Cabinet & ministers
Your cabinet has five posts — Economy, Defense, Interior, Foreign, Intelligence — and each minister converts their competence and personality trait into a real bonus for that portfolio, while rallying their own faction.
How it works
Every tick, Sim.politics() walks the cabinet and turns each seated minister into a departmental effect scaled by competence (comp, 0–5) times a trait multiplier. The Economy minister adds to growth (comp × 0.14), Interior to stability (comp × 2.2 — the single strongest lever), Defense to military efficiency (comp × 0.9), Foreign to diplomacy (comp × 1.0) and Intelligence to counter-espionage (comp × 1.0). Simply holding a post also adds +9 to that minister's faction's target mood, so the cabinet is a power-sharing tool as much as a competence one.
Personality traits reshape the multiplier: a technocrat gives ×1.28 departmental output, a reformer ×1.18, clean ×1.15, a veteran ×1.32 specifically at Defense; a populist drops to ×0.9 and an ambitious minister to ×0.95 while also sapping stability (power struggles). A hardliner at Interior adds flat stability but costs diplomacy. Your leader's own competence and traits stack on top — a 'builder' leader adds +3 stability, a 'corrupt' one bleeds growth and stability, an 'ambitious' one raises coup risk.
The AI auto-fills empty posts each tick by seating the highest-competence available politician (and nudging their faction +6). Ministers are drawn from your central politician pool, whose size scales with population (6–30), and talented provincial governors (★4+) occasionally get promoted into that pool.
Formulas
cabGrow += comp × 0.14 × traitMultcabStab += comp × 2.2 × traitMultcabMil += comp × 0.9 × traitMultminister's faction target +9 (and +6 on appointment)maxPols = clamp(round(6 + log10(pop)×7), 6, 30)Key numbers
How to play
- ▸Interior is your highest-leverage seat — each competence star there is worth 2.2 stability, far more than any other post.
- ▸Match trait to post: put your veteran at Defense (×1.32) and your technocrat wherever raw output matters most.
- ▸Avoid seating ambitious ministers unless you must — they underperform (×0.95) and actively erode stability through power struggles.
- ▸Every appointment doubles as faction management: fill a post with the bloc you most need to calm for the +9 mood swing.