Megathread : Politics, Government and Elections in V2

[kolpo]

Maybe there should be a negative modifier. The longer a party stays in power, the harder it is to hold on to it.

Yes that seems to be true in general. People get after a while tired of the ruling party and blame them for everything bad that happens. But in some nations does it not seem to work that way, could it maybe be somewhat linked with national value?

Wouldn't liberty nations be more likely to vote for the opposition then order nations? Those who like order want stability and shall be willing to tolerate the faults of the ruling party for the greater good of stability, while someone focused on liberaty shall vote for the opposition the moment he is unhappy with the ruling party.

 

[unmerged(38835)]

Maybe liberal countries with free speech/press etc. should get a random event like "Serious Opposition" or something making them less prone to revolutions but instead "endangered" by a democratic surprise.

 

[Arilou]

How about some way of ranking the "significance" of issues to a particular election? And random events that increase/decrease signifiance (based on various MTTH's)

For instance, in the french elections, Germany is a threat (modelled by game mechanics) so french voters are likely to vote jingoistic. however, we get a random event about say, a state visit, or a german princess who donates to french orphans or something. That pushes down the "issue" of threat, and instead another issue (say, the Economy) becomes more significant.

 

[unmerged(91061)]

The one thing I most look forward to in Vicky2 is the politics and government improvement. This is what really sets the series apart for me. However, not much info has been leaked other then that parliaments and bureaucrats will exist. This leaves me with a few questions.

-Will there be compulsory vs non-compulsory voting? Non-compulsory voting makes elections about raising the plurality of one group and lowering that of another, whereas compulsory makes it about changing the issues and what not.
-Will there be uni, bi & tri cameral parliaments?
-Will there be preferential vs first past the post voting?
-Can constitutional monarchies constitutionally set exactly what the monarch can do, appoint members of the upper house, declare war, purely ceremonial. Or better yet, is the difference between monarchy and Con. Monarchy more a matter of degree, so say Russia can gradually constitutionalise the Czar.
-Can government size be regulated through the amount of bureaucrats there are?
-Can conscription, slavery, state religion, national language, etc. all be enacted into law?
-Will parliaments follow party lines or shall each politician have their own agenda? How tight will party discipline be?

Thoughts?

 

[Jolt]

The one thing I most look forward to in Vicky2 is the politics and government improvement. This is what really sets the series apart for me. However, not much info has been leaked other then that parliaments and bureaucrats will exist. This leaves me with a few questions.

My guess would be because Paradox is still conceptualizing ideas that they can incorporate in the game.

-Will there be compulsory vs non-compulsory voting? Non-compulsory voting makes elections about raising the plurality of one group and lowering that of another, whereas compulsory makes it about changing the issues and what not.

IMO, that is an unnecessary complication. At this game level, it would be a non-issue at least for me.

-Will there be uni, bi & tri cameral parliaments?

Paradox has already revealed that there shall be an Upper and Lower Chambers as well as the single parliament (Not so sure about the single parliament confirmation.)

-Will there be preferential vs first past the post voting?

Once again, I think that such options would be unnecessary complications to the elections. Keep it simple.

-Can constitutional monarchies constitutionally set exactly what the monarch can do, appoint members of the upper house, declare war, purely ceremonial. Or better yet, is the difference between monarchy and Con. Monarchy more a matter of degree, so say Russia can gradually constitutionalise the Czar.

Most probably it will remain the same differences as in Vicky 1, under Cons. Monarchies, there will be the possibility of banning parties which democracies don't have (As well as the "Landed" vote)

-Can government size be regulated through the amount of bureaucrats there are?

Nobody besides King/Johan & Co. can answer this one. I think my opinion would differ in the ammount of unnecessary complication this could provoke. At best, turn this into a slider.

-Can conscription, slavery, state religion, national language, etc. all be enacted into law?

Conscription is incorporated into the mobilization pool. Slavery wasn't enacted as a measure during this period, quite the contrary. But banning slavery can be a decision for the countries that still have them from the beginning of the game. Religion and national languages could also be decisions with the impact of lowering mil and con of the target group while increasing for everyone else living in the national provinces.

-Will parliaments follow party lines or shall each politician have their own agenda? How tight will party discipline be?

Too much complication here as well.

 

[ashandresash]

(...)
-Can conscription, slavery, state religion, national language, etc. all be enacted into law?
(...)
Thoughts?

About slavery, I hope so. It'd better than V1 system, affecting the whole citizenship issue (of course, talking about game purposes).

And talking about emancipation... What about genre? I mean, rights of women (in education, in labour, voting...). Of course, femenine/masculine pops would be a nightmare to manage (natural growht in a 100% masculine province? WTF!), but there's lot of possibilities... same rights beteen genres has had huge impact on economics, population growth, politics, religion...

