Ruling-Party Confidence Subsystem

Country-agnostic design notes for the one-party-state confidence model that drives leader stability in any country with governmentType: "onePartyState". CN is the first consumer; the subsystem is shaped so a second one-party country populates a CountryConfig.priorityProfile and immediately participates without code changes.

For CN-flavour specifics (9-axis profile contents, regional structure, purge labels), see china.md.

Overview#

In a one-party state, the head of government is selected and retained by the ruling party rather than by direct popular vote. Their tenure depends on internal confidence - a numeric score (0-95) that drifts each turn based on:

1. Policy alignment with the ruling-party's priorities (enacted bills' categories scored against per-axis weights).
2. Purge events (admin-recorded internal-discipline actions).
3. Leader-mandate renewals (re-elections, confirmations) that bump confidence.

When confidence drops past thresholds, in-game consequences progress from "no effect" to "discipline loss" to "appointment resistance" to "forced crisis" - the lowest band signals a leadership transition risk.

Components#

Priority profile (RulingPartyPriorityProfile)#

A 9-axis profile capturing the ruling party's ideology weights. Each axis has an id, name, weight (0-1, summing to 1.0), and a description. Defined per country on CountryConfig.priorityProfile. Validated by validatePriorityProfile().

Policy-axis effects (Record<string, PolicyAxisEffect[]>)#

Maps broad policy categories (e.g. "market-liberalization", "industrial-investment", "censorship") to per-axis deltas in the range −100…+100. Lives on CountryConfig.policyAxisEffects. Each enacted bill's category field is looked up here at turn-resolution time and folded into the country's drift score.

Confidence state (CountryLeaderState)#

Per-leader document in the countryLeaderStates collection, keyed by ${countryId}_${leaderObjectId}. Carries the current partyConfidence (0-95), renewalCount, and a rolling history of up to 50 deltas with turn, reason, and previous/next values for audit.

Confidence bands#

• secure (≥80) - leadership solid
• stable (≥65) - normal operation
• watchful (≥50) - party paying attention
• strained (≥35) - visible tensions
• crisis (≥20) - leadership challenge risk
• critical (<20) - forced transition path eligible

Consequence ladder (ConfidenceConsequenceLevel)#

• none (≥50) - no penalty
• discipline_loss (<50) - NPC discipline weakens
• challenge_risk (<35) - internal challenge events become likely
• appointment_resistance (<25) - cabinet appointments face delay
• forced_crisis (<15) - special leadership-removal mechanics become eligible

Today the consequence ladder is informational; consumers (NPC discipline modulation, forced-transition triggers) are future work.

Purge events#

PurgeEvent documents in the rulingPartyPurgeEvents collection. Severity (minor / regional / senior / faction / extreme) maps to a fixed confidence delta via PURGE_SEVERITY_DELTA:

Inserted via admin endpoint POST /api/admin/country/[code]/ruling-party-purge. Consumed by onePartyBillLifecycle on the next turn - once consumed, each event is marked processed: true so drift is not double-counted.

Per-turn flow#

processOnePartyBillLifecycleForCountry(countryId, now) runs each turn for every one-party country:

1. Process expired lower-chamber bills (enact or fail).
2. Collect enacted policy categories.
3. Load any unprocessed purge events for the country.
4. Call processRulingPartyConfidenceTurn(db, countryId, ...) which:
   • Loads the country's priority profile + axis effects from config.
   • Computes drift via computeTurnDrift (policy alignment + purge deltas).
   • Applies the delta to the country's leader confidence state.
   • Returns drift details + consequence level for telemetry.
5. Mark consumed purges as processed.

Lifecycle hooks#

• installNewLeader(db, countryId, leaderId, officeType, partyId, turn) - fresh confidence of 75. Called when a new PM is seated.
• renewLeaderMandate(db, countryId, leaderId, ...) - +5 bump (capped at 95). Called when the seated leader is confirmed for another term.
• adjustLeaderConfidence(db, countryId, leaderId, delta, reason, turn) - arbitrary delta with history entry. Used by the turn driver and any future ad-hoc consumers.

File map#

Adding a new one-party country#

To onboard a second one-party country (call it "XX"):

1. Set governmentType: "onePartyState" and rulingPartyId: <seq> on COUNTRY_CONFIGS.XX.
2. Populate XX.priorityProfile with the country's 9-axis profile (axes can differ from CN's; weights must sum to 1.0).
3. Populate XX.policyAxisEffects with the country's policy-category → axis-delta map.
4. If the country has a CN-style regional budget (local tax retention
   • central transfer), populate XX.onePartyRegionalBudget and call processCNRegionalBudgets from the country's turn phase. (File name pending a future rename - the function reads the budget knobs from config so the same processor handles XX.)
5. Seed parties with regimeStatus values (one "ruling", others "approved" or "banned").
6. Register a per-country entry in COUNTRY_BILL_PHASES bound to processOnePartyBillLifecycleForCountry("XX", now).

That's it. No subsystem-code changes required.