporarily along with their Leaders, the extent by which this happen is fairly limited. For the political system to be interesting to engage with the Ideologies of each group have to be balanced such that by default any given Law will please some groups and anger others. If the groups stray too far from their molds then a subset of the Laws would become uninteresting to try to pass, and if the Interest Groups were to change their ideologies too frequently it'd be hard to get a handle on what they stand for and what role they play.

Government form, or rather the legal implications of the government form, can have a huge impact on Interest Groups' power. To use your example, in a communist country private ownership is abolished, which alters the Ownership Production Method of buildings. This in turn effectively abolishes both capitalism and the aristocracy, which devastates the power base of the Industrialists and Landowners respectively. So after a communist government form has been instituted there may still be some holdouts who support the old ways, but it's likely these Interest Group will become Marginalized in favor of more powerful Trade Unions, Intelligentsia, and Rural Folk. So while the vestige of the Interest Group will remain and will re-emerge if conditions changes, it will be rendered irrelevant without a power base.

 

[lachek]

Well, I guess the follow up question would be, could you create a religious conservative society, which is industrialized? I would hate that choosing a conservative/religious pathway would lock you into an agrarian economy (since that historically was not always true).

Yes, but it's harder. A more industrialized economy requires a more educated workforce, and a more literate population is both more likely to get involved with politics and also more likely to support Interest Groups that demand liberal reforms like voting rights and free speech. One way to try to play this is to try to max out on Authority so you can try to keep these sentiments under control. If one of these movements should boil over, you can put it back down with a powerful military. Another strategy if you have a lot of workforce at your disposal is to not modernize your factories, instead relying on large quantities of poorly educated Laborers rather than Machinists and Engineers. The former tend to be less politically engaged in the first place and also have less political strength on account of their low incomes.

 

[lachek]

The idea of a direct election, where you count pops votes, rather then use clout to calculate the more devious and beurocratic ways groups can influence elections, but also the ruling coalitions those develop seems...shortsighted.

It's both. While the precise mechanics around how votes are counted and what role parties will play (if any) is something we're not quite yet ready to talk about, one thing that is not under discussion is that both political strength derived from Pop Wealth as well as votes cast in democratic elections will definitely count towards the effective political influence each power bloc will have. In addition, political strength can be affected by Laws (e.g. Monarchy giving more power to the Landowners) and even things like geography (Pops in the capital do get a bonus to their political strength compared to Pops who live elsewhere, while Pops in unincorporated states like colonies get much less.)

So no, we're definitely not presenting an idealized version of how democracy magically creates perfectly equitable distribution of power due to 1 man, 1 vote. But we also want elections to act as important events where it's entirely possible that the balance of power suddenly shifts overnight due to powerful popular movements, public sentiment, or voter manipulation.

 

[lachek]

Crap now I want a voting system that factors in literacy. Say pops with 42% literacy would only give 1/2 the votes as as pops of the same size but with 84% literacy.

Little teaser for you:

Under Census Suffrage, only literate Pops are given the vote. The Intelligentsia thinks this is actually just as good as Universal Suffrage, something the Populist Trade Unions disagrees with.

 

[Wizzington]

Based on a Discord comment I saw that most lower-class pops will be politically inactive- this was not really the case for the United States at the start date, however, as 58% of the voting-eligible population voted in the 1836 election, 80% in the 1840 election, and that number rarely fell below 70% until after the turn of the century. Will historical voter turnout numbers be used to assign pops to Interest Groups where applicable?

Lower class political participation depends heavily on literacy.

 

[Wizzington]

A little question about literacy rate and jobs, how will work the literacy cap for the jobs?

For example is you control Spain and your workers have a literacy rate of 30%, and for a mechanist job the requisite are 40%, No one will take the job?, or Will someone take the jobs and create a mechanist por with 40% literacy and the literacy rate of the workers will become lower.

If the actual solution, is that no one will take the open job of machinist, there will be a big problem with the simulation beacuse for some jobs you will pass form 1 million of peoples uncapable of taking best jobs and the next day when the 1 million pop reach de 40% literacy rate, you will get 1 million or capable pops for the new jobs.

This is something we'll explain in a future dev diary about Qualifications.

 

[Wizzington]

I think it would make sense for Dixie clergy to identify with the Planter IG over the Devout/Pious IG in that case, as the church at the time served mainly to advance the interests of the slaveholding class. The issue however is how to ensure that happens instead of Dixie clergy being ahistorically abolitionist. The same can be said of lower-class rural Dixie pops identifying with the Planters rather than Rural Folk.

This could be done by adding an increased weight for certain pops (such as Clergy) in slave states to support the Southern Planters.