No difference between major and minor parties?

[Lares]

All parties marked with an X in the status column of the corresponding party file of their country are displayed in-game with the minor parties icon. If you point on it with the cursor, it reads "This is a minor party and will receive less votes in elections". It's the same with parties which have the status of a "third_party". There seems to be no major party at all. I tried this with several countries in various V:R scenarios. I don't know if this is just an in-game labeling error, though.

By the way: Religious parties in Germany (Zentrumspartei = catholic) and the Netherlands (Rooms-Katholieke = catholic) are classified as "all" in the religion column. Haven't checked this for other countries.

 

[Lares]

After some further investigations on this subject, let me clarify a few things. Maybe this isn't a bug, but I would like to know how it works. The status displayed to the right of each party in the in-game political parties list seems to be not derived directly from the party file of the country in the db/parties-Folder of Victoria.

After starting a scenario all parties show the minor party status icon. If you point at it with the mouse, you'll see the phrase "This is a minor party and will receive less votes at elections". This has nothing to do with the status column in the corresponding parties file.

If you hold an election, this will change following election day: The two parties with the highest share of votes will become major parties, with a new icon and the phrase "This is a major party and will receive extra votes at elections". Again, this isn't derived directly from the status column of the parties file.

Let me show you an example of this: Playing as Belgium in 1881 scenario all parties will be displayed as minor parties in-game at the start, although all parties have a "X" in the "BEL_party" file, meaning that they are not "third parties". In the elections, three parties get a share of the votes: The Liberale Partij 75 %, the Katholieke Partij 14 %, and the Belgische Werkliden Partij 11 %. Although all of them have the same status in the parties file, only the Liberals and the Catholics will get the major party icon.

Is this to represent the effects of plurality vote in single-member districts? And how does the status of a third party (in the parties file) affect this?

[If this is all designers intention, maybe the moderator could move this thread to a better place then the bug reporting forum]

 

[Lares]

I found the following information on the brand new Revolution Guide for V:R on VickyWiki:

Changes in Major / Minor Party Status

Major party status can change over time, in a variety of ways: sometimes by event, sometimes when the regime changes (i.e., going from a monarchy to a constitutional monarchy or presidential dictatorship), and sometimes from the weight of accumulated election results. With persistence and a bit of luck, you can make your favourite party a major.

Be aware that major / minor party status is different to the concept of minority parties, which are those that only get votes from certain POP cultures - although if the relevant culture/s form a majority of your population a minority party may still get a lot of votes. (N.B. You have to look in the party file to find out which culture/s a minority party gets votes from – you can’t see this in-game.) In contrast, a minor party is one that receives fewer votes at an election than a major party (and will get even less votes under a two party system) but can still get votes from all cultures.

So this is definitly no bug, but I will continue finding out what makes the status change.