Bugs/Issues

• Faith Educator doesn't seem to stop endorsements in time.

Open

Open

• Clicking and dragging to move the map does not work in the political strategy mode.

• When player used the ReachAcrossIsle card, it didn't stack when I used two of them at once. Some of these cards should stack or shouldn't let you cast them if they aren't intended to be used simultaneously, as this can lead to wasted political capital, or confusion in general.

• Ohio and Arkansas' Dem/Rep numbers don't look very accurate. Unlike most states where there's at least 20 or 30% on either side, that is not the case with Arkansas or Ohio.

• Mike Pence is strongly pro abortion.. Something doesn't add up here given that he's one of the most anti abortion candidates: <IssueStance Key="ABORTION">70</IssueStance

   

Gameplay

• There needs to be more information on the impact debates have. When a player successfully beats the AI in a debate, the map appears to remain the same. When the AI wins a debate, the player immediately loses half a dozen states. It seems like this may be due to the AI being uncompetitive on enthusiasm, and an enthusiasm boost from a debate win does more for them than it does for the player - however, these effects are extremely unclear, and it makes the feature frustrating when losing one debate can flip 100 EVs or more, yet winning a debate seems to make no difference at all (or even costs you EVs).

• When using analyst card, with no other cards, you get a free card, meaning you can theoretically abuse it (if you have high enough political capital) to keep getting free cards with the only limit being how much stamina you can expend to travel to said state. (And the possibility you run out of cards to draw out of 35)

• Mentor is very weak right now. But it can be fixed, takes 6 political capital to use, but that also means it'll take around half of your stamina (assuming you use it all on plane trips) which means it takes about roughly 12 turns to break even on PC, which is a horrible opportunity cost, assuming your stamina is somewhere in the ballpark of 10 with 5 stamina involved in going to it to get 0.2 pc each (for 1 political capital a turn). It needs to give you much more political capital to warrant its use, considering it will get taken off the map easily by an aware opponent.

• When saying your opponent opposes something, it ends up also meaning that your party should oppose it too (when it really shouldn't change it). This can be seen on the first screenshot, where repub values go from -18 to -25 even though all I talked about was saying my opponent opposes the "ESG" in this case. If anything, it should only affect the opponent party's score

• Parent-Teacher Forum isn't very strong right now, requires a bit of political capital, but it doesn't move the issue too much priority wise - furthermore on issuescores, classroom transparency has negligible effect on independents. This could use more adjustment, as the card has virtually next to no effect on races at it is in its current state

• Lobbying team cards are very powerful and don't cost much to cast. Maybe raising their political capital would help balance things out, as players can easily have tons of political capital in the early-mid game since they act like 2 max level networking hqs when you have one out. For reference lobbying team cost 2 pc to cast, but give you 2 pc every turn. Lobbyist cost 1 pc to cast, but gives you 1 pc every turn. You can see how the math gets out of hand very quickly

• Pete Buttigieg could use some slightly better issue scores, I think it would be fitting to give him a boost to infrastructure funding, since that's literally his role as transportation secretary. Not to mention how he's one of the focal figures in that during the passing of one of the most expensive infrastructure bills in America in the build back better plan and infrastructure investment and jobs act, which he largely oversees. So I think giving him some good issue scores on the infrastructure investment would be pretty apt and spot on.

• Grassroots protest isn't very strong, and it's easy to ignore. It seems to only be okay in primaries. Maybe a buff idea for it would be to make opponents lose more stamina anytime they try to do an action in the state, and also make grassroots protest extend to neighboring states, not just one state. That way anytime you do any action (ad, speech, fundraising) you end up using another additional stamina each time, and it would be more of an effective regional-denial tool if its effects extend to neighboring states, since it's a temporary card that is high cost for what can take opponents 2.5 turns to save up PC for it, but so little reward with little to no effect on gameplay most of the time.

• Players generally find cards relating to funds to be a bit underwhelming such as the following

QOL

Community

• Here are the top 7 voted suggestions in order from highest to lowest

1. Have the option to play against either just one opponent, or four in game. I think it would be interesting to have primary challenges that involve just 1 opponent (1v1) or even beyond the game's limit of 3 additional challengers, allowing people to push the map to the max with even 4 or 5 challengers. It would be great to give players the option.

2. I think DC should be added due to it 3 electoral votes, it shouldnt be auto democrat because if the 3rd partys are added then it would make it possible for DC flipping to the third party

3. Primaries: Allow the number of opponents to be 1-3, also allocate the proper amount of delegates to each candidate according to the state.

4. VPs/conventions should have a boost to your campaign. Particularly their issues should affect the shape of the race in some ways. Right now they don't do anything. In other games they at least gave a boost to their homestate. But in a more realistic fashion - they should complement a candidate's issues. Similarly to how you have top scoring issues that are affected by think tanks - VPs should have their own top scoring or niche issues that may come into the race. Similarly around this time conventions happen - maybe a convention speech would be something nice for a candidate to give, which gives a small national profile boost, and can affect your candidates. As this is typically one of the 2nd most important national events that happens alongside debates. I think this would be a solid addition to the game!

5. As of right now, the same issues appear to dominate in the general election and in the primary. For example, "Addressing Climate Change" should not be an issue in the Republican Primary. Additionally, I'm not sure how things are coded, but it appears like the opposite party is also voting in the primary? Some clarity on that would be appreciated, and if that is the case, primaries need to be changed to have a heavy weight on the actual party the primary is for.

6. When it comes to primaries, one of the most infuriating things to see the AI do is give up their early lead in their homestate, (especially if it's an early state) where they otherwise should be taking advantage of. It would be nice to see the AI push when it comes to shove, and not be passive about letting people snipe up their territory, or at least have a mental gameplan about what states they will highly prioritize, what their strategy is (if it's super tuesday, focusing on big states), or tribalizing in a way that feels more life-like to elections. Instead of having 4 candidates throw all their eggs into iowa and nevada, and then having no answer like you sometimes see. Which can lead to people saying primaries is too 'easy'. I believe that fixing this will lead to better pacing and more dynamic primary strategies, as well as more comprehensive gameplans so that each candidate is picking/choosing areas to strategize in where they will potentially be more successful.

7. I think there should be 4 new cards for customizing characters like: Liberal Republican, Liberatarian Republican, Bluedog Democrat, and, Liberarian (Independent Libertarian)

• Two most requested features are still Historical Candidates and Third Party Candidates

• Theres also a subset of people on social media asking about a Mac and Console port

Text/Typos

• Think this is the unity through division card? Anyway, "including its Biden" should be "including Biden" (see: bottom right).

   

• Text color is hard to see, Intimidator is spelled wrong, and elses needs an apostrophe