Politics & Elections

[Inarius]

Hi !

I have thought for a long time of what was lacking in Sim City (for example), and, as I think, in every city builder that I know : Politics, and elections.

It seems really hard to implement, as limiting the choices seems in contradiction with the idea of the player as Mayor.

There is only one game I know where politics is used, and it's very clever : Victoria 1 & 2, Paradox Interactive. In this game you play a nation during the XIXth century and beginning of XXth century .
You are always playing the leader, whatever the winning side is. But your choices are limited sometimes. If the liberal are winning, you won't be able to raise some taxes, if it's the communist, you can nationalize and micro-manage everything and do everything you want (as long as it's not democracy or rights) and build plants on your own. Politics is a limit to nearly everything, economy, society, some reforms, even war. Before changing your country, you have to change your people !

So I was thinking, why couldn't you make it in this game ? It would be the first time ever in a City builder !

Inhabitants would vote for parties every X years, based on their values and specific issues. You could change the type of vote (majority/proportionnal, first past the post, etc., there is a lot of possibility), and after the vote all decisions, rise or reduction of taxes, or anything should be first approved by the Council. You could do anything, as long as it's allowed. And if it's really close from being accepted, perhaps you could negociate (XXXX but also raise YYYY). Raising a tax on capital should only be permitted if people have voted for a really left-winged party !

Some drastic decisions could even be done if you have some extremists on charge. Like suppressing elections (which will eventually lead to a revolution !), suppress the police and create militias, nationalize some firms and run them for yourself, (which will make flee most of the others), control the central bank, use printing money, forbid the use of car in city center, etc...etc...Hence the importance of listening to the issues of your people (or doing this on purpose)

You could also have lobbies (based on the main firms in the city) who try to influence and corrupt some member of your council. Or you could try to bribe your own council to influence them on some vote.
Each media would also have a party they support. People using this media would be influenced in their vote.

Parties would be defined by a few values (economy, society, identity, environnement, for example). I think that with these 4 values you can simulate most of world's political parties. Their name would derivate from these values. Conservative, Social-Democratic, Christian-Democrat, Socialist,Green, Republican, Communist,National-liberal, etc...

At the beginning there would be only one party, and the other would appear when enough people support their idea and don't feel represented, and would disappear when nobody support them anymore.

People would have some neutral or random values when they arrive, and according to what they live (insecurity, unemployement, pollution, too much commute-time, too few schools, etc...etc...) their needs would slowly evolve, until they are ready to vote for a party that promises them changes. But as a player if you decide not to change, you can, but after a time, a more extremist party will rise, until a time when governing will be very complicated, because you won't be able to do a lot of things anymore.

Let's take an example.
You don't build any police station. Nothing. Criminality will explode, and, quickly, a right winged and after a time they will become angry and will vote for a ultra-right winged party. At that time, you will have some interesting new options (right to self-defense, legalizing free sale of weapons,which would then create a new market for entrepreneur, etc.). If you still continue to do nothing, it's your choice. But, quickly, people will move from your city, because they will see that nothing is still done, and criminality is still very high.

Well, that's just some ideas, I imagine i could make 10 more pages, but I suppose it's a lot of work so...

What do you think ?
(This idea could be linked to many other other I have read on the forum, of course)

(PS : Sorry for my bad english)

[David]

These are interesting ideas. Let's discuss more.

If the ideas get solid enough, I will forward them to the dev team for consideration.

[Inarius]

The main idea about this, is that it must remain something very flexible, like all other things in Capitalism 2. Not much placeholder, more dynamic, self regulating systems. The idea behind this is to make a city with more challenges, more complex systems, where you will have to plan, and win in the heads before in the vote (thank you Gramsci ^^).

So, what can I add ? I told you about 4 main values :

ECONOMIC : (less is more "freemarket", more is "interventionist" or even dirigiste). This is quite different from being "left-winged" or "right-winged". For example, there are some example of State-capitalism country, such as China, which is very interventionist, but at the same time, does not provide a good social cover.
When people experience inequality, unemployement, or when they experience the economic breakdown they tend to ask for more control, and when they have too much taxes or different limiting laws, they will go for less taxes/control. A very high value could unlock the possibility of "51% joint-venture only", like China did, or could make forced nationalization like Argentina and Venezuela did with oil industry. Actually, all bylaws would have some requirements or tolerance value (more than XX, or between YY and ZZ). If you have more than 50% council members, that's ok, if not you can negociate and make a "pack" with some other decisions. Some decisions would ever be non negociable, and not acceptable if they are too far from one party's ideology.

SOCIAL :
A country with 0 in this area will consider that everything will be private. Schools, hospitals, police. You could see this as a sum of all these needs. This value will raise when one is experimenting a lack of X of Y (even if security is in my idea something different, most people does not see security as a "service" like they do for health or education, which is why i would see in the next groupe), and will remain stable if they are not lacking anything. This will lower, however, when people feels they are paying too much taxes. More or less, this value will remain stable if the lack of service is equilibrated by the desire to pay less taxes.
A high level for "social" for a party will mean that it will agree to increase the number of hospital, school. Perhaps you could link the level of this value to the number of hospital (or school, or anything cultural) per habitant that this party consider "normal" that the city pay ?
"Social" value can't be completely opposed to "Economic" (they change for mostly the same reason, because you can't ask for more schools without understanding that you will have to pay taxes for that, but some people are still very good at this )

IDENTITY :
A city with a very high value would be seen like a dictature. Everything linked to authority, security, conception of identity (and, therefore, with immigration). Legalisation of drug industry, prostitution, all religion stuff (by the way, will there be religion in this expansion ? very explosive stuff...), or banishment of some nationalities (which would be quite extreme). The number of policemen per habitant accepted could be linked to this. Some kind of criminality should move this value, and also after a big wave of immigration, and also when economical crisis happens. When there is a job for everyone, people are less prone to vote for identiarian parties. On the other hand, a very opened country would attract more easily people, culture, and tourism.

