In pretty much every 4x game you are leading a unified nation, where your decisions are always followed. Are there any games that try to simulate internal political struggles? A lot of them will abstract it away with a happiness meter, but I'm wondering if any dev has tried to go deeper.
Victoria 3 sort of does an okay job simulating this.
>>2386087HoI IV does this exquisitely.Not only do most nations, even autocracies, have internal power struggles but there are deep democracy mechanics for the United States Of America.The House Of Representatives is represented and so too is the campaign trail. Also represented is Congress and The Senate. It is tremendously detailed and fully realized.
>>2386148But does it actually change your actions in any way?In Victoria 3 different interest groups not letting you pass stuff you want is a real issue.In HoI4 what meaningful gameplay changes do the "internal power struggles" cause?
In Total War Rome 2 and Attila you have a system, where every single character (generals, statesmen, admirals, etc) belong to a faction. One of these faction is the ruling family. While having a lot of power for your ruling family is good, your goal shouldn't be to completely reduce the power of all other factions, because this will trigger a civil war. You also don't want to have a weak ruling family. You need to deliberately follow a balance of power, while still following a certain plan and being in control. This would be a cool system, if it wasn't for the fact that any character in control of the player can perform like Alexander the Great on the battlefield, which basically means that you will never have any problems. If battles were actually difficult and you could lose your ruler and your heir and have your empire fall into chaos, then this system would actually see some use. But as it is now, you have to deliberately fail or "roleplay" your campaigns by autoresolving every battle, except the ones you fight with your ruler or something.
>>2386148I don't know what you're smoking anon. Hoi 4 is literally an on rails tree of focuses you pick by hand and shit just happens over time. HOI 3 had way more detailed politics.>>2386087The Vicky 3 reccs are pretty good. Also going to shill you Tropico 3/4 and Suzerain.
>>2386087Europa universalis (4 and 5 at least never played prior games) have estates you have to keep pleased while also working to reduce their power
>>2386148>HoI IV does this exquisitely.>Not only do most nations, even autocracies, have internal power struggles but there are deep democracy mechanics for the United States Of America.8/10 bait
Endless Space 2 kinda has this in the sense that your population types have specific ideologies they support over others. Then depending on your techs/constructions that also influences which ideology your population leans to. If you are a federation or a republic you can bribe people to push the ideology you want. Your hero units also become party leaders and can give bonuses if their faction is a major member of the senate.It seems kinda pointless until you realize how good certain legislative bills are like using the system to become an ecologist senate while playing Vodyani to instantly colonize every planet an Ark is anchored to.
>>2386087Last time I tried a game with internal politics was shadow empire with political points.
>>2386365I always thought it would be cool in a TW style game if the controllability of your units depended on their training, morale and the skill of the generalSo the kind of micro that you do to cheese battles would only be possible with elite units, and normal or disorganized units under poor command could only be given vague orders and would have a possibility to attack or fall back or chase routers when you don't order them tonoone will make a game like that though because players hate when they can't command their guys
>>2386087I know there was this one modern day political simulator focused on running a political party that came out recently. Can't remember the name but apparently it costs too much for what it was worth iirc.
>>2386087>Are there any games that try to simulate internal political struggles?Not any 4x games, but you'll find something closer to what you want in grand strategy games like victoria, hoi.
>>2386365Like all problems with Nu-TW this is immediately solved by playing a Multiplayer Head-to-Head campaign so you can face an opponent that might actually beat you in battle.I did a classic Carthage vs Rome campaign and I was losing until I killed his Faction Leader in battle. This kicked off a civil war, I then proceeded to ally the rebellious faction and turn the tides.
>>2386087Shadow Empire does this. You've got political parties, religious groups, corporations, and crime gangs that influence your organization's leaders, who all have their own ambitions, loyalties, and competences that you have to juggle as you assign them. There's a resource representing political capital that you spend to, among many other things, fire or assassinate the ones giving you problems, because they'll steal money from you and stage coups which can end your playthrough if it happens at a bad time. It also just got a new DLC that greatly expands the government and internal politics systems.
>>2386415-0.15 political power a day from lack of senate support. Total simulation.
Victoria 2 had army brigades rebel when said rebellion spawned.
