Would "interest groups" serve as a good replacement for factions?

[methegrate]

You are looking very one sided to this. I would say that these groups want to achieve something totally different. Edicts for more production should cause massive problems with your population working that sector. Nutritional plentitude on the other hand is in favour, it lays more weight and importance to their interesests and gives more political power to those producing food.

Thinking further, depending on your empire type, there should also be the will to automate and enslave, leveling normal pops with political power up to better jobs (I stil cant believe that there are no rights which forbid my decadent species to work as workers).

+ to this. Factions/influence groups should want mutually contradictory things. It shouldn't ever be possible to make everyone happy.

 

[Ikael]

I don't know if Victoria's Interest Group system is entirely applicable to Stellaris, but the game badly needs an internal politics rework, with internal policies that matters and changes, uses for unity as a resource, rewards for keeping factions happy that goes beyond influence, and actual threats of rebellion or even civil war if not managed properly, rather than the current system of "ignore at your pleasure".

Also, something that would tie factions or interest groups to planets and sectors, and that is greatly shaped by your authority type would be great, but I am not holding my breath here.

 

[Losttruppen]

One of the main things I'm unsure about is how to have "interest groups" ask for things that actually make sense and aren't annoying...

...It's not clear to me that there's actually much for Interest Groups to actually ask the player to do, so I'm not really sure how to solve that problem.

Faction Issues could be expanded as a quest system, where right now each faction has 1-10 Issues which are just a bunch of yes/no objectives.

These could be replaced by random anomaly like events which give several mutually exclusive decisions with varying rewards and outcomes in favour of one faction at the loss of another; some rewards being worth angering your primary faction and elevating their opposite.

Examples:
-Pacifist mining faction wants you to colonize x world for its riches and will start the colony with several free districts, but it's a tomb world and you are a spiritualist.
-Stolen/abandoned tech or equipment from a planet in your territory to distribute amongst your factions
-Militarist wants you to declare war on x target
-a faction wants b tech, x faction wants y tech from your current pool
-spend x resource to receive a reward from y faction
-event chain to establish Holy Worlds(should not be an AP or manually selected imo)
-more event chains like the Rebel Shipyard/Flagship that can spawn dynamically based on things like the number of unhappy pops in a given faction in a particular sector.
-interactions with leviathans, space critters, neighbouring empires

As long as they aren't too intrusive with pop ups and reward "normal" gameplay I wouldn't mind some short or long term objectives to do in the early/mid game.

That is on top of the fact just about every single election or leader/ruler change, policy, civic, edict, event, anomaly, or dig site in the game could have the choices affect x or y faction approval. Right now factions are almost completely isolated from the rest of the game and only affected by ethics attraction which is pretty indirect.

Factions and these "interest groups" I feel are also in the same field as the Institutions, Religions, and Cults which @grekulf mentioned in Dev Diary #141 and could share similar mechanics.

 

[DanielPrates]

negative faction approval needs to come with real risks. i'm looking forward to an internal politics overhaul. i'm sure it's coming. i can feel it in my waters.

I felt these waters some five years ago, by now they evaporated altogether.

 

[Avian Overlord]

I think one of the issues with politics in Stellaris is that your empire ethics answer most policy questions for you, so there simply isn't much room for political maneuvering. There needs to be room for differences in politics factions can push for besides ethic changes.

 

[TrotBot]

Like I'm sure many people have, I've been following the development of Victoria 3. One thing that stands out to me as a good paradigm that Stellaris could potentially utilise is Interest Groups.

We all know that Factions in Stellaris are reasonably pointless. They are kinda Influence factories, with very set "Issues" that you can, for the most part, ignore.

What if we had Interest Groups instead (perhaps with a different name). Pops of particular types could have various types of interests and form groups to pressure for those interests. Perhaps Clerks would want increased political power for workers (if they also have egalitarian ethics), would want Trade / Economy-focused laws passed in the Galactic Community... maybe if we're talking about Spiritualist Clerks, they might want Temples on the worlds they work on etc.

I'd also like to see the Democratic Agendas replaced, so maybe this could tie into that. If you elect a Ruler from the Agrarian interest group, they may want Farming Subsidies and so on.

i prefer interest groups and classes being something factions compete for the support of.

 

[Ikael]

So I have been thinking about the whole "internal politics in Stellaris" (a slow Friday day at work...) and I have come with this idea:

- No, you don't need to burn to the ground the faction system, you just gotta expand it. Keep the faction demands tied to pop happiness, it has promise
- But first, rework the faction's demands. Make them incompatible with each other
- Second, create more options for your internal politics tab rather than locking them by ethos. Say, egalitarians might prefer a consumer economy, but materialists might be into a knowledge economy policy instead
- Even better: tie faction demands with foreign policy. Your empire might not be in a good position for starting a war, but your militarist faction is getting restless...
- After that, add the following concept: Loyalist VS rebel pops

80% - 100% approval of one faction => Pops belonging to this faction become Loyalist pops
30% approval or less of one faction => Pops belonging to this faction become Rebel pops

A planet with >50% of its political power in the hands of your loyalists => Gives a particular bonus on that particular planet, say, extra stability (effects and balance pending). Yay!
Planet with > 50% Rebel pops (over its total population, political power nonwithstanding) => Ruh OH

Having a rebel planet will also mean getting a heavy stability hit to nearby planets, even if they are loyalist planets.
Having >adjacent< and >multiple< rebel planets means that you got a military uprising (or even civil war!) in your hands

This system would have the following implications:

- You should try to maximize the political power of whoever supports your ethics for maximum loyalist bonuses. You know, as real politicians do
- Having some really angry factions is not a big deal, UNLESS THEY ALL CONCENTRATE ON THE SAME PLANET
- This means that conquering and holding new territories will be an actual challenge that will force you to deal with intra-politics. Oh, and forced resettlement will be a thing, too

Ok, so how can you avoid rebellions?

- You can "integrate faction into society". This action will consume +1 unity per faction pop, and will tilt the faction's approval rating veeeeery slowly, up to a maximum of +31% approval, right above the "rebellion level".
- Yes, it can easily become a permanent "unity tax. Meaning, if you conquer populated empires, you better have unity to spare
- However, you can't integrate more than one faction at once, unless you're a democracy, so choices will need to be made regarding internal policy
- This also means that 1) Unity will be an actual useful resource for keeping empires together and 2) That democracy will actually be a strong government for once and 3) That territorial expansion and changing ideas will force you to balance internal policies