ENVIRONMENT :
When I typed this as a group, i thought that is was very close from Economic. But after all, when you see techies around San Fransisco, they are mostly green libertarian, so I suppose this is different. This is like Social, but for everything green. Forbidding certain type of cars, promoting certain types of energies, creating some specific taxes, forbiding some types of industry.
This value will lower if you live in a very healthy environment and if you don't have some kind of "green education" at school.

All people when they arrive have more or less random values (even if their level of education and relative wealthness, or some other values, change it. Very wealthy people TENDS to want less economic control, and more educated people TEND to be more liberal on the level of identity when they arrive in the city, and more interventionist on the level of environment). But, if you live in a polluted city, or with a lot of cars, your environment value will raise, slowly, until the point where your "relative" difference between the party people used to vote and another one (a greener one) changes, and then, they will change their vote for the next elections. We all have basis in life, but what we experience change us to the point where we can change our orientation.

Well, that's a bit more.

[David]

I have got this work-in-progress screenshot from the dev team and would like to share it with you guys.

At the beginning of the game, you play as a businessman. With the success of your business, you may form a new political party and participate in mayoral elections. This screenshot shows a rival political party and the party's leader and members.

[Dav3]

Nice! Would be interesting to know what exactly you could change playing the keyrole in a political party.

[therealevan]

This could be interesting, lobbying money anyone?

[David]

We have been thinking about the gameplay mechanism behind elections. Since the focus of the game is business and city management, the simulation of politics will be peripheral and greatly simplified.

We have considered the possibility of letting mayoral candidates setting their political ideologies. A simplified design approach will be to allow the player to set a value between a spectrum with the following two ends.

egalitarian left - fairness and distribution of wealth and resources, ample social welfare, high tax rates

libertarian right - maximizing individual freedom, a small government, low government expenditure budget and low tax rates.

The elected mayor's actual execution of policies will be gauged against the promises he/she has made during the election. Alignment will lead to a high approval rating whereas misalignment will lead to a low approval rating.

Another major factor that affects an election is a candidate's election campaign budget, which has a direct effect on the support rating.

What do you guys think about this design approach?

Any suggestions?

[Inarius]

We have considered the possibility of letting mayoral candidates setting their political ideologies. A simplified design approach will be to allow the player to set a value between a spectrum with the following two ends.

--> Yeah, it's a good idea to simplify this approach. But don't underestimate the "ecological" (which can be libertarian as well as egalitarian !) part which can have huge impact (on mine, or industry limitation, for example).

The elected mayor's actual execution of policies will be gauged against the promises he/she has made during the election. Alignment will lead to a high approval rating whereas misalignment will lead to a low approval rating.

--> Why not ?

Another major factor that affects an election is a candidate's election campaign budget, which has a direct effect on the support rating.

Why not ? But from where will the money come from ? How will you decide that one side or another will have more money ?

[counting]

I've always see voting very similar like purchasing services with just one token where "customers" have a long time to evaluate the "product" and decide if they will become repeat customers.

In this sense, the campaign funding is like branding your name with advertisement, and your "promise" quality depends on how good you deliver your speech and how on point to current social issues. So misalignment behave a lot like quality inequality under corporate brand, and making too many different promotes (too many mega-class) will make your words less reliable (unless you build solid resume from previous political positions). But in real life people have very diversified "concern" with different topics, not just a simple linear quality, or right/left political view. It's not going to be versatile with just simply percentage of concern with just brand and "quality of services" to determine an aggregate rating. If it's the politic mechanic is not interesting enough, I would rather not having it in the first place.

Personally I would device a more complicated "voter brackets" (they can have overlaps, and a general "everyone bracket"), where each of them have different concern with some policies. And these set of policies are topics related to real public service item. Where during election, the candidates "survey" the current city situation, and pick limited amount of topics that he/she thinks can get voters attention, thus a dry run of the actual city management, where they just promise to increase the quality of those said areas, how much of a "promise rating" raised depends on campaign budgets level set on that topic (very much like running a real city, just instead of using city fund, using campaign fund, hence the "dry run"). And may the one who can attract most voters win, which means someone could pick much needed improving topics, but if these policies attract the percent of "voter brackets" which have less voters, he/she could still lose the election. (such as raise city wide fire protection can raise everyone's rating a bit and some votes, however if low income voter bracket is a huge percentage in this city, put campaign on public housing policy might get you more votes in the end)

However, the real deal is still about after the election, where service rating really is depended on the performance of the mayor, where he/she set budgets to all the city policies and other measurements to raise the actual living standard for the citizen. Whether or not they are align to the campaign promises don't need to be very high, since economic and social situation with the city could change over time, where some topics might be needed during campaign may not be after that.

[David]

A preview of the work-in-progress political party system.