Bugs/Issues
Electoral Votes Map is not up to date. For example game says Texas has 38 votes, in reality they have 40.
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I'm not sure that's how this issue really is in real-life. E.g. republicans being for Defunding Law Enforcement, and Dems being against it? Seems like it accidentally shares the same data values as stronger law enforcement. Reference: Ad in Tennessee.
Builder Cards potentially not doing anything Seems to be an issue with ones involving 20, 25, 50%, 100% etc. numbers whose values are a bit over the place. From testing I don't see the effects as advertised. Hopefully further investigation can be done.
when it says 50% it seems to round, so all it seems to do is take away 1 stamina cost when building, instead of 2, so it leans more to 25% than 50% decrease on construction costs
This reads as though Dems oppose sanctions in Russia, to my understanding the majority SUPPORT Sanctions on Russia
HQ Clipped into the map in players game. Save attached.
says Republicans support social media censorship when all the repub candidates are against it
AI was losing enthusiasm when it should've been gaining a lot? This was a 52 week game, last autosave for reference, this could be related to reasons such as the AI struggling to match player enthusiasm on higher difficulties.
Partisan Station (Increase ad costs by 60% when active) does not appear to have any effect.
Gameplay
Andrew Yang: he had a real trademark style that 2020 nailed well some people are going to be commenting on this
Kamala skintone looks a bit light.
When you say 'X' candidate is against something. It comes out as 'Your Candidate' campaigns against 'X' Issue. in the bottom news headline. Example provided here:
Randomize issues seem too aggressive, and cause unintended bugs. Here's primaries, for instance: It also tends to have drastic party lean changes in general, which create an unrecognizable map, quite contrary to previous political machine iterations.
Player note on Attacks: After picking the strong support of unions option, my opponent was then able to pick the "Attack Opposition" choice and weaken my position while strengthening theirs. The problem is... I didn't oppose unions? This might be an intentional design, but I think "attack opposition" should only work when your opponent is not doing Strong Support. Moderate Support makes sense, because you can accuse them of not going far enough, although it should have a weaker effect.
At the moment, "Attack Opposition" or "Attack Support" work regardless of what you choose, and have the same effect regardless of whether the other guy chose mild or strong. I think the point of those options is to have variation dependent on your opponent's choices, & being able to attack them for opposing something they fully endorsed seems wrong.
The Party Figurehead card is simply not worth using after you’ve played the game several times and adapt to the “meta.” The card, from my estimations, needs to probably be around $150k on the low end to be worth playing. Could be worth increasing the cost with the funds raked in, but I recommend taking a look at this card again. Can’t see myself ever playing it.
In general, it feels like certain categories, like funds, aren’t as impactful as they should be.
Stamina seems to easily trump intelligence/funds by a wide margin (given that they can counter a lack of intelligence/funds by spending a turn HQ building, and suddenly they don't have that deficit anymore). Granted, it's only a point difference, and players don't see how certain stats like funds change the makeup of the game very much, so maybe funds should have more to do with fundraising or other stuff like that.
Intelligence could also have some other ulterior uses, like being able to campaign on more issue scores down the list in states without having to place an HQ, as that might play the role of intelligence but without giving it a straight up hard advantage, so it's up to the player's to keenly make use of that, sort of like how Charisma can help mitigate the stamina needed to make speeches, and Media Bias not requiring as the general stamina to place ads.
Players seem to feel that Debates could use some more room for player expression, currently they feel a bit like a pop quiz about what state/party likes what. Risk and reward becoming more prominent mechanically may be valuable.
It also makes it tough, because the game may have you give your opinion on opposing issues that you can't wiggle your way out of so you're handed down a lose-lose situation, which isn’t as fun for the player.
Ads might need to be stronger, or have nationwide effects, like in the games before 2020.
finding that ads aren't very necessary for winning games, and you can afford to ignore them for your entire playthroughs and just focus on speeches instead (a theme 2020 had).
Some of the money cards, like +10k cash, or trading political capital for 50k cash, seem to be terrible amounts.
Fundraising out of California is too strong, and seems to be one of the best early meta moves
Veteran players aren’t finding the highest difficulty quite challenging enough
Reworking the debate mode so all 4 nominees can talk (Primaries) would add more interest and realism to the mode.
Players find the “random events” that have “?” feel out of place and less interesting, would prefer another pool of event cards to pull from.
Interesting player suggestion: I like the topics you can discuss however you can change it up depending on the state, seems bad. If I do a debate for gun control in the North I get votes, if I oppose gun support I get votes, the game not only allows you to be wishy washy on topics but it ONLY benifets you, if you do a speech in 1 state it should have a small affect on other states as well. Because if not you can just say what you want to say to get votes.
random events, atleast in my playthrough I had the event of "This company wants to back you with money do you want to" everytime its the same thing Pharmaceutical companies, add more companies, NRA/Pharmaceutical/Oil companies make the money amount different but also add postive/negiative in the states depending if they are for or against. Like you had in 2012 you use points to get a big party to back you IE NRA/Christian families/LGBQT/ Big Tax cut companies that do good/bad depending on the state.
QOL
Allow players to view caucus results after the voting closes. For example - I managed to barely flip Iowa in the early game, but seeing by how much would have been nice. Similarly, I lost Nevada, but polling was close - I have no way of seeing by how much I lost during playtime or after the fact.
Popular player request: Allow players to view caucus results after the voting closes. For example - I managed to barely flip Iowa in the early game, but seeing by how much would have been nice. Similarly, I lost Nevada, but polling was close - I have no way of seeing by how much I lost during playtime or after the fact.
Players would appreciate options to speed up and slow down in Ai vs Ai Mode
Some players find the HUD to be a bit cluttered or overwhelming, particularly in primary mode.
Community
Top 3 Community Suggestions In order of highest votes
Maybe a deck builder to make your own custom decks.
When in the Candidate Details tab in-game or on the character select screen, please let us see candidate issue stances so that way we don't have to go to the Candidates 2024 xml file to view how they stand on certain issues. This is important as it affects the starting map, and helps us better identify with the candidate, and the game's balancing
Please allow for finalized primary results to be shown. Getting to see during the primaries that you won by x%, or you lost despite being up by x%, would be great. Similarly, being able to look at the map afterwards would be nice.
General - I feel like, immersion-wise and in general, it’d be nice to see things jump to 100% in total. For both the primaries & the general election, this would make it more interesting to me. Perhaps the random effect causes Biden to beat Trump despite Trump doing 5% better in the polling - showing a 51%-49% result to reflect that would be neat. Same with primaries: - seems like candidates are capped at 25%, 26% during the race, but after it ends I’d love to see “oh, DeSantis finished with 30%, 33% in Iowa.”
Some players miss the progression feeling from the ideology tree
Some of the highest demand future features include Historical Candidates, and third party candidates.
Text/Typos
Players are finding the issue of “Illegal Immigration” to come across bias and not read well in regards to opposing/supporting. Suggest changing to Tightening Border Security
This seems... a bit out of line with republican stances, it should be about opposing gun control measures for a Republican. For reference, a player is playing crenshaw
This card also reads opposite of what is intended. It likely elevates your stance AGAINST being tough on crime.
fix the grammar here, comma instead of semicolon, fix some capitalization in the [] statement, also it’s heads up not head’s up
Capital is misspelled
