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Simmerville's avatar
Simmerville
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago

Political election

I'm running a political system in my game, including (currently) 3 political parties and a big election every 5 years. Right now I'm running my Year 230 election, and this time it's a t ad better organized because there is more details as I can refer to a kingdom and not just one region.

So, I'm wondering if anyone else run elections of some kind? Not only political, I guess there are many ways to organize such a thing.

In my game there are 8 regions (I mostly play one region only, covering about 5 worlds), and each region has a Council. There is also the national The People Chamber, with 19 seats to be won through the election. The first step of the election is to elect Hood Contacts, and the parties need so and so many Hood Contacts per seat at the Chamber. This time they need 2.5 but this changes depending on how many hoods can be won. There are always a few hoods where none of the parties have candidates, they will be under administration by the Council and normally one local person (often from a better family) gets assigned for the position.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvcw5MKLbcpvf6nqLUITmJIY6CnqZBNfvnzjq9z258UQ9jU5Tz4vSGo92Mf1wfLKnGFTB6KXtrYn2ij4CqmGIGQ9Mglabqz_QbIcetqy4Abr-YIw-WZSd_MpRiCZHPwi0Z0oRSB0qttoOo2sthlx0b-ZGPcOjcYjmifvDXzX3PSJtNlGVYTajLJ86l/s700/20220325a.jpg

The party that gets most Chamber seats also get the President, while the runner up party gets the Vice President. Right, the VP is not a back-up, but more like a controller.

In addition the 8 regional councils are set. Each district (=world) holds a new voting involving only the two Hood Contacts that got most votes in step one. The winner becomes the district's Councilor, with a seat at the region Council. Finally there is a fine tuning based on the Councilors' internet followers, and the one with highest total/final score gets the Mayor position, and will assign offices to the other 4 Councilors.

Well, my routine grows for every election, and it has become quite a task thanks to me playing 100+ households and according to the game I have about 525 sims... But it is great fun, and makes the Politician career more interesting, too. Btw, only a few candidates actually work as Politicians, instead I have a secondary routine where they can join one of the parties no matter profession. Those reaching furthest are normally in Politics or Business, though.

While I sort out the results, I create an Election TV Special video. This has become tradition for me ;) Half way into the election (and the TV show) I finally know who are the Hood Contacts, and also what party won the President. But I still don't know who will be in the Council of my most played region. This thing takes me several RL days to complete, LOL, it's become a game within the game. Votes are based on merits and qualities from the game, such as skills, fame, reputation, number of times felt confident, followers - and a lot more.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhybdTiRhisSO-8ijCXTPzpWPYHnh55pOfuGzy-bEFgv4t4aXFiUAIoJNdOqZp27h5iKIvMi7c5rzzE1U4AT5lU1KIqX6uqxfE6tBbTMcsBAxpkzJmjQL23_shh2z8nIaPfXVWdhBwPG0WjTxTm15UkKo0w-s1it0usLUGKaFaoXFNESl5v4tka0efB/s16000/20220925a.jpg

Might post more when I get some more results :)
  • I love elections for their ability to change the game's landscape sometimes drastically. Not tying the offices to the politics career is a good call! Business works well for aspiring politicians, as does Law, but also Conservationist for their ability to propose global policies. How are you handling Conservationists in your game? Do you let them use their ability or do they need to forge contacts or acquire certain merits first?

    I used to have a standardized system where each political party was represented by a GT club. Each club had the same rules and used the same public lot for vote aquisition. That was done by a 24 hour club outing. Before the election, each party had to propose one venue to build and one gameplay rule that I had to follow until the next election. Naturally I only chose venues and laws that I was willing to play with.

    Nowadays I have an Election Day holiday with the customs "Attend holiday service" (go voting), Brawl and Watch TV. The actual elections are more story driven, but often contain scoring of some kind. Although my game is centered around Detroit and Windsor with their suburbs, there is no limit to the position a played sim can attain. Currently I have a played sim as US president and a played sim as Mayor of Detroit, but the Governor of Michigan is an npc. On the Canadian side no office is held by a played sim since Jacques Villareal passed away.
  • Hi, glad to see I'm not the only nerdy one, LOL. I agree, politics can add changes, or even help growing a few ideas. I might come up wih more parties in the future, but because The People Chamber has only 19 seats and I prefer a chance for a party to have some sort of a majority, I can't have like 10 different parties. I have the typical stereotypes of parties supporting workers vs a party supporting the industry owners. With ECO Lifestyle I included an ECO party, but it seems kind of hard for them to win many seats at the chamber. I like that it will take time to make huge changes, but at least they can stir things up a bit.

