How does ideology change from elections work?

[GrounchoVilla]

I've been playing a Red Mexico game, and I've noticed the buff from Bolivarian Alliance turned the populations of several Latin American countries 50%< communist. Yet every time there's an election in one of those counrties, the democrats win and continue in power. The cynics in the government and the party papers suggested it was the bourgeoisie rigging the election, but I'm sure there's just some mechanic I'm missing. Some of these countries are high stability, and I wasn't sure if high stability ruling parties have an advantage even if they're polling less than 50%. The thing is, gaining allies by staging coups is a bit of a slog since it takes a while (you can stage at most 2 a year, sometimes less), and in my last ironman game, I trainwrecked it by just getting impatient and trying topple Colombia's government by force - the US didn't like that (I now gather the US sometimes drags you into WWII even if you're a Latin American country over the Monroe Doctrine - they ignored all my expansionism up until that point

 

[Herennius]

I never suceeded with staging a government switch by elections. I assume some random chance is involved - the more you are above 50% for your desired party, the higher the chances for a change (though I wouldn't rule out thyt you could even suceed with less than 50%, e.g. if you have 40% and the other parties 30/15/15). I hope someone more seasoned can explain the logic behind.

 

[bitmode]

When an election happens, a random eligible election event fires. Outside of Spain and the USA there are just ten possible events (common/on_actions/00_on_actions.txt:18-27) and in any given situation only a subset of those are eligible. All events require the country to be democratic, so elections in non-democratic countries do nothing (Argentina, Bolivia, Peru).

There is respectively one event for a fascist or communist majority (>50%) which only leaves the country with a choice between switching ideology or starting a civil war. So if a democratic country has >50% communism and gets past an election without either of these happening, another event must have fired. Assuming they are not at war the other options are:

• "Magnate Favors Fascism" if they have a motorized equipment designer
• "Communists/Fascists in Government?": if communism/fascism are >15% respectively; may lead to a coalition
• "Public Demands/Opposes Rearmament": if they have a war nearby and no Partial Mobilization or vice versa

So even under ideal conditions it is a coin flip between "Communists in Government?" and "Communist Majority". In the worst case it is one out of five.

 

[Secret Master]

When an election happens, a random eligible election event fires. Outside of Spain and the USA there are just ten possible events (common/on_actions/00_on_actions.txt:18-27) and in any given situation only a subset of those are eligible. All events require the country to be democratic, so elections in non-democratic countries do nothing (Argentina, Bolivia, Peru).

There is respectively one event for a fascist or communist majority (>50%) which only leaves the country with a choice between switching ideology or starting a civil war. So if a democratic country has >50% communism and gets past an election without either of these happening, another event must have fired. Assuming they are not at war the other options are:

• "Magnate Favors Fascism" if they have a motorized equipment designer
• "Communists/Fascists in Government?": if communism/fascism are >15% respectively; may lead to a coalition
• "Public Demands/Opposes Rearmament": if they have a war nearby and no Partial Mobilization or vice versa

So even under ideal conditions it is a coin flip between "Communists in Government?" and "Communist Majority". In the worst case it is one out of five.

Does the actual party popularity of communism/fascism influence the potential events or outcomes from them? As in, does 51% or 85% communism matter, or is it just "you need greater than 50% communism" in these events?

This matters for intelligence propaganda missions, because it can be a lot of time and effort to get far past 50%. The last time I turned Sweden communist, it took years just to get past 51%, but if it doesn't matter how far past 50% you are, you can spend agents and operations on other things that need to be done.

 

[bitmode]

Does the actual party popularity of communism/fascism influence the potential events or outcomes from them? As in, does 51% or 85% communism matter, or is it just "you need greater than 50% communism" in these events?

It does not matter because the trigger is a binary decision:

    trigger = {
        has_government = democratic
        communism > 0.5
        is_puppet = no
    }

and the random event selection uses fixed, equal weights. There are three decimal places of precision, so 0.501 or 50.1% is the smallest party popularity to enable the event.

 

[Secret Master]

It does not matter because the trigger is a binary decision:

    trigger = {
        has_government = democratic
        communism > 0.5
        is_puppet = no
    }

and the random event selection uses fixed, equal weights. There are three decimal places of precision, so 0.501 or 50.1% is the smallest party popularity to enable the event.

That's... disappointing. I would have expected higher party popularity to matter more.

Good to know, though. When that popularity hits 51%, I can let it go unless someone is fighting the ideology I promoted.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

Interesting. What's weird is one game I had Cuba go communist well after their election and join my Bolivarian Alliance, which I think invalidated my desire to go with the Mexico achievement that comes with conquering a European province. I could have said no to them joining, but how could I say no?