This is a fairly good thread. Several excellent questions about the NPC's faction support were raised; however, much of the discussion and a few of the answers reflected the poster's opinions of politics in the real world rather than what actually exists in the game world.
I appologize for having deleted my posts. It don't think they added much.
I still do not accept that an NPC with a faction support score of less than 25 (on a scale of 0 to 100) is counted as a
member supporter of that faction. There are four places to check faction supporters:
- The on map information mode panels
- The individual NPC's politics panel
- Population 'arrows' overlays - faction respect1
- The Almanac
- The lists tab - for each faction, shows the entire population in four levels2
- The politics tab - links to a page for each faction which
- names the leader,
- gives a total number of supporters &
- gives a narrative for the relationship level
1 This overlay is interesting because it is actually the tenth (respect) of the ten happiness factors; the first nine are available under the previous (happiness) button. I believe it is obivious that it is not intended to identify faction supporters; rather it is intended to lead the player to understand that working through the factions is the key way to improve his respect standing. The division into factions does NOT indicate the levels of support for the faction, but rather their respect for El Presidente.
2 These four levels correspond to the quartiles of the 0 to 100 scale upon which each NPC is ranked for each faction. The position on the page is in numerical order from high number in the upper left to the lower right. Perhaps the game world philosophy might be stated,
everyone supports the existence of every faction because that is the foundation of liberty; but if their level of support is not 25 or greater for a specific faction, they don't support it in practice.
I believe the job related avatars do have a strong effect on the NPC's job seeking decisions and faction support levels.
I also believe that buildings have an association with factions.
I believe the program has a simple set of checks for each faction to determine if its goals are being met. These checks are rather clearly implied in the Almanac narratives under the Politics tab.