How the Factions Work - Not Like Political Parties

[Coconut Kid]

The "logic" of the factions is

• Mechanical
• Attenuated
• Simplistic

The "Gameplay" object of the factions is to irritate El Presidente. If the squeaking wheel can attract the player's attention, then the game developer's intent has been met. And that intent is: "As the dictator of Tropico, you will have to keep multiple factions happy in order to prevent them from rebelling and deposing you. To make matters worse, the game's factions, which include Communists, the military, and the clergy, may have opposing goals, so making all of them happy at once will be very tricky indeed."

Let us list the pet interests and the associated verbal prompts¹ each faction generates and then wonder what will cancel this verbal "chit-chat" out. (This is not an exercise in PhD level moral ethics.)

• Communists
  • NO Unemployed people
    • prompt?
  • NO people housed in shacks
    • prompt?
  • Minimum level of pay divergence (little gap between high & low pay)
    • prompt?
  • Plenty of Food
    • prompt?
  • Health Care for everyone
    • "Presidente, the people suffer under lack of proper medical treatment!"
  • Peasants (uneducated) resent the rich
  • Displeasing this group lowers productivity and injures relations with the USSR
• Capitalists
  • Constantly Growing economy/income (prosperous business climate including Banking)
    • prompt?
  • 2^nd level industry and/or tourist activity (prosperous business climate)
    • prompt?
  • Upscale "Tropican Entertainment" (vs Tourist)
    • prompt?
  • Luxury Housing for The Elite (College Educated)
    • prompt?
  • Security from Crime
    • prompt?
  • Significant level of pay divergence (big gap between high & low pay) for The Elite (College Educated)
    • prompt?
  • Displeasing this group injures relations with the United States
• Militarists
  • Number of Soldiers & Generals at least proportionate to population
    • prompt?
  • Good pay, housing and living conditions for the Army
    • prompt?
  • Army must outnumber Rebels
    • prompt?
  • Military is suspicious of the peasants
• Religionists
  • Churches with Priests proportionate to population and well distributed
    • "Presidente, the people's spiritual needs are not being met. Maybe you should build more churches?"
    • "Presidente, perhaps if we build a church the people will be more content?"
  • At least one Cathedral
    • prompt?
  • No booze, gambling or Cabarets (lack of spirituality)
    • prompt?
  • Suspicious of the rich?
  • Suspicious of the Intelligentsia
  • Suspicious of Presidente's Swiss Bank Account
  • Displeasing this group can cause heightened tensions with Peasants and make more likely a popular uprising
• Intelligentsia
  • Honest Elections
    • prompt?
  • High School
    • prompt?
  • College
    • prompt?
  • Media (newspaper, radio & T.V.)
    • prompt?
  • Small Army
    • prompt?
  • Suspicious of the Religionists
• Environmentalists
  • Control pollution
    • "El Presidente, the island is disgusting. Is there nothing that can be done for the environment?"
  • Maintain natural beauty (anti logging & mining)
    • prompt?
  • Build beautiful things (landscaping & some buildings)
    • prompt?

¹ Most players have heard some of the verbal prompts so many times that they probably tend to ignore them. Others are more unusual and may be overlooked because they are not clearly connected.

I suppose that within the .exe file(s) somewhere is a list. It would be interesting to see.

I shall try to update this post if folks give me quotes or near quotes for the "prompts" or better information about "faction effects."

This is a copy of my post in another thread now deleted.

 

[Coconut Kid]

Tropico's political side has three main facets:

• Political Popularity - the summation of each resident's feelings reported as RESPECT
• REVOLTS - when your people are widely displeased with your leadership
  • Army launches a coup d'etat
  • Individuals drop out of society and join an unorganized Rebel movement
  • Protesters appear on the streets
    • When numerous enough, they lead to
  • Popular Uprising = a spontaneous movement of the people (different from the Rebels)
• Elections - if you wish to maintain a pretense of a democratic government, you must make an effort to win elections as fairly as possible.

