Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: Kay12 on May 20, 2011, 02:28:07 am
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Currently, LCS political alignments are rather simple. We have C+, who always vote for conservative outcomes. C, who are more random but usually end up trying to keep laws at C, and so on. This means that all issues will change at an almost equal pace, and there can't be (except for freak RNG rolls) interesting scenarios where some laws are elite liberal and others remain conservative. Public votes are the only way to stall/advance some particular issue when the public mood differs from the Congress' opinion.
So, I propose a few new alignments to be added. They wouldn't be seen around as characters, only in politics and supreme court. They'd have a more diverse political agenda. And lo, we have something along the lines of...
* Arch Conservative (same as currently)
* Conservative (same as currently)
* Moderate (same as currently)
* Liberal (same as currently)
* Elite Liberal (same as currently)
* Religious (has a C+ or C agenda concerning most issues but has Liberal views on death penalty, immigration and human rights)
* Neosoviet (supports left-wing union laws, high taxes and hates corporations like Liberals, but has conservative views on military spending, intelligence, human rights, police...)
* Libertarian (thinks taxation is theft and hate excessive regulations, but values free speech and other liberty aspects of Liberals)
* Rationalist (wants to get rid of useless traditions like flag burning bans, thinks large military is useless, wants to protect free speech but doesn't understand the fuss Liberals are making about nuclear power and animal research... they're just dumb little rats)
Whaddya think? More ideas?
One problem is, I don't think we'll have enough colors for them if too many are to be added. As far as I can remember, LCS has a rather limited color palette. Tactical stuff like coloured backgrounds or other sorcery may have to be used to ease setting these guys apart.
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I think that multiple parties would detract from the idea of "Liberal vs. Conservative"
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I disagree. Having these "tweeners" would allow flexibility to the current political system, and realism as well. The current system fails to project the popular opinion in the Senate and Congress, because it ignores the differences between issues - it could almost as well be a big conservative vs liberal scale without separate issues at all. If I hated nuclear power but liked the death penalty to be extreme, who'd I vote for? I wouldn't vote for an Arch Conservative guy, because he'd always support nuclear power. I wouldn't vote for an Elite Liberal, because he'd oppose death penalty. I wouldn't vote for anything in between, because they don't want to completely ban nuclear power and are too moderate for my views on death penalty!
Basically, in LCS, there currently "exists" a group of people who can't vote for a congressman they like - the people whose opinion varies by issue.
EDIT: Besides, they wouldn't be "parties" per se, just political viewpoints that could fall within either Liberal or Conservative party, a bit like moderates but not with that same "we just want it to be quite so but not quite" attitude towards everything.
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The game is intentionally morally simplistic and stereotypical, trying to add nuance would ruin its charm, not to mention making it more "realistic" would risk bringing it out of its refuge in audacity.
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This would throw a wrench in the way that the victory conditions work for one. And secondly, it takes away from one of the rather poignant pieces of commentary that this game has. The american political system has become increasingly polarized since the 70s. Politicians more and more do actually fit into a single axis left-right spectrum. If you know a politician is liberal on social issues, then it's very, very likely that they are liberal on fiscal issues as well. In my mind, this is supposed to be the world that LCS exists in, only more so.
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I don't understand how it breaks the victory conditions and I don't see how it hurts the political commentary. The current political system in LCS is, face it, boring. A certain type of Government is bound to twist all the laws close to a certain level. It's way too predictable. As I said - we wouldn't even need separate issues at all with a system like this, a single huge Conservative-Liberal meter would be enough.
In LCS, people who are conservative in some respects genuinely are liberal in some areas. This is obvious in the popularity polls - if you go push the button at the nuclear plant a few times, you'll have people who hate nuclear power but are comfortably numb in all other aspects. If everyone truly hates nuclear power, why will there still be a Congress that supports it with a dozen Elite Liberals saying nay? There also already are groups that don't care about certain issues at all, for example, corporations don't care about abortion (these are, if I recall correctly, listed in the source somewhere). I would sincerely prefer if the Congress would be a somewhat slanted version of the popular opinion at the time of election, not a horribly flattened one. Suggestions for other ways than additional flavors of Conservative/Liberal are welcome, of course.