>>2386087In Vic2 you can only do certain things if specific political parties are in power, but this tends to devolve into specific parties being the correct ones, which I guess is why it's not done more often. It's very easy to have your campaign completely derailed when liberal parties win and fuck up your factories unless you really know what you're doing, for example.
>>2386087Imperator rome unloyal generals and governors will literaly do their own thing when they are disloyal and not follow your command
>>2386087Why haven't we seen a city-builder where it takes weeks to get construction done and it can be held up for any reason?
>>2395625Isn't that W&RSR with the realistic option?
>>2396076YesIt also adds some heating requirements too which needs a single person to not be there for their shift in order for every resident to start dying from cold which causes a work shortage which causes delays for manning important places like, oh I don't know, the heating plant.
>>2395533>It's very easy to have your campaign completely derailed when liberal parties win and fuck up your factoriesJust stop subsidizing factories that make a perpetual loss.The real issue is when you current party doesn't let you spend money into upgrading factories, since capitalists will rarely do so and upgrading the actually profitable factories making high value goods is how your industrial economy balloons.
>>2386087>pretending that your decisions are always followed when even back in Civilization 1, which could be argued to be the true progenitor of the 4X genre, a player with a Republic or Democracy couldn't declare war and always had to accept a peace treaty with the message "Senate overrules your decision".
If these games actually bothered depicting the inefficiencies of separation of powers bureaucracy their developers would have to come to terms with depicting the extremely incovenient truth which is that authoritarianism is the most efficient form of government.
>>2396397Authoritarianism isn't a form of government, autocracy is a form of governement.
>>2398020Tomato, potatoe, same difference.
>>2386087>democrats and republicans are diametrically opposed and constantly struggling for powerThe problem is perhaps in any 4X that you are a supernatural being, the state, and you have agency but the people don't.Crusader Kings gets close to creating nations that are made up of people, however it is also not a 4X because>eXplore - you don't>eXpand - there is a reasonable limit to expansion>eXploit - you do>eXterminate - lolwhat?>victory - there is noneand CK3 is a game where the only person with real agency and intelligence is the player.
>>2386158>How does it affect thingsYou can't click the focus you wanted, until you generate enough blue/red mana so you can spend fuhrer mana on the focus you wanted.I think someone could explain it betterHoI4 is basically a hodge-podge of new mechanics that then are exclusive to the nations that got them in their DLCs. There are like FIVE different power struggle mechanics in the game, each of them doing the same thing - cock-blocking human player - and all of them are pointless tedium. HoI4 was unironically a better game before they've started to fiddle with this. WTT is where things should be at the release state of the game (and which is true now, given it is integrated into the baseline), everything after it was just mucking shit up for no actual gain.So in hindsight, that game should be played vanilla + NSB for railroad autism and supply mechanics.And PDX is desperate enough to make fucking flavour packs for countries that were perfectly functional, just so they can give zoomers new single button to click.
>>2386087Yes and there's not a single one where that's not cancer
>>2398079My favourites flavours:Switzerland - so you can click through a fuck-huge tree just to... still sit on the bunch of Alpine valleysAfghanistan - the ultimate fantasy map-painter, where you conquer most of the Old World as bunch of tribals riding war elephants. Mustache Man never knew what hit himUruguay - So you can build a sugar mill and a dam and then WW2 is over. Interdesting!Norway - so you can click your way until getting overrun by Nazis (Sweden gets honorable mention for sitting right next to you doing nothing, but now with a tree)I am still waiting for that Liberia DLC. I want to liberate Africa, but with imperial and American exceptionalism, not metric and Rastafarian exceptionalism - that's boring and gay, Ethiopia.
>>2386148>tremendously details>fully realizedLol don't be so obvious next time
>>2398079isnt the point of internal struggle pointless tedium? to add another layer of things to consider while playing the game
>>2396397Ah yes, the famously efficient USSR.
>>2386087https://red-autumn.itch.io/social-democracyi wished i could win by taking over Z/cathies and all the "right wing"(still socialists), but the dev is a dirty commie who probably faps to Weimar too.
Old World does have the three important families in each campaign, but having to manage them is pretty much just an early game challenge since if you play properly they should always love you from the midgame onwards.
>>2401856Should be easy enough to mod whatever you'd want out of it
