Experienced a fun quirk of game mechanics in SM: Alpha Centauri today. Was playing as the Lord's Believers (religious fundamentalists), and had already forced the Spartans (militiarists) and the Gaians (environmentalists) into vassalage. The University (materialist empiricists) had been wiped out by the Spartans and I. That just left the U.N. Peacekeepers (humanists), the Hive (totalitarians) and the Morgans (materialist objectivists).
The Hive had conquered almost all of the U.N. Peacekeepers' territory on the mainland, all but turning them into a sea-based faction. The Morganites lived in their own quiet corner of the world just making money. I managed to get friendly terms with the Morgans and Peacekeepers, as I ran a free market democracy and had the only army capable of protecting them from the Hive. The Believer-Hive war gets incredibly spicy when the Hive deploy a planet buster against my forces and one of my captured cities - this atrocity causes every faction to unite against the good old Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang.
Eventually Yang surrenders. With every faction either a willing pact brother/sister of me, or a vassal under me, I decide to just call a vote to elect me as supreme governor of humanity. I also had troops lined up on the borders of the Morgans and Peacekeepers just in case they changed their mind - but they were happy to support me in victory.
Everyone votes yes on the proposal. However because the Hive got kicked out of the planetary council due to their use of the planet buster, none of their votes counted, even though they voted in favour. As a result the game ran it as if they had voted
no. This still ended up working in my favour as the Morganites and Peacekeepers agreed to become my vassals and unite against the Hive, but it was a rather big surprise to have my loyal Hive vassal suddenly announce it's time for round two - complete with
another planet buster strike.
Yang, every time