Political Parties: Reform Party

Too many third parties!

When it comes time for Senate votes, I generally don't feel that much tension as to who is going to win (my party of course). But this tension is even lower considering the "opposition" splits its vote between all the other parties.

My personal preference would be:
1) Fewer (and more distinct) political parties
2) Your average approval rating (or weighted average) over the entire x years is what determines the election.
3) Losing the election means you get penalized, but also acquire the opposing party's bonus.

But those suggestions could lead to lots of other changes.

I think the quickest fix would be to simply have the "opposition" parties automatically unified for the purposes of the main election. The leading opposition party would be the automatic winner in that case. That way the player would actually lose in a plurality.

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Ideally, I think there should be maybe only maybe five major parties. That way you could actually associate them with strategies, personalities, and attributes.

Militarist: (conquest victory) -- attack, defense, HP, soldiering, military production, logistics, loyalty
Industralist: (conquest victory) -- social production, military production
Federalist: (alliance / influence victory) -- economics, trade, trade routes
Technologist: (technology victory) -- technology, espionage, sensors
Universalist: (influence / alliance victory) -- greens / planet quality, contentment, influence, diplomacy, pop growth

It would be almost like an additional package of racial attributes... (which maybe could shift with the elections).

Stardock should do a poll on how many people actually choose the pacifists, or the trade / espionage party, or the diplomacy / influence party? They just don't seem to be as useful as the federalists, industrialists or technologists. I also suspect the AI -- if it gets stuck with a loser political party (mercantilist?), ends up doing worse.

I think fewer choices can sometimes mean more meaningful choices.

ideas

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maybe custom political parties would be better (you choose bonuses similar to like when choosing a race) the opposition parties would take the remaining bonuses.

another possiblity (although it may be too much) is to have the AI leaders(or just their actions/priorities) change depending on their election results.

of course with a change of leadership in your race you would loose alot of control of the other parties decisions (ie they can make or break alliances and start/end wars

another thing that seems out of place are Evil democracies (they shouldn't be able to have the full benefits of a democracy like good/neutral democracies (possibly give them caste systems/slavery based tyranies)
also like the possibility of a galactic oligarchy (although it starts to sound a little like civ4)

maybe the more advanced forms of government should require an ethical alignment first and the type of government chosen from that.

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Militarist: (conquest victory) -- attack, defense, HP, soldiering, military production, logistics, loyalty
Industralist: (conquest victory) -- social production, military production
Federalist: (alliance / influence victory) -- economics, trade, trade routes
Technologist: (technology victory) -- technology, espionage, sensors
Universalist: (influence / alliance victory) -- greens / planet quality, contentment, influence, diplomacy, pop growth

It would be almost like an additional package of racial attributes... (which maybe could shift with the elections).

I like your idea, but think it would be a good idea to focus each party on two sorts of victory. Militarists, for example, would obviously be a conquest victory orientated party, but the militarists might also be of the sort to stress alliance building and the like to support wars. Thus:

Militarist (conquest / alliance) -- HP, Soldiering, Diplomacy
Industrialist (conquest / influence) -- Military Production, Social Production
Federalist (alliance / technology) -- Economics, Diplomacy, Research
Technologist (technology / conquest) -- Research, Espionage, Weapons
Universalist (alliance / influence) -- Diplomacy, Morale, Influence
Mercantile (influence / technology) -- Trade, Trade Routes, Research

Such a setup would cover all combinations of two victory conditions, which would mean that picking one party wouldn't limit you to a particular strategy, but would hopefully still lead to a more focused game than picking the federalists, industrialists, or technologists gives at present where the bonuses are powerful and general enough to let you do anything with them.

One thing for an expansion pack would be coatlition government. When there is no party with a majority, you could enter into coalition negotiations with the other parties which share your major orientation (e.g. the Federalists, being alliance orientated, could form a coalition with either the War Party or the Universalists). This would mean that whichever party you chose, you'd have two possible partners for coalition. If you entered into a coalition, you'd have all your bonuses halved, but would gain half of your partners' bonuses (and if your coalition was three way, you'd lose two thirds of your bonuses, and gain one third of each of the other parties' bonuses). Then, for the duration of the coalition, you'd get random events, much like the alignment ones, but ones which pertained to major policies of your coalition. Instead of the good/neutral/evil choice, you'd get the options to acceed,compromise, or block your coalition partner's proposal. If you acceed to their demand, you lose more of your own bonuses while gaining a small amount from your partner's bonus (but not as large as the penalty you took). If you compromise, no change occurs in your bonuses or penalties, but the chance of the coalition breaking down increases by 1 perecntage point. If you block the proposal, you gain back a portion of your bonuses, and lose a little of your partner's bonuses (but not as much as the bonus you got back), and the chance of the coalition breaking down increases by 5 percentage points. All this is structured such that you always get a better deal by rocking the coalition's boat or by stopping your partenrs from doing so, which makes the coalition more unstable as time drags on, much like coalitions in real governments. Every week, a check is performed to determine if the coalition has broken down that turn. Once the coalition breaks down, the largest opposition party will become the government, and you'll immediately lose all your bonuses and gain their bonuses as penalties.

This would create a situation, where, if you were the Mercantilists and involved in a war, and the opposition party was the War Party, you would have to work hard to keep a Mercantile/Industrialist/Universalist coalition together, or else the War Party would get into government and your Soldiering and HP would drop through the floor, making the war much harder. I would say that this ought to go hand in hand with making Morale much more difficult to keep high, while reducing the level at which your planets will outright rebel, except in imperial governments.

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