There's one idea with multiple party laws: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/134-multi-party-laws#post-last.

May be there are more solutions. IIf you continue making proposal, I'll try to update the fist post with them, but it won't be fast.

@HaxtonFale:

I partially agree with you. I think pax368 idea is good "per se", but it will be better if it is implemented in a way you don't require so much micromanagement, like:

• Make propaganda an option in senate screen that affects all systems at once.
• Make the use proposed for luxuries affect all systems at same time, just by clicking the wanted resource in economic screen.
• Make the propaganda infinite system improvement (like public 3D printing) that while in the cue attract people from desired party (good with migration), and slowly manipulates people living in the system. Put also a button in system management screen that allows you to put this propaganda in all your systems queue with one click.

There are many options, but this is what occurred to me just now. I don't want micro too, but the core idea is good.

Yeah I agree that a system-level mechanic with that sort of detail would be cumbersome and not at all what I was thinking.  The propaganda wheel would work at an empire level. 

pax368 wrote:

I think being able to go star system by star system and campaign and do the election influences would be an interesting system.

Got a system that you need to build some industry improvements on and do not want your ecologist party members there offended or their support to wane? Run some tree hugger campaign rallies.

Are some religious voters cropping up in your home system because you built the new wonders from the Eras or assimilated a minor faction? Use manpower to do some voter suppression and intimidation. Or use influence for a get out the vote scheme for another faction.

Cravers on your border pushing you to research military techs and build a defensive fleet? Buy some propaganda with dust so the political gains go towards your "Valiant Scientists who create the warfighting technology of tomorrow to hold back the Craver threat!" instead of your militarists or industrialists. Or reverse that and the "Brave men and women who work tirelessly to build and maintain the fleets that keep our worlds safe!"

Basically in each system, on the bottom left of the screen it shows how your citizens voted in the last election. Click on that to launch a politics screen, and from there choose to launch a political event, last say 5 to 10 turns, that either tries to boost or suppress a faction. This makes a much more interactive political experience. This should also be tied in with having system governors of a certain bent. Say you have an Ecologist hero on your system, he will push your system towards the Ecologists over time, and political actions that boost the Ecologists on that system get a SUPER boost, and ones that try and suppress them have a much harder time.

Also tying certain election actions to certain political parties to luxury resources would create a really interesting trade dynamic. So you are really pushing the Pacifists as a political party. The best actions for pushing them might come from the trade or happiness luxury resources. Ecologists would love the food resources etc.

I know they have talked about luxury resource sinks in a few other threads, and this could be one, because what is more of a giant sink than politics?

Also, ability to push other political factions on your opponents would be interesting. Trying to push Pacifists or Ecologists on the Cravers, Militarists on the Lumeris or religion on Sophons would be a fun mini espionage game.

No.

Please, no.

No per-system systems. No additional micromanagement. No. It's already bad enough now, without the (inept) governor AI, and adding a mechanic that requires you to go through all your systems, or - even worse - systems in a particular situation, would be just adding oil to the fire.

@mezmorki

About your last two posts:

I'm doing the same as you with laws. Here same sensation of @pax368. It has lot of potential, and added with actual population system can be awesome, but for now its a meh.

Good ideas in your last post. Maybe you can post something about propaganda in ideas section? I think you're brainstorming the correct way. IIRC propaganda was mentioned in first GDDs, but ATM didn't remember exactly where and if this was about politics or migration.

I think being able to go star system by star system and campaign and do the election influences would be an interesting system.

Got a system that you need to build some industry improvements on and do not want your ecologist party members there offended or their support to wane? Run some tree hugger campaign rallies.

Are some religious voters cropping up in your home system because you built the new wonders from the Eras or assimilated a minor faction? Use manpower to do some voter suppression and intimidation. Or use influence for a get out the vote scheme for another faction.

Cravers on your border pushing you to research military techs and build a defensive fleet? Buy some propaganda with dust so the political gains go towards your "Valiant Scientists who create the warfighting technology of tomorrow to hold back the Craver threat!" instead of your militarists or industrialists. Or reverse that and the "Brave men and women who work tirelessly to build and maintain the fleets that keep our worlds safe!"

Basically in each system, on the bottom left of the screen it shows how your citizens voted in the last election. Click on that to launch a politics screen, and from there choose to launch a political event, last say 5 to 10 turns, that either tries to boost or suppress a faction. This makes a much more interactive political experience. This should also be tied in with having system governors of a certain bent. Say you have an Ecologist hero on your system, he will push your system towards the Ecologists over time, and political actions that boost the Ecologists on that system get a SUPER boost, and ones that try and suppress them have a much harder time.

Also tying certain election actions to certain political parties to luxury resources would create a really interesting trade dynamic. So you are really pushing the Pacifists as a political party. The best actions for pushing them might come from the trade or happiness luxury resources. Ecologists would love the food resources etc.

I know they have talked about luxury resource sinks in a few other threads, and this could be one, because what is more of a giant sink than politics?

Also, ability to push other political factions on your opponents would be interesting. Trying to push Pacifists or Ecologists on the Cravers, Militarists on the Lumeris or religion on Sophons would be a fun mini espionage game.

Brainstorming a little out loud here...

It seems to me, that if you play the game doing a little of everything (as you are supposed to), the upshot is that while your laws aren't particularly powerful you get a bunch of them to choose from - at least in theory.

Now, if you want to focus your politics and still be able to do a little of everything (as you need to) it seems there needs to be more options built into the game to manage the political parties over the course of play.  

What if you can spend influence to basically enhance or reduce the effect of certain action causing a political shift during the interim period between elections.  For example, if I'm going Industrial + Military heavy, and I want to suppress the scientist party, I can spend influence to inhibit actions causing the scientist party to gain support.  

