Some Observations on P4E+P...

[Taft 0]

Alright. I've run through the primaries a few times, and I've noticed some things as I've gone through:

1) The effect of winning states is fairly muted, especially later on.

2) Candidates who are getting whomped don't start trending towards zero support.

3) Momentum is hard to come by, and has a limited effect in-game.

4) The week-by-week interface is somewhat unwieldy.

Points 1 and 2 are somewhat self-explanatory, and they go together fairly well...the best case I can think of was a McCain-Guliani-Romney battle where McCain swept every early state through CA save for NH (which Guliani won), yet still began losing support in the polls while Romney, who kept losing, rose dramatically. Points three and four are what have hit me the most, however.

Momentum feels a bit funny in the game. Realistically, you don't run ads in Alabama in January, or Iowa in March. However, to get a momentum boost from the ads early on, running multi-state ad campaigns seem to be the only way to go about this. Perhaps the answer lies in going back to the old P4E momentum system (where momentum in individual states was kept separate, but global events had an effect in each state). Part of this is a consequence of the primary system (and what has made it so hard to model).

Point four is another animal altogether. Ads and footsoldiers are handled on the week-by-week basis, but there is almost never enough money to run ads them even in just the early states unless one tampers with the fundraising coefficients. Additionally, it feels like there isn't enough money in the system, period. Footsoldiers also make things slightly odd...perhaps allowing more than five to be recruited would solve this.

Finally, one thing I am not clear on is the benefits of using "develop campaign" as an option.

[admin_270 82]

Hi Taft,

Thanks for the feedback - just wanted to clarify one thing. Momentum on the main screen is a population-adjusted average of all the momentum numbers from each region. If you have a high national momentum number, then, it isn't going to give you a bonus in regions where there's no momentum. So running ads in New Hampshire in March won't give your campaign much of a bonus in states other than New Hampshire.

The Develop Campaign activity adds 5 to your Established Progress. Once you reach 100, your Established attribute goes up 1, which helps in a whole host of things.

Hope this helps.

Alright. I've run through the primaries a few times, and I've noticed some things as I've gone through:

1) The effect of winning states is fairly muted, especially later on.

2) Candidates who are getting whomped don't start trending towards zero support.

3) Momentum is hard to come by, and has a limited effect in-game.

4) The week-by-week interface is somewhat unwieldy.

Points 1 and 2 are somewhat self-explanatory, and they go together fairly well...the best case I can think of was a McCain-Guliani-Romney battle where McCain swept every early state through CA save for NH (which Guliani won), yet still began losing support in the polls while Romney, who kept losing, rose dramatically. Points three and four are what have hit me the most, however.

Momentum feels a bit funny in the game. Realistically, you don't run ads in Alabama in January, or Iowa in March. However, to get a momentum boost from the ads early on, running multi-state ad campaigns seem to be the only way to go about this. Perhaps the answer lies in going back to the old P4E momentum system (where momentum in individual states was kept separate, but global events had an effect in each state). Part of this is a consequence of the primary system (and what has made it so hard to model).

Point four is another animal altogether. Ads and footsoldiers are handled on the week-by-week basis, but there is almost never enough money to run ads them even in just the early states unless one tampers with the fundraising coefficients. Additionally, it feels like there isn't enough money in the system, period. Footsoldiers also make things slightly odd...perhaps allowing more than five to be recruited would solve this.

Finally, one thing I am not clear on is the benefits of using "develop campaign" as an option.