Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #6 - Interest Groups

[brycecon]

Also, natural disasters. If there is one thing Paradox has missed out of all their games it is the influence of natural disasters. Why isnt the world map painted pink blue grey or white? At some point floods, plagues, earthquakes, disease, drought and more plagues happened.

 

[Lithaeus]

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.

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).

 

[WhapXI]

I think this whole discussion about the role and nature of IGs and how they model irl politics is interesting. I guess it depends how complex the models of power structures in the game can or will be. Because obviously the 19th century was a time when a hell of a lot of new ideas for how states and governments should be organised were flying around.

I think it would be worth considering a geographic basis for pop political power. Say you're in a highly centralised absolute monarchy, then an aristocrat or clergyman in the capital will probably wield a lot more political strength than a pop halfway across the empire in a rural backwater. On the other hand, a Leninist-style communist republic would have councils in every town and province, in theory having equal power to each other. Similarly a federal empire like the German Reich would have much more powerful aristocrats and officers in each of the provincal capitals. I guess ultimately I'm hoping that there is some kind of shifting centralisation vs decentralisation in the game, and how that would be reflected.

Regarding power structures themselves, IGs are a decent catch-all for informal groups, established churches, trade unions, political parties, regional governing bodies, industrial concerns, financial bodies, and so forth, but I think the game might really benefit if each of these systems is given its own room to breathe and interact. Maybe even a category for hostile groups like revolutionary groups and terrorist cells. Each did have different roles in society and politics, after all, that I don't think a generic IG system would really model. I think if you started somewhere without a legislature or something then political parties and trade unions and such would start to emerge as IGs became more militant and organised. Sort of how the Jacobins grew out of the Third Estate in France. Or it could go the other way, like the UK's Labour Party, a political party that grew out of the extant union movement. Or if your capitalists don't feel represented by a socially-minded government, they might start to coalesce as an organised business lobby to try and promote their own interests outside of the normal party politics. Or maybe if you have a regional-nationalist political party that you're trying to supress, eventually a terrorist cell emerges that's much harder to surpress and starts giving you bad events. Or if you're trying to establish or maintain a theocracy, all your time and energy would go to promoting the interests and power of the established church, and try and make it such that all other groups are slowly starved of power and die away.

I appreciate this would probably be complicated, but I think the basis would still be the same. Every group would still be an IG, but they'd each have a different type, and the player would have a different set of interactions with each of them. Think of it like EU4's different subject types giving different subject interactions. It's much simpler to interact with a political party or trade union than it is to negotiate with an Estate of like-minded landowners, for instance, so for the former the player would have more tools to interact with, influence, or attempt to supress them. You'd also need to allow pops to join multiple IGs at the same time, but also limit it by type. All pops should be part of an informal group, but also could be a member of a political party, a union, and a subversive group, all at the same time.

It's fun to spitball about dream games, tbh. Hopefully this sort of political complexity makes it into the game eventually. Considering how Stellaris radically changed, anything's possible!

 

[CivandEUIII]

Interesting!
You've touched a bit on leaders being influenced by the interest groups they lead (and vice versa), so I'm curious - is it possible to "force" a leader to have a name, portrait and set of ideologies through events or some similar mechanism? Or will they always be randomized (within the limits of the interest group they lead of course)?

 

[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.

 

[Benjamintf1]

> but these are not entirely set in stone - they can change over the course of the game and will also vary based on the current leader of the Interest Group, who comes with his or her own personal ideology and view of the world

I actually find this surprising. I was assuming we'd see interest groups as a more static thing that changed by people joining them or leaving them. (Given the removal of the static "con/reactionary/lib/fasc/soc/anarcholib/com" I had assumed that instead of trying to push parties to change(ie, the republican party becoming more abolitionist as time goes on), that we'd see it coming from the popularization of interest groups(for example, the popularization of either a "abolitionist" group or "radical republican" group).

I'm also surprised at how...at face value people are talking about elections and parties? Like, I read interest groups as a measure to move away from the "public image"/"idealist" view of elections. The way clout and IG's seem to be it seems like it's set up to model things like: Political parties that don't represent a large section of their constitutiants(at least, well), interest groups that hold influence regardless of elections(I suspect industrialists in britian, for example, will hold much sway regardless of who wins seats in parlement, for example). 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.

