Alberta 2015 beta is available - 2011 Canada engine

[RI Democrat 2]

I've been working on Alberta 2015 scenario ever since the provincial election a few weeks ago and have completed a beta version using the Canada 2011 engine. The candidate names and ridings should all be correct at this point, and I made a few modifications to issues and stances to take account of the provincial context. The file is available here:

http://www.filedropper.com/alberta2015beta

This did involve a fair amount of guesswork on my part (I'm not Canadian and only really followed the election at the very end). I mostly tried to extrapolate from the Alberta 2008 scenario for 270soft's Alberta Premier Forever game. I'd definitely appreciate some feedback, especially if anyone has any suggestions on the following:

• Should any of the issue stance descriptions be changed?
• Similarly, any suggestions regarding leaders' stances or issue centers for the different regions?
• If anyone knows how to create media markets for the Canada 2011 engine, I'd really like to know how to do it - I suspect it isn't really possible to run a television ad only in certain parts of Edmonton but not others, for example.
• The game starts with a small poll lead for the PCs with the NDP and Wildrose roughly tied. This was based on what I found regarding the polling from late March/early April combined with the conventional wisdom at the time that the PCs would probably pull out another win.
• Right now there are no alternate leaders. I'm thinking about adding Alison Redford for the PCs and Danielle Smith for the Wildrose, but would the latter probably be better as an alternate scenario where most of the Wildrose defections never happened, as opposed to just having her as an alternate leader?

Anyway, any and all feedback is welcome!

[Patine 151]

As an Albertan myself, I would very much like to give a full review. However, the scenario crashes after the leadership profiles.

However, on them, three things:

Rachel Notley should have a higher Integrity than Jim Prentice, as more Albertans regarded her as more trustworthy and less corrupt than Prentice.

There should be named "face" Independent. I'd suggest Joe Anglin, the former Wildrose MLA and a former interim leader of the Alberta Green Party, running in Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre, as he seemed to be the highest profile Independent running.

Although it's merely my own preference, I would say completing the party, which would only take three more small parties (the Social Credit, Communist, and Alberta First Parties) would add a degree and completion, but not everyone is OCD like me.

If you can get that error fixed, I'll gladly give feedback on the rest.

[RI Democrat 2]

What did the error say? I did have to do some debugging to get it to work at first, but I ran a full spacebar campaign with no errors before uploading.

[Patine 151]

Access violation at address 0041A986 in module 'pm4e-can-2011.exe'. Read of address 00000008

[RI Democrat 2]

I'm honestly not sure what would cause that, given that it runs fine on my own computer. Are you running version 1.3.0 of PM4E Canada 2011?

I did make the change to Rachel Notley's integrity rating and re-uploaded it, in case it was just a corrupted file or something (link below). Has anyone else tried it so far?

http://www.filedropper.com/alberta2015beta2

On the Independents, I generally prefer to leave them with an unnamed leader and a centrist platform on everything since I assume they are a pretty diverse group overall, as opposed to giving them a platform based on a real person who may or may not reflect the views of the other Independent candidates. I thought about Joe Anglin, but I was also having trouble figuring out what his platform would be given that he had been a member of both Wildrose and the Greens.

[RI Democrat 2]

BTW, I'm aware that some of the organizational costs need to be tweaked. I'm just waiting to see if whatever's causing it to crash on others' computers has been fixed before posting another update.

[Patine 151]

Okay, I got this to work. It seems I was missing a PM4E update after. Thanks for pointing that out.

I haven't actually finished a game yet, but I'd say this on the actual issues - most of them look alright, but two I'm a bit leery of: Illegal Substance Laws and Aboriginal Affairs. Neither came up once in the actual campaign (even though Illegal Substance Laws seems to be a big issue federally). In fact, I'm almost certain both issues are actually exclusively federal in jurisdiction in Canada. Other than that, the issues look reasonable. I might suggest Urban Transit as one replacement issue, as provincial funding for Edmonton and Calgary train and bus expansion, as well as the on-the-table high-speed train plans for a direct link between Edmonton and Calgary parallel to Highway 2 has come up several times lately. That said, I will now attempt to make actual progress playing a game.

