Factions
Every organized political actor, one model
Parties, industrialists, unions, the army, churches, minority movements, separatists — every organized group that can push a country around runs on the same four numbers, and you can act on any of them directly, at home or abroad.
How it works
What makes a faction dangerous
Every faction has Popular Support (how much of the population identifies with it), Influence (how much institutional pull it has regardless of numbers), Agitation (how willing it is to overturn the current order), and a sensitivity value that decides how readily growing support turns into real leverage. A mass movement gets more dangerous as it grows; a small entrenched elite — an officer corps, a party machine, a business lobby — stays dangerous without needing to grow at all. An agitated enough faction can even build its own small armed following.
How it works
Coalitions pull in different directions
Factions without their own party back whichever party's platform is closest to their own — and that support can stack. The American New Deal coalition, for example, bundles Northern Liberals, Organized Labor, Southern Democrats, and Urban Machines all behind one party at election time, even though they don't agree with each other. Push a civil-rights law and you strengthen your Northern Liberal base while pushing Southern Democrats toward open agitation — the same policy that wins you one part of your coalition can fracture another.
How it works
When a faction turns on you
A faction's support, multiplied by how agitated it is, feeds directly into national instability — on top of whatever economic unrest your provinces are already generating. Pushed far enough, a faction can move to seize power outright; whether anyone else backs the coup depends on how the moment looks to them, though enough shared desperation can pull in allies you wouldn't expect. A coup that succeeds becomes a new party, taking its accumulated strength with it into government.
How it works
Reaching into someone else's politics
Faction actions are how you influence a group directly — the sharpest lever short of war, and the main way one country meddles in another's internal politics. Foreign actions are harder against a country with strong counterintelligence, which raises the cost and makes an AI less willing to try in the first place.
- At home
- Rally your base, subsidize the machine, court or smear the opposition, outlaw a faction, co-opt it, crack down, or purge corruption from your own.
- Abroad
- Endorse, fund, run covert election support, discredit, arm, incite an uprising, or back a coup against someone else's faction.