Politics is about overlapping influences and control used to meet some goal(s).

Ive looked into designs for political/faction influences for MMORPGS and have the following ideas:

You have high level (non-player) Entities which you then use "influence maps" to calculate the effects of multiple power structures as to what rules govern different areas. The players carry out actions to effect the centers and strengths of these entities with various costs involved .

Those strength of influence then allow 'payout' (of whatever) which is applied to achieving whatever goals you world system allows (and some common 'points' metric which will act as an indicator of success/winning.

Variation in the map 'terrain' can vary what tactics need to be used to influence an area (ie rural vs urban, rich vs poor...)

There may be independant power structures for different social aspects which define what the players can manipulate in your world system.

How these different aspects interact (and the terrain they are employed on) can lead to the game having more complex situational interactions (more ways to manipulate in different locals for a players 'gains')

These entity influences can employ fuzzy logic type math to generalize the effects of overlaps -- strong core control areas, some middle area, a border area where influences overlap significantly and areas outside of entity control. Multiple factors with potentially irregular equations/endcases can be employed (like decreasing returns and other non-linear reactions). The current state of an area has an effect upon the efficiency/costs of maintaining or disrupting control. Adjacency of like/different influence can have some reinforcing/negating effects.

The changes to the control happens not instantly, but on some regular time interval and sometimes more suddenly by certain types of events. This gives players time to counteract actions of their opponents before things shift significantly (and not everyone can be ONLINE when things change, so that base interval has to take that into account)

Once the current 'influence' is determined across the map, the local map areas are run by the rules/policies of the controlling entity (or shadow rules if the entities arent held to public policies -- players decide that and how far they want to depart from the public supported agendas). Usually the effectt is to regenerate the political assets needed to be spent on the next cycle.

One thing you have to watch out for, and add compensators for, are sudden pendulum swings/loopholes which destabilize your political map (often to a point where it is stuck with too much power that cannot be countered/dislodged, or allow snowballing to overwhelm opponents control) Much of the 'gains'/asset value generated then is likely to have to be employed to maintain the current control (leaving only a small amount to emply for expasion.).

External events of varying magnitudes should be able to happen to 'shake things up' and to generate opportunities or requiring 'damage control'.

Cooperation between players shoud not become a loophole (should be closer to a zero sum game at a certain point with accelerating competition as a players total control increases )

The job of politicians is to basically ensure that the system can adapt to changes by creating new policies/laws and such. (of course it takes a long time to perfectly adapt the system to the environment)

Basically, you need a changing environment if you want politicians to be useful.

So try to come up with ways to change the environment, and ways the politicians can change the system to respond.

The response is probably the easier part, because its mostly just deciding where public funds go (and where they come from) and creating some arbitrary regulations to restrict what people can do. Like if some regenerating resource is running low, politicians could increase its taxing, use public funds to increase rate of regeneration, or apply regulations to how much of that resource can be gathered (time of day limit, limit per person, whatever).

Some things dont change but still require constant effort because you can never perfectly adapt the system, like creating more and better roads and other such relatively unlimited progress.

You should also think about how to support the 'power structure' through artificial game features.

You could make it very rigid with lets say "ruler" and "politicians" and "lesser politicians" and very well specified tasks for each and systems for how they get and lose the positions.

You could also make a more flexible system that allows people to organize by themselves, with built in support for organization and communication and recordkeeping (things like appointing people to positions, creating position descriptions, setting up voting systems, documenting regulations and whatnot...)

Or you could just add chat and offline messaging system and call it done.

@wodinoneeye "External events of varying magnitudes should be able to happen to 'shake things up' and to generate opportunities or requiring 'damage control'."

-- Could external factors be anything from a natural disaster, to NPC mobs raiding a town or even another player country attacking? I believe the whole idea is brilliant because not only can the org in power do damage control but their main oppositing party can use that as a weapon to cast doubt on the rulers.

Yes any/all depending on what your 'real world' is, which the politicos 'run' or organize/control (for all the polulation who are not the politicos) but who may have to be convinced/satisfied by the politicos utility to them.

