The Political Process
Update to Version 0.225
NOTES
With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game, or it might prevent you from clicking any buttons. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/
If you experience any other problems, you can post a new discussion in the bug reports forum, by navigating to the community hub, clicking the Discussions tab, and clicking the Bug Reports link on the right side of the screen.
If you want to continue playing a previous version of the game, you can right click on the game in your Steam library, click properties, then click betas and select the version you want to play.
ADDITIONS
-Added an option to conditionally endorse candidates. For example, you can tell a candidate that you will endorse them if they change their minimum wage position to match your minimum wage position. If they accept your condition, their minimum wage position will automatically change to your position once you endorse them. This can be done in several ways: you can set default conditions – every candidate will have an “Endorse (Conditions)” button – if it is green it means they accept your default conditions; if it is red, they don’t. If you click a green button, it will endorse them and they will adjust their policy positions accordingly. If you click a red button, it will bring up a menu where you can “negotiate” conditions specifically for that candidate (without changing your default conditions). There is also an option in the Endorse Multiple menu to only endorse candidates who accept your default conditions.
-If you threaten to run a primary challenger against a candidate (part of the conditional endorsement negotiation process), and they still reject your conditional endorsement, you will be prompted about whether you actually want to run one of your protégés against the candidate in the primary.
-Added NPC Campaign Influence to the game. Voter policy opinions will change each election based on the policy positions of candidates in their district. Essentially, politicians change the policy opinions of some voters through their campaign efforts. This already happens in player elections, but now it also happens in elections that do not involve the player. The purpose of this addition is so that voter policy positions will change over time, making the game slightly more interesting. There is also a strategic aspect - the more proteges you run in a state, the more voters in that state will move towards your policies (assuming your proteges have the same policies as you). This option is on by default and is called Dynamic Policies. It can be turned off in the advanced options menu under the politicians tab or under the elections -> general tab. It can also be turned off when starting a new game, in the menu where you enter the city name.
-Added advanced options to change various dynamic policy variables.
-Added a “Policy Support History” button to the laws tab in the Metrics menu. It displays how policy support has changed compared to the initial policy support value and the previous policy support value.
-Added a relationships mechanic that will allow you to gain relationship points with other politicians for things such as endorsements and attending rallies/fundraisers. Other events are planned that will add more ways to increase relationships. In future updates, it will be possible to use relationships to influence politicians.
-When selecting a new protégé, it is now possible to select “None” as their district; this is essentially creating a protégé without assigning them to an election. You can also select "None" as a protégés next election, if you want them to sit out several elections.
-Added an option to select “President” as a protégés next election.
-Added Protégé Leadership Opportunities – on week 52, if any of your protégés have won an election in either state house, state senate, U.S. house, or U.S. senate, an event will appear in your schedule allowing you to select which protégés you want to run for party leadership positions (at the beginning of the next year).
-Added an ‘Approval’ tab to the Rankings tab in the presidential politician menu. It shows an approval rating timeline chart for every president. There is a separate chart for each president, not a single chart with all presidents.
-Added a “Presidential Approval” poll to the Polls tab in the Election Menu. This “poll” is updated every 10 weeks and simply records the president’s approval rating at that time. Currently presidential approval is unlikely to change as there are no events or metrics that currently influence approval; that will be added later.
-Added a current news counter in parentheses as part of the News tab – so if there is any news for the week, it will show the number of news stories in parentheses – News (4).
-Added (#) to Challenge tab to indicate how many challenges there are.
-Added 1 new mouth type, 2 jaw types, and 2 hair types (1 male).
FIXES
-Fixed an issue with election page county maps where senate and governor maps could show incorrect colors in states with non-partisan primaries – if both candidates in the general election belonged to the same political party.
-Fixed an issue where the election calculations were using the wrong variables for middle income and upper income tax positions – creating an incorrect score for politicians.
-Fixed an issue where endorsed gubernatorial candidates would still be endorsed even after the election had ended.
-Fixed an issue where protégés would retire at the age of 70 even if the minimum retirement age was set above 70.
-Fixed an issue where presidential candidates would withdraw before the primaries, even if there was only one other presidential candidate. There now has to be at least 6 candidates to cause candidates to withdraw before the primaries.
