Learn to Play Again: A USA Victoria 2 AAR [PDM]

[Rovsea]

OK, so I've been lax here. I'll admit that.

BUT, I've been playing a lot more Vicky 2 lately, and to be honest I'm interested in picking this back up where I left off. Political parties (as mentioned) are extremely important for a wide variety of reasons, and they're also an area I think a lot of players don't feel very comfortable addressing, especially once we get into the election mechanics (I may well cover elections separately).

So I'll be playing today and possibly put up an update later on tonight.

 

[EmperorofMordor]

It's alive!!!

 

[The Number 9]

Sill interested !

 

[Rovsea]

Update 2:
Political Parties; What They Are and Why You Should Care:

Let's start with the basics:

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This is the Political tab of the game, and it shows you the state of your political parties, your reforms, popular movements or rebels, decisions, and a handy way to release nations (if you're Britain and you want to play as Australia, South Africa, Canada, (possibly) Ireland, or another, smaller nation). Rebels can be important to keep your eye on (so when you're Mexico and fighting the Mexican American war you'll know when the reactionaries rise up to take over your nation (or the jacobins, but they're pretty ok)), and decisions are always fun, but if you're like me and you want to try and steer your nation forward, probably the most important aspect of the Political viewer is, well, the politics.

In the picture above we have a view of the political situation in a nice India game that I played to 1926 (at which point I felt I'd done enough and promptly abandoned it). We can see our government form (top banner), the power that the political parties have in the upper house (largely determined by government form and reforms), our nation's plurality (I mostly keep track of plurality for the tech boost it gives), when the next election is (which can be important if you're micromanaging), who is currently in charge, what their policies are, our national spirit (or whatever it's called, you can see the icon in the upper left; it's apparently equality in this game, but most New World Nations have Liberty, while most Old World seem to have Order, with a few equality hanging around), the ideologies of the people and the voters (nice to check if doing that next voting reform will help or hurt you), and the Important issues that effect elections and (possibly) movements. That last is more easily viewed under the POPs tab, as are a couple of other political statistics. By clicking the button that says "Independence Party" we'll bring up the list of political parties and (if you have the right government type) you can switch to one of them.

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As you can see, the color of the party corresponds to conservative/liberal/socialist viewpoint (blue/grey conservative, yellow liberal, red socialist) where the liberals tend to be about lower taxes, capitalist run industry, and social freedoms; conservatives tend to favor government spending on military, higher taxes, and higher tariffs with curtailed social liberties (almost all reactionary parties in the game favor slavery, for instance); and socialists are about government run industry, lots of social liberties, and generally low military spending. These are generalizations, and different nations have different parties that play very differently (as we'll see). The policies that the parties support impact almost every aspect of the game (not really colonization, but just about everything else), and believe it or not, this is equally as important in nations that are uncivilized or don't have democracy. Generally, authoritarian nations have an easier time of selecting the party in power, but beware that this comes at the cost of more rebels and militancy. There are a couple of things to keep in mind that are unique to democracies, however:

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One of the most mysterious and seldom thought of values in the game is party loyalty, but it does influence the way that your people vote come election time. Given the "encourage party focus" national foci that are available, party loyalty seems most important when considering state elections (in voting time you get votes by province, I believe; this is how you can have an election go 100% in favor of the conservatives when 25% of your voters are liberals, for example; the liberals failed to win a single province). Since this India game I started as an Unciv Empire, I don't have the richest vote history, even at this late stage of the game. Nations like France and the US are a different story.

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Here is a short descriptor of the Trade Policies. Trade Policies are very narrowly defined into 2 camps: Protectionism and Free Trade. Neither one is really that bad. One caps your tariffs at -100% and 25% (free trade), the other caps them at -25% and 100% (protectionism). In most scenarios I'd say that you don't really need to expand outside of their mutually inclusive range of -25% to 25%... unless you're losing a war badly and need the extra cash that protectionism's higher tariff ceiling provides.

