After getting bushwhacked by an underperforming yet ferociously-militarised Craver faction in my first playthrough as Sophons 2.0 I decided to give the ole Cravers a try and 40 turns later found myself in possession of about a quarter of the galaxy, pumping out ships faster than I could find minor factions to enslave. It was all going swimmingly until The People's Republic of Craveria decided to host one of its cheeky one-party elections. It wasn't exactly clear what went on in these "elections" given that we were nominally a dictatorship, and that all of the foreign populaces with uncravery opinions we'd assimilated were our presumably-disenfranchised slaves, but I just rolled with it. Fan of the military-industrial-complex that I am, I had forged a populace more-or-less evenly split between militarist and industrialist ideologies, although the earlier polls had showed 100% support for militarism. I duly plumped for the militarist party. 

The results came in, with the industrialists gaining a narrow lead on the militarists and the tiny religious faction barely making a showing. For reasons that are obvious in retrospect but were opaque at the time, the militarists gained 100% power in the senate and I was left a little perplexed, wondering why ES2 had gone through the trouble of rendering the election process if it was going to give me what I wanted anyway. I closed the election screen to find an empire in ruins. Half of my systems were in rebellion, I was losing enough Dust to bankrupt me in 2 turns (from a position of pretty formidable wealth), and huge segments of my population had just vanished into the ether. Looking into the system screens, I found that the recent *ahem* elections had enraged the majority of my empire, and as a result they were starving themselves of food and my empire of Dust. I had no way to boost my people's happiness fast enough to save my empire from pretty much dissolving overnight. I reloaded the last autosave and tried throwing in my support for the industrialist party instead; people were a little less unhappy, but most of them were still in rebellion. I reloaded several more times, trying everything I could to save the situation, including supporting the tiny religious faction (which caused my empire to melt almost instantaneously). 

I was about to give up on the save and restart the game with another faction, but I gave the politics screen another look, hoping but not believing I might find a solution there. I looked over the available laws and realised that I might have an answer. I enacted the laws that gave happiness bonuses for ongoing wars and for having ships in orbit around a system, then I declared war on every faction I knew and set every unengaged ship on a course for my unhappiest systems. I ended the turn, voted in the militarists so the laws would stay in force, and found I had just about averted the catastrophe. After a few turns were past I had a ship in every Craver system and fleets at every choke-point between me and the assorted Lumerises I had just declared war on; I had salvaged the situation, but my solution felt cheap and a bit broken, like I had had to play the system to stop my empire from being devoured by obscure game mechanics. Only when I thought back on what had happened for a minute did I realise how accurate it had actually been; I was a dictatorship that offered no outlet for the divergent opinions of the electorate, and so to quell dissent I had engaged in a wanton display of military showboating and tried to distract my populace from its political concerns by stoking war-fever against foreign powers. I'm usually quite cautious and methodical in my playstyle, and I would never declare wars on multiple fronts, with no immediate strategic goal and no fleets in place, but the game had forced me to play like an actual military dictatorship just to keep control of my population - which is really great!

What is less great is that I only reached this point by a mixture of save-scumming and suspension of disbelief; I couldn't find anywhere that explained the effects of the dictatorship government type (i.e. you gain complete legislative freedom in exchange for dissatisfaction from pops whose ideology conflicts with the official one), the 50-50 split between militarists and industrialists which seems inevitable in a Craver playthrough created an electoral rift which tore my populace apart but doesn't seem justified by real-life (i.e. militarist and industrialists are often co-dependent) and the consequences of the election were so sudden and severe that I had no recourse but reloading a save. Obviously ES2 is just in early access, so I can forgive a lot of the game's opacity for now, but I don't know what changes are upcoming and I really hope that some of the following might be considered:

• Some sort of affinity/enmity between political parties based on the ideology wheel, facilitating coalition/opposition
• Modifiers on pop unhappiness in a dictatorship depending on the affinity/enmity of the party in power (i.e. industrialists less unhappy under militarists, pacifists more unhappy)
• More reflection of government type in the election screen (i.e. maybe don't call it an "election" if it's a dictatorship?)
• More flavour text / advice that would make jingoist solutions like mine look more like something the game intended rather than a work-around
• A more detailed, tooltipped, info-giving politics screen that covers broader governmental issues in addition to ideology/populace information
• A system-screen breakdown of how your actions are affecting/have affected the opinions of the local populace (i.e. militarists went from 50% to 55% support after building warship turn 36)
• More contingency solutions to political unrest (i.e. spend manpower/prestige to quell dissent/bring ideology in line on a per-system level)
• Avoid letting players fall into political situations that can only be rectified by expenditures/research that unhappiness/rebellion debuffs make impossible to reach

TL;DR - The game made me accidentally roleplay the Cravers and I want it to do a better job of allowing moments like that to happen.

That's pretty amusing, and I'm glad you managed to get a semi-positive result out of it. It does highlight a problem with the game as it is now though: we don't always have enough information or enough options when the new mechanics throw us a fastball.

I'd love to know if anyone's managed--or if it's even possible--to get a pacifist party in control of the Cravers.

Jovian09 wrote:

That's pretty amusing, and I'm glad you managed to get a semi-positive result out of it. It does highlight a problem with the game as it is now though: we don't always have enough information or enough options when the new mechanics throw us a fastball.

I'd love to know if anyone's managed--or if it's even possible--to get a pacifist party in control of the Cravers.

Sure is .. just conquer popluation that has the pacifist affinity and you can get them in your Senate in no time.

Yeah, the ability to force a party with no real popular mandate makes dictatorship a little broken in some ways (and in the game!) 

Case in point, on the same save as above I later brought the religious party into power on the basis of a few Kalgeros pops (and about 5% of the "vote") and was able to instantly pass the law that forces happiness levels to "content", thereby defeating the whole intended trade-off between legislative freedom and popular unrest that dictatorships are supposed to have in ES2. Again, it was a nice religion-is-the-opium-of-the-masses moment as my insect-people hierarchy cynically invoked religion to pacify an unruly populace, but it felt a little janky, and if I get any pacifist party option I'll try getting them in power to see if the game has any way to get it to make sense in the Cravers' fiction.

Why would Cravers even have elections? This is not some one party oppressive dictatorship... there wouldn't even be party's in the first place! I think this system will only work for some races ... applying it to all just doesn't make sense from the lore that the game establishes itself.

Bencalica wrote:

I was a dictatorship that offered no outlet for the divergent opinions of the electorate, and so to quell dissent I had engaged in a wanton display of military showboating and tried to distract my populace from its political concerns by stoking war-fever against foreign powers.

That's a cool interpretation of what happened but there was nothing in the game to actually support this... no quest dialog or popup or information in the game warning of or explaining this... and once again makes no sense anyway because it's the Cravers - what electorate?? Is that a kind of food?

I had a handful of foreign slave pops cripple my entire Craver empire when they didn't get their religious party into power. I have a hard time seeing how that would be possible, given that the Cravers don't really seem like the kind of creatures that would take their slaves going on strike all that well. In general I don't really see how the election system fits the Cravers, as they're supposed to be a hivemind type of race.

Clarste wrote:

It's said that the Craver drones are barely sentient. They aren't a hivemind per se, but they don't really have any concept of individual rights either. I'd say it's more of an authoritarian, hierarchical society. They aren't the type to rebel against their leaders, and would rather eat any slave that acts up than suffer them to rebel.

Edit: Not to say they shouldn't suffer any penalties from happiness, but it just seems weird that the opinions of their slaves can cripple their economy so easily.

I am okey with the the fact that slaves opinion is not something to consider. But the cravers society is ruled by Bishops who may have different opinions. I assume that Bishops have a huge influence on the others barely sentient Cravers (maybe almost guided by pheromons). All in all, in my opinion,  the opinion (political affinity) of the bishops matter in order to determine approval of the crowd.