-Likely fixed an issue where the All Governors automated marketing campaign would remain in the automated marketing list even after the election had ended.
-Fixed an issue in dictator mode that froze the game at the “Updating Metrics” screen when clicking next turn on week 52.
-May have fixed an issue where duplicate candidates would appear in certain elections (if those elections were in one of the player’s districts).
-Fixed an issue where player elections would not appear in the Favorites tab of the Election Night Menu or the Election Page Menu.
-Likely fixed an issue where the game would not save if the chair or vice-chair variable for a caucus was missing. (I don’t know why the variable might go missing, but if it does, it should no longer cause a problem with saving).
-Likely fixed an issue where the game would not create senate/governor polls if there were only two candidates and one of them was an independent.
-Fixed an issue where a candidate’s name would not be displayed correctly during presidential primary election nights, if the candidate had a middle initial.
-Likely fixed an issue where the player would run against an incumbent even if the game said that the incumbent was not going to seek reelection. This occurred only if the player applied for the position on week 6.
-Fixed an issue where the wrong candidates would appear in the player’s election night results if the player applied for the position on week 6.
-May have fixed an issue where policy support goes above 100% (or below 0%). It does not actually “fix” the issue; it simple resets the support value to 100% (or 0%) if the value goes above 100% (or below 0%). This fix is only applied at the end/beginning of the year.
-Likely fixed an issue with custom elections where only two custom candidates (from each party) would be added to the list of candidates who can be endorsed.
-Fixed an issue where the portraits of custom republican candidates would not show up in the presidential primary election page.
-May have fixed an issue where numbers would display as NaN (which could have also created a situation where the game would freeze when clicking the next turn button). This could occur during election campaigns if specific policy support positions were 0 (0% of voters supported a specific policy).
ADJUSTMENTS
-Adjusted approval rating so it is more realistic. Party ID has a bigger impact on approval rating, and approval rating is adjusted each year so that previous approval is not as significant compared to new approval (an event that happened 20 years ago does not have as much impact as an event that happened yesterday). Currently presidential approval is unlikely to change as there are no events or metrics that currently influence approval; that will be added later.
-Adjusted the User Interface (specifically in the Office -> Summary tab). Some events have been converted into messages (so it is no longer necessary to create a pop-up to see the event information). Some messages now include a portrait (of the person to which the message refers – or the person who is the source of the message – such as your chief of staff telling you something about an upcoming election). All events related to a specific legislation are now grouped together. It may take a while to get used to the new layout.
-Moved the Challenge tab next to the Actions tab in the Office -> Summary Menu. More challenges may be added in the future, and it seems like it would be more convenient to keep track of them next to the other tabs in the Office Summary Menu.
-The approval ratings of presidential candidates is now adjusted to represent their national approval rating (rather than their state approval rating – which could have given them an unfair and unrealistic advantage). This does not apply to the president, vice-president, or player.
-Previously, 50% of support for a policy became permanent after an election. If you increased support by 10% (the max), 5% would become permanent. This value has been changed from 50% to 90%. So, now if you increase support by 10%, 9% will become permanent. This means that, conceptually, within 10 years (5 house elections), you could change support by 45% (previously it was 25%). But, it is unlikely that support would actually change that much.
Development Notes: This update took longer than expected. I'm sorry for the delay. I spent a lot of time attempting to add some big features that did not work out as intended, so they have not been included in the update. The next few updates will add more events to the game. These will allow the player to make decisions about how to respond to the events, or they will add some narrative elements to the world to make it more interesting. I will attempt to release smaller, more frequent updates, so you do not have to wait as long for new content.
Update to Version 0.211
ADDITIONS
- Clicking the title of a poll will bring up a Details menu for all polls with the same title, showing weekly averages and a timeline graph of weekly averages.
- Poll results can be viewed from the election page and the election night menu, by clicking on the info icon for the election and then clicking the “View Poll Results” button.
- Added an option to add custom pollsters to the game. This can be found in the advanced options -> election tab -> polls.
- Added an option to edit current pollsters in the game.