 

[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.

 

[BrytonJSwan]

Really hoping the Family Compact and Chateau Clique in Upper and Lower Canada are represented through this system as the names for the landowner IGs. it would be perfect for that!

 

[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.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wizzington and the extra info Iachek and KaiserJohan - this sounds like yet another interesting component of a machine with lots of moving parts, and sounds wonderfully Vicky Really love the moddability as well - super-cool

My favourite interest group action would be the lobbying for more dreadnoughts, of "We want eight and we won't wait" fame - which also makes for a good naval pic for this DD - here's one of the eight, the Orion-class battleship HMS Thunderer - the closest intersection between warships and interest groups I can think of!

 

[adil3tr]

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.

This sounds really arbitrary in a game that's all about emergent simulation.

 

[Heatth]

This sounds really arbitrary in a game that's all about emergent simulation.

Part of the emergent simulation is that people exist and they sometimes have ideologies that vary from what you would expect, and you have to deal with it. The game can't actually simulate the whole lives of everyone in your country, so there needs to be some "arbitrariness" to some aspect of it, to simulate the stuff that isn't simulated. Miss these surprises is also a failure of simulation.

I imagine there is some weight to what ideologies the leaders will be, which you may be able to influence. And the devs have already said that you the leaders can't stay too far from their own IG (no anarchist military leader)

 

[Shock360]

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

There’s a lot more common folk than aristocrats. Giving common folk and aristocrats a population based influence boost benefits common folk more

 

[Revshawn]

Judging by the large stain in my pants, I would say this was a pretty great dev diary. Thanks a lot Wiz!

I am taking the day off tomorrow to recover.

 

[adil3tr]

Part of the emergent simulation is that people exist and they sometimes have ideologies that vary from what you would expect, and you have to deal with it. The game can't actually simulate the whole lives of everyone in your country, so there needs to be some "arbitrariness" to some aspect of it, to simulate the stuff that isn't simulated. Miss these surprises is also a failure of simulation.

I imagine there is some weight to what ideologies the leaders will be, which you may be able to influence. And the devs have already said that you the leaders can't stay too far from their own IG (no anarchist military leader)

I'm sorry but that is not how the world works at all. At best a monarch could do that but in reality only the most unstable places that already have a base for this (like the communists in the afghan army launching a coup) could see it happen. History doesn't have that many special surprises where the head of the US army suddenly reveals he's a communist and the whole armed forces all agree with him. This is a game of classes and demographics, if you want that kind of thing then go play crusader king, seriously, games like victoria are rare.

 

[Lorehead]

Part of the emergent simulation is that people exist and they sometimes have ideologies that vary from what you would expect, and you have to deal with it. The game can't actually simulate the whole lives of everyone in your country, so there needs to be some "arbitrariness" to some aspect of it, to simulate the stuff that isn't simulated. Miss these surprises is also a failure of simulation.

Totally. That said, governments of the time did keep tabs on potential leaders of movements, and sometimes took steps to eliminate them.

 

[Spartakusbund]

I'm sorry but that is not how the world works at all. At best a monarch could do that but in reality only the most unstable places that already have a base for this (like the communists in the afghan army launching a coup) could see it happen. History doesn't have that many special surprises where the head of the US army suddenly reveals he's a communist

In the historical US, yes that would be absurd. However, in a divergent US where communism is able to take root it would be a lot less absurd. Though it certainly should not be “sudden.”

and the whole armed forces all agree with him.

Obviously this shouldn’t happen, and I don’t think it will. The ideology should already be present in the POPs that support the IG as a prerequisite.

 

[Heatth]

Totally. That said, governments of the time did keep tabs on potential leaders of movements, and sometimes took steps to eliminate them.

Yeah, if you can't influence the leaders at all then that is a problem. But that is a very different problem than "there shouldn't be any RNG about the personality and inclination of the in-game characters".

 

[nikkythegreat]

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.

 

[Lorehead]

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.

I think illiteracy making the proletariat more lumpen is supposed to do that.