Developer Diary 13 – Upper House and Reform

[Alexander Seil]

My guess is that they will still vote for a lower house socialist party, since the people will like the issues of that party. But since they are also content with all the reforms that now have been enacted the gererall mood of the people will be that of preserving the current situation. So they will at the same time vote in a conservative upper house, since the lower house nad the upper hose patties represent different things. Lets see if I finaly got it right, it would mean that I finaly figured it out

That only works if POPs now vote for the ruling party only on issues*, which wasn't the case in Vicky.

*By issues I mean what Vicky considered issues, not what Vicky II considers issues, i.e. old issues + reforms!

Socialist lower house and conservative upper house. The POPs will remain socialist.

That makes no sense, how does the game know that the Upper House is supposed to be Conservative of there are no Conservative POPs around to vote it in?

 

[wilcoxchar]

Revanchism usually happens when you loose wars or territory to other nations. (like Germany loosing WWI)

Ergo. Don't loose wars.

What about Italy in the interbellum?

 

[Meanmanturbo]

That makes no sense, how does the game know that the Upper House is supposed to be Conservative of there are no Conservative POPs around to vote it in?

It would seem like ideology for lower house and ideology for upper house actualy are two different things. For lower house it would work like in Vicky, but for upper house it would only take into account the POPs wants for reforms, and not the actual ideology of the POPs. This looks like a great cause of confusion, maby different naming would help?

 

[Alexander Seil]

It would seem like ideology for lower house and ideology for upper house actualy are two different things. For lower house it would work like in Vicky, but for upper house it would only take into account the POPs wants for reforms, nad not the actual ideollogy of the POPs.

Clearly that cannot be the case either, since this system is supposed to be streamlined...what you're suggesting introduces a massive presentation issue that would make these things very difficult to track for the player.

 

[telesien]

That makes no sense, how does the game know that the Upper House is supposed to be Conservative of there are no Conservative POPs around to vote it in?

You are still overthinking it. Nevermind, it took me like half an hour to get it too The game knows what reforms each POP wants. That was the same in Vicky 1, where you can see how having or not having certain reforms influences their MIL. And when each individual POP sees, that its need for reforms is fullfilled, they logically don't want other reform. They either know or fear, that they will worsen the situation. Therefor they will support such upper house, that will fight for maintaining status quo.

Another way to think of it is absolute and relative terms. Parties and lower house are absolut in their ideology. Every ideology just means what it means. In upper house, all "ideologies" are relative. They function WITH THE RELATION to current state of things. That is why socialst POP in socialist state would support conservative upper house. Conservative here doesn't mean Ronald Reagan. It means CURRENT STATUS QUO.

EDIT: Actually Meanmanturbo got it right. And I don't see it as complicated for the player, but actually as a neat function. By following lower house results, you can track actual ideologies and by upper house results relation towards further reforms. When you have liberal government and upper house, you know that you underperfom and must reform more. Having conservative upper house on the other hand means, that you do it right and the "constitution" looks just like people want it.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

EDIT: Actually Meanmanturbo got it right. And I don't see it as complicated for the player, but actually as a neat function. By following lower house results, you can track actual ideologies and by upper house results relation towards further reforms. When you have liberal government and upper house, you know that you underperfom and must reform more. Having conservative upper house on the other hand means, that you do it right and the "constitution" looks just like people want it.

Yes, I thought about that, it realy is a nice feature, having a conservative upper house would be a nice game goal to strive for, meaning that your people are content.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Cannot be. Why have POP ideologies at all then, rather than a collection of individual issues? What's the point? The whole idea of the DD is to tie up POP ideologies into a neat system, while your explanation leaves that part out entirely, relegating POP ideologies to some bizarre limbo where they are superceded by individual reform and issue preferences.

And yes, I understand what Conservative means here.