I could even see this working in a way similar to empire plans from Endless Legend.  Imagine a spider diagram (like empire plans) with all the parties in a middle ring at "zero" influence.  You could spend influence to move a party to a higher ring, where they would get a bonus to supporters (up to a 100% bonus or something?).  Conversely, you could spend influence to reduce a party's support chance all the way down to zero.  In that case, it wouldn't matter how many science stations you build, it simply won't affect the strength of the scientist party.  Basically, this is a "propaganda wheel".  The effects of investments could last until the next election, at which point you'd need to reinvest in your propaganda engine.

It's hard to get much more specific with ideas - because I have no clue what the actual mechanics are that governs the political system in this game.  Total black box.

I concur with Mezmorki, late game you just ignore the politics, try and support an election comes up, pick the best laws you can, and then never interact with it again for 20 turns. If the system is going to be relevant at all, there needs to be ways to influence the election between them, and not just by your normal actions. It is a 4X game, you are going to do all the normal 4X actions to some extent or another, and if you just try and gimp yourself and do 1 or 2 you will lose, and quickly.

From a game design standpoint having any game play element that players have little to no control over, little to no interaction with, and can mostly ignore, is not designed well.

It is just so frustrating because it has so much potential to be EPIC. But right now is bland.

However, there are some big hurdles to overcome.

The challenge as stated above is that if you are going to have any hope of winning the game you need to research, build your economy, build industry, and fight wars with space ships.  That basically means Pacifists, militarists, scientists, and industrialists are inevitably going to have major seats at the table.  You can ignore the pop growth stuff (ecologists) a little more, and avoid religious stuff mostly if you want.  But still, the act of playing the game and doing all the things you have to do inevitably pushes you towards a multi-party situation.  If you go hard in one are to try and access stronger laws, you're seriously gimping another aspect of your empire.  

The result of all of this, coupled with the lack of transparency around how votes are tabulated and party affiliations shift, is that I mostly just ignore the system.  When elections happen, I take a look at the laws on offer and pick the best one's for my situation.   You can't even see the more advanced / powerful laws in-game for me to even know if it's worth working towards a stronger party majority - and so I just ignore it all.  Which is a shame, because it could be major selling point of the game.

I would like to see a tech added that allows a player to pass laws one level higher than their current majority's power level.

"Realistically" though, constructing something usually raise the opposition.

For exemple if a governement constructs lots of schools, then people who voted for that would just say "that's what we wanted. This is normal.".
But people against those would say "No, just no, you're so wrong ! With that money we needed moar [insert non-school stuff here] ! I'm gonna vote against you !".

I don't know if constructing more weapons irl would just raise a militarist party and a pacifism party would just say "meh. Don't care".

I basically agree. My suggestion would be rather that automatically increasing a parties popularity (or creating the party if not currently existing) actions creation political "stocks," like how in Endless Legends you could have production/food/science stocks. And that in order to activate a stock (thus supporting or creating a party), you would have to spend a certain amount resources, in all likelihood influence. You could also create opposite situations where you spend influence to prevent the formation/support of a political party.

This could allow for your actions to influence the politics of your empire, but at the same time have a greater degree of control over it.

HaxtonFale wrote:

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Romeo wrote:

"listen to the people"

A button doing nothing, with a small approval 3-turn boost, would be nice indeed !

(I suspect "doing nothing" is what the "official support" button does though, because this button seems to be close to no effect)

It says it gives a (minor) boost to a chosen party. But it does about as much as any other button right now, so...

Is it working? I thought I had heard it wasn't doing literally anything yet.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Romeo wrote:

"listen to the people"

A button doing nothing, with a small approval 3-turn boost, would be nice indeed !

(I suspect "doing nothing" is what the "official support" button does though, because this button seems to be close to no effect)

It says it gives a (minor) boost to a chosen party. But it does about as much as any other button right now, so...

I am certain (but can be wrong) that the system isn't working as intended yet.

Main point here is what type of ruling system you have.

I played all available options and it does matter what you have.

In a dictatorship you have only 1 party and it has 100% power and can pass any law for free but the drawback is population happiness if they don't truly support the winning party.

I would hold off with suggestions to the system until developers decide that the system is working somehow as they expect it to and we are able to manage populations.

There is supposed to be a way to get rid of certain populations but no details have been provided yet.

Thanks for your ideas.

Probalby is intended as @samsonazs said. I'm conscious too about @Romeao's comments, and that devs has said that there's not still fully implemented.

That's only something that happenend to me, and I suspect to lots of people. I wanted to know your opinions, and make dev's aware of it (suspect they're, but didn't see any other comment in these forums).

I think this is intended and with improved option on managing population and making choices aligned with political parties those will be the challenges you will need to face.

I agree that right now this doesn't fully work as it is probably should.

The whole point is that you will need to listen more to the people and if you want those nice laws from the top tiers then you need to make that faction strong (or be a dictatorship).

lo_fabre wrote:

Hi,

In my last campain, I unlocked 5 out fo the six avaliable political parties. My senate composition in % was divided in: 345 - 17% - 17% - 16% - 16%.

That lead to a starnge situation, where I can acces laws from 5 political parties, but had only support to unlock laws from the 34% party, and also they were the lowest support reaquiring laws.

Not sure if intended, as this forces players to look cautiously at what parties are unlocked and what are favoured if they want powerful laws enacted, but in the other side when you get there it fells awkward. Even can't say if its good or bad or something has to be done.

What do you think about it?

I think one of the biggest obstacles right now is the fact that supporting your preferred party doesn't do a damn thing - you can sink tons of  and  and some other party will win due to some random variable. Note that even the polls don't matter!