.
Besides the internal forces, dictators must balance out the influence of the Cold War's external forces. (The U.S. and The Soviet Union / Russia)

[Coconut Kid]

To zero out a faction's respect/support.

MadamePresident:

CheckFrequencyYearEnd
Condition Year = 1950
LoopThroughAllUnits
Condition UnitUIFactionSupportIntellectual >= 25 ; (i.e. the person has at least one + for intellectual faction.)
GeneralEffect AddTo UnitUIRespect -100 ; (zeros out respect unit by unit.)

Since units may support mulitple factions, this code will lose you "some" respect among other factions as well.

From flagator_:

CheckFrequencyMonthBegin  ;you shouldn't have to do this more than once a month, tops
LoopThroughAllUnits
Condition UnitUIFactionSupportCapitalist > 0
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable1 UnitUIFactionSupportCapitalist
GeneralEffect MultiplyBy EventVariable1 -1
GeneralEffect AddTo UnitUIFactionSupportCapitalist EventVariable1 ;the effect of these three is to set support to 0
MessageTypeLowerRight
MessageText "[UNIT_NAME] has had their subversive capitalist tendencies squashed."

Should work for any faction by substitution of the appropriate operators.

[Coconut Kid]

El_Coronel (in case I have left out essential stuff, the original thread is here:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5837.0 ):

I poked about in the earlier threads but saw no definitive answer on how faction works for units.  I think I am making progress in understanding it.

Methodology: I placed a single unit on a map to keep it simple.  I dumped the 4 following scripts into the 'events' folder created in the main Tropico folder.  Then I loaded my map.  Opening the Lists, I checked the current display there for my one unit in the environmentalist faction, which is the one I was tinkering with.

Results:  A single AddTo does not visibly move the faction obtained by checking UnitUIFactionSupportEnvironmentalist (18).  After about 25, the x100 number moved 1 (from 1800 to 1801 in my case). This suggested the increments are smaller, so I added a x10000 line in my report. And retested.

This time at iteration 29 I saw the numbers toggle to the following:

iteration 29
(x1) 18
(x100) 1801
(x10000) 180100

The granularity of x100 was sufficient, it appears.  (Prior experience with the logging numbers made be suspect this). Now the question is whether the effect is random, a chance based increment, or fixed on some interval.  I will go on to see when the next several increments happen, and retest from start to see if the sequence stays consistent.

At iternation 57 I saw 1802 appear.  It looks like the magic number is 28, which is the number of days in a month in the game, but another set should prove it.  My starting day was probably the 2nd of January for the sequence, thus the slight blip.

At iteration 85 1803 popped up.  That's 28 days later.  The next should be at 113 then.  And it was.

It appears that an AddTo of 1 each day for a month results in an increase of one percent of a point of faction.  That means 2800 should move it 1 point.  That will be next test.

A quick edit of testevnt.evt to change the 1 to 2800 and away I go.

My unit starts as a detractor, so in the space of 3 months it should move up to the maximum support category.  The numbers should track progress.

Whoops.  That's odd.  Numbers are maxes at iteration 1.  Yep, she's now a DieHard supporter! Either a bigger boost moves faction a LOT faster, or I have some sloppy code.  Except if it were code, 1 point per day for all of January would not get it to 100.  The former theory seems more likely.  Must be some exponential equation involved...

I'll try with a boost of 2 instead and see if the numbers move more than twice as fast.

Hmm, at iteration 1 the number is 1900.  And at 2.  And all the way through the month.  Aha!  We can only boost faction for a given unit once per month?  At 29 it's 1902. and at 57 it moves to 1904.  Still unclear. 

Does appear as if the 'one move per month' theory might be good.  Not sure what happened last test though. Why did a boost of 2800 max faction?  It should have moved to around 4500 (45.00) if it's linear as the other two tests suggest.  Unless it's some sort of logarythmic scale.  Let me try a boost of 10.

Hmm, at iteration 1 it's 2700.  That is 1700+1000 (17+10), which is weird.  But tracks with the other two tests of 1 and 2 increments.  And by that logic, 1700+280000 would force maximum.  But why is that first increment 100 times the others?  Is that a designed intent to allow scenario designers to quickly move faction at the start of a scenario?  In any case, at 29 interations the number moves to 2710.