 

[telesien]

Cannot be. Why have POP ideologies at all then, rather than a collection of individual issues? What's the point? The whole idea of the DD is to tie up POP ideologies into a neat system, while your explanation leaves that part out entirely, relegating POP ideologies to some bizarre limbo where they are superceded by individual reform and issue preferences.

And yes, I understand what Conservative means here.

They still have important part when they vote for government, which surely influences much more things then just what reforms you can or can't issue

EDIT: Also the explanation of ideologies here is how they work in upper house. Notice that it all deals only with their attitude towards reforms and not other stuff (like liberals never having state capitalism or communists always supporting full citizenship)

 

[Meanmanturbo]

Cannot be. Why have POP ideologies at all then, rather than a collection of individual issues? What's the point? The whole idea of the DD is to tie up POP ideologies into a neat system, while your explanation leaves that part out entirely, relegating POP ideologies to some bizarre limbo where they are superceded by individual reform and issue preferences.

And yes, I understand what Conservative means here.

Note that this DD has ONLY been about the upper house, the lower house is for another DD. So what effects ideologies will have on the lower house and the day to day government actualy not entirely clear yet...even if it looked like I thought it was

 

[Alexander Seil]

They still have important part when they vote for government, which surely influences much more things then just what reforms you can or can't issue

So, in your explanation, we have a schizophrenic ideology system where POPs vote for the Upper House based on issues, even though the Upper House only represents ideologies, and then turn around to vote on ideology for the government itself, which governs primarily on issues? :wacko:

If that is the case, maybe it's time to scrap the system and start from scratch, because this isn't my definition of streamlined :rofl:

EDIT: None of this would be a conceptual stumbling block if only the POPs didn't have ideologies, but only issues (and then the game calculated Upper House ideological composition based on current situation vs. POP preferences), but they clearly do have ideologies, so I still believe your explanation is wrong, as long as King didn't go completely insane when designing this system :rofl:

 

[telesien]

So, in your explanation, we have a schizophrenic ideology system where POPs vote for the Upper House based on issues, even though the Upper House only represents ideologies, and then turn around to vote on ideology for the government itself, which governs primarily on issues? :wacko:

If that is the case, maybe it's time to scrap the system and start from scratch, because this isn't my definition of streamlined :rofl:

Tha is your opinion and you are surely entitled to it, but I see it as ingenious tool for great political simulation

 

[Meanmanturbo]

So, in your explanation, we have a schizophrenic ideology system where POPs vote for the Upper House based on issues, even though the Upper House only represents ideologies, and then turn around to vote on ideology for the government itself, which governs primarily on issues? :wacko:

If that is the case, maybe it's time to scrap the system and start from scratch, because this isn't my definition of streamlined :rofl:

EDIT: None of this would be a conceptual stumbling block if only the POPs didn't have ideologies, but only issues (and then the game calculated Upper House ideological composition based on current situation vs. POP preferences), but they clearly do have ideologies, so I still believe your explanation is wrong, as long as King didn't go completely insane when designing this system :rofl:

Lowerhouse and upperhouse voting is sperate. So you can have a boradly conservative country, with a conservative upperhouse voting in a liberal party because they like the Free Trade. Thus your day to day business is liberal but your country is boradly happy with the current status quo. POP ideology only become important when you have a tie break, if you have both a conservative and a liberal party with the political issue that the POP favours, then the ideology will become important then.

From King himself

 

[Alexander Seil]

Euhm, Meanmanturbo, that has nothing to do with what we're discussing. In fact the statement quite clearly implies that the Upper House is elected on ideology and the lower house on issues, which is exactly my point and the exact opposite of telesien's. I was asking King about the stable equilibria that such a system would create under different starting conditions.

