Political Machine 2016 Wish LIst

from Stardock Forums

2016 is coming up and the elections already look like it will be one of the most interesting in a long time, especially after the clown show that was the 2016 elections. Hillary will be the obvious nominee for the Democrats while the Republican field looks like it will be an all out fight to the death. With such an exciting election ahead, I started thinking about the Political Machine games and how they will portray this election. I know nobody posts or reads here anymore but regardless, here is my wish list for Political Machine 2016:

Primaries. With the upcoming election inevitably having such an interesting primary, it seems insane not to include it in the next title. It doesn't need to get super complex with the invisible primaries, campaigning for the straw polls, and whatnot. It can just be the actual primary race and allow you to pick, say, four people running against each other for their party's nomination. You should also be able to see how the other party is doing during their primary. Once it finishes, you should be allowed to continue on to the general elections with all the money and publicity you have built up during the primaries in a grand campaign.

Debates. We already have the television interviews in the single player so why not have the debates? It could be a similar system of questions to the Campaign Trail game (http://www.americanhistoryusa.com/campaign-trail/) with your answers affecting your national ratings so you can't just say what the one state you are campaigning in wants to hear. Perhaps there can be a debating trait for candidates that determines how positively the debates affect them (so a person with high debating skills will take less of a hit if they do poorly and will get more of a boost if they do well). It would also make the running mate actually important since he will also have to debate and affect your rankings.

Third party candidates. Now, I don't think you should be able to play as any of these guys since they're so unimportant (Except for when you play as American Independent or Reform in the 1968 and 1992 scenarios but we'll get to that later). However, there probably should be a NPC third party guys campaigning in the background that can snatch critical votes for your party if you don't pander enough to your own party. If you play as Jeb Bush and go too moderate, the Constitution candidate may end up getting a huge amount of the votes from the Republican base who feel like their voices are being ignored. In a grand campaign, a primary challenger may even choose to run as a third party against you if you don't appeal to their faction but that might be too complicated. I would say that the third party candidates in the game should be the Green Party which can steal votes from the Democrats, and the Constitution and the Libertarian Party which can eat votes from the Republicans.

Sugar daddies. These are sort of like endorsements except they give you money instead of voter support. Depending on what issues you are strong on, sugar daddies can give you massive financial backing. They will give either massive single, one time donations or smaller donations throughout the race. They can be based on real people but given a silly fake name. Here's some examples of sugar daddies:
 
For Democrats
  • George Soros (can't think of a fake name for him)
  • Mitchell Blumingham (Michael Bloomberg)
  • Wendell Luggett (Warren Buffet)

For Republicans

  • Saul Ackerman (Sheldon Adelson)
  • Donald Stump (Donald Trump)
  • The Haas Brothers (Koch Brothers)

Historical Election Scenarios. Political Machine 2012 was really disappointing since it didn't have alternate scenarios like the previous games. While I wasn't a big fan of the scenarios, I still think there is a lot that can be done with them, especially historical elections. IT would be really fun to play these famous elections in the Political Machine style. So here are the elections that I think would be best fit in the game.

1952

Republicans

  • Dwight Eisenhower
  • Richard Nixon
  • Robert Taft
  • Harold Stassen
  • Earl Warren
  • Thomas Dewey
  • Wayne Morse
  • Douglas McCarthur
  • Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
  • Alfred Driscoll
  • John Bricker
  • Herbert Hoover
  • J. Edgar Hoover

Democrats

  • Adlai Stevenson
  • John Sparkman
  • Harry Truman
  • Richard Russell
  • Estes Kefauver
  • Alben Barkley
  • William Douglas
  • George Marshall

1960

Republicans

  • Richard Nixon
  • George H. Bender
  • James M. Lloyd
  • Nelson Rockefeller
  • Cecil H. Underwood
  • Thomas Dewey
  • Barry Goldwater
  • William F. Knowland
  • Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
  • Harold Stassen

Democrats

  • John F. Kennedy
  • Lyndon B. Johnson
  • Pat Brown
  • Hubert Humphrey
  • George Smathers
  • Adlai Stevenson
  • Strom Thurmond
  • Henry Jackson
  • Al Gore Sr.

1968

Republicans

  • Richard Nixon
  • Spiro Agnew
  • Nelson Rockefeller
  • Ronald Reagan
  • James Rhodes
  • Edward Brooke
  • George Romney
  • William Westmoreland

Democrats

  • Lyndon B. Johnson
  • Hubert Humphrey
  • Bobby Kennedy
  • George McGovern
  • Ted Kennedy
  • Eugene McCarthy
  • Edmund Muskie

American Independent (their victory condition will be not to win the election, but to deadlock the election)

  • George Wallace
  • Curtis LeMay
  • Happy Chandler
  • Strom Thurmond

1980

Republicans

  • Ronald Reagan
  • George Bush
  • Gerald Ford
  • Donald Rumsfeld
  • Jesse Helms
  • John Anderson
  • Howard Baker
  • John Connally
  • Bob Dole
  • Alexander Haig
  • Phil Crane