If the first is a x100 effect, I should be able to hit 99 at iteration 1 by adding 99-17=82.  Yes!  And I should see 99.82 at 29 iterations... and I do (and the x1 number is rounded to 100 too, interesting.)

Tentative conclusion:

The first adjustment of a unit's faction adds whole points in the 0-100 faction range.  So a unit with 50 starting faction can be changed to a 100 with:

GeneralEffect AddTo (faction) 50

After that, faction is moved in 1/100ths of a point with one event per month maximum.  The above command would at one half a point, moving a faction of 50.00 to 50.50. ...

[Coconut Kid]

I changed to a loop of Monthbegin and negative numbers and it performed exaclty as expected in my conclusions above. 

Next is testing beyond one year.  Hope my test unit doesn't emmigrate on me ...  no dock, maybe that will keep her close.

Anamolous behavior on the first of the year.  Regular on the first of the other months out to past 3 years.

start  17.00
Feb 1  27.00
Mar 1  27.10
Apr 1  27.20
.
.
Nov 1 27.90
Dec 1 28.00
Jan 1  27.81    <--
Feb 1  27.91
Mar 1  28.01
.
.
Dec 1  28.91
Jan 1  28.73    <--
Feb 1  28.83
.
.
Dec 1  29.83
Jan 1  29.64      <-- 
Feb 1  29.74

It appears there is some normalization of faction on Jan 1 of each year.  But is this to some base number (maybe 25 as the neutral point) or back to the starting number for the unit? 

First year decrease is: 0.29
Second: 0.28
Third:  0.29

Hmm, doesn't seem to be 1 percent of total, quite, though close.  I would expect the first to be a bit lower.  Might be rounding.

Can't tell what the target is though.  There may be other faction-modifying events in the game that we don't see too (beyond the newspaper/radio/TV ones we know about).

[Coconut Kid]

Whoops, made one assumption too soon.  x10000 is necessary to see significant digits once a year is passed.

With new unit (and a corn farm to keep her fed and working, though in a shack), I see the following with a 10 increment once at Jan 1 each year:

start 10/1000/100000
1951 20/2029/202857
1952  21/2140/214020
1953  23/2252/225183
1954  24/2363/236346
1955  25/2475/2475091956  26/2587/258672  detractor
1957  27/2698/269835  moderate
     (saw her slip back to detractor in May!)
1958  28/2810/280998  moderate again
     (saw her slip back to detractor in August)
1959  29/2922/292160  moderate again
     (slipped back in Nov)
1960  30/3033/303323  moderate again
1961  31/3145/314486
     (intellectuals slipped from moderate to detractor too)
     (and returned a month or so later, so something random going on)
1962  33/3256/325649
1963  34/3368/336812
1964  35/3480/347975
1965  36/3591/359138

Hmm, it begins to look as if the AddTo number is a rate of change.  Monthly nets about the same annual rate as a yearly adjustment of the same size.  The normalization, or decay, is not always on Jan 1 from the looks of this test, though the numbers need crunching tomorrow.
I have a better feel now, but am still not at all solid on how it works.

It appears fewer changes will do the same job as a lot of micro-tweaking, which is good from a performance angle.. but is tricky since we're so short of variables to track things.

[Coconut Kid]

Senior Runia:

My understanding of scoping and namespaces in the Tropico scripting language is as follows:

event variables are persistent, but their scope is only their event.  That is, if you analogize events to C functions, then event variables are automatic, static variables.

group variables are also persistent.  Their scope is all events within the same directory.  If you analogize a folder of events to a C++ class, then a group variable is a private member variable of the class.

Events also have a namespace, namely, the 8-char filename as seen in dos.   They are global in scope.  Their folder affects which group variables they see, but not their name.  Therefore name conflicts between events from different folders are possible.

El_Coronel:

That is as my testing is showing.  I misunderstood the scope of events; I thought they too were limited to a single folder.  Subevents will be global for me now .