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I think the current alignment is just fine, but there should be more political parties. For example, the liberal Christian party, the conservative comunism party etc.
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Oh, forgot to add, there already are factions in LCS that care about several but not all issues. I'm not sure on the exact gameplay effects but I'm fairly sure that I saw each faction and their respective ideologies in the source files.
And another thing, these new alignments could only be present under the hood and don't even have to be exactly mentioned. What I'd want is the Congress capturing a somewhat accurate (election reform increasing this accuracy) ghost image of the popular opinion, and it would influence random rolls on each issue. C+ and L+ might remain so, but a C Congressman might be tempted to vote towards moderacy or liberalism on a single issue if such is supported by popular opinion. Moderates should be especially suspectible for this.
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As the person responsible for making the buggy Stalinist Comrade Squad mod (and who still need to compile the copy on Sourceforge and upload it into a usable format to please Lenin_Cat)...I have to say that while I support having factions with differing ideological views in game, many people do not, and so any attempt to add these sort of groups will likely have to be done in a 'mod' of LCS.
"Under the hood" stuff are opposed by Johnathan S. Fox because it just adds more complexity and randomness without adding any fun to the player. So a mod that adds in these factions is your best bet.
Factions already exist in game, but:
1) other than AM Radio/Cable News (they make society more conservative), they do not do anything in the politics subgame; instead,
2) all they do is try to siege your HQ if you make them angry. If you leak information out in a C+ environment, the Firemen attack. If you publish Corporate secrets, the Corporations attack.
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I don't understand how it breaks the victory conditions and I don't see how it hurts the political commentary. The current political system in LCS is, face it, boring. A certain type of Government is bound to twist all the laws close to a certain level. It's way too predictable. As I said - we wouldn't even need separate issues at all with a system like this, a single huge Conservative-Liberal meter would be enough.
In LCS, people who are conservative in some respects genuinely are liberal in some areas. This is obvious in the popularity polls - if you go push the button at the nuclear plant a few times, you'll have people who hate nuclear power but are comfortably numb in all other aspects. If everyone truly hates nuclear power, why will there still be a Congress that supports it with a dozen Elite Liberals saying nay? There also already are groups that don't care about certain issues at all, for example, corporations don't care about abortion (these are, if I recall correctly, listed in the source somewhere). I would sincerely prefer if the Congress would be a somewhat slanted version of the popular opinion at the time of election, not a horribly flattened one. Suggestions for other ways than additional flavors of Conservative/Liberal are welcome, of course.
70% of American generally favor raising taxes on the rich in most polls and have done so for the past few years. Even a majority of republicans favor such an increase. Yet we have a major american party that not only is against this, but wants to lower taxes on the rich and will spend political capitol to accomplish this. The LCS system is actually pretty true to life.
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Ah (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142940/Americans-Allowing-Tax-Cuts-Wealthy-Expire.aspx)-em (http://www.gallup.com/poll/147104/Democrats-Republicans-Differ-Widely-Taxing-Rich.aspx). (Your general point is true though; political elites are more polarized than the masses.)
In any event, LCS' national proposition system allows for the people to vote on specific issues as opposed to ideological politicians, which is unlike in real life.
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I agree with the issue you're trying to address, which is that the issues change together instead of separately. My solution would be to have politicians who aren't C or L consider public opinion when voting. Maybe they have a 1/2 chance of slaving to public opinion (use the same roll as a voter in a popular vote), and a 1/2 chance of voting according to their alignment. Moderates could vote with public opinion 2/3 of the time, the other 1/3 of the time they would vote in favor of whichever side is closer to centrist. In this way, causing a big fuss on one issue would trigger the laws reacting.
