Political Machine - wooooooooo!

I expected this game to be boring, but it so rules! I crushed Rice 470 to whatever with Edwards. :D

Couple of questions:

  1. Is there a hotkey to close popup windows? Kind of annoying to hit 1, 2, and 3 cycling through stuff or a state, only to have to click with the mouse to close each.
  2. Where is the effect of speeches documented?
  3. How about home-state advantages?
  4. What the heck do you have to do for a television interview? I didn’t get one during the entire time I was crushing Rice.

I played the demo and I was interviewed by 20/20 or something as Kerry… You just answer a few multiple choice questions and that’s it…

Just a comment - all the people complaining on the official boards about how Clinton’s so damned hard crack me up to no end. One was going on about how Clinton kept “murdering” his political operatives with fixers. :D

Yeah, this is a pretty sweet game, isn’t it? I’m sure Brad will be around to definitively answers these questions, but I’ll take a stab in the meantime, along with seizing the opportunity to complain about the documentation again, which should have answered these questions… :)

  1. I think pressing the key again will close the window.

  2. Speeches raise the priority of an issue among voters. Ads, on the other hand, skew your actual perspective on the issue. For instance, if you give a speech on fighting crime, it will rise in the voter priority list. But if you want to improve your pro-fighting crime score, you need to take out an ad.

  3. If it has any effect, it’s unfortunately under the hood, like how voters feel about most of your candidate’s stats.

  4. Television interviews come up randomly. They always appear in pairs, one for you and one for your opponent. You’ll see an icon of a TV camera in one of the states. As long as you visit the state that turn, you’ll get the interview. If you miss it, the interview goes away next turn.

    -Tom

The numbers will switch back and forth between the windows, but they don’t close them.

Edit: Ah ha, hitting one of the function keys closes 'em. Why escape is mapped to settings instead I have no idea.

Once I finish the campaign I’m going to run The Armaggedon Election blog. Me as The AntiChrist (figuring out his positions is easy, with the exception of workfare and outsourcing) vs…well, Bush is the appropriate opponent. World set to domestic rioting, depressing, and global war.

:D

I actually beat Ronald Reagan running as a racist Dixiecrat. Hooray America!

It’s a good game, but I find it too easy. Maybe because so much is not under the hood, which is great. Excellent interface, all the information right where you want it, explanation of cause and effect out in the open.

Troy

It gets pretty tough on the hardest setting, but that’s because the AI makes almost flawless usage of Stamina and fundraising – it’s so algorithmically obvious it hurts. You can still beat it by focusing on battleground states like FL/OH, though, and eke by in the electoral college. For some reason, the AI doesn’t seem to prioritize these states as well as it should, preferring to follow an obvious algorithmic behavior of shoring up support in all states and getting the best overall bang for its Stamina and funds. Oh, and the blogger unit rocks – cheap advertising is so crucial.

Glad you like it.

Tom answered it pretty much how I would have.

Home state advantage comes only in the form of starting with much higher awareness. It’s hard to max awareness in all the states.

At the highest levels, the AI plays much more intelligently.

Some more questions:

[ul]
[li]The per-week change to position from ads - is that your national position, or just in-state?
[/li]
[li]What are the awareness effects of ads? They appear to have some, but I can’t figure out the details.
[/li]
[li]There appears to be a neighboring-state affect for ads, but I can’t figure it out.
[/li]
[li]What are the two lines for each issue on the candidate issue page?
[/li]
[li]Is there a way to disable the newspaper announcing new ads? It’s really annoying to close 4 in a row when Nixon goes on an ad blitz. Failing that, is there a hotkey to close them?
[/li]
[/ul]

Wow, this is a pretty delayed thread.

I got this when it first came out, and I got crushed, crushed, crushed, every time. I ran out of money, couldn’t keep control of any state I was winning in, and just got trounced.

Guess this would be a good time to go back and try again…