I also did not realize event variables were persistent.

Group variable work as I thought, darn it.  I was hoping their scope was slightly more versatile, but they'll do.  At least the more limited scope means there are effectively more sets of them ... sort of. 2xinfinity is no more than infinity.

By the way, elegant logic in your variable store logic.

Of course, I just require the flag to be either 0 or 1 and drop a couple more characters.  I think i will also make a version to sweep GV1 throu GV3 in and out, variables sets versus single variables.

Here's my modified version which appears to work perfectly.

CheckFrequencyOnlyWhenCalled
;
; event: varsetrw (name each event to describe var set)
;
; variable x
;
; GV4 is rw flag (F/0 = read, T/1 = write)
; note: GV4 must be 1 or 0 only
; GV1, GV2, GV3 are passed variables
;
; EV1, EV2, EV3 are perm storage
; EV4 is working storage

; do GV1
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable4 (GroupVariable1 * GroupVariable4)
GeneralEffect AddTo EventVariable4 (EventVariable1 * (GroupVariable4 = 0))
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable1 EventVariable4
GeneralEffect SetTo GroupVariable1 EventVariable4

; do GV2
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable4 (GroupVariable2 * GroupVariable4)
GeneralEffect AddTo EventVariable4 (EventVariable2 * (GroupVariable4 = 0))
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable2 EventVariable4
GeneralEffect SetTo GroupVariable2 EventVariable4

; do GV3
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable4 (GroupVariable3 * GroupVariable4)
GeneralEffect AddTo EventVariable4 (EventVariable3 * (GroupVariable4 = 0))
GeneralEffect SetTo EventVariable3 EventVariable4
GeneralEffect SetTo GroupVariable3 EventVariable4

[artemais]

Um, okay.  I can't understand any of that, and my reading of the script cannot determine what that does....
Also, I don't understand the condepts of the other posts either, although I remember reading (once upon a time) the posts from el_coronel.  Would you please decipher?

[Brf]

It looks to me that the scripts from the first of the set, 5 posts up or something, are omitted.

In any case, I think the original post was about trying to change faction support by repeatedly adding to factionsupport. It has been my experience that only the latest addto actually counts.... in other words:

addto unituifactionsupportmilitary 25
addto unituifactionsupportmilitary 30

will actually only add 30, not 55.

It is like the "adder" is actually a "setto" for an "adder", if you know what I mean....

[Coconut Kid]

Um, okay.  I can't understand any of that, and my reading of the script cannot determine what that does. Also, I don't understand the concepts of the other posts either, although I remember reading (once upon a time) the posts from el_coronel.  Would you please decipher?

I humbly beg your pardon for not including all the essential stuff.

The original thread is here:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5837.0

 

[Coconut Kid]

... It has been my experience that only the latest addto actually counts. ... in other words:

addto unituifactionsupportmilitary 25
addto unituifactionsupportmilitary 30

will actually only add 30, not 55.

It is like the "adder" is actually a "setto" for an "adder", if you know what I mean. ...

Oh my. I thought your "experience" was that "addto" operated just as "setto" would be expected to operate.

That is to say that nothing is added ; instead, the "addto" value is substituted for the previous value in the field.

Since the operand "setto" works with so few cases, the operand "addto" is not really an "adder."

I have gone wrong yet again.

 

[Coconut Kid]

... I shall try to update this post if folks give me quotes or near quotes for the "prompts" or better information about "faction effects." ...

By the way, I posted this additional stuff about factions here because no one seemed to be jumping on the invitation. Again, I'm sorry it is so incomprehensible.

 

[Brf]

if you know what I mean. ...

Oh my. I thought your "experience" was that "addto" operated just as "setto" would be expected to operate.

That is to say that nothing is added ; instead, the "addto" value is substituted for the previous value in the field.

Since the operand "setto" works with so few cases, the operand "addto" is not really an "adder."

I have gone wrong yet again.

 

YES! 

