Ideology Cards Poll

[vcczar]

@Cal @Rodja @Rezi @WVProgressive @themiddlepolitical @jvikings1 @DakotaHale @SilentLiberty @Hestia @ConservativeElector2

@MrPotatoTed made a suggestion to get rid of the Ideology Cards. I prefer to keep them because the game is based on playing the part of a faction, which is generally ideological. The issue is that there is often contradictions between a faction's ideology and a politician's personal ideology. 

Here are the options that I see. Note: If I make any changes it may really slow down the creation of this game, especially if it leads to massive overhauls. Some of these changes will be less time-consuming than others 

The card system needs to stay for Lobbies and Interests. Ideally, they stay for Ideology cards. 

 

1) We keep things the same as they are. Players get an ideology card, even if they have members of their faction that have personal ideologies that don't align with the card. This also means that someone might get the "Traditionalist" card even if most of their members are "Moderates" because some other faction has more "Moderates." This keeps the ideology cards. 

 

2) Players are given ideology cards at the beginning of the game. Politicians drafted automatically get the ideology of the player drafting, so Bernie Sanders is a conservative if he is drafted by the Conservative Ideology player. The downside is that the simulation will be in no way realistic. This keeps the ideology cards. 

 

3) Players must draft politicians that are approximately related to their ideology card. That is, within 1 from the card. So, if someone wants to play as the Conservative, they can draft Moderates, Conservatives, or Traditionalists. The draftees will then take on the ideology card, so the moderates and traditionalists would become conservatives. A LW Pop and RW Pop could only draft their own kind and Progressives and Traditionalists, respectively. The issue with this is that the fringe players will have fewer politicians. This keeps the ideology cards. 

 

4) We get rid of ideology cards. Players draft anyone they want, so long as they are members of the same party, The issue here is that the moderates will likely be very powerful. Even if we increase scoring for Traditionalists, we will likely see Calhoun, Cruz, Ron Paul, etc operating like moderates because the grand bulk of a player's politicians are likely to be moderates. 

 

5) We get rid of ideology cards. The game operates like #4 above, except a player is heavily penalized if they don't make the politicians vote according to their personal ideology. So someone may have more moderates, but if they make Ron Paul vote for Social Security, the player will lose a lot of points. This means players can't have their entire faction vote as a bloc but they must take the time and individually select how their politicians will vote. 

 

I'm personally in favor of option #1 or #3. I'm against #4 or #5 mainly because it gets rid of what makes a Faction a Faction. They game is about playing as a faction of a party. It will really kind of throw the game in another direction and will require a huge overhaul. However, I'm willing to see what other people think. 

[vcczar]

Just a few more people need to vote. 

[vcczar]

I think I have a new system if we end up going with option #3. I'll wait to see what the vote is before I display it. 

[jvikings1]

One thing with option 3, there is a major disadvantage to choosing a populist faction (because they would only have one next to them as opposed to 2). And at least for the early stages of the game, it you get stuck outside of the 3 middle ones (liberal, moderate, conservative), there wouldn't be a whole lot you could do.

[Cal]

4 minutes ago, jvikings1 said:

One thing with option 3, there is a major disadvantage to choosing a populist faction (because they would only have one next to them as opposed to 2). And at least for the early stages of the game, it you get stuck outside of the 3 middle ones (liberal, moderate, conservative), there wouldn't be a whole lot you could do.

One way to answer that would be including more what-if or minor statesmen for these factions than are currently in the game, but that could also result in uneven representation and unrealistic results for those who DID exist on the political fringe and should not have had so much powers 

[vcczar]

32 minutes ago, jvikings1 said:

One thing with option 3, there is a major disadvantage to choosing a populist faction (because they would only have one next to them as opposed to 2). And at least for the early stages of the game, it you get stuck outside of the 3 middle ones (liberal, moderate, conservative), there wouldn't be a whole lot you could do.

Yeah, I was thinking about this, and I think I have a solution that I came up with about 30 min ago. Will flesh it out a bit and probably present it tomorrow. 

[Hestia]

2 hours ago, vcczar said:

Yeah, I was thinking about this, and I think I have a solution that I came up with about 30 min ago. Will flesh it out a bit and probably present it tomorrow. 

I wonder though if that's realistic? Because that's generally what happens in history. It begins to pose the question: do our factions set what is a "faction" simply by having a coalition of people, or do the ideologies set the factions? I think we've answered before with the first one, but I'm not sure that they'll always make sense like that.

[MrPotatoTed]

Yeah, I mean the "Rand Paul Problem" as posed above still exists in the current game, if he ends up happening to be in the moderate faction or whatever.  But I'll be interested to see @vcczar's new idea!

[vcczar]

12 minutes ago, Hestia said:

I wonder though if that's realistic? Because that's generally what happens in history. It begins to pose the question: do our factions set what is a "faction" simply by having a coalition of people, or do the ideologies set the factions? I think we've answered before with the first one, but I'm not sure that they'll always make sense like that.

 

7 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Yeah, I mean the "Rand Paul Problem" as posed above still exists in the current game, if he ends up happening to be in the moderate faction or whatever.  But I'll be interested to see @vcczar's new idea!

Basically what I’ll do is pose the new idea. And we will see if it is preferred to the old idea or if they old Idea just needs to be slightly altered or if they new idea needs to be slightly altered. But we’re going to pick better. #1 or #3 or a slight variation of these two. But we gotta make the right choice and make it quickly because we still got things to do and not a lot of time. 

[Cal]

9 hours ago, vcczar said:

 

Basically what I’ll do is pose the new idea. And we will see if it is preferred to the old idea or if they old Idea just needs to be slightly altered or if they new idea needs to be slightly altered. But we’re going to pick better. #1 or #3 or a slight variation of these two. But we gotta make the right choice and make it quickly because we still got things to do and not a lot of time. 

I get the feeling I’m about to get stuck as the Traditionalist faction 😛 But hey someone has to do it!