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The public proposition system is good, but it doesn't weigh much. It has very little "stopping power" against Congress and Supreme Court - it may temporarily stall an issue, but won't actually change it in the long run, because any changes that deviate from the Congress' views are swiftly reverted. I'm not quite familiar with the specifics of the US politics, but a quick source peek reveals that propositions and Supreme Court have 1 chance to change laws each year, while Congress has 2.
Jon's suggestion is good, as usual (besides, I can't really argue with that fox).
EDIT: Well, I must say I've been hit by an interesting series of rolls or then the game has some kind of logic I was totally unaware of. A few years into game (first presidential election just over) and I have all laws at C+ ('twas nightmare start) except DP at C and gay rights at a whopping L! I haven't been observing this too carefully but I think that it's just people voting liberal laws over and over again and Congress has undone everything except gay laws.
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Maybe congress is controlled by the Secret Rainbow Coalition?
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This is Liberal Crime Squad. It isn't supposed to be realistic or nuanced. It's supposed to be a ridiculous satire of bipartisan politics in the US. I'd think this would be pretty obvious to anyone who's played the game.
I get the design problems this is intended to address, but I don't think anything should be done to water down the current absolute dichotomy between "conservative" and "liberal" in the game.
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Well, the country I live in does not share such bipartisanship, and to be honest, I though American politics were somewhat moved by smaller subparties as well (such as the Log Cabin Republicans, in LCS terms conservatives with liberal gay views). However, what Jon suggested is good in my opinion, and I don't believe it ruins the satire; It'll not only be a parody of bipartisanship, but populism as well. That's something even Europe can afford!
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Well, the country I live in does not share such bipartisanship, and to be honest, I though American politics were somewhat moved by smaller subparties as well (such as the Log Cabin Republicans, in LCS terms conservatives with liberal gay views).
Some of the satire might be a little lost on you if you don't live in the US, I guess, and you can't be blamed for that. LCS is a farcical, satirical pastiche of two-party, heavily-bifurcated American politics. It is supposed to be that way, and is not supposed to be realistic. There's a reason why "liberal" and "conservative" are bandied about the way they are in the game, and treated almost like D&D alignments (if not even more harshly); it's a bit of social commentary and is intentionally absurd in how partisan it is.
Liberal Crime Squad is not meant to be an accurate representation of politics in the US or anywhere else. It represents a satirical, warped version of American politics as Americans tend to treat it, and also satirizes political terrorist/activist groups, with the LCS itself being something of a parody of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
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I agree with the issue you're trying to address, which is that the issues change together instead of separately. My solution would be to have politicians who aren't C or L consider public opinion when voting. Maybe they have a 1/2 chance of slaving to public opinion (use the same roll as a voter in a popular vote), and a 1/2 chance of voting according to their alignment. Moderates could vote with public opinion 2/3 of the time, the other 1/3 of the time they would vote in favor of whichever side is closer to centrist. In this way, causing a big fuss on one issue would trigger the laws reacting.
Correction: I would have politicians who are C or L consider public opinion. The C+ and L+ would be hardliners who ignore the polls.
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^ That's what I thought.
And yes, as people have been saying that the bilpolarity of LCS politics is intentional for a few days now, I think I'd be idiot if I hadn't understood that yet. From a pure gameplay point of view, variety would be nice, and as I've said a few times already, Jon's suggestion will provide such variety without hurting the satire.
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Fair enough, and it's definitely suitable that moderates would be treated as effectively clueless on-the-fence populists.
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It would effectively kills off any talk of a Moderate Military coup, which had previously been suggested on the boards, by giving moderates already more prominence as the swing vote.
The main question for me is how do we communicate this mechanic to the player, so that he knows why the bill to improve pollution regulations failed miserably in an L+ congress*.