That is exactly what I meant. Kind of like when your script does:

addto unituifactionsupportmilitary

it is actually "setto"ing an internal field that is operating like an "addto-unituifactionsupportmilitary" modifier.

[ZPS]

• Communists

• Health Care for everyone
  • prompt?

[li]Religionists[/li]

• Churches with Priests proportionate to population and well distributed
  • prompt?

From memory:

"Presidente, the people suffer under lack of proper medical treatment!"

"Presidente, the people's spiritual needs are not being met. Maybe you should build more churches?"

[artemais]

"Presidente, the people's spiritual needs are not being met. Maybe you should build more churches?"

I think it is actually "Perhaps if we build a church, the people will be more content."

[ZPS]

My memory's getting bad, eh. 

[s_stabeler]

i don't knowe, i think there is some kind of alert that involves people prayingin a corner of their shacks, maybe that is an actiual message................

[TruthForAll25]

also the intellectual faction in the game become angry if you make money off interest on building future buildings ( i forget which edict it is)

 

[Sticker]

Special Building Permit? I think you take off 10% (I think).  I never realy bother with Swiss Bank Account.  It just is another thing to think about and I like to play maps where it doesn't matter.

[Coconut Kid]

... I never really bother with the Swiss Bank Account.  It just is another thing to think about and I like to play maps where it doesn't matter.

Then tell us how you set the Victory Conditions when you are starting off your "random" maps.

Please! We (well at least me) are really interested. Do you use Don't Worry, Be Happy OR Economic Powerhouse??

 

[el_malo]

What 

A random game without the Special Building Permit... heresy I say, pure heresy 

[Coconut Kid]

Bad dictator; bad, bad dictator. The Swiss Bankers will be sending out very persuasive salesmen soon.

One thing I did not cover, at least not adequately, in my previous discussion is that the Faction Leader can and does sway the faction's position just because of his/her personal attitude.

It is not always easy to know why individuals are unhappy - in spite of the clues provided. But the Manual and Game Guides are not kidding when they suggest that making the Faction Leader happier (or removing them & hopeing for a happier replacement) will have a big impact on the whole Faction.

Perhaps Respect needs to be considered as well as Happiness. Ah ha, a use for the Prison and its "re-education" function. Send faction leaders with low respect to prison to increase their respect..

 

[Coconut Kid]

... (El Presidente Picayune & Free Press + Dissent) ...

Please make that, (El Presidente's Picayune & Free Press and Dispatch)

My paper manual has a bad missprint so newspapers don't show at all; so I have to I have to rely on other stuff.

The Info Bar shows for the four Newspaper options (other than Coupons etc.) shows,
"Increase your respect in the __ faction by _%, and also increases the portion of your population in the __ faction by about _%. (up to 10%)"

So, it is your respect "in" the faction that changes while the faction also grows.

>"Political" Respect< You can improve it (A) on a wide level through relations with factions or (B) on the individual level.

>A< In general, an individual's political respect is primarily based on how the factions they belong to feel about you. Your character traits have a large impact on the factions.

>B< An otherwise respectful individual may despise you if you arrest and jail his father. A bribe will improve the political respect of the individual who receives it.

Remember that individuals who have a high level of leadership cast a wide aura reflecting their level of political respect.

The above are paraphrases from the manual.

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

..., I think there is some kind of alert that involves people praying in a corner of their shacks, maybe that is an actiual message.

That is the thought which an individual has when they are unable to go to church to recharge their religion need gage (they have to go through the default routine for a recharge).

[Coconut Kid]

Faction Relations

• Enraged
• Angry
• Cold
• Cool
• Fair
• Decent
• Cordial
• Close
• Very Close
• Perfect Harmony

[Coconut Kid]

I wonder how the Faction Leader Attitude meshes with the Faction Relations?

Faction Leader's   |  Attitude	Faction Relations
-?-	Enraged
-?-	Angry
Upset	Cold
Unhappy	Cool
Concerned	Fair
Content	Decent
Pleased	Cordial
Happy	Close
Delighted	Very Close
Euphoric	Perfect Harmony