Having events makes for uncertainty (so the game is not just a bean-counting game) and there are risks (like using up your asset/resources on a political push and not having a reserve for something unforseen). Also the different types of crisis (and windfalls too) can require different tactics/countermeasures (of all the kinds of actions the players can carry out). A war for example can force you to seek cooperation with someone you might otherwise not have as an ally. Ditto when a windfall to an opponent suddenly calls for quick action instead of some systematic campaign.

I mentioned in another posting that some events (shorter 4X game) may hit all the players (to be fair if its major) -- and that could create a climate of change across the whole world, which all the players now may have to scramble to react to (an possibly knock someone for a loop who thought they were ahead of everyone else)

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@wodinoneeye "Cooperation between players should not become a loophole (should be closer to a zero sum game at a certain point with accelerating competition as a players total control increases)"

-- I want to make sure I understand this concept. Do you mean say guild A and guild B are both 100 players strong. They ally giving them the martial and voting power of 200 players. Guild A's enemies (Guild of 80) and Guild B's enemies (Guild of 130) should potentially be a barrier that would have to overcome?

That could be a case where the act of allying causes opponents to ally (and they may be better at it) secret treaties are such and were common because public declarations can cause issues within the population (interior climate stability/priorities) vs external entities (balance of enemies and allies and neutrals -- normalcy effecting the base economy (whatever that is in your game) which is to be manipulated as a source of power to have politics over). It wasnt always clear WHO would actually become the ally in changing times (ie- pre ww1 the french were the concern of the british before german growth of power, and treaties with small powers (serbia) triggered bigger treaty activations (and mobilizations all round).

Having a well delared ally has its advantages too (does the undelying game economics gain by this in some ways, but with limitations in other ways...)

Is your system the pure metric of vote count? Or does the power value of those vote's advantage vary (by the government type ie - government for the governed vs government mostly by/for the leaders) depending on the aspects/condition types which really influence 'control' and then types of actions allowable. 80 votes might mean alot for internal politics, but not so much much for external where military resourec or economic of your area is the important measure (and the consensus of having 80/80 or 70/80, etc.. which then frees use of those resources is more importatnt). A dictatorship with only 10 'votes' but a massive military can out-do a tribal council of 100 chiefs of nomadic peoples...

Being allied can also incur costs (you now inherit THEIR enemies) - when THEIR decisions/actions precipitate reactions YOU have to make (so for that game mechanism 'alliances' of more than trivial definition would need some kind of agreed upon options with limitations defined (which can cause secondary politics between even allied entities when the 'agreed upon' conditions/actions/deals cant or a intentionally aren;t met and applications of pressure to try to gain compliance) A whole graduation of typed action magnitudes (usually with increasing costs). The world map of 'areas' becomes a terrain with advantageous/influential positions (and other liabilities) and thus positioning yourself (real world not so freely depending on how world spanning things operate - by historic era etc...).

Each faction may have their own agendas (or special priorities THEY need to stay in power locally) which can interfere in one or more aspects externally (ex- you can be partially in alliance and partially competitors for resources)

(At some point it does have to be generalized to not be so convoluted as our Real World, and to preserve YOUR sanity, since complexity increases the game rules/logic/simulations by the square and the balancing/testing of that by the cube) You are going for MORE detailed politics (than a game where it is secondary), so some of these ideas are given as areas to increase the complexity some.

I think my original point was once the politics controlled by a single player grows much larger - more and more things work against them as a built in limitation (ie- old command control limitations from various games - distance/size), so if they try to get even larger -- holding a coalition together, satisfying enough of those under you for their goals (complicated when there are more who can have contentions between each other ). At that level it can become a whole 'nuther game, as it becomes personalities of the players and not just judging resourec/political points (example - historic king of Poland was often a Lithuanian because even though the king had little power it still had great prestige and import when wars happened, and rival aristocratic families within Poland blocked each others members from taking the position...) SO players playing 'king of the mountain' can happen for some large power block in your game and that coalition can destroy itself until the players wise up and work together sufficiently sharing advantage gained by the coalitions existance.