My idea is to have the game calculate who's going to vote to popular opinion and then report to the player that "X Representatives and Y Senators have voted based on popular opinion instead of ideology." Presidents are already influenced by their Cabinet, so I see no reason to add this mechanic in there, and the courts are "supposedly" insulated from popular opinion, so this mechanic wouldn't apply over there either.
*And yes, this happened. Somebody once did a Sleeper Run where all issues except pollution was L+ in popular opinion and only pollution was C+; this was done because there are no sleepers that can impact the pollution issue directly. And yes, it was annoying for the person in question who was playing said run.
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It must've been quite a long ago, because I think currently if a sleeper has no specific issue attached they will impact a random issue. Also, as I said, having a single issue C+ while the others go L+ is very improbable because the Congress has double the power of public opinion. Especially if the Supreme Court is no longer C+, having the pollution laws consistently remain C+ is nearly impossible.
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Why not add the different political alignements in a satirical way?
Until the electoral reform would be L or L+, they'd all be doomed and hopeless, getting only a few seats.
Encountering members of these beliefs would be rare as well and they could say amusing things about how they are annoyed they are unknown and not respected.
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It would effectively kills off any talk of a Moderate Military coup, which had previously been suggested on the boards, by giving moderates already more prominence as the swing vote.
The main question for me is how do we communicate this mechanic to the player, so that he knows why the bill to improve pollution regulations failed miserably in an L+ congress*.
You could still have such an ending, though my views have drifted somewhat from that opinion. I would expect a Conservative coup if anything, especially now that the military has a permanent Conservative presence in the game.
I think the idea that popular opinion is liberal on an issue, and congress voted that way, is pretty intuitive. I strongly suggest making L+ and C+ politicians steadfast in their views, ignoring popular opinion. An L+ Congress should never refuse to liberalize an issue, no matter how strongly the people feel about it.
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I think the idea that popular opinion is liberal on an issue, and congress voted that way, is pretty intuitive. I strongly suggest making L+ and C+ politicians steadfast in their views, ignoring popular opinion. An L+ Congress should never refuse to liberalize an issue, no matter how strongly the people feel about it.
Right, although they should certainly stand a greater chance of being voted out of office because of it.
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I think that politicians occasionally taking a peek at public opinion is more intuitive than the current system.
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I'm going to attempt to start programming in this system, but I do have another suggestion. At the moment, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party can only nominate people of their ideology...as well as Moderates. The problem is that the Moderates are likely to lose if they run in an extremist environment that favors the C+ or L+ world. Since parties does appear to exist more for gaining political power for their members rather than just to mindlessly promote their ideology, is it alright to allow Liberal Party to nominate C Presidents, and Conservative Party to nominate L Presidents? Doing so could help to prevent the extremist C+/L+ politicians from coasting to an easy victory by deriding the Moderates and securing the swing L/C vote...
EDIT: And, uh, by start, I mean download Visual C++ very slowly. If anybody can implement this proposed change before me, then good.
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is it alright to allow Liberal Party to nominate C Presidents, and Conservative Party to nominate L Presidents? Doing so could help to prevent the extremist C+/L+ politicians from coasting to an easy victory by deriding the Moderates and securing the swing L/C vote...
Considering how hyper-partisan most of LCS is, I think that would strike players as a bug if they saw it happen. And while it fits with LCS' "any means necessary" philosophy, it's at odds with its "no compromise" philosophy on the other.
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While I agree with the OP's understanding of the deep matrix that is true political science, Liberal Crime squad has always been, at least from my perspective, less of a rational and thoughtful examination of political discourse, and more of a glimpse into the fevered and delusional world of a talk-radio pundit's sedated and hallucinogenic dreams.