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We move on to economic policy. Since I could make a couple updates on the benefits and detractors of the different economic policies, I can't go too in depth here. Suffice to say that, in general: Laissez Faire results in lower taxes, capitalist only factories, and is a liberal policy; Interventionism results in state/capitalist cooperation in factories (it's my favorite economic policy) moderate to high taxes, and and is a conservative policy; Planned Economy results in state run only factories, high taxes, and is a socialist policy; State Capitalism results in high taxes, state run factories (not sure it excludes capitalists though), and is a Reactionary/Fascist policy. Because these policies effect your industry and your primary source of income (taxes), they are by far the most important policies, and you need to understand when you want certain policies in place versus others. A nation struggling to stay in the green on state capitalism will often plunge into the red if liberal take power because laissez faire can halve their tax income while free trade prevents them from compensating with high tariffs. What's more, weak industries often rely on government investment to get railroads built and factories up off the ground, and with Laissez Faire you can have thousands of unemployed craftsmen sitting outside of your closed, unsubsidized factories. Theoretically, Laissez Faire is the least efficient of the Economic policies: you lose tax income to have less control over industry. however, it's important to keep in mind the power of capitalists to run a strong economy once you're out of the early developmental stages. They can self-regulate your inefficient factories, weed out the ones unlikely to ever make you money, and replace them with profitable factories that produce more goods. Once my industry is established, I have no problem switching over to a Laissez Faire economy, and some strong nations can happily start the game with that policy in place. I do believe that the effects of the different parties depends on the country you are playing (for instance, some countries have lower taxes with interventionism than others).

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The Religious Policy is probably the least important policy, in my opinion. I'd imagine that it effects the militancy/consciousness of your pops depending upon their religious affiliation, but since there's no real way to check your state religion (if you have one), I'm unsure how much impact religious policy really has. The policies range from conservative to socialist with: Moralism - only one, state-run religion; Pluralism - a state-sponsored religion, but other religions are tolerated; Secularized - no connection between state and religion, everyone is free to worship as they please; Atheism - there are no religions recognized by the state. I've never noticed religion having an impact on the game in any measurable degree besides events that deal with religion and effect consciousness/militancy. Amusingly, all three US political parties at the start of the game start with moralism, which is so blatantly against historical fact that you can't take it seriously.

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The Citizenship policy is important mostly if you have multi-ethnic nations. If you're playing as isolationist Portugal and you plan on abandoning your colonies, for isntance, you can safely ignore your Citizenship policy completely. However, if you're a nation with more than one culture, it matters. Residency, the conservative option, limits voting to the Primary culture. Limited Citizenship expands this, and Full Citizenship makes pretty much everyone equal. It's important to note that unrepresented pops raise militancy because they're upset that they're considered second citizens (you can see in the picture that Full Citizenship lowers militancy). It's important to note that the citizenship policy doesn't actually do anything vote wise, and that actual statistic affecting modifiers are provided by the reforms section, although full citizenship is required to enact the "Minority Rights Protected" reform.

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The War Policy is probably the second (or, depending on how militarily desperate you are, the first) most important policy. It determines how much you can spend on soldiers (the higher the spending, the more POPs are encouraged to become soldiers or officers), it determines how many units you can mobilize, it determines how fast you generate casus bellis (as do other factors like infamy and political reforms), it determines the negative impact mobilization has, it affects organization, and it affects who you can declare war on, in the case of Pacifism. Jingoism represents the most militant policy (high mobilization impact, large mobilization, faster CB acquisition, higher regain rate), while pacifism represents the lowest. I tend to favor Pro-Military, as it's a reasonable policy to get without going too reactionary; most nations have it on Liberal or Conservative Parties (oddly enough, South Africa has it on their Anarcho Liberals, which is weird, but we'll get to that). I'd argue that if you like to declare war (who doesn't?) Pacifism is the worst policy. Why? Just look at what my options for justifying a war against China are:

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Pacifists get to free nations, declare war when given event-driven CBs, and probably get to beat down anybody stupid enough to go over the infamy limit, but are limited in pretty much every other way. Why is my India Pacifist, you ask? Because I'm more or less stuck with the liberals at this point, although with the latest Vicky 2 patch, I might be able to swing an election to my Conservatives (the patch gave election events greater scope, and a much larger impact).

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As we can see here, my Laissez Faire economy is pretty strong, but it does make it impossible for me to fund factory construction, or subsidize factories that I want to stick around (never know when you'll need your own steamer convoy factory because you're at war with the UK).

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So let's talk a bit more about the Political-POP relationship, then shall we? It does determine elections, rebels, and a lot of other game mechanics. We see here a province belonging to Palestine that is majority Palestine primary culture (Mashriqi), but we also note that there is a frighteningly high proportion of Anarcho-Liberals and Socialists compared to Conservatives. The question becomes, why? I believe (although I've not checked the game files to double check) that things like culture, pop-militancy, pop consciousness, and whether or not a province is a core impact the political ideology of your people. For instance, if you have a large number of unemployed craftsmen and farmers, get ready for some communists once that political ideology fires. As another example, if you're the Ottomans, get ready for a lot of anarcho-liberals and separatists in provinces without a sizable Turkish population. ((Note that I don't have any screen-shots here suitable for addressing separatists, subordinate/insubordinate, or social-liberals, I'll cover them later).

