Feature You'd Most Like to See

[RFK/JFKfan 11]

I think it would be cool if the 2012 version is more of a complete political game than an election game. For example, House, Senate, Governor and Mayoral Elections as well as the Presidential Election on election night, have a career mode, if you get elected to the House or Senate you can vote, debate and present bills, if you are a Governor or President you make decisions regarding your country, with approval ratings etc.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

Strongly agree with the previous post.

[Abe Lincoln 9]

One issue i have is the transistion from primaries to general election. For example in the 2004 scenario, while the democratic primaries are going on bush takes a massive lead so that once the dems have a candidate in place he is massively ahead. He even is comptetieve in vermont.

Also once someone has secured the nomination everyone else should pull out

In 2008 John McCain secured the nomination in march but Ron Paul did not drop out until June.

[arsenal 2]

True That. However once you have secured the nomination, you should be able to start the general election. Candidates should be much more likely to pull out

[browns47 3]

Please allow multiple styles of elections in Scenario Creation. I think all Campaigns forever users would agree mayoral and state election would be much easier with either PR or a city/state/nation total of overall votes. You could still keep the map divided into regions for campaigning purposes but allowing multiple election styles would add variety to user created scenarios - basically taking scenario creation to a whole new level.

[EGaffney 17]

In President Forever 2008 + Primaries, it would be great if the scenario designer could set a target number for undecided % on the day before the primary. At the moment, this veers between 20-30% in scenarios like United State - 2008. Although we can manually reduce undecideds in the percentages for each candidate, it rapidly trends upwards to that range of figures. That makes early campaigns a waste of money, because your poll numbers inevitably turn into Undecided, and the winner is almost always the candidate with the most momentum on the day of the primary, because they capture a huge number of the undecided voters.

I know some players enjoy big swings, but an option to reduce the uncertainty in scenarios we ourselves design would be very much appreciated.

[Anthony_270 949]

@EGaffney,

Thanks for the feedback, it's noted.

[Treasurer 28]

Just thinking, especially in the case of British elections, i thought it might be a good idea if you can multi-pick near-by regions, (maybe limit of 10 or 15) to perform barnstorm/issue knowledge/debate/Policy speeches in as well as propping up the region limit to allow all 600+ constituencies for a UK election. This would give the benefit of a proper election night with all constituencies called individually, which would be great. The pointer might find it hard to select some individual constituencies with the map size and such, but maybe it can drag a box over the local area to select them.

[zagatstein 2]

Just thinking, especially in the case of British elections, i thought it might be a good idea if you can multi-pick near-by regions, (maybe limit of 10 or 15) to perform barnstorm/issue knowledge/debate/Policy speeches in as well as propping up the region limit to allow all 600+ constituencies for a UK election. This would give the benefit of a proper election night with all constituencies called individually, which would be great. The pointer might find it hard to select some individual constituencies with the map size and such, but maybe it can drag a box over the local area to select them.

I really like this idea, especially the individual constituencies as regions. I don't remember who designed the map, but the 2005 scenario with more, and therefore smaller, regions had a more authentic feel to it.

In terms of the multi-pick, would that be similar to the weeklong turns in President Forever 2008+Primaries? I thought that was perfect.

[Potsdamerplatz 1]

(1) The ability to modify each individual candidate's fundraising co-efficient. Some candidates like Obama are prolific fundraisers whilst Hillary Clinton struggled badly in last year's primaries.

(2) Introduce a "public relations" attribute similar to leadership, integrity and experience. Candidates with a higher rating would be more skilled at spinning stories and deflecting scandals.

(3) Modifying Campaigns Forever to include PR. I know this would be very popular with modders.

(4) The option to print and save your final results on election night and also print/save the final map.

(5) Having a candidate's policy speech backfiring in the same way as attack ads do. If a candidate makes a speech attacking a rival candidate's stance (which is exactly the same position as his own) then the speech would backfire and lead to negative headlines.

(6) Adding billboard ads to President Forever. This can already be done using Campaigns Forever, but it would be a nice addition to the main game.

[Anthony_270 949]

Thanks Potsdamerplatz for the suggestions - all noted.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

(1) The ability to modify each individual candidate's fundraising co-efficient. Some candidates like Obama are prolific fundraisers whilst Hillary Clinton struggled badly in last year's primaries.

(2) Introduce a "public relations" attribute similar to leadership, integrity and experience. Candidates with a higher rating would be more skilled at spinning stories and deflecting scandals.

(3) Modifying Campaigns Forever to include PR. I know this would be very popular with modders.

(4) The option to print and save your final results on election night and also print/save the final map.

(5) Having a candidate's policy speech backfiring in the same way as attack ads do. If a candidate makes a speech attacking a rival candidate's stance (which is exactly the same position as his own) then the speech would backfire and lead to negative headlines.

(6) Adding billboard ads to President Forever. This can already be done using Campaigns Forever, but it would be a nice addition to the main game.

[Big Boss 2]

More parties

Internet play

More than one or two terms (changing world, new candidates)

[RFK/JFKfan 11]

It would be cool if you could zoom in on individual counties in each state on Election Night and see how many counties have reported, the numbers coming out of each county etc.