OK, maybe a mod.

 

[khannate]

I believe it would be a good idea if each party has leaders, just like the generals in Vicky 1. To illustrate, if a party has a charismatic leader, the party would get more polls but if a party has a corrupt leader, the party woud get smaller polls. Or, if the policy of a party leader differs from the official party policy, then the party policy could be affected to that of the leader. e.g. jingoistic leader in a pacifist party changes the party policy to anti military or pro military. The advantage of this system is that it can recreate the historical rise and decline of parties and different tendency of the same party in the different party. Besides, the players would definitely be glad to see more historical personality in the game.

I also hope there will be some kind of merges and splits of paties.

 

[unmerged(34416)]

-Will there be compulsory vs non-compulsory voting? Non-compulsory voting makes elections about raising the plurality of one group and lowering that of another, whereas compulsory makes it about changing the issues and what not.

There kind of already is. With consciousness low pops will vote for the incuments. This pretty much simulates pops not bothering to vote.

Pref. vs. first past the post? Likely what is in Vic1 is first past the post, since that's how the British electoral system works. However I think it's too much of a complication. What would the result on the game be? As far as I can see it'd result in perhaps a different party coming to power, or maybe not. In real life proportional representation means that parties which should not get into power get a few useless seats to make sure that the party in power can't get anything done.... Much of your ideas, and I don't mean to offend you, but I feel they add a whole new level of unnecessary and unimplementable complication.

One very important thing you did hit on is Constitutional Monarchy.

Victoria seems to think a "Democracy" is more democratic than a "Constiutional Monarchy". I think we can all accept that is not the case. The most democratic counties in the world right now are constitutional monarchies. As far as I'm aware Scandinavian countries typicaly come top of any assessment of democratic quality.

So in Victoria 2 I'd like to see the style of governement correctly stated. But there's room to state it's a Constitutional Monarchy, Democracy, or Dictatorship, regardless of how the nation actually works.

For example it's fairly possible to imagine a country with a hereditory dictator, where things are very democractic. The Dictator's family functions much like a Monarchy in modern times. The reasons to distinguish between Democracy (i.e. no hereditary rulers) Dictatorship (i.e. a different dynasty than the country started with) and Constitutional Monarchy (the dyntasty the game started with) is to first of all have a bit of flavour. It's interesting to know that the Hohenzollern dynasty is in Prussia (we'd know if it was a const. monarchy) or that the current head of the UK is not of the Windsor dynasty, but something akin to Cromwell. Additionally this would greatly influence events. A random coronation event could fire if there is a hereditory leader, or be prevented from firing if there is not. Flavour events when a monarch dies may or may not fire depending if this is set or not.

Additionally, this change would also get rid of the false split a monarchy faces in Victoria. It either goes Democratic or Constitutional Monarchy, and there is no chance to change afterwards. With this change in place the actual form of government would change, rather than one ambiguous header.

For example we may see...

Prussia
Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State unelected with full veto.
Elected Parliament
Suffrage - Wealth

United Kingdom
Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State unelected with limited powers.
Elected Parliament.
Suffrage - Landowners

Bolivia
Presidential Dictatorship
Head of State unelected with full powers.
Ministers directly appointed by Head of State.
Suffrage - None.

United Provinces of Central America
Presidential Dictatorship
Head of State unelected with limited powers.
Elected Parliament.
Suffrage - Men

United States of America
Republic
Elected President
Head of State elected with limited powers.
Elected Parliament.
Suffrage - All

Sweden
Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State unelected with no political powers.
Elected Parliament.
Suffrage - All

I hope that gives a bit of an example of how I'd like to see things working. Notably that there would be no democracies, states in Vic1 which were called Democracies would be called Republics.

 

[truth is life]

@Halk: Your ideas are interesting, but I would like to make one small point: Perhaps the famous plurality-based militancy reduction could be based on some weighted average of how 'democratic' you are? So a Con Mon with very liberal voting laws and other rights laws (and this is where eg. female voting rights and the like could come into play) get a bigger MIL reduction than 1835 US, even though the latter is 'democratic' since the former is much more democratic in practice.

 

[unmerged(91061)]

Great suggestion Halk, I'd just add the bicarmeralism Paradox mentioned, so...

United Kingdom
Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State unelected with limited powers.
Elected Lower House.
Appointed Upper House.
Suffrage - Landowners


Something that follows on from this I think is each country's Constitution, dictating who can do what. So the UK "constitution" would read a bit like.
Head of State: Hereditary
Legislature-Lower: By the people, for the people
Legislature-Upper: Appointed by HoS
Executive: Drawn from the legislature
Judiciary: Appointed by HoS
Military: Monarch, with consent of Parliament (Monarch & Parliament must agree to declare war)
Economy: Executive (The HoG & Govn. sets the budget)
Internal affairs: Parliament (Both houses must agree on domestic policy)
Foreign affairs: Executive

 

[Barón Rojo]

And the Papal States!

