The Political Machine 2020 v1.4 - The Final Stretch

One Last Update before the Big Night!

from PolMach Forums

Greetings fellow Political Junkies!

It's almost here - the moment we've all been waiting for - Election Night 2020! 

Of course, being 2020, experts warn that the surge in mail-in ballots may result in an  'Election Month', but...whatever. I know WE'RE pumped! And with early voter numbers being shattered, it looks like most of the electorate is pumped too!

But enough about the horse race - let's talk about v1.4!


Randomization Options: In the Advanced Setting popup, you can now play with the Randomization of Issues and State Data. Want a crazy game where all the state values are scrambled and the big issues are "Banning Soft Drinks" and "Giving Frogs the Right to Vote"? Want a regular game with just small randomization tweaks made to top issues? In v1.4, all those randomization options at your fingertips.

New Achievements: We've doubled the number of available achievements to unlock, giving hardcore players rewards for their mastery of the game! Masochistic wins for Trump, Biden, and several other candidates will give you an official badge of honor for your accomplishments. Wear them proudly!


New & Improved Issues: Keeping up with the news has been hard the last few weeks, but we've added & boosted several issues that are coming up in the final stretch of campaigning.

  • Investigating Hunter Biden
  • Herd Immunity
  • Saving the Middle Class
  • Court Packing
  • Dangers of Socialism
  • Second Stimulus Package
  • Nation Mask Mandate
  • Election Integrity

We've also updated the Biden and Trump Ideology trees to reflect their 2020 campaign messaging.

And More!

While those are the big things, the whole change log lists bug fixes and stat tweaks that were put into the final update!

Happy Campaigning!

 

 

 v1.4 Changelog

  • NEW FEATURE: Issue and State Randomization
    • You can now access Randomization options under the ADVANCED SETTING tab when setting up your game.
    • Issue randomization can result in 'Some Randomization' or a 'Very Random' game, where even the most crazy fringe issues can bubble up in importance.
    • State Data can have Wealth, Electoral Votes, Party Affiliations, or 'All The Above" randomized.
    • Election Night: Updated the '270 to Win' text to be driven by the actual number of electoral votes.
    • Note: This only works in Single Player modes.
  • 10 NEW ACHIEVEMENTS
    • Trump Train
    • President Joe
    • #YangGang4Ever
    • Tea-Party Triumph
    • Feel the Burn!
    • Obama's 3rd Term
    • Romney 2020
    • A Vote for Extinction
    • A Totally Random Win
    • Beating the Coronavirus
    • There are now a series of 10 achievements, many of which tied to beating the game on Masochistic difficulty with specific candidates.
  • New Issues
    • Investigating Hunter Biden
    • Peaceful Transfer of Power
    • Saving the Middle Class
    • Socialism
    • Election Integrity
    • Herd Immunity
    • Court Packing
    • California Wildfire Assistance
  • Updated Issues
    • Fracking
    • Filling Supreme Court Vacancy
    • Second Stimulus Package
    • Building the Wall
    • Funding Nasa
    • Stopping the Coronavirus
    • National Mask Mandate
    • Defund the Police
    • Prosecuting Rioters
    • Higher Importance
    • Lower Importance
  • Updated State Demographics 
    • Alaska: D +1, R +8, I -9
    • Oklahoma: D - 5, R +3, I +2 
    • Texas: D + 6, R -1, I-5
    • Virginia: D +2, R -2
    • Washington: D +2, I -2
  • Updated Candidates
    • Ideology Tree given several new issues: Saving the Middle Class, The China Virus, and Dangers of Socialism
    • +1 to Minority Appeal
    • Notes: One of the big areas where President Trump is outperforming his 2016 numbers is with Latino voters, so boosting his 'Minority Appeal' stat made sense for this update.
    • Ideology Tree given several new issues: National Mask Mandate, Second Stimulus Package, and Court Packing
    • +1 to Starting Funds
    • +1 to Media Appeal
    • Notes: After some record-breaking fundraising months, we had to give him a boost in funds. We're also seeing the media go pretty easy on the former VP in situations where they'd be tougher on his opponent, so boosting his Media Appeal made sense as well.
    • Donald Trump
    • Joe Biden
  • Fixes
    • When you have a malformed Ideology Tree in the My Games directory, the game will now pop up a message warning you about the problematic XML (This would break the game in earlier versions).
    • John Adam's home state set to Massachusetts
    • Fixed Various Misc Typos

 

60,661 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from PolMach Forums Top

No John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and their ideologies? You forgot Bill Clinton's Third Way. What about an easier process for modding? The instructions are a bit difficult to follow, and not everybody can do it. There should be an in-game modding option. Plus, your state demographics are still out of whack. And Texas is considered more independent. If it were a conventional Republican, it still be a solid red.  You don't touch Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, Idaho, Wyoming, Kentucky, all of whom currently impossible for a Democrat to crack. No issue of Puerto Rico statehood. And "Saving the Middle Class" is not a purely Republican issue.  And Trump's tax returns? 

 

Reply #2 from PolMach Forums Top

No Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, Teddy Roosevelt? No new operatives like speechwriters or webmasters? 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from PolMach Forums Top

And no Nebraska and Maine Congressional District Electoral votes.

Reply #4 from PolMach Forums Top

Hey HiddenAuror!

The big thing we wanted to add across the updates for TPM2020 were the Candidate and Ideology Workshop support, giving modders an easy way to easilly share their creations. We're really happy with how this turned out: In the candidate workshop alone there are over 400 candidates to pick from!