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At the moment, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party can only nominate people of their ideology...as well as Moderates. The problem is that the Moderates are likely to lose if they run in an extremist environment that favors the C+ or L+ world. Since parties does appear to exist more for gaining political power for their members rather than just to mindlessly promote their ideology, is it alright to allow Liberal Party to nominate C Presidents, and Conservative Party to nominate L Presidents? Doing so could help to prevent the extremist C+/L+ politicians from coasting to an easy victory by deriding the Moderates and securing the swing L/C vote...
Well... these nominees aren't the pragmatic selection of a group of cigar puffing politicians sitting in a back room somewhere, they're the popular selection of the party's base. Primary voters will be pragmatic, but only to a point; they desperately want to rally behind someone that will bring change they can believe in, referencing Obama's 2008 campaign slogan. A Liberal Party primary won't produce a Conservative candidate because the Liberal Party voters won't get excited about a Conservative.
This is a flaw in the presidential primary system. With some kind of preferential voting system, you could get a Conservative defeating an incumbent Arch-Conservative, by getting help from the Liberals with their second/third/fourth choice. Perhaps this could tie in with the Election Reform topic. But with primary nominations, it's very unlikely, since the Liberals will run someone they prefer more, and yes, inevitably lose.
This is seen in a lot of lopsided House districts around the country; it's ironclad locked for one party or the other, and their opponents won't nominate someone who stands a chance, because to do that, they'd basically have to nominate a member of the other party.
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I don't think that nominating more liberal/conservative candidates in hostile territory would have all that big a change on elections. It might help slightly at the margins, yes. But the politics is about more then triangulation. As an example, I'd offer my home district of MD-1st, which . That means that if the nation were exactly balanced between liberals and conservatives in a given election, you'd expect the republicans to win this district 63-37, i.e. a landslide.
Despite being in this conservative hellhole however, a democrat managed to win in 2008 but he didn't do it with a really conservative campaign. He was pro-choice, pro cap and trade, pro stimulus, voted for one of the two healthcare bills out of the house, supported the financial regulations and voted for hate crime legislation to protect gays. Yes, he tacked sharply right on guns, stimulus and a few issues of local importance (fairly conservative stance on the 2010 Chesepeake bay dredge report) but his liberal positions far outweighed his conservative ones. But despite having a pretty liberal track record, he outperformed the PVI handicap by 10 points in both 2008 and 2010.
So the reason why parties don't always triangulate for the center isn't just to appease their base. There are a lot of things that make a candidate electable or unelectable beyond triangulation. So it makes sense to pick a guy who would actually advance your agenda and is slightly less likely to win then to pick a guy who is still a real underdog but wont be any good even if he does win.
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As an example, I'd offer my home district of MD-1st, which .
There seems to be something missing, here...
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While I agree with the OP's understanding of the deep matrix that is true political science, Liberal Crime squad has always been, at least from my perspective, less of a rational and thoughtful examination of political discourse, and more of a glimpse into the fevered and delusional world of a talk-radio pundit's sedated and hallucinogenic dreams.
My proposition was to spice up the gameplay, while I was under the impression that it would also bring some life to the political system. I thought LCS satire was more about the issues, but it seems that the huge left/right division along with other issues should be kept as well. In any case, making the public opinion system also turn politicians is intuitive, probably good for gameplay and provides more variation than the current "vote a bit randomly" system.
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mainiac: While it worked for MD-1, it might not work on the national level. The reason I raised this idea was because of my Sleeper Run where in both Presidential Elections, a Moderate Retired Military General ran against an Elite Liberal and lost horribly: 41%-59%. And both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party was guaranteed 40% of the vote each, so when it comes down to the swing vote, the Conservatives lost heavily. When faced with such horrible odds, I'd think party elites would want to reconsider their party nomination practices.
Even in your example, some sort of ideological compromise was necessary on certain issues, which is hard to reflect in the current LCS system.
That being said, Johnathan S. Fox is likely right in raising the question of primaries as preventing more "likely" candidates to win, but what this means is that it is incredibly easy for LCS/CCS to win in an extremist environment. Considering the Liberal Crime Squad game is essentially a game about political extremism, this may be a dynamic the game developers would support.