- Added an option to save and load pollster presets. You can either replace all of the current pollsters with a preset or add preset pollsters to the current list of pollsters (this allows for making multiple presets and adding multiple presets to the same game).
- Added 4 new options to the Endorse Multiple menu: Protégés Only, Favorites Only, Minimum Policy Agreement Percentage, and Mandatory Policies. If you set the Minimum Policy Agreement Percentage, the game will not endorse any candidate whose policy agreement percentage is below that value. If you select any Mandatory Policies, the game will not endorse any candidate who does not share your position regarding those policies.
- If the Independent Polls menu is limited to showing a specific election (such as the Senate General Election in Michigan), it will display weekly averages and an average timeline graph for the specific election (essentially it shows everything that the Poll Details page shows without having to click on the Poll title).
- Added the “Add to Favorites” button to the details menu for politicians.
- Added party demographic percentages to the Politician Summary Pages (Governors, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate). These are the pages that show a map, and let you select a state to look at the politicians in that state.
- Your protégés will now change political parties if you change political parties – but only if they do not currently hold a political office and they are not currently part of an election campaign.
FIXES
- Fixed an issue with the multiple endorsements menu that would not allow you to endorse multiple U.S. House or U.S. Senate candidates if it was not an election year for state senate.
- Likely fixed an issue where withdrawing from multiple elections in a single year would cause duplicate candidates in those elections. For example, if you withdrew from a House election and then withdrew from a Senate election, the candidates from the senate election would run in both the house and senate elections, creating a possibility where the same candidate would win two elections and hold two political positions. This could also fix an issue where the game might freeze at the election screen, if a senate candidate was simultaneously running in a house election.
- Fixed an issue where you could not unselect an option in the Endorse Multiple menu.
- Fixed an issue where the election night map might not appear if you were looking at the politician summary page when clicking the next turn button.
- Fixed an issue where current politicians would not run for governor elections.
- Fixed an issue where party gender ratios would not save in the advanced option presets.
- Fixed an issue that prevented presidential national polls from being created.
- Likely fixed an issue where state-specific pollsters would not create polls.
- Likely fixed an issue that caused the game to freeze on week 19 under specific circumstances. Specifically, if a player used the advanced options to change the presidential primary election weeks or the presidential primary delegates, it could have produce results that caused an error.
-May have fixed several issues that caused duplicate candidates/politicians in specific circumstances.
Update to Version 0.2
NOTES
With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/
If you experience any other problems, you can post a new discussion in the bug reports forum, by navigating to the community hub, clicking the Discussions tab, and clicking the Bug Reports link on the right side of the screen.
If you want to continue playing the previous version of the game, you can do so by right clicking on the game, going to properties, clicking the betas tab, and selecting the v0175 option.
ADDITIONS
- Added an election night menu that displays all election results in “real time”. The menu includes interactive maps that display results at the state level and at the county level (for applicable election types). The speed that results come in can be increased, decreased, or paused. There is also a button to skip to the end of election night. In the options menu, you can select if the election night menu pops up automatically, never pops up, or creates a prompt. If you select for it to never pop up, it will appear as an item in your schedule.
- Added independent candidates to elections. (This can be turned off in the advanced options, under the Politicians tab).
- Added an option to play as an independent candidate. (NOTE – winning an election as an independent is very unlikely, but you can always adjust the election difficulty to increase the chances of winning).
- Added an option for your character to get married and have children. This can be found in the profile tab, under the Family sub-tab. When the children turn 18 years old, they will be added to your list of protégés.
- Added governors and governor elections for every state (previously it was limited to the player’s home state).
- Added the possibility that governors will run for president, or be selected as a running mate.
- Added an option for the player to select a governor as a running mate.
- Added independent pollsters. They can be found in the election tab, under Polls. Currently, independent polls are limited to senate, governor, and president elections. They can be turned off from the Polls menu in order to slightly speed up the time between each turn.
- Added a dark mode option/style (which makes the User interface darker). It can be turned on or off in the Options menu.
- Added a Favorites tab to the election page and the election night menu. This allows you to easily look at the elections of protégés, endorsed politicians, and favorited politicians. There are several sorting options that allow you to narrow down the list of displayed elections even further.
