Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kay12]

Currently, LCS political alignments are rather simple. We have C+, who always vote for conservative outcomes. C, who are more random but usually end up trying to keep laws at C, and so on. This means that all issues will change at an almost equal pace, and there can't be (except for freak RNG rolls) interesting scenarios where some laws are elite liberal and others remain conservative. Public votes are the only way to stall/advance some particular issue when the public mood differs from the Congress' opinion.

So, I propose a few new alignments to be added. They wouldn't be seen around as characters, only in politics and supreme court. They'd have a more diverse political agenda. And lo, we have something along the lines of...

* Arch Conservative (same as currently)
* Conservative (same as currently)
* Moderate (same as currently)
* Liberal (same as currently)
* Elite Liberal (same as currently)

* Religious (has a C+ or C agenda concerning most issues but has Liberal views on death penalty, immigration and human rights)
* Neosoviet (supports left-wing union laws, high taxes and hates corporations like Liberals, but has conservative views on military spending, intelligence, human rights, police...)
* Libertarian (thinks taxation is theft and hate excessive regulations, but values free speech and other liberty aspects of Liberals)
* Rationalist (wants to get rid of useless traditions like flag burning bans, thinks large military is useless, wants to protect free speech but doesn't understand the fuss Liberals are making about nuclear power and animal research... they're just dumb little rats)


Whaddya think? More ideas?

One problem is, I don't think we'll have enough colors for them if too many are to be added. As far as I can remember, LCS has a rather limited color palette. Tactical stuff like coloured backgrounds or other sorcery may have to be used to ease setting these guys apart.

[emissary666]

I think that multiple parties would detract from the idea of "Liberal vs. Conservative"

[Kay12]

I disagree. Having these "tweeners" would allow flexibility to the current political system, and realism as well. The current system fails to project the popular opinion in the Senate and Congress, because it ignores the differences between issues - it could almost as well be a big conservative vs liberal scale without separate issues at all. If I hated nuclear power but liked the death penalty to be extreme, who'd I vote for? I wouldn't vote for an Arch Conservative guy, because he'd always support nuclear power. I wouldn't vote for an Elite Liberal, because he'd oppose death penalty. I wouldn't vote for anything in between, because they don't want to completely ban nuclear power and are too moderate for my views on death penalty!

Basically, in LCS, there currently "exists" a group of people who can't vote for a congressman they like - the people whose opinion varies by issue.

EDIT: Besides, they wouldn't be "parties" per se, just political viewpoints that could fall within either Liberal or Conservative party, a bit like moderates but not with that same "we just want it to be quite so but not quite" attitude towards everything.

[Trorbes]

The game is intentionally morally simplistic and stereotypical, trying to add nuance would ruin its charm, not to mention making it more "realistic" would risk bringing it out of its refuge in audacity.

[mainiac]

This would throw a wrench in the way that the victory conditions work for one.  And secondly, it takes away from one of the rather poignant pieces of commentary that this game has.  The american political system has become increasingly polarized since the 70s.  Politicians more and more do actually fit into a single axis left-right spectrum.  If you know a politician is liberal on social issues, then it's very, very likely that they are liberal on fiscal issues as well.  In my mind, this is supposed to be the world that LCS exists in, only more so.

[Kay12]

I don't understand how it breaks the victory conditions and I don't see how it hurts the political commentary. The current political system in LCS is, face it, boring. A certain type of Government is bound to twist all the laws close to a certain level. It's way too predictable. As I said - we wouldn't even need separate issues at all with a system like this, a single huge Conservative-Liberal meter would be enough.

In LCS, people who are conservative in some respects genuinely are liberal in some areas. This is obvious in the popularity polls - if you go push the button at the nuclear plant a few times, you'll have people who hate nuclear power but are comfortably numb in all other aspects. If everyone truly hates nuclear power, why will there still be a Congress that supports it with a dozen Elite Liberals saying nay? There also already are groups that don't care about certain issues at all, for example, corporations don't care about abortion (these are, if I recall correctly, listed in the source somewhere). I would sincerely prefer if the Congress would be a somewhat slanted version of the popular opinion at the time of election, not a horribly flattened one. Suggestions for other ways than additional flavors of Conservative/Liberal are welcome, of course.

[Angel Of Death]

I think the current alignment is just fine, but there should be more political parties. For example, the liberal Christian party, the conservative comunism party etc.

[Kay12]

Oh, forgot to add, there already are factions in LCS that care about several but not all issues. I'm not sure on the exact gameplay effects but I'm fairly sure that I saw each faction and their respective ideologies in the source files.

