Constitutional Convention

Overview#

The constitutional convention is the voluntary exit path from one-party rule, a player-initiated alternative to the forced Stage-4 collapse conversion described in one-party-states-as-shipped.md. A sitting leader announces a convention, negotiates a draft (target system, legacy-party seat reservation, election delay), and, if the draft is submitted in time, the regime converts to a parliamentary or presidential republic on a schedule the player chose rather than one collapse imposed.

Location: src/lib/onePartyState/constitutionalConvention.ts10d ago

Both the convention path and the forced Stage-4 path share the same conversion implementation (triggerSystemConversion in systemConversion.ts), differing only in path: "voluntary" vs "forced" and in how the terms (legacy reservation, election delay) are set.

Three Phases#

The convention is a small state machine stored on the country's regime-escalation document (getRegimeEscalationCollection), under a convention field.

1. announced#

announceConvention(db, countryId, leaderCharacterId, currentTurn), player-initiated.

Pre-conditions (throws otherwise):

• The country must have a regime-escalation state row (self-healed via ensureInitialEscalationState if missing, a fresh game with no per-turn driver run yet still allows the announce).
• currentStage must not be "collapse". Once collapsing, the only paths out are Stage-4's acceptPeacefully/resist decisions or a forced conversion, layering a voluntary convention on top would race checkForcedConversion and produce an undefined outcome.
• No convention already in progress.

Effects:

• Sets convention.phase = "announced", announcedAtTurn = currentTurn, draftDeadlineTurn = currentTurn + DRAFT_PHASE_TURNS (48 turns).
• Defaults legacyReservation to cfg.legacyReservationDefault ?? 20 and electionDelayTurns to cfg.electionDelayDefault ?? 24 (overridable in the next phase).
• Sets conventionInProgress: true, which freezes the Stage-4 dwell counter for the country's whole regime-escalation state.
• Applies +15 popular legitimacy (ANNOUNCE_POPULAR_BUMP) and -10 ruling-party confidence (ANNOUNCE_INTRA_COST), announcing a convention plays well with the public and badly with the party apparatus.
• Records a regime_escalation country-history event.

2. draft#

submitConventionDraft(db, countryId, draft, currentTurn) locks the convention's terms and advances announced -> draft.

Input (ConventionDraftInput):

• targetSystem: GovernmentType, must be in the country's collapseTargetAllowlist (falling back to a single-value collapseTargetSystem if the allowlist is omitted on that country's config). Throws otherwise.
• legacyReservation: number, must be 0..35 (the design's negotiated range for guaranteed legacy-party seats after conversion).
• electionDelayTurns, must be one of 12, 24, or 48 (VALID_ELECTION_DELAYS), matching the UI-exposed picker values.

Also requires an in-progress convention already in the "announced" phase; throws if there is no convention or if it's already past that phase.

3. ratification#

Not player-triggered, reached automatically by the per-turn tick once the draft phase deadline passes (see below). At draftDeadlineTurn + electionDelayTurns, the tick driver fires triggerSystemConversion(db, countryId, currentTurn, {targetSystem, legacyReservation, path: "voluntary", electionAtTurn: currentTurn}), which flips governmentType and parks the snap-election marker for the election engine. The convention field is then cleared and conventionInProgress reset to false.

Per-Turn Auto-Transitions (tickConventionPhase)#

Called from processRegimeEscalationTurn, before the dwell update (so conventionInProgress is correct for that tick):

• announced + deadline passed without a draft -> the convention is abandoned: convention field is unset, conventionInProgress reset to false, and a "dissolves without a draft" history event is recorded. Nothing else happens, the regime stays one-party and Stage-4 dwell resumes accumulating.
• draft + draftDeadlineTurn reached -> advances to ratification. No conversion yet.
• ratification + draftDeadlineTurn + electionDelayTurns reached -> fires the conversion (see phase 3 above). Defensive guard: if somehow targetSystem is missing at this point (should be impossible since draft submission requires it), the convention is dropped without converting rather than risking a bad cast.

Design Notes#

• The 48-turn draft window and the 12/24/48-turn election-delay choices give the player genuine room to negotiate before committing, but an abandoned announce costs nothing extra beyond the initial legitimacy/confidence trade, there's no penalty for announcing and then not following through.
• Freezing the Stage-4 dwell counter while a convention is in progress means a player can't be simultaneously racing toward a voluntary exit and getting overtaken by a forced Stage-4 collapse from the same underlying stress.
• Country config drives which target systems are reachable (collapseTargetAllowlist) and the negotiated defaults (legacyReservationDefault, electionDelayDefault), this is shared with the forced-conversion path so the two exits can't offer wildly different terms for the same country.

Related Systems#

• one-party-states-as-shipped.md - Full one-party-state mechanics, including the forced Stage-4 collapse path and regime-escalation stages
• src/lib/onePartyState/systemConversion.ts10d ago - Shared conversion implementation (triggerSystemConversion)
• src/lib/turn/regimeEscalationTurn.ts10d ago - Per-turn regime-escalation driver