Politics & Elections Mod for CS2 - Party Editor (Rename and Recolour Parties), Election Settings & Long-Term Vision Update (Very Early WIP)
Another progress update on the Politics & Elections Mod for Cities Skylines 2.
Since the last post I’ve mainly been working on turning the project and added customisation options and start points for the later gameplay features.
New additions:
Party Editor
- rename parties
- edit full party names
- edit party colours live
- ideology sliders (economic / social / governance) (no functions currently)
- base support for balancing
- tax and policy modifiers (no functions currently)
Election Settings
- configure election cycle length
- configure campaign duration
- configure coalition rules
- configure re-election cooldowns
- adjustable voter simulation settings
Parliament Improvements
- live parliament seat updates
- improved statistics
- scaled parliament layouts for different seat counts
Elections now properly simulate large voting populations instead of only displaying the sampled voter count internally used for performance.
The long-term goal of this mod is to have a working simulation of the politics in your city.
Planned long-term systems:
Dynamic voter groups
- office workers
- industrial workers
- wealthy suburbs
- low-income districts
- highly educated urban populations
- etc.
These groups would have different priorities and political interests depending on:
- wealth
- education
- housing type
- employment
- pollution
- crime
- transport quality
- taxes
- public services
The idea is that city building itself slowly shapes the political landscape.
Examples:
- wealthy office economies become more liberal
- polluted industrial cities strengthen green opposition
- struggling working-class districts shift towards labour/socialist parties
- suburban low-density areas become more conservative
- unemployment increases populist support
Another major goal is to make governments actually matter mechanically.
Future governments would:
- restrict or influence taxation ranges
- influence budgets and subsidies and policies
- create political trade-offs
- make some city strategies easier and others harder
Example:
A liberal government may make citizens and their voters happier with lower taxes, but also prevent the player from raising taxes beyond certain limits, except in emergencies, which would cost support in the population and the voters.
I also want political memory and long-term voter trends:
- governments being punished for not following their positions
- opposition gaining support from city problems
- polling systems
- turnout/apathy systems
- party trend graphs over time (because everyone loves graphs)
- reactions to major construction projects or demolitions (solar-plant, coal-plant, police station etc.)
- snap election penalties
Still VERY early WIP and lots of balancing/programming work left.
Also worth mentioning:
I’m currently writing my IT Bachelor thesis, so development speed will probably vary a lot and I honestly can’t give any ETA for a release yet 😅
But I’m having a lot of fun building this and I really appreciate all the feedback and ideas people have been giving so far.
I still have some visual bugs and need to smooth out a lot of stuff still. I currently have another personal coding project and my Bachelor thesis as well as work, so I am a bit stretched thin on time and mental capacity.
Suggestions and criticism are always welcome!