[RI Democrat 2]

Thanks. I was reluctant to mess around with issues too much since I didn't know all the details of what did and didn't come up in the campaign, so I definitely appreciate suggestions such as yours. BTW, I did change the organization costs so that people shouldn't run out of money too quickly, and I also increased the "inter party coefficient" from 10 to 15, since it seemed like an election with a pretty volatile electorate.

http://www.filedropper.com/alberta2015beta3

[mz452 18]

I absolutely love this. I'd love to see some of the other recent provincial elections too. Keep up the good work.

[RI Democrat 2]

Okay, I got this to work. It seems I was missing a PM4E update after. Thanks for pointing that out.

I haven't actually finished a game yet, but I'd say this on the actual issues - most of them look alright, but two I'm a bit leery of: Illegal Substance Laws and Aboriginal Affairs. Neither came up once in the actual campaign (even though Illegal Substance Laws seems to be a big issue federally). In fact, I'm almost certain both issues are actually exclusively federal in jurisdiction in Canada. Other than that, the issues look reasonable. I might suggest Urban Transit as one replacement issue, as provincial funding for Edmonton and Calgary train and bus expansion, as well as the on-the-table high-speed train plans for a direct link between Edmonton and Calgary parallel to Highway 2 has come up several times lately. That said, I will now attempt to make actual progress playing a game.

How did the urban transit issue break down? Was it fairly predictable by ideological position with the NDP, Liberals, and Alberta Party supporting more funding and expansion and the PCs and Wildrose opposing it? I'm assuming expansion would be supported in Edmonton and Calgary, but would it also be popular in areas surrounding or between Edmonton and Calgary?

[Patine 151]

The PC's would be the centre-point on the issue, as their level of funding offered is the reference point for things, and was viewed as inadequette by the Edmonton and Calgary city councils. The Liberals likely would have offered more (though, in the RW campaign, they barely mentioned it) and the NDP offered the biggest grant. The Wildrose stood on the side of parsimony on the issue, and I don't know the Alberta Party's on that, as they didn't address it at all, not even the rare mentions of the issue the Liberals did.

[RI Democrat 2]

I've substituted in the suggested "Urban Transit" issue for "Illegal Substances" and made Alison Redford an alternate leader for the PCs. Unless anyone else has any particular suggestions, I'll probably go ahead and post it to the 270soft site soon. Here is the most recent version:

http://www.filedropper.com/alberta2015beta4

Below is the most interesting result I've gotten so far, incidentally. I was playing as the Liberals and the PCs really collapsed in the final week after staking out a lead earlier, and I ended up winning a few seats that I'd mostly been ignoring, including the one that Brian Jean was contesting. The game gave the NDP a minority government even though Wildrose & the PCs combined had 44 seats, to 43 combined for the NDP, the Liberals, and the Alberta Party. The PC/WR vs. NDP/LIB/AP/GPA split in the popular vote was also less than 1%.

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu96/FlyingSquirrel42/Alberta%20Results.png

[Patine 151]

A cosmetic suggestion, if I may. I think city flags for urban regions add a bit of color and break from the monotony of every region using the same flag. Edmonton and Calgary's can be found in both the Alberta 2008 scenario that I believe that map is from, as well as the official TheorySpark Canada 2011 scenario, I believe. I also happen to have the flags of Red Deer and Lethbridge cropped to TheorySpark engine usable dimensions from an old attempt at an Alberta 2012 scenario that never got off the ground I can send you if you'd like.

[RI Democrat 2]

That's a good idea. And sure, if you have the Red Deer and Lethbridge flags, send them my way and I'll add them. I'll send you a PM with my e-mail address later.

[Effercha 0]

Someone made a scenario! Fantastic!!!

Can you put the file up again? Thanks

[willpaddyg 0]

The link to filedropper doesn't work, I get redirected to the homepage. Is there any chance you could upload this to the 270soft campaigns site?

[RI Democrat 2]

Sorry, I guess that link must have expired. I'm going to add in those flags that Patine found and then upload it to 270soft.

[Arran_Sutherland 0]

I'd really like to try this scenario, has it been uploaded to the site yet?

[RI Democrat 2]

Scenario is now available at campaigns.270soft.com. Thanks everyone!