EDIT: I suspect that what happens is that reform preferences are compared to existing and then get fed into the function that determines POP ideology. Again, different from what either of you described, which essentially eliminates POP ideology as a consideration from the Upper House. If you can't see why that makes no sense...well, I can't really explain it any clearer than this, really.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

Euhm, Meanmanturbo, that has nothing to do with what we're discussing. In fact the statement quite clearly implies that the Upper House is elected on ideology and the lower house on issues, which is exactly my point and the exact opposite of telesien's. I was asking King about the stable equilibria that such a system would create under different starting conditions.

EDIT: I suspect that what happens is that reform preferences are compared to existing and then get fed into the function that determines POP ideology. Again, different from what either of you described, which essentially eliminates POP ideology as a consideration from the Upper House. If you can't see why that makes no sense...well, I can't really explain it any clearer than this, really.

Well, I agree that it sounds wierd and massively counterintuitive to have ideologies mean different things for lower and upper house, but it is the only way I can make sense of it. And the mechanic, if it worked that way, would be realy realy good, except for using confusing naming.

And also, the King quote does imply that the ideology of POPs may actualy not mean that much, so issues might just be the most important part for voting for lower house

 

[Subcomandante]

Euhm, Meanmanturbo, that has nothing to do with what we're discussing. In fact the statement quite clearly implies that the Upper House is elected on ideology and the lower house on issues, which is exactly my point and the exact opposite of telesien's. I was asking King about the stable equilibria that such a system would create under different starting conditions.

EDIT: I suspect that what happens is that reform preferences are compared to existing and then get fed into the function that determines POP ideology. Again, different from what either of you described, which essentially eliminates POP ideology as a consideration from the Upper House. If you can't see why that makes no sense...well, I can't really explain it any clearer than this, really.

Don't get worked up over the terminology. Ideologies are all issue based, even in real life. Only those vote on ideology who have no idea what their issues are, or those who are in doubt.

When ideologies have to be clearly defined and delineated from each other, you will see that the political issues of most people fall into multiple ideologies.

That's why there exists no common definition of things like conservatism, capitalism, socialism or liberalism in real life.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Well, I agree that it sounds wierd and massively counterintuitive to have ideologies mean different things for lower and upper house, but it is the only way I can make sense of it. And the mechanic, if it worked that way, would be realy realy good, except for using confusing naming.

And also, the King quote does imply that the ideology of POPs may actualy not mean that much, so issues might just be the most important part for voting for lower house

So I think we can agree that it's not the case.

What King was saying is that ideology is a tiebreaker in lower house voting, but it seems to completely determine the upper house (if it's elected).

 

[Meanmanturbo]

So I think we can agree that it's not the case.

What King was saying is that ideology is a tiebreaker in lower house voting, but it seems to completely determine the upper house (if it's elected).

Well, then we would almost still get the same result from what I suggested. If ideology works like you desrcibe, then it would only concern refoms for upper house purposes. Since it looks like POP voting for lower house will be mostly determined by issues and only ideology being a tie breaker, I dont realy see the difference in the end result.

edit
We would still get a situation were, indeed, the ideology of the former socialists in the socialist state where all reforms are enacted would turn into conservatives. So we would get a conservative upper house. But the issues would stay the same, and since ideology is only a tie-breaker, there is a good chance that the socialists would stay in power in the lower house even if the majority of the population has now turned conservative.

 

[unmerged(131989)]

yes of course

Thanks for the quick response!

 

[Alexander Seil]

Well, then we would almost still get the same result from what I suggested. If ideology works like you desrcibe, then it would only concern refoms for upper house purposes. Since it looks like POP voting for lower house will be mostly determined by issues and only ideology being a tie breaker, I dont realy see the difference in the end result.

Well, actually, I guess I see it now, the situation I described in my original question wouldn't happen because ideology is almost irrelevant for lower house voting. I suppose in my hypothetical country, we'd just have Conservative POPs (the former Socialists) voting for the Socialist party on issues. Makes sense.

 

[OHgamer]

What about Italy in the interbellum?

Failure to gain control of Dalmatia other than the port of Zara was considered a disgrace to completing the return of Italia Irredenta.