Quick preface: I know parties were a last minute addition and probably need still need some tinkering under the hood. I don't terribly enjoy their implementation at present, and I get the sense few people do. Why I wanted to write this now was that I'm starting to see people in a couple of threads give up on political parties and argue that players were wrong to lobby for their addition. I think parties are critical for the ludonarrativity and historicity of the game, so I wanted to outline a vision for improvements to parties that could hopefully make them a fun and flavourful system to interact with.
At present, I would say there are several big problems with the parties system:
Here's how that would work, I think:
What do you think?
At present, I would say there are several big problems with the parties system:
- I never care about them outside of elections, when I just shove whatever combination of interest groups I want into government as best I can - the parties have no permanence or meaning outside two screens in the game, each accessed once every few years
- This leads to a ludonarrative sense that it is the IGs that represent political parties (I have literally caught myself mouthing "and if I add the industrialist party to this..."), as it is them, not the political parties, that carry a political agenda - that effectively, I am leading a "liberal coalition" of the industrialist and intellecual parties, rather than a liberal party formed of the industrialist and intellectual interests
- This creates narrative dissonance when the Intellectual leader picks Das Kapital off the shelf and I find I am suddenly leading a socialist goverment, without having changed anything in that government, which is reinforced by the appearance of "relevant" journal entries
- Parties in goverment can pass any policy that any constituent interest group supports - because law passage is a very slow process, and some laws are clearly superior to others, you usually wind up passing lots of laws from one IG's agenda (even when their partymates oppose the change), and almost nothing from most of the others'. It feels to me someone should eventually get pissed off by this!
- Legitimacy calculations (which I think are outside the scope of the suggestion I am making here)
Here's how that would work, I think:
- When a party forms, it takes three political traits from its constituent interest groups, including leader traits: those form the political traits of the party, indicating what laws it can pass and what is politically on its agenda, perhaps determining some relevant events totally outside of the law-passage process
- These political traits are principally selected on a random, clout-weighted basis from the political traits of the consituent IGs, with some weighting given to historical flavour: i.e. a liberal party that has been "localised" to the (American) Republican Party, will be much more likely to take on the Abolitionist trait
- Party formation is communicated as a big deal to the player, with an event pop-up and potentially the role for the player to choose between two options for the 3rd political trait, giving them stake in the process. Party formation (and destruction!) should be a rare and important occurrence - note how many modern European democracies use parties defined in the middle of the 19th century even today, though also note that what those parties' agenda has changed significantly over time
- If an IG does not have any of its political traits recognised as part of the party's political traits, or actively opposes one of the existing traits, there is a probability for an event to occur where it will demand its least-preferred party trait be swapped with one of its traits, or it will leave the party. This should also (generally) be treated as a big deal, on par with the Peelite-Conservative split or the socialist fracture after the 2nd International (which are super cool events that the game currently seems to have very limited mechanics to model!). This I think would make more narrative sense of the possibility for an IG leader to suddenly flip an IG's agenda through trait-acquisition, as that will then generate the possibility of them leaving their existing party for a new one, rather than immediately changing what that party represents and carrying the other IGs along with them.
- Passing laws that reflect the goals of one IG would give them a attractional- or clout-boost, increasing that IG's "grip" over the party it participates in
- During elections, incumbent parties that have acheived some/all of the traits listed in an agenda would trigger the chance for an event where they lose that agenda trait (and generate a new one through the clout-weighted system described above, or player intervention) in exchange for a large boost in momentum. Incumbent parties that fail to acheive their agendas would receive scaling momentum penalties for each election-cycle. This would provide some light RP-centric player goals for people to pursue - "I want to keep the socialist party in power, so I need to treat their agenda as a manifesto for the next few years" - as well as help simulate historical events like the political drift in the Liberal Party in the later Gladstone years where it glommed onto unpopular support for Irish Home Rule in part because it had been so succesful in acheiving its other (more palatable) goals
- The law passage cycle - which I really want to emphasise that I feel should match the game's terminology of it as a "debate" - has a probability of events adding a temporary fourth trait to rival parties as they give temporary support to the ruling coalition in exchange for something else, up to and including changing one of the ruling party's political traits to one of their's (assuming it is a valid trait for at least one of the constituent IGs in that ruling party).
- Existing laws that correspond to traits shared by, say, 2/3 of the parties in play by clout-weighting, have a chance to become "settled" with all parties. Parties regardless of pro-/anti- position are forced to drop traits referencing that law and generate new ones from the systems described above (not including ones that also reference that trait). IGs which support the settled status quo gain a popularity boost. Issues can of course become "unsettled" at a later date.
What do you think?
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