    I played only one Conservationist, an she has been a Hood Contact previously, and is running for this election, too. I might find more political ideas (especially for the ECO party, I guess) when diving (literally) into that career some more.

    It's also nice to see that skills pays off. Skills are part of the criterias when votes are tallied. Also an university degree makes a difference. Ambitious sims will know what to do :) I too have clubs, one fore each party, but the members are only those having a seat at the People Chamber. They might gather to practice debating etc, but I mostly use it to administrate the groups. The Chamber is an actual building (underground in San Myshuno), they are spread on 5 departments, and politicians have assigned seats. I did not build them offices as I don't think I can play them in detail. Th chamber main room is nice fore story purposes. Aaand, there is a lot of pretending involved...

    Did I read about your President on a blog? Hm... feels like I did hear about your story somehow. Pls post a link if there is one :) There's plenty on my elections on my blog, most of it is tagged Politics, but my current system developed earlier this year, only.
  • Sounds interesting. Victor Feng in my game rose to the top of the politics career, which is National Leader, so I reworked Von Haunt Estate as his National Leader Estate and made a club of National Leader Staff to help him out. I didn't do anything to create elections besides the vote-related actions in the politics career.

    Shortly after that he got pregnant with an alien baby, much to Lily's horror, and became a much interesting character :)

    Are you guys using an election mechanic of some kind?
  • "mightysprite;c-18185843" wrote:
    Sounds interesting. Victor Feng in my game rose to the top of the politics career, which is National Leader, so I reworked Von Haunt Estate as his National Leader Estate and made a club of National Leader Staff to help him out. I didn't do anything to create elections besides the vote-related actions in the politics career.

    Shortly after that he got pregnant with an alien baby, much to Lily's horror, and became a much interesting character :)

    Are you guys using an election mechanic of some kind?


    LOL, imagine a RL President getting pregnant with alien baby?!! :) Would it be a worst thing possible, or the greatest jippo ever?

    I use no election mechanics, only a spreadsheet and certain criteria that gives a number of votes each.

    First each party will provide a list of candidates for the many hoods, but they can each cover max 21 hoods. The candidates are ranked by the party, No 1 will be their President candidate. Then all lists are combined (my ECO party is still young and could only provide about 12 names. In the end there will be some hoods with 3 or 2 candidates (this is where votes get most important), and some hoods with just 1 candidates (easy win). Hoods with no candidates will have one person assigned later by the regional Council (often a repeat from last election, or a wealthy family).

    Then there is a first step of the election, in the spreadsheet the candidates get votes if having experience from careers like Politics or Business, education (degree), skills (Logic, Charisma, Res & Debate) and a few more. Top 2 Hood Contacts per district (=world) go on to step 2 where they decide who shall be that district's Councilor. On this step votes are from Fame (max 3 points), Reputation (-4 to +4), times felt Confident (x/10) plus a few factors from my extra DNA string (like social status and success factor). On step 3 there will be the 5 Councilors, and only internet followers is added (n/100) to fine tune their rank with the "internet vote". Top score is offered to become Mayor of the region (3-5 worlds per region), and Mayor will then form the Council by assigning departments to the other 4.

    Btw, number of won Hood Contacts sets how many seats at The People Chamber each party gets, but their adjusted list of ranked candidates for the Chamber is not restricted to the Hood Contacts. There are also rules that might stop a Hood Contact from being a member of the Chamber. A top nobility person, say a duke, already has a mission with the Royal Chamber and must choose as nobody can belong to more than one chamber (I have 3). A duke will normally accept to be the Hood Contact but not be suggested for Councilor or for a seat at The People Chamber.

    Well - too much text again, LOL. Running a spreadsheet election gets quite easy after the first run through :)
  • "Simmerville;c-18185905" wrote:

    Well - too much text again, LOL. Running a spreadsheet election gets quite easy after the first run through :)

    Like real world tax declarations ;) First time using the online portal you think you never understand, but subsequent years it's just copy-clickety-click.

    Okay, back to topic. You'll absolutely love high ranking Conservationists, the global policies have both an actual ingame impact and storytelling potential. The first time I saw what they can do my jaw dropped. My biofood company was able to force the whole nation to eat organic food only, that of course was produced by them. (Ingame food prices go up in all worlds, and sims get energized from eating that food). The government literally begged UFD to abolish that policy, and they did, but only after forcing the government to pass a law that allowed androids to buy themselves free even from unwilling owners. It was huge, and needless to say, ever since I put more restrictions on who may pass a policy. By the way, policies last for 90 days only, so for a slow running rotational game you may want to mod that number.