Democrats

  • Jimmy Carter
  • Walter Mondale
  • Ted Kennedy
  • Jerry Brown
  • Mo Udall
  • Gary Hart
  • George Wallace
  • Hubert Humphrey
  • Frank Church
  • Lloyd Bentsen
  • Robert Byrd
  • Cliff Finch
  • Henry Jackson
  • Birch Bayh

1992

Republicans

  • George Bush
  • Dan Quayle
  • Pat Buchanan
  • Ron Paul
  • Bob Dole
  • Jack Kemp
  • Colin Powell

Democrats

  • Bill Clinton
  • Al Gore
  • Jerry Brown
  • Mario Cuomo
  • Paul Tsongas
  • Tom Harkin
  • Sam Nunn
  • Ann Richards
  • Jesse Jackson
Reform (Goal is to win. Basically super hard mode.)
  • Ross Perot
  • James Stockdale
  • Steve Forbes
  • Jerry Brown (if not picked by Democrat)
  • Pat Buchanan (if not picked as Republican)
  • John Anderson
  • Dick Lamm
  • Donald Trump

2000

Republicans

  • George W. Bush
  • Dick Cheney
  • John McCain
  • Alan Keyes
  • Steve Forbes
  • Orrin Hatch
  • Newt Gingrich
  • John Ashcroft
  • Dan Quayle
  • Gary Bauer
  • John Kasich
  • Elizabeth Dole
  • Lamar Alexander
  • Newt Gingrich

Democrats

  • Al Gore
  • Joe Lieberman
  • Hillary Clinton
  • John Kerry
  • Bill Bradley
  • Bob Kerrey
  • Jesse Jackson
  • Howard Dean
  • Al Sharpton
  • Wesley Clark
  • Dick Gephardt
  • Dennis Kucinich

So finally, now that all my suggestions are out, here is my candidate suggestion list for Political Machine 2016's 2016 scenario.

2016

Republicans

  • Jeb Bush
  • Mitt Romney
  • Scott Walker
  • Rand Paul
  • Ted Cruz
  • Chris Christie
  • Marco Rubio
  • Mike Huckabee
  • Bobby Jindal
  • Rick Perry
  • Ben Carson
  • John Kasich
  • John Bolton
  • Mike Pence
  • Carly Fiorina
  • Rick Santorum
Democrats
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Joe Biden
  • Elizabeth Warren
  • Mario Cuomo
  • Martin O'Malley
  • Jim Webb
  • Brian Schweitzer
  • Julian Castro
  • Jerry Brown
  • Ed Rendell
  • Al Franken
  • Michelle Obama
  • George Clooney

Anyway, nobody may read this but I had a lot of fun making it. Hope to see some discussion on what you guys would like to see in Political Machine 2016.

7,708 views 1 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I actually really like all of these ideas, pretty much in the order you posted them.

Primaries would be fun - New Hampshire and Iowa would naturally carry more weight as they can muster up early support and enthusiasm, followed by Colorado, New York, Nevada, South Carolina, North Carolina. If your candidate doesn't do well in these, it will be harder to stop the momentum - but not impossible. The debates could get pretty fun and silly, too.

Speaking of debates, they could be very interesting. Depending on intelligence, charisma, and perhaps media bias, different questions would be offered to the candidates, the NPCs would use their stats to pick an appropriate one, and rebuttals would be possible, particularly if your candidate is named in an opponent's answer.

With third parties, I can see two different ways - first, a general "third party" or "independent" player that performs basically the same actions, perhaps to win the gray "independent" vote and make the states less blue or red. Second, you could have your "conservative third party" and "liberal third parties" run in tandem with the Democrat and the Republican, or perhaps enter the race a few weeks after. I could see the conservative third party be represented with yellow (as with Libertarian Party) and the liberal third party be represented with green (as with Green Party). They wouldn't be able to accrue as much money or political capital but it'd be fun trying to make history.

Sugar Daddies would be fine, Patrons if you want to be PC about it. I would disagree with Trump as he's running of course, but the rest are pretty spot on. I think a good way to enhance these would be to add points to your stats upon adoption as well. For instance, if Trump were running, he'd decrease your Credibility as a price for his money.

Historical elections would be great for a very fully-fleshed out game, but it doesn't seem like Stardock wants to devote a whole lot of resources for this series, which makes sense. It's a niche market and can't make very much money. There would have to be people to make all of those candidates to Stardock standards, including artists for new assets when current ones won't suffice and time period appropriate interviewers and sets; researchers to determine the best way to fit issues into the time periods, as well as determine state support, populations, etc; programmers to fit all of this into a scenario and make it run smoothly; a vast team of QA for the inevitable breaks.

That said, all of these things are aspects of the game I'd like to see. I would like to contribute to seeing this happen, or even just return to the 2008 model with updated candidates and some fun scenarios. I'm perfectly willing to devote some time to do some QA for this game (did gaming hardware/software QA for 2 years and now work as a software engineer) and I think I do okay with making candidates as per the link below!

So Stardock, if you're reading, you have a smallish fanbase for this product, sure, but you have some devoted political sim junkies who love this series and are willing to put some time in. At least, I am. :) Good suggestions, Octosteel.

https://www.wincustomize.com/users/3368834