Papal States
Papacy
Head of State elected by the clergy at the death, with full powers.
Appointed Lower House.
Suffrage - Clergy.

 

[unmerged(41327)]

Militancy should be more evident after an election when a sizable minority loses. This should have more of an effect in young and less developed democracies. Also, militancy should increase after elections for those who aren't allowed to vote.

 

[Orinsul]

The Upper House of england is hereditary not appointed by the HoS and the lower house is parliamentarian certainly not 'by the people, for the people' as thats either a little political spin for a speech or direct democracy.
And itd be best to avoid any Whig history with pretend that today is perfect and granted advantages to those governments that sit most in line to the modern democratic system and ideals but rather aknowledge the era.

 

[unmerged(34416)]

@Halk: Your ideas are interesting, but I would like to make one small point: Perhaps the famous plurality-based militancy reduction could be based on some weighted average of how 'democratic' you are? So a Con Mon with very liberal voting laws and other rights laws (and this is where eg. female voting rights and the like could come into play) get a bigger MIL reduction than 1835 US, even though the latter is 'democratic' since the former is much more democratic in practice.

That is exactly how I had envisaged it. Lack of a hereditary head of state should not result in a militancy decrease. It should be down to how "democratic" the country is. There's no reason why the Papacy example stated couldn't evolve into a very democratic country with a head of state elected solely by the clergy. Likewise it need not be very free at all, it could be very theocratic.

 

[kolpo]

How about some way of ranking the "significance" of issues to a particular election? And random events that increase/decrease signifiance (based on various MTTH's)

For instance, in the french elections, Germany is a threat (modelled by game mechanics) so french voters are likely to vote jingoistic. however, we get a random event about say, a state visit, or a german princess who donates to french orphans or something. That pushes down the "issue" of threat, and instead another issue (say, the Economy) becomes more significant.

Yes and time should also play a role. Social issues should have a bigger chance to become an election issue in the later years of the game then in the begining. High literacy and plurarity should also play a role.

 

[Arilou]

AS mentioned, more ways of restricting suffrage. Especially you should be able to restrict suffrage based on cultures, and of course, class.

 

[Minodrin]

I was just thinking that what if the political parties could have flags/traits that come and go, you know how HoI leaders have traits, or perhaps more like Total-War leaders have traits.

The longer a party exists, especially if it is in power, it can gain several "corrupt" traits, and as these would be easier to gain than lose, a long-serving party would eventually start to eat itself up (or it's country). Some good traits might be 'inspiring leader', 'popular movement' and so forth. Each of these traits would have it's own, small flag in the screen where you view parties, so it'd be easy to see what parties have what flags/traits. Some of these could influence the game the same way the party ideologies do now, while most might just influence the pops and the balance of power between the parties.

In Vicky 1 we had these election events that affected the political makeup of a single state. These were not very effective when dealing with large countries. Make it rather so that you have events for the whole country or important parts of it "Jingoism sweeps the nation", "colonial people turn against the ruling party"...

 

[unmerged(23244)]

This is more of a cosmetic thing than anything else, but I hope that in V2, the interval between elections will be a round number, like four years, five years or six years, rather than four years and nine months.

 

[unmerged(91061)]

That would be a nice touch if term limits could be set in the constitution. None of this everyone serves the same time mallarky.

The ability for the player to draft a constitution would be a great feature to have (even in an expansion pack) where you can set term limits, type of parliament (if any), type of executive, suffrage, etc. as well as more specific laws (cannot have less then trinkets in health care, communist parties are banned, etc.).
Furthermore, during a revolution, if you are defeated by the rebels or surrender before hand, you then go on to draft a new constitution which must meet a certain ideological requirement based on the rebels in the victorious revolution. Meeting the minimum ideological requisite would disperse most rebels and install a new government under that constitution, but some rebels would remain. If however, you surpass their demands then the more you surpass them the more rebels who're content and disband. Things could be made more complex by adding competing ideologies amongst successful rebels. For example, if I lost a revolution in Spain, and the rebels were mainly radical-liberals plus a few socialists, then I would need to have X amount of things in the constitution that were in accordance with radical-liberalism (Republic, universal suffrage, all parties allowed), As Well As, Y amount of things in accordance with socialism (cannot have less then trinkets in Pensions, unions legal).

Thoughts?

 

[unmerged(79428)]

as far as elections are concerned, it would be cool to be able to choose the districts (meaning provinces, states or country) and how many members of parliament are elected in each district.
It would also be nice to be able to set a minimum percentage of vote in the district to obtain representation.
This would give a lot of fun to elections giving us the chance to manipulate the results