Factions

Version

This article has been verified for the current PC version (3.10) of the game.

**Factions** represent political parties and have a potentially high impact on pop  happiness. Most ethics have only one faction, and in most cases, every pop joins the faction corresponding to its ethic. Faction names are randomly generated but can be manually changed at any point.

 Gestalt Consciousness empires don't have factions.

## Faction Properties

Every faction has all of these properties. Approval, size, and support are usually the most important figures to keep in mind.

### Formation potential

Factions can begin forming after 10 years as long as the empire has encountered another species (i.e. has a second species in the empire or has made first contact, including space fauna or primitives); empires with the  Parliamentary System civic can have factions form after 30 days instead. All factions require at least five pops as well; a faction with fewer than five pops will be disbanded, though it can be reformed later if conditions allow. There is also a 180-day cooldown between factions forming, though this does not apply to the very first set of factions. A faction can only form if its ethic attraction in the empire is at least 3%.

The  Supremacist faction will only form if the empire does not have  Pacifist as one of its governing ethics.

### Approval

 **Faction Approval** is a value from 0 to 100, starting at a base of 50 and modified by fulfilling or ignoring the faction's demands on various issues, as well as actions taken towards factions. Faction approval adds a  happiness modifier to all member pops:

### Size

 **Faction Size** is the number of pops who are members of the faction. A pop cannot join a faction if it is enslaved, being purged, or has the  Nerve Stapled or  Zombie traits. A pop can only join the faction that matches its ethics (except the Manifesti, see below). Robot pops can only join factions if they have citizen rights, and never the  Traditionalist faction. Alien species can never join the  Supremacist faction and will instead join the the  Isolationist faction. As a Pop has to have the corresponding ethic to join a faction,  ethics attraction plays a major role in faction size. Both systems interact to a degree, with many issues aiming to create (or curb) conflicting attractions.

Ideally, you want to maximize the size of factions with high approval and minimize (or eliminate) factions with very low approval. Depending on the size, an unhappy faction will be listed as white, yellow, or red in the outliner.

### Support

 **Faction Support** is the percentage of an empire's  political power held by pops in the faction. A faction can have higher support than another faction with a larger size if the smaller faction has many members who are  rulers with  living standards that increase their political power.

### Issues

Issues indirectly translate to happiness: the more issues that are fulfilled, the higher the faction approval, and the happier the faction members. By their nature, factions with opposing ethics have opposing issues, making it impossible to make all factions happy. An issue can be either fulfilled or not fulfilled. In either case, it might produce a happiness penalty (red), a happiness bonus (green), or be neutral (yellow). Many issues have requirements before they can appear, making it sometimes hard to know what will please a faction before unlocking the proper options.

As they can only have two states, issues come in a few common shapes that can each only have two of the above states:

* Positive issues increase approval if fulfilled and don't affect it if not fulfilled.
* Negative issues decrease approval if not fulfilled and don't affect it if fulfilled.
* Extreme issues increase approval if fulfilled and decrease it if not fulfilled, .
* Timed issues belong into one of the above, but rely on having a timed country flag.
* Stacking issues are a set of positive issues with 2 or more "levels" to fulfilling them. The higher level is the same basic mechanic/check, but with a higher threshold (i.e., being 10, 20 and 50 years at peace; having 1, 3 or 5 Non-Aggression Pacts). Fulfilling one level will unlock the next one and generally disable the previous, so that it is not possible to increase approval from fulfilling more than one level and you only see one unfulfilled level at a same time.

### Effects

All factions produce  unity for the empire, unless they have extremely low approval. The higher the faction approval and support, the more unity will be produced. Factions produce  unity equal to the 0.15 times the combined political power of the pops (not percentage) times the approval of the faction.

The exact formula is:

# Unity from Faction
0.3
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100
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Multiplied By value
# )

{\displaystyle \text{Unity from Faction} = 0.3 \cdot (1 + (\sum modifiers) / 100) \cdot ( \text{Multiplied By value} ) =

}

=
0.3
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1
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100
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Faction's Approval

/

100
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0.5
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Faction's Political Power
)

{\displaystyle = 0.3 \cdot (1 + (\sum modifiers) / 100) \cdot ( \text{Faction's Approval} /100) \cdot 0.5 \cdot (\text{Faction's Political Power})

}

Note: Here *Multiplied By value* is the value shown on mouse hover over the Unity value in-game: "Multiplied by N due to the Support and Approval level of the faction." It is always rounded down, but that is pure cosmetic.