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Note that you can call elections pretty much whenever you want if you're a democracy. If you feel you're really close to getting the party you want in power, or if you want to take advantage of an event like a scandal in your less favorable party, you can call an election and hope to twist things in your favor. There are a LOT of factors that impact elections, so I won't get into too much detail here, just note that Voter Ideology and Upper-House makeup don't seem to correspond exactly with the estimated vote outcome. This is because of those factors I mentioned.

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Here we have the POPs tab which shows us a number of really useful things. First, it shows us the ideology of our total population (including colonies), which can be helpful although it's somewhat redundant here. Not so redundant are the helpful pie charts of Electoral Vote and Dominant Issues, both of which have a major role in elections. If issues which only favor the Liberals are most dominant, for instance, then the Liberals are a lot more likely to win your election. You use the voting events to manipulate dominant issues and tip elections in the favor of the party you want, although this does have limits. Electoral Vote is good for me because it allows me to observe closely how electoral votes impact the outcome of an election. I've noted that the event that pops up asking you to support a party (or let the vote run it's course) actually tends to hurt the party you attempt to support. This is because it effects the militancy of supporters of other parties, which just adds another level of complexity to the whole thing.

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Here you can see the impact of pacifism on the military. I can *only* mobilize 822 divisions (this is actually low, given my total divisions supported by soldier pops at this point is above 1,000; in the late game that's not a good ratio), although I'll probably never have a practical reason to mobilize given my standing army size.

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In addition to all the previous things we've talked about, it's important to realize that political parties have a big impact on diplomacy as well. They'll make it much harder to form an alliance with a nation of different ideology that's on the fence about your proposal anyways. In addition, communist, fascist, and anarcho-liberal rebellions have a tendency to reduce great power influence in a nation and sever ties like alliances.

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Ignoring the stupid amount of profit I'm turning, you'll note that my taxes are capped at 50%, as is my military spending. As we'll see in the next comparison, this can have a drastic impact on a nation's economy.

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This CSA game's economy is in a much worse off position. I'm in debt, barely turning a profit, and have a lot of struggling artisans. This is after recovery from the Civil War as well, and given the size of this CSA, I think that this economy should be much better off than it is:

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Another thing to note: each country's parties have different policies, and which party has which policies is coded into the game at the start. For instance, the bizarrely "more liberal than the liberals" South African Conservative party is very different from most other nation's conservatives. The Whigs from the CSA game are also an odd conservative party with mostly reactionary policies, but also Laissez Faire. For that reason, it's important to figure out the quirks that your parties have if you plan to go electioneering. It makes little sense to struggle into a conservative government just to realize that not only do they have the Laissez Faire you've been trying to escape, but they also have Free Trade and Jingoism, cutting the high tariffs you've set and forcing you to maintain at least 50% spending on soldier POPs.

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After a quick glance further into South Africa's political situation, we note that the Conservatives are called the progressives, and that aside from a Jingoistic war policy (and the liberal Pro-military is more conservative than liberal anyways), the Liberals are more conservative than the conservatives across the board. Residency on a Liberal party is especially weird (all of the other policies aren't too outrageous).

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Something to keep in mind if you plan on state-ifying Africa is that unsettled pops generally split their political ideology based on the parties available when the region is colonized. Hence the lovely mostly-equal pie charts that you get when you look at the ideology in Africa. This can really throw off your political situation if you end up making a state out of an African province with high pop that hasn't been settled yet (like Bunkeya).

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One other thing to know is that Parties Shift over time. Some nations have multiple conservative or liberal parties, and so if you want one conservative party to assume power when you have two of relatively equal size, you need to keep their differences in mind during the election. You can see here that the Whigs from the start of the game in the US have disappeared after the Civil War, to be replaced by the Republicans, who support full citizenship and anti-military instead of limited citizenship and pacifism. It can be important to notice if that lovely interventionist economy you built is about to come crumbling down around your ears because the liberal party with surprisingly conservative traits you've had has just switched to Free Trade and Laissez Faire.

I hope this has been a helpful overview of political parties, why they are important, and what you need to know about them. Note that there are a lot of topics I've not discussed in depth here (political rebels, non-party ideologies, and elections just to name a few). I'm more than happy to answer any questions I can, and look forward to putting up more updates in the future.

 

[Idhrendur]

Thanks for the update!