Volatile election results.

[Cato_89]

Apologies if this comes across a little presumptuous, since I'm fairly new here, but:

Does anyone else feel that the way elections are handled is a little too volatile?

For instance I set up a new party and then bang - two game-years later I've leapfrogged two long-estabished parties into third place nationally, with 20% of the vote, and with an even newer party placing 2nd.

It just doesn't seem very realistic. Real world parties take a long time to go from foundation to "major" status. A lot of that is down to FPTP, so obviously Particracy's compulsary PR would help, but there are other factors. The benefits of incumbancy, combined with the fear of "wasted votes" and the unknown quantity of a new political organisation. Add to that tribalism and the fact that not all voters are potential swing voters.

Why does this matter? Because it suddenly feels as if there's no challenge involved. I was anticipating a gradual build up of seats and support, eventually edging up into double figures in percent terms, gaining disproportionate influence in a hung parliament as a junior partner... maybe, after fifty or so game years, breaking into the "top two". In the UK it took 45 years for the Labour Party to go from 1st MP to Majority Government. The Lib Dems took 20 years to break 20%. In Particracy I'm HoS in four years. For a game where half the fun is in the RP, such lack of realism rather breaks the immersion.

After three elections the formula for Party Seats seems to basically boil down to: (Total Seats in Legislature / Number of "Active" Parties) +/- 20% variation. No bonuses for incumbancy. No voter loyalty to the established parties. No differentiation between the party with a consistent three century record of legislating and the party set up last week in someones basement.

Again, apologies if this is all very presumptuous of me. It may be that this is the way its always been, and the community likes it this way, in which case fair enough. Its just that I've not found any discussion of this topic elsewhere on the forums, and I was wondering what the general view of the community was.

[Siggon Kristov]

Visibility plays a big role.
If 2 parties have been in a nation, not doing anything, and a 3rd party comes with new ideas, proposing bills and stuff, they'll have better chances than the 2 parties who haven't been doing anything for years.

Also, Particracy uses proportional representation, so the entrance of a 3rd party into parliament isn't as difficult as it would be in a constituency-based first-past-the-post election (where support for a new party may either be too divided among the constituencies to win any specific constituency, or concentrated in only a few constituencies which would mean the party has little seats and therefore no impact).

[Cato_89]

Re: Visibility - Sure, if the established 2 were literally doing nothing then that would make sense (though its still not that realistic - established parties will still have the benefits of incumbency [including Visibility though having incumbent Ministers, MPs, Congressmen, etc.] outweighing the furious activism of the fringe group with no seats). The instances I've experienced are closer to two highly active established parties being supplanted by a new equally (if not less) active new party. Visibility seems rather overpowered as a game mechanic (compared to say political positions, legislative success, how established the party is). Maybe the voters of Terra are supposed to be impulsive neophilliacs with goldfish memories?

Re: FPTP vs. PR - IRL I'm pro-electoral reform so I totally see the increased fluidity that it allows within party systems. That said, even PR elections aren't this volatile. The UK's PR-based Euro elections see more parties elected than their FPTP Westminster ones; but its still the established parties that dominate, and the swings are not that extreme (allowing for general "midterm" voting patterns). New Zealand's twenty years with an effectively proportional system has seen the growth in % seats for parties besides the main two, yet neither main party risks being supplanted for the forseeable future. If Germany's Bundestag elections were held in Particracy, then the Pirate Party would have been evens to become the largest party in 2009.


BTW, I hope this doesn't come across as majorly negative feedback. Its my only real issue with what is otherwise a very impressive game. This is the first time I've ever seen anything as extensive in scope tailored specifically to the niche market of people who want to role play legislative procedure (I know it's been around for seven-odd years, but I'm clearly very late to the party). The breadth and scope of legislative options alone is phenomenal, as is the work players have put into nation-building. My general instict on election volatility is that its as much a game-balancing measure as anything - to ensure that players don't get bored and wander off while grand strategy geeks like me are plotting our century-long path to power.

[MichaelReilly]

Yep. It happens.

The game's coded in such a way that it relies very heavily on visibility over anything else. Not very realistic, but lets be honest: it would be a nightmare if they tried to put in algorithms to determine hundreds of factors in the run-up to elections.

A perfect example is when I lost all my seats to a new party a few weeks back despite being in the nation for 6 real-life years. They simply had much better visibility than me. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

[Cato_89]

What about rebalancing the existing factors - say reducing the impact of visability and increasing the impact of political positions and legislative success? Presumably just a case of changing a couple of percentage modifiers. The work of minutes for any mid-level modder.

[Siggon Kristov]

What about rebalancing the existing factors - say reducing the impact of visability and increasing the impact of political positions and legislative success? Presumably just a case of changing a couple of percentage modifiers. The work of minutes for any mid-level modder.

The game won't be changed or edited. The code is old and fragile.

[EEL123]

I agree entirely with your point that the election results are too volatile - I recall that on my first election in Particracy, I won a majority, and was unsure whether to laugh or cry - but as Siggon has pointed out, it is extremely unlikely that any change will be made to the game mechanics at this late stage.

[Cato_89]

Yes, I don't expect that it will be. I was making a theoretical speculation as to what would be possible.

In what way is the code "fragile"?

[Siggon Kristov]

In what way is the code "fragile"?

Ask Wouter.

[soysauce]

Yes, I don't expect that it will be. I was making a theoretical speculation as to what would be possible.

In what way is the code "fragile"?

Very easy to break, pissing about with features could quite easily render it all non-functional, probably due to the amount of code and the presence of a lot of potential errors which could bugger things up if the system was modified.