effect · add_political_power

Hands-On Usage

add_political_power is the most direct means for a nation to gain or lose political power points, commonly appearing in focus tree completion rewards, decision costs, event options, and similar scenarios. For example, in a diplomatic event, granting or deducting political power can represent the cost of a decision:

country_event = {
    id = my_mod.1
    option = {
        name = my_mod.1.a
        # Sign treaty, costs political capital
        add_political_power = -25
    }
    option = {
        name = my_mod.1.b
        # Reject treaty, gain domestic support
        add_political_power = 15
        add_stability = 0.05
    }
}

Synergy

• [add_stability](/wiki/effect/add_stability): Stability and political power typically shift in sync, reflecting overall changes in domestic politics. Pairing as reward and penalty, or stacking in the same direction, is very common.
• [add_war_support](/wiki/effect/add_war_support): War support changes (such as declaring war or diplomatic victories) often impact political power simultaneously, with both describing shifts in public sentiment.
• [add_popularity](/wiki/effect/add_popularity): When adjusting ideology support rates, pairing with political power rewards or penalties is standard practice to reflect the real cost of factional struggle.
• [has_country_flag](/wiki/trigger/has_country_flag): Using flags in conditional checks to distinguish different narrative branches, then dispensing varying amounts of political power accordingly, is the standard pattern for event chain management.

Common Pitfalls

1. Confusion between positive and negative values: add_political_power with a negative number deducts points. Beginners sometimes write add_political_power = -100 intending to penalize the AI but forget to place it in the correct scope, causing the effect to apply to the wrong nation (e.g., accidentally placed inside an every_other_country loop). Always confirm that the current execution scope is the intended target nation.
2. Mixing with add_scaled_political_power: add_scaled_political_power scales by internal game coefficients, while this command adds or subtracts fixed values. If your design intent is "grant flexibly based on difficulty/game progression" but you mistakenly use the fixed-value version, early and late game balance will suffer dramatically. Clearly distinguish between the two based on your design intent.