Is bolstering/suppression worthless?

[HatefulMother]

I was playing as the Japanese Shugunate and I really needed to bolster the industrialists so that I could pass some trade laws. I bolstered them for more than 20 years yet they clout barely changed. Am I doing something wrong? Is there some trick to making it work? It costs a lot of authority to bolster/suppress and I wonder if it would be easier to just spend that on consumption taxes.

[Pancakes]

Only certain pops can belong to a given interest group. Bolstering makes a larger percentage of those pops join the IG you bolster. You also need to increase the number or wealth of pops that can join the IG to actually have a large effect. For industrialists, most of your power will come from capitalists, getting laws like landed/wealth voting will help give them power, as will building factories and mines rather than plantations and farms, which employ more aristocrats instead of more capitalists.

[kesat]

Because only pops who meet certain criterias will consider to support a specific interest group based on their attraction.

Only pops who are shopkeepers, engineers or capitalists will consider to support the industrialists.

Furthermore bolstering a interest group is just one of many modifiers for attraction, e.g. the popularity of the interest group leader is quite important.

And then there are also various modifiers for political strength due to laws. E.g. the shogunate in japan has quite a lot of modifiers to political strength (+50% serfdom, +25% peasant levies, +25% hereditary bureacrats, +25% monarchy) while the industrialists don't have any at all.

[HatefulMother]

Ok thanks. That makes more sense.

[Alehkra]

It can definitely be helpful, but to start out with Japan I'm not sure if it's the most useful for Industrialists specifically. Focusing your economic development on things that creates more capitalists, engineers and machinists and the like helps them more than anything. The first almost always go for Industrialists regardless of bolstering, and the latter two won't start drifting into the trade unions until things like equality and socialism are researched. I think it can actually be more helpful to bolster the Intelligentsia, because they can actually compete with the landowners for Aristocrats.

[Pancakes]

Getting landed voting should be a big priority as Japan that wants strong industrialists because it dilutes the power of aristocrats by giving clergy, officers, and most importantly capitalists a big bump in political strength and the shogunate usually doesn't oppose it, so you don't risk radicalizing the shogunate and starting a civil war.

[RobOda]

It can help to kick them down quicker.

I used it on the religious faction in Afghanistan, to marginalise them enough to finally break free of the religious interference within the government.

[KarlThorsten89]

Usually when I bolster any party, they lose power and support, so in my experience, flawed as it may be, bolstering is just another word for suppression most of the time. It's like I am wasting my time with it. And suppression sometimes INCREASES party popularity, so I can't use that either.