And another thing, these new alignments could only be present under the hood and don't even have to be exactly mentioned. What I'd want is the Congress capturing a somewhat accurate (election reform increasing this accuracy) ghost image of the popular opinion, and it would influence random rolls on each issue. C+ and L+ might remain so, but a C Congressman might be tempted to vote towards moderacy or liberalism on a single issue if such is supported by popular opinion. Moderates should be especially suspectible for this.

[Servant Corps]

As the person responsible for making the buggy Stalinist Comrade Squad mod (and who still need to compile the copy on Sourceforge and upload it into a usable format to please Lenin_Cat)...I have to say that while I support having factions with differing ideological views in game, many people do not, and so any attempt to add these sort of groups will likely have to be done in a 'mod' of LCS.

"Under the hood" stuff are opposed by Johnathan S. Fox because it just adds more complexity and randomness without adding any fun to the player. So a mod that adds in these factions is your best bet.

Factions already exist in game, but:
1) other than AM Radio/Cable News (they make society more conservative), they do not do anything in the politics subgame; instead,
2) all they do is try to siege your HQ if you make them angry. If you leak information out in a C+ environment, the Firemen attack. If you publish Corporate secrets, the Corporations attack.

[mainiac]

I don't understand how it breaks the victory conditions and I don't see how it hurts the political commentary. The current political system in LCS is, face it, boring. A certain type of Government is bound to twist all the laws close to a certain level. It's way too predictable. As I said - we wouldn't even need separate issues at all with a system like this, a single huge Conservative-Liberal meter would be enough.

In LCS, people who are conservative in some respects genuinely are liberal in some areas. This is obvious in the popularity polls - if you go push the button at the nuclear plant a few times, you'll have people who hate nuclear power but are comfortably numb in all other aspects. If everyone truly hates nuclear power, why will there still be a Congress that supports it with a dozen Elite Liberals saying nay? There also already are groups that don't care about certain issues at all, for example, corporations don't care about abortion (these are, if I recall correctly, listed in the source somewhere). I would sincerely prefer if the Congress would be a somewhat slanted version of the popular opinion at the time of election, not a horribly flattened one. Suggestions for other ways than additional flavors of Conservative/Liberal are welcome, of course.

70% of American generally favor raising taxes on the rich in most polls and have done so for the past few years.  Even a majority of republicans favor such an increase.  Yet we have a major american party that not only is against this, but wants to lower taxes on the rich and will spend political capitol to accomplish this.  The LCS system is actually pretty true to life.

[Servant Corps]

Ah-em. (Your general point is true though; political elites are more polarized than the masses.)

In any event, LCS' national proposition system allows for the people to vote on specific issues as opposed to ideological politicians, which is unlike in real life.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I agree with the issue you're trying to address, which is that the issues change together instead of separately. My solution would be to have politicians who aren't C or L consider public opinion when voting. Maybe they have a 1/2 chance of slaving to public opinion (use the same roll as a voter in a popular vote), and a 1/2 chance of voting according to their alignment. Moderates could vote with public opinion 2/3 of the time, the other 1/3 of the time they would vote in favor of whichever side is closer to centrist. In this way, causing a big fuss on one issue would trigger the laws reacting.

[Kay12]

The public proposition system is good, but it doesn't weigh much. It has very little "stopping power" against Congress and Supreme Court - it may temporarily stall an issue, but won't actually change it in the long run, because any changes that deviate from the Congress' views are swiftly reverted. I'm not quite familiar with the specifics of the US politics, but a quick source peek reveals that propositions and Supreme Court have 1 chance to change laws each year, while Congress has 2.

Jon's suggestion is good, as usual (besides, I can't really argue with that fox).


EDIT: Well, I must say I've been hit by an interesting series of rolls or then the game has some kind of logic I was totally unaware of. A few years into game (first presidential election just over) and I have all laws at C+ ('twas nightmare start) except DP at C and gay rights at a whopping L! I haven't been observing this too carefully but I think that it's just people voting liberal laws over and over again and Congress has undone everything except gay laws.

[Innominate]

Maybe congress is controlled by the Secret Rainbow Coalition?

[G-Flex]

This is Liberal Crime Squad. It isn't supposed to be realistic or nuanced. It's supposed to be a ridiculous satire of bipartisan politics in the US. I'd think this would be pretty obvious to anyone who's played the game.

I get the design problems this is intended to address, but I don't think anything should be done to water down the current absolute dichotomy between "conservative" and "liberal" in the game.