Do Interest Groups serve a purpose anymore?

[strattonthebard]

After thinking about it, I've realized interest groups in v3 aren't actually ideologies, they are classes. Classes largely based on Marxist theory (Land owners, petit bourgeoisie, etc). And those classes are inherently tied to certain ideologies.

Personally i think there shouls be more classes and there needs to be an ideological layer underneath seperate. A trade unionist shouldn't inherently support socialism even if most might.

Many religous people have had socialist/anarchic leanings like in Spain.

Well most trade unions don't start out with the socialist ideology and they don't always have it. But you're right it's a bit weird and I think the fact that everyone in an interest group always has the same idealogy is part of the problem.

I don't know how practical this is from a programming perspective but I kind of wish IG's could split into 2-3 subgroups that have an additional ideological trait on top of the basic set. So for example rather than your rural folk all turning anarchist in the late game you could have subgroups of rural folk, all sharing the same basic traits but with one also being anarchist and another being traditionalist. You could also give those subgroups regional or cultural attraction, so the US might have landowners split into say, Yankee landowners that support tenant farmers but not slavery and Dixie landowners who have the slaver idealogy.

 

[Rabid]

After thinking about it, I've realized interest groups in v3 aren't actually ideologies, they are classes. Classes largely based on Marxist theory (Land owners, petit bourgeoisie, etc). And those classes are inherently tied to certain ideologies.

Personally i think there shouls be more classes and there needs to be an ideological layer underneath seperate. A trade unionist shouldn't inherently support socialism even if most might.

Many religous people have had socialist/anarchic leanings like in Spain.

You can have pops which would have been "real life" non-socialist trade union members. In game, they're just labourers, engineers and machinist who are supporting IGs other than the TU IG. I believe that the IG is somewhat confusingly named.

I am on the side of "we could use a few more IGs and they need to change their stances more often" rather than any more significant change. As a gameplay system and a very abstract but useful way of condensing down national politics and ideology into a few numbers it's extremely useful and effective.

 

[Citizen Caen]

After thinking about it, I've realized interest groups in v3 aren't actually ideologies, they are classes. Classes largely based on Marxist theory (Land owners, petit bourgeoisie, etc). And those classes are inherently tied to certain ideologies.

Personally i think there shouls be more classes and there needs to be an ideological layer underneath seperate. A trade unionist shouldn't inherently support socialism even if most might.

Many religous people have had socialist/anarchic leanings like in Spain.

What you describe is how it should be. Interest groups should be classes of people that all share the same material interests. But unfortunately no. They are a weird chimera of class interests and specific ideologies.

I suspect the weirdness comes from the original conception of interest groups as something like “class analysis”-themed Stellaris factions. But when they showed that off the dev diary. People hated it, so they very quickly pivoted to the system they have today with IGs joining political parties.

I think the ideal would be for IG’s to be the materialist class interest of a profession and then have political movements be the sole source of societal ideologies.
So for example a trade unionist wouldn’t automatically be a socialist (though he may be attracted to that movement), but he would normally support certain tax laws, public welfare, and trade policies since they are in his interests. Unless a political movement attracts them and overrides that.