[RFK/JFKfan 11]

On Campaigns Forever, it would also be good if you could move candidates from one scenario to another without having to type out their details.

[pilight 237]

But a concern I have is with the veep process. My first run of the 2000 P4E scenario resulted in the AI George Bush choosing Alan Keyes as his VP and likewise a lot of other elections took place where Lyndon LaRouche became Clinton's VP when he was Bill's only opponent in the 1996 Primary.

What I am trying to get at, is I would like to see the AI choose from the VP's that are assigned to them. It helps for some realism.

Dropped out presidential candidates should be available as running mates to the human player after the convention without having a separate VP leader created, like they are for the AIs. Also, presidential candidates should have the ability to be toggled on and off as potential VP candidates, to prevent what dwkulsar is describing.

I'd like to see potential VPs have a chance of turning down the nomination, perhaps making it an ongoing process during the primaries to determine which ones are willing to be your running mate.

Candidates should be able to select a running mate as soon as they have their party nomination wrapped up, rather than having to wait for the convention.

VPs should also get interview opportunities.

[ktitus 4]

Candidates should be able to select a running mate as soon as they have their party nomination wrapped up, rather than having to wait for the convention.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe non-AI players can do that by submitting an VP offer through the "players" screen to the player you want to be your running mate once you've secured the nomination?

However, I can see how that might be nice for the AI.

[pilight 237]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe non-AI players can do that by submitting an VP offer through the "players" screen to the player you want to be your running mate once you've secured the nomination?

However, I can see how that might be nice for the AI.

Only if you're offering to another presidential candidate who hasn't dropped out. We should be able to go ahead and pick one off the VP list as soon as we have the nomination locked up.

[graemp 9]

I'd like to see a 'party order view' change option on the ridings view page.

The game was first designed as a 2-4 party game in that whatever page you are on, the most parties you will ever be able to view at once is 4. If the scenario you are playing has more than 4 parties, then to see what is going on with the other parties [eg endorsers, momentum and ridings] you have to continually scroll up and down [or left and right]. This is irritating and makes the game awkward to play.

This problem is the most irritating when there are 5 serious parties such as with many Canadian Federal Elections. If the Bloc are the fifth party, it is really difficult to campaign in Quebec as it is awkward to get a look at what is going on in the ridings.

It is a definate turn off to play any of the smaller parties that are listed 5th or lower.

I appreciate that it would take a lot of effort to re-design the game by moving away from the 4 party view format. But I don't think this is necessary.

When viewing ridings, the game currently enables a player to view ridings either in alphabetical order or in order of marginality, simply by clicking on an icon. Perhaps a similar facility could be built in to change the order in which the parties appear. By clicking on an icon next to the alphabetical/marginal icon, you could change the order in which you have the parties displayed in each of the ridings. To use the Quebec example, if I was playing the Bloc, I could set the view option to change the party order from

Lib

PC

Ref

NDP

---- scroll down ----

BQ

to a different order based perhaps on alphabetical order [or in an order where it lists the manual players first] to give

BQ

Lib

NDP

PC

---- scroll down ----

Ref

[wrestlingking235 2]

I'd like to see the option to set a nation to wartime status when making a scenario. Have it work like economy, where there's a chance for peace, or a huge setback. And you can set whether or not it's a popular war. It would really add to scenarios like the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

[Anthony_270 949]

Thanks for this idea - note that you can do something similar with the scripted events.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

I'd like to see the option to set a nation to wartime status when making a scenario. Have it work like economy, where there's a chance for peace, or a huge setback. And you can set whether or not it's a popular war. It would really add to scenarios like the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

[graemp 9]

It is possible to have an English debate and a french debate.

It is possible to determine who takes part in these debates by setting minimum_percent_qualify_for_debate at a level.

As I understand it, this % is a national %

It would be good to be able to set different qualification criteria for different debates.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

In President Forever + Primaries, in the primary, you can make someone an "offer" of their withdrawing and endorsing you. You can also make an offer that involves their becoming your Vice Presidential candidate. But you can only make a VP offer if you have already clinched the nomination. This makes sense, but what would also make sense would be if you could offer someone the VP slot if their withdrawing and giving you their delegates would clinch you the nomination. Suppose, for instance, you had all the delegates doled out at the end of the 2008 Democratic primaries, and it was:

Obama 45%

Clinton 45%

Edwards 10%

I'd say Obama should be able to offer Edwards the VP slot, since with his delegates and Edwards' delegates he'd have a majority.

[karatex 0]

I looked but didn't see this already -- similar to the feature where you take over as the primary winner even if you lose the primary, it would be cool if endorsing a candidate meant you took over as that candidate.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

I think the most important thing I'd like for the President Forever series is a wider variety of ways of structuring the general election. Currently there's only one option: winner-take-all electoral votes by state, with an outright majority required to win. That's fine for the US system, as it is the US system, but it isn't very adaptable. I might like to see:

- Proportional-representation allocation of EVs

- No Electoral College, just use national popular vote

- Plurality wins

- No majority = runoff

...as additional options for how the scenario designer could structure their election. I think it would make scenario-designing a lot more enjoyable by freeing up so many additional options.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

Also, for the