- Added an option to endorse multiple candidates at the same time, based on various parameters (including political party and policy agreement).
- Added an option to select "None" as your protege's next election.
IMPROVEMENTS
- Improved the politician summary pages. House and Senate summary pages now have interactive maps that let you quickly look at politicians from a specific state, instead of going through a long list of every politician.
- Improved the election results tab; included interactive maps where applicable.
- Adjusted county demographics so that they are more accurate. (Thanks to Somberg, js29095 (Dolor Mortis), RobbRouth, and Ian Reid for helping compile updated party demographics for every county).
- Adjusted governor elections so that current politicians from both parties will run for an open seat, if the state is competitive. Previously, only current politicians from the state’s majority party would run in the election.
- Adjusted senate elections so that it is more likely for minority party politicians to run in semi-competitive states. In this instance, semi-competitive refers to states where the difference between party demographics is less than or equal to 5%.
- Adjusted the custom election menu so it is now possible to add more than two candidates to each party primary. (There is still a limit of 3 candidates max in player elections).
- Adjusted term lengths and election years so that they are accurate for each specific state.
FIXES
- Fixed an issue where randomizing a politician during customization would randomize your character’s policies instead of the politician’s policies.
- Fixed an issue where the game would not progress, on week 1, if there was a surplus in the highway trust fund and road conditions were very good (under those circumstances, a missing variable prevented the game from progressing).
- Likely fixed an issue where some protégé policies would not match the player’s policies. This was specific to the “newer” policies added to the game.
- Fixed an issue where Medicaid Expansion would not be set to false at the state level when it was set to false at the federal level. This could cause problems when trying to make changes to the state Medicaid program.
- Fixed an issue with loading group presets that would allow a group preset to be loaded after week 6 during an election year. Week 6 is when the primary candidates are determined for elections. If the group is loaded after week 6, it could cause problems with the elections.
- Fixed an issue where the starting date on the house summary timeline graph would be incorrect if the player moved to a new city, or started playing as a protégé who lived in a different city.
- May have fixed an issue where a politician would create legislation to decrease the school property tax, but then vote against the legislation.
- Adjusted Arkansas congressional districts so that districts 3 and 4 have the correct counties. (If you have a saved game in Arkansas, the change could cause problems). If you encounter problems while playing an old Arkansas save file, you can play an older version of the game by right clicking on the game, selecting properties, and then selecting the Beta tab. In the beta tab there is a drop-down menu that will show a list of available betas.
- Added state senate district 35 to Arkansas state senate district (If you are playing a saved game in Arkansas, it is possible it could cause strange behavior).
- Fixed an issue where the wrong candidate would sometimes be displayed (if they had the same name as the correct candidate).
- Various other fixes.
KNOWN ISSUES
- In the "Endorse Multiple" menu, there is no option to endorse multiple U.S. House or U.S. Senate candidates if it is not a state senate election year. This will be fixed in the next small update.
- Some candidate portraits appear empty in certain election types. It may or may not be possible to fix this by the next small update.
NEXT MAJOR UPDATE
- The next major update will be an Events update. I intend to divide it into multiple smaller segments so that I can release updates more frequently. Once I start working on the update, I will attempt to provide weekly progress reports in the discussion forums.
Update to Version 0.175
Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the player, as senator, was forced to vote on a conference report for the budget resolution, if they ended the turn without voting on the conference report.
- Fixed an issue where a candidate could appear twice in mayor or governor primaries if the player selected the candidate while playing as the party committee chairperson.
- Fixed an issue where the mayor or governor menu, in the party chair campaign menu, would not display correctly if none of the primary winners belonged to the player’s political party. This could happen in instances where it is a non-partisan primary or instances where no candidate from the player’s party runs in the primary.
- Fixed an issue where candidates might not display correctly if non-partisan primaries are true. This could happen if the player is the party chair and two candidates from the player’s party won the non-partisan primary in the same district.
- Fixed an issue where some Massachusetts state senate districts had the wrong district number, which could create strange behavior.