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And it's done. I uploaded the change that allows for C, M, and L to either consult popular opinion (50% for non-M, 80% for M) or vote according to ideology, at least in Congress, as opposed to the previous system of voting based on a random dice roll.
I noticed that the Supreme Court had that "vote randomly" code as well. I decided to remove that code, but hopefully allowed for the bias to impact its votes. I was also thinking of adding a Conservative bias to Election Reform, but decided to restrain myself due to how useless ER is right now.
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Does "vote ideologically" mean old voting system (slightly random but usually towards the politician's alignment) or always towards alignment?
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Always towards alignment.
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Even in your example, some sort of ideological compromise was necessary on certain issues, which is hard to reflect in the current LCS system.
The compromises IMHO, constituted the bending to public opinion effect that has been proposed for L and C politicians. What he clearly was not was an M, since his liberal positions far outnumbered his conservative ones.
As to it not working on a national level, can you name any modern president who staked out a moderate course between liberalism and conservatism? The last guy I can think of was Dwight Eisenhower and he was very much a product of a less polarized era.
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The funny thing about LCS moderates is that they're not part Liberal, part Conservative, but actually something in between. Yeah, I'm only saying this because I'm tired and feeling funny, but there actually exists a political alignment in LCS whose political agenda includes the following...
Representative Simon MacGyver, Moderate: I believe in gender equality, although in name only!
Representative Alice Youngblood, Moderate: We want the nuclear power to be used often. But not *too* often!
Senator Paul Kennedy, Moderate: I think gay people should be tolerated, but with only a few equal rights.
President John Smith, Moderate: It serves the entire country the best if wages are kept unfair while corporations are otherwise moderated.
On the other hand, several M laws make sense. For example misdemeanor flag burning isn't too radical or silly, netiher is a ban on military-style weapons or a fairly neutral nuclear power policy.
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I see moderates as mostly Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans, with a smattering of independents.
Though the thought crosses my mind of what the game would be like without moderates of any kind. You're with us or against us.
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I too see them as the "pussy wing" of either party. Of course, this changes as the game progresses. In the very late game I consider everyone not Elite Liberal to be the Conservative party's attempt to slow their imminent doom.
EDIT: The code didn't compile, so I committed a change that I think should work but seems a bit wonky (what, I got 435 against conservative drug laws... on a fairly nightmarish setting).
MORE EDIT: Made another change, and now it seems to produce even quite sensible results. Testing phase initialized!
MORE MORE EDIT: Nope, it doesn't. Seems like all the Congressmen are fickler than ever! I don't understand election code very well, so it may take a while for me to sort it out. If you (whoever is reading this) feel like fixing it, go ahead.
Clearly broken: Arch Conservatives may vote for making laws more liberal and Elite Liberals may vote for more Conservative laws.
Too volatile: Public opinion should have less effect when far from the Congressman's views (Liberals are more likely to vote a law from L to M than from C to C+).
MORE MORE MORE EDIT: After only a brief check, I encountered my old nemesis - the Assignment/Comparison bug, the one that plotted to keep women's rights CONSERVATIVE in versions of yore (well, not *that* yore, but you get the idea). Results seem to make more sense now, falling back to testing.
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Too volatile: Public opinion should have less effect when far from the Congressman's views (Liberals are more likely to vote a law from L to M than from C to C+).
I would suggest that Liberals will never vote for a law to move from C to C+, and are very very hesitant to move from M to C. The reverse for Conservatives.
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Hmm, after looking at the system a bit more carefully, the worst possible outcome currently for a Liberal representative actually seems to be -1 - Conservative, but not Arch Conservative. The same applies to Conservatives, they aren't able to vote Elite Liberal.
The results don't show a lot of variance, I'm afraid. On the other hand, it may be because I have a lot of C+ politicians and they get replaced by L+ guys straight away.