    My presidential election happened in february, but it was only touched in passing in my story. What made it so interesting was that basically one of my played sims chose who'd win the election due to a chance card he had received earlier. I tagged the posts, here they are: https://enkisstories.tumblr.com/tagged/president/chrono
  • cyncie's avatar
    cyncie
    Seasoned Veteran
    I need to take a closer look at how you all are doing this. The only politician in my game is Alex Moyer, who is president of the human world. In story, she ran against incumbent Bragg on a platform of restoring magic equality, but due to influence from The Sixxams recanted on election. That betrayal lead to the magic beings retreating from the human world to form The Myst. The Myst is governed by local representation in The Mystic Assembly and overseen by The Council of All Magic, so there’s no central leader. I had no idea how to actually set up an election at the time, but it might be fun to give her a challenger who wants a working relationship with The Myst.
  • @Simmerville They are all played sims. I put their story status as "Story Status: Main/Major/Minor/Misc/NPC" (based on how often they get played) and then boldened what category the sim belongs to. Jeff, the president, is Misc, meaning I only play him when something explicitely calls for him to take action. So far that hasn't happened, so he mainly appears on screen when I invite him to Detroit to spend some time with his son (whom my main family fosters and will probably adopt later on).

    @cyncie I like the idea of Alex as a politician! Seeing that she is a tutorial sim, I tend to give her roles in support or guidance oriented fields, and politics fits that nicely.
  • "cyncie;c-18186287" wrote:
    I need to take a closer look at how you all are doing this. The only politician in my game is Alex Moyer, who is president of the human world. In story, she ran against incumbent Bragg on a platform of restoring magic equality, but due to influence from The Sixxams recanted on election. That betrayal lead to the magic beings retreating from the human world to form The Myst. The Myst is governed by local representation in The Mystic Assembly and overseen by The Council of All Magic, so there’s no central leader. I had no idea how to actually set up an election at the time, but it might be fun to give her a challenger who wants a working relationship with The Myst.


    Your system sounds cool! I never played Magicians so I don't know what possibilities they give, but my Vampires do have a system of 2 clans with each their leader, with certain routines and battle etc.

    "EnkiSchmidt;c-18186299" wrote:
    @Simmerville They are all played sims. I put their story status as "Story Status: Main/Major/Minor/Misc/NPC" (based on how often they get played) and then boldened what category the sim belongs to. Jeff, the president, is Misc, meaning I only play him when something explicitely calls for him to take action. So far that hasn't happened, so he mainly appears on screen when I invite him to Detroit to spend some time with his son (whom my main family fosters and will probably adopt later on).

    Okay, I get the NPC code. I too have some houses I play often, while others are more in the background, and I mostly play them very quickly just to reproduce, have them grow up and adjust details etc. I might even cheat skills and promotions for those I don't really play.
  • Quick note... I finally uploaded the 10 min Election TV special from my latest election :) It is probably a bit chaotic to anyone not familiar with my routines, I made it mostly to document this election for my own good.

    PS: Now my politicians are wearing cc buttons :)


  • "EnkiSchmidt;c-18186000" wrote:
    "Simmerville;c-18185905" wrote:

    Well - too much text again, LOL. Running a spreadsheet election gets quite easy after the first run through :)

    Like real world tax declarations ;) First time using the online portal you think you never understand, but subsequent years it's just copy-clickety-click.

    Okay, back to topic. You'll absolutely love high ranking Conservationists, the global policies have both an actual ingame impact and storytelling potential. The first time I saw what they can do my jaw dropped. My biofood company was able to force the whole nation to eat organic food only, that of course was produced by them. (Ingame food prices go up in all worlds, and sims get energized from eating that food). The government literally begged UFD to abolish that policy, and they did, but only after forcing the government to pass a law that allowed androids to buy themselves free even from unwilling owners. It was huge, and needless to say, ever since I put more restrictions on who may pass a policy. By the way, policies last for 90 days only, so for a slow running rotational game you may want to mod that number.

    My presidential election happened in february, but it was only touched in passing in my story. What made it so interesting was that basically one of my played sims chose who'd win the election due to a chance card he had received earlier. I tagged the posts, here they are: https://enkisstories.tumblr.com/tagged/president/chrono


    Thanks for posting the link, that's interesting. Question - I see the 4 candidates are tagged NPC, were they assigned by the game as a Politician career feature? And, do you also play the household of the White House?

    Btw, the 90 days thing is fine with me. I play on rotation, but I don't need all households to experience any given detail. And I assume the food claim thing can be repeated later if I want it to happen again. Bad thing re rotation is that my Conservationist will need many years o get anywhere near the top :)

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