If you have not seen the release notes for the previous Major Update, you can do so here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/eventcomments/3085508296772376213/
NOTE - With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/
Update to Version 0.172
NOTE - With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/
Also, if you experience any other problems, you can post a bug report in the community discussions forum. You can navigate there by clicking on the Community Hub, and then clicking the Discussions tab. On the right side of the screen, there is a sub-forum called Bug Reports.
NOTE - It is recommended that you start a new game once this version of the game has been downloaded. This update makes changes to the election mechanics, which will likely create a congressional imbalance in any games saved prior to this update. Generally this occurs in the form of democrats not being able to win a majority in the house or senate. Starting a new game is the best option to avoid unbalanced elections.
If you want to continue playing your old save game, without unbalanced elections, you can choose to continue playing the older version of the game by right clicking on the game, going to properties, clicking the betas tab, and selecting the v0159 option. This will allow you to continue using the old election mechanics for your old save games. Once you are ready to start playing the most recent version, make sure to go back to the properties/betas menu and opt-out of the beta version by selecting the None option.
Additions:
- Added new election mechanics. There are now more factors that influence election results. These election factors can be adjusted in the advanced options.
- Added an option to endorse candidates during primary and general elections.
- Added an option to campaign with any endorsed candidate (rallies and fundraisers), if the endorsed candidate has lower political points than your character.
- Added an option to do limited marketing for any endorsed candidate.
- Events with endorsed candidates will increase their likelihood of winning their election.
- Marketing for endorsed candidates will increase their likelihood of winning their election.
- Added an option to campaign with endorsed candidates even when your character is not running for election (for instance during a midterm election while your character is president).
- It is now possible to skip appropriation bills (as president) without receiving a pop-up forcing a vote on the legislation.
- Added a search function to the game. The search button can be found at the top of the screen, next to the other icons. Currently it only searches active politicians for a match. This might be improved in the future.
- Adjusted save/load process (for campaign saves and advanced option presets) so that file sizes are smaller.
- Added a treasury option to the advanced options so that it is now possible to change the school, city, state, and national treasury values at any time.
- Added campaign funds to the profile tab, so that the player can see their campaign funds at any time (and not just during campaigns).
- Added a button to "Skip Time" in the Office -> Summary Menu. This allows you to skip multiple turns at once, if you do not hold a political office, and are not participating in a campaign.
- Added new policy positions to the marketing menu.
- Added new policy positions to the policy polls.
- Added an analysis / advice button to the campaign overview menu that gives a simple analysis of the election and some advice about how to win.
- Added new marketing types (for experience and traits). This isn’t fancy, but it is an additional method for influencing voter enthusiasm (which is useful if you can’t attack an opponent’s policies because they are too similar to yours).
- Added an option to view politician details from the election results page (specifically the other elections tab).
- Added an option to require player elections to have opponents. By default this is turned off. It can be turned on in the advanced options, under the Election -> General tab.
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where per capita income would decrease for no reason. Not all members of the labor force would be counted in the per capita income calculations, causing the per capita income value to be lower than it should have been. This in turn would cause the economy to get worse, which resulted in a cycle of the economy continuing to get worse.
- Fixed an issue with campaign marketing where policy support would sometimes decrease if it was already at the 10% maximum (or if the default support added to the modified support was more than 100%).
- Fixed an issue where a candidate might run against themselves in a primary (this may have been limited to senate primaries).
- Fixed an issue where the number of criminals in a city could be absurdly large if the player moved to a new city. This would happen if jail length value had been decreased to a very low number. Now, the jail length value is set back to default if the player moves, preventing the problem.
- Fixed an issue where vetoes would sometimes not be overturned by a 2/3 majority at the city and state levels.
- Fixed an issue where independent voters might not be counted correctly (or may not vote correctly) in districts with Open primaries.
- Fixed an issue where 100% of candidates would have mixed ancestry if moving to a new state/county, after loading.
- Fixed an issue where custom election candidates were not reset at the end of the election, causing a situation where they would run again in the next election. This could cause an incumbent to run against themselves in the election.
- Fixed an issue where TANF, SNAP, and WIC laws might be denied a hearing when they should have been granted a hearing.
- Fixed various other issues.