*Faction's Political Power* is the sum of the political power of all rulers, specialist and workers, but not slaves:

# Faction's Political Power
Ruler Political Power
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Ruler Pop
Specialist Political Power
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Specialist Pop
Worker Political Power
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Worker Pop

{\displaystyle \text{Faction's Political Power} = \text{Ruler Political Power} \cdot \sum \text{Ruler Pop} + \text{Specialist Political Power} \cdot \sum \text{Specialist Pop} + \text{Worker Political Power} \cdot \sum \text{Worker Pop}

}

*Faction Support* is *Faction's Political Power* divided by the global sum of political power of all pops in all factions (except for slaves):

# Faction Support
(
Faction's Political Power

/

∑
Political power of all pops in all factions
)

/

100

{\displaystyle \text{Faction Support} = (\text{Faction's Political Power} / \sum \text{Political power of all pops in all factions}) / 100

}

Note: Pops that have an ethic, but did not form a faction, are not counted in this global sum. *Faction Support* is always rounded down, but that is pure cosmetic.

 Faction Unity Gain can be improved by the following:

* Egalitarian ethic: **+25%**
* Fanatic Egalitarian ethic: **+50%**
* Parliamentary System civic: **+40%**
* Shared Burdens civic: **+100%** from  Progressives
* Oligarchic authority: **+15%**
* The Living State technology: **+10%**

### Leader

Every faction has a faction leader chosen randomly from the empire's  leaders, including its  envoys, but excluding leaders created by events. If an empire's  ruler is also the leader of a faction, the attraction for that faction's ethic will increase by **+25%**. Some factions have restrictions or weights on which leader classes or species can lead them:

* **0%** if leader isn't the empire's main species
  Xenoist | * **–50%** if leader is a  scientist
  Manifesti | **0%** if leader is the empire's  ruler and the empire has  Imperial or  Dictatorial authority

### Actions

There are three actions available to manipulate your empire's factions:

* **+10** faction approval
* **–35** faction approval for all other factions
* You can't embrace factions
* At least 20% faction support
* Don't have the fanatic version of this faction's ethic
* Not a dominion

* **+100%** faction ethic attraction

* **–75%** faction ethic attraction
* **–50** faction approval

AI empires won't embrace a faction unless their ruler is the faction's leader, and they won't embrace a faction if doing so would shift their ethic from moderate to fanatic unless that faction has at least 50% support. AI empires will never promote or suppress factions, and an AI empire with the  Fanatic Purifiers civic will never embrace a faction.

## Factions

There are 10 factions, one for each ethic except  Xenophobe and  Egalitarian which each have two. Many faction issues are not present if the empire has the  Fanatic Purifiers civic or require the empire to have established  communications with a certain number of empires.

### Manifesti

Manifesti is a special 10th faction that can appear during the Rise of the Manifesti event chain. Pops that have  Egalitarian,  Pacifist or  Xenophile ethic can join it. If the faction approval falls below 35% for an extended period of time the faction will disband and will not appear again. They have 5 odd issues:

## References

1. ↑ If an empire's main species is mechanical, usually after taking the  Synthetic Evolution ascension perk, the Supremacist faction can't get a faction leader.
2. ↑ The Giant Massacre Supremacist faction issue is only available if you have contact with a Guardian, so if you kill the last Guardian you won't get the **+10** faction approval since the issue will disappear even though it's fulfilled.
3. ↑ The corporate civic  Indentured Assets does not fulfill this requirement.
4. ↑ Unlike the similar Imperial Hegemony  Imperialist issue, being president of a  Hegemony federation doesn't fulfill this.
5. ↑ The No Species-Wide Slavery Xenoist issue is still fulfilled in cases where you're enslaving individual pops but not the entire species, such as when you have the  Slaver Guilds civic.
6. ↑ The Pre-Sapient Survival  Xenoist issue isn't visible if  Pre-Sapients policy is *Protected*, so you only fail the demand if you have the *Extermination* policy.

**Game concepts**