As for deeper modding, the XML should be pretty easy to tinker around with in the game's Data directory. Is there anything in particular you wanted to do? Perhaps I can help you make the tweaks your looking for?

Reply #5 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I have a serious question. For the past couple updates, when I start my game I click on it, click play, then it does the little stardockexplosion and just stays black. I've waited for 10 minutes, 30, an hour, I've un and reinstalled, where can I get help for this?

Reply #6 from PolMach Forums Top

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

Quoting Suiter6253, reply 5

I have a serious question. For the past couple updates, when I start my game I click on it, click play, then it does the little stardockexplosion and just stays black. I've waited for 10 minutes, 30, an hour, I've un and reinstalled, where can I get help for this?

Could we get a little more information about your PC? Please run a DxDiag.exe, save the information, and PM me a shared link to the cloud service (GoogleDrive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc) you uploaded it to?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #7 from PolMach Forums Top

Hello

I am grateful for your gracious response, especially since I was a bit acerbic.

The truth is, I have difficulty with my eyesight. I can’t really see the Ideology modding instructions on Steam. And I have tried to work with out looking at the instructions, with little success. The issues don’t show up in the revised ideology trees. I don’t know if it is because of my eyesight, or my lack of computer skills.

 

In the previous two versions of the game, I added new issues in the main issues folder, albeit with difficulty. In this version, I find it to be impossible.

 

I don’t have the problem changing the demographics of the states and making them more Republican, Democrat or Independent. That’s easy. The reason why I create more Republican leaning states is that a lot of the registered Democrats happen to vote Republican in presidential elections. They are conservative Democrats. For example, West Virginia and Kentucky may elect Senator Joe Manchin and Governor Andy Beshear respectively, but when it comes to the presidency, it would take a generation before a Democrat could win their electoral votes. And Ohio, Iowa, Florida should be a bit more difficult for Democrats than the other Obama states which went for Trump. Perhaps Pennsylvania should be tighter. I can make those changes.

 

 However, I wish I knew how to create the two electoral votes for the Maine and Nebraska Congressional Districts.

 

Thank you, and kind regards.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 6

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

Quoting Suiter6253,reply 5
I have a serious question. For the past couple updates, when I start my game I click on it, click play, then it does the little stardockexplosion and just stays black. I've waited for 10 minutes, 30, an hour, I've un and reinstalled, where can I get help for this?
Could we get a little more information about your PC? Please run a DxDiag.exe, save the information, and PM me a shared link to the cloud service (GoogleDrive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc) you uploaded it to?

Thank you for the data.

Two things.

Try forcing your laptop (with two video cards) to use one of the other (try both please):

https://www.itechtics.com/use-specific-gpu/

If that fails, try renaming:

\Documents\My Games\PolMachine2020

to:

\Documents\My Games\PolMachine2020.OLD

And running the game again.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

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Reply #9 from PolMach Forums Top

Quoting ScottTykoski, reply 4

Hello

I am grateful for your gracious response, especially since I was a bit acerbic.

The truth is, I have difficulty with my eyesight. I can’t really see the Ideology modding instructions on Steam. And I have tried to work with out looking at the instructions, with little success. The issues don’t show up in the revised ideology trees. I don’t know if it is because of my eyesight, or my lack of computer skills.

 

In the previous two versions of the game, I added new issues in the main issues folder, albeit with difficulty. In this version, I find it to be impossible.

 

I don’t have the problem changing the demographics of the states and making them more Republican, Democrat or Independent. That’s easy. The reason why I create more Republican leaning states is that a lot of the registered Democrats happen to vote Republican in presidential elections. They are conservative Democrats. For example, West Virginia and Kentucky may elect Senator Joe Manchin and Governor Andy Beshear respectively, but when it comes to the presidency, it would take a generation before a Democrat could win their electoral votes. And Ohio, Iowa, Florida should be a bit more difficult for Democrats than the other Obama states which went for Trump. Perhaps Pennsylvania should be tighter. I can make those changes.

 

 However, I wish I knew how to create the two electoral votes for the Maine and Nebraska Congressional Districts.

 

Thank you, and kind regards.

Reply #10 from PolMach Forums Top

Hello. I loved PM2012 and PM2016. I tried to play PM2012 with my brother and it doesn't get supported for Multiplayer. So we both bought PM2020 to play with each other. However, this game falls really flat compared to its predecessors. I don't care how many issues you throw into the game, it isn't going to change the fact there is only 1 type of Ad, 1 type of building, and Political Operatives are extremely expensive. 

Not to mention you can't get political clout (or ideology points as you now call them) manually, and appears you can only get them through random events. No interviews/webshows like before with Bill O' Malley or the other guys. Only a grandma event giving you Political Ideology Points or cash. Also endorsements swing the election way too much. 

This feels like a cheap knock off of PM2016 designed to make a quick buck. This game is fun, but not nearly as much fun as PM2016. Can we still buy PM2016 in-store? Thank you. Please don't take offense to this, I'm just being brutally honest and thank the creators for hours of fun, but sometimes you don't need to fix it if its not broken. 

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Reply #12 from PolMach Forums Top

I wish I could understand the game. I know it's a political game. But who are you playing against? Are the opponent's buyers playing online? How would you even know the percentages by party? How has the designer of the program created the product, which way does the product lean? As in political news today things can surely be bent wrongly. I guess these are somewhat serious concerns I have when you're dealing with the political spectrum, game or otherwise.

Bob