Bane
10.03.10, 13:45
We continue on from last week, this week I want to talk to you about some of the broad trends that make POPs want to choose ideology and issue and also what POPs will do when they get angry. Much testing and balancing is still to be done, so I am not going to go into too much depth about the specifics. At the same time we just didn’t start picking issues and ideologies at random, we had a number of goals in mind when we started to script this system and this is what I am going to talk about this week.
Craftsmen and Labourers are swing voters. They have no default weight to either an ideology or a party issue; these two groups are the most sensitive to the current country situation. We have two main goals in this approach, firstly as a country industrialises, the ability to hold a party in power through skilful manipulation of your POPs composition becomes harder. These two groups will grow in numbers as the game continues, so your country’s electoral system (assuming you have one) will become increasingly sensitive to your current country situation. The second is how to model the rise of socialism. In Europe it is probably the most defining political effect of the late 19th and early 20th century. The rise of this movement still defines how the politics in most European countries work today. However, in the US the Socialist Party peaked at 16.6% of the vote in a presidential election (1924 for those who are interested), thus we wanted to set both possibilities to be true, one where the socialist movement rises and becomes strong and the other where it does not. We wanted to create the conditions that model both sides of the Atlantic.
Next up the Aristocrat. Now they are basically a Conservative POP, however this creates problems for us with our reform model. So we set up an interesting trend with Aristocrats, when the poor get militant the Aristocrats get a stronger pull towards conservatism and reaction. Thus, in the face of unrest among the poor, the aristocracy will circle the wagons and dig in and try to defend their privileges. However, in the face of poor and middle class unrest, Aristocrats also pick up a pull towards liberalism. Essentially, in this situation the ranks of the aristocracy split as the threat of revolution increases meaning that political reform becomes increasingly possible.
War? What is it good for? It is the eternal question that people ask and in Paradox games quite often war isn’t all that bad after all. In Victoria 2, war is a useful instrument of internal policy. When war is declared, it gives all POPs a strong pull towards Jingoism. This has two major effects; Jingoism as an issue reduces the POPs militancy gain from war exhaustion, Jingoistic POPs will go that extra mile to ensure victory. Secondly, if your POPs are Jingoistic, they are not looking for reform. There may be strikes in St. Petersburg in the first half of 1914, but a damn good war will bring you some social peace. However, this Jingoism effect starts to drop as war exhaustion bites, so staying at war is not going to hold off the masses forever. As war exhaustion bites, your POPs get a counter swing towards pacifism, which increases the militancy effects of war exhaustion. This counter swing is not as strong as the swing to Jingoism, leaving some room for reform in the POP issue choices, making the militancy problems even worse. The effect we are looking for is that countries with lower reform levels are not going to just instantly collapse when war is declared. Instead, they will be able to sustain a fight in total war for a number of years before the morale on the home front collapses. All countries will get this effect, but the fewer reforms you have, the more likely you are to get a feedback loop that can become pretty dangerous. A major defeat will exacerbate the problem. Remember; failure to achieve war goals increase militancy. You could be locked into a war, knowing that your country is falling apart. Could one more big push win you the war and save you from the even worse effects of defeat?
Well, these are some of the trends, but what do POPs do when they get angry? We have taken the rebels with a cause system from In Nomine, thus rebel units have a goal, and this influences what they will do and where they will go. However, we have added an additional twist to this. When a POP hits MIL 7, he joins a rebel faction. So an Irish POP in Ireland will join the Irish rebel faction, seeking an independent Ireland. Each member of the faction contributes towards the growth in the organisation of this faction based on his income. Sort of like small contributions around a pub were Irish workers seek to help the movement, strong police spending reduces the rate at which rebel factions gain organisation. When a POP hits 8 MIL he is now ready for more direct action. The POP can now spawn a rebel unit whose strength is based around the POP size and the faction organisation. At MIL 10 the POP can no longer wait and will rise in revolt, spawning a rebel unit. Now the rebel factions are a bit different, they are assessing their chances of the success of a generalised rising, looking at their own strength and the strength of the country military and the number of rebels in existence (amongst other factors). As the unrest rises, as the number of rebels increases, you reach a tipping point where one of the rebel factions will go into generalised rising. All POPs aligned to that faction, with more than 8 MIL, will rise as a block seeking to overthrow the government. Rebels should be less common in Victoria 2, but when they appear they should be far more interesting. No more whack-a-mole now, but we want to give you a fight for your life.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22367&d=1268219210
Craftsmen and Labourers are swing voters. They have no default weight to either an ideology or a party issue; these two groups are the most sensitive to the current country situation. We have two main goals in this approach, firstly as a country industrialises, the ability to hold a party in power through skilful manipulation of your POPs composition becomes harder. These two groups will grow in numbers as the game continues, so your country’s electoral system (assuming you have one) will become increasingly sensitive to your current country situation. The second is how to model the rise of socialism. In Europe it is probably the most defining political effect of the late 19th and early 20th century. The rise of this movement still defines how the politics in most European countries work today. However, in the US the Socialist Party peaked at 16.6% of the vote in a presidential election (1924 for those who are interested), thus we wanted to set both possibilities to be true, one where the socialist movement rises and becomes strong and the other where it does not. We wanted to create the conditions that model both sides of the Atlantic.
Next up the Aristocrat. Now they are basically a Conservative POP, however this creates problems for us with our reform model. So we set up an interesting trend with Aristocrats, when the poor get militant the Aristocrats get a stronger pull towards conservatism and reaction. Thus, in the face of unrest among the poor, the aristocracy will circle the wagons and dig in and try to defend their privileges. However, in the face of poor and middle class unrest, Aristocrats also pick up a pull towards liberalism. Essentially, in this situation the ranks of the aristocracy split as the threat of revolution increases meaning that political reform becomes increasingly possible.
War? What is it good for? It is the eternal question that people ask and in Paradox games quite often war isn’t all that bad after all. In Victoria 2, war is a useful instrument of internal policy. When war is declared, it gives all POPs a strong pull towards Jingoism. This has two major effects; Jingoism as an issue reduces the POPs militancy gain from war exhaustion, Jingoistic POPs will go that extra mile to ensure victory. Secondly, if your POPs are Jingoistic, they are not looking for reform. There may be strikes in St. Petersburg in the first half of 1914, but a damn good war will bring you some social peace. However, this Jingoism effect starts to drop as war exhaustion bites, so staying at war is not going to hold off the masses forever. As war exhaustion bites, your POPs get a counter swing towards pacifism, which increases the militancy effects of war exhaustion. This counter swing is not as strong as the swing to Jingoism, leaving some room for reform in the POP issue choices, making the militancy problems even worse. The effect we are looking for is that countries with lower reform levels are not going to just instantly collapse when war is declared. Instead, they will be able to sustain a fight in total war for a number of years before the morale on the home front collapses. All countries will get this effect, but the fewer reforms you have, the more likely you are to get a feedback loop that can become pretty dangerous. A major defeat will exacerbate the problem. Remember; failure to achieve war goals increase militancy. You could be locked into a war, knowing that your country is falling apart. Could one more big push win you the war and save you from the even worse effects of defeat?
Well, these are some of the trends, but what do POPs do when they get angry? We have taken the rebels with a cause system from In Nomine, thus rebel units have a goal, and this influences what they will do and where they will go. However, we have added an additional twist to this. When a POP hits MIL 7, he joins a rebel faction. So an Irish POP in Ireland will join the Irish rebel faction, seeking an independent Ireland. Each member of the faction contributes towards the growth in the organisation of this faction based on his income. Sort of like small contributions around a pub were Irish workers seek to help the movement, strong police spending reduces the rate at which rebel factions gain organisation. When a POP hits 8 MIL he is now ready for more direct action. The POP can now spawn a rebel unit whose strength is based around the POP size and the faction organisation. At MIL 10 the POP can no longer wait and will rise in revolt, spawning a rebel unit. Now the rebel factions are a bit different, they are assessing their chances of the success of a generalised rising, looking at their own strength and the strength of the country military and the number of rebels in existence (amongst other factors). As the unrest rises, as the number of rebels increases, you reach a tipping point where one of the rebel factions will go into generalised rising. All POPs aligned to that faction, with more than 8 MIL, will rise as a block seeking to overthrow the government. Rebels should be less common in Victoria 2, but when they appear they should be far more interesting. No more whack-a-mole now, but we want to give you a fight for your life.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22367&d=1268219210