I've had a fair bit of success with a custom candidate with:
- max initial money to get a good base of money-making hq's up (plus enough left over for at least a 3-point-per-turn clout producer)
- zero comeliness and intelligence, I just avoid the tv show appearances altogether; I may have to revise this at higher difficulties
- max charisma because I give speeches constantly to build awareness, change issue priority, and build political capital
- Right now I'm putting the points into max stamina but I think I'll back off at least one point there
- I'm also putting zero into fundraising because I don't use that as a primary source of income; but sometimes my cashflow drags a bit so I might revise this
and my general plan is:
- plan which states I'm going to get from the political strategy view; not planning on getting any states where the opposing party has more than 60% of the population according to the detail view
- build HQs like mad at first, focusing on getting at least two lvl 3 money makers and at least a lvl 1 in every 10+ electoral vote state I need to win; they tend to max out my awareness in those states by the end without much else; send the +1aw operatives from the lvl 3 hq's to the 9-or-less states that I need
- after my first five speeches (5 PC points) hire a speech writer to further increase my speech effectiveness
- by midgame I try to have a 7-point-per-turn political capital producer for hiring operatives; mostly intimidators to steal states that normally I'd have no chance at, but also a webmaster for my main "TV ad spam" state and a PR man for the media bias points
- in mid-late game spam with TV ads on my main issues; at least one to build support among all voters, at least one to build support among my party and the independents, and one or two other indie-friendly issues to "push" above the opponent's main issue; the "polls" screen is very helpful for identifying those issues that are important to people and I have a chance of increasing my "slice of the pie"
- in lategame identify one or two states that are in the sway of the opposition but not too far off, and intimidator bomb (5+ intimidators) them so no one dares vote for the opponent ;) This helps buffer in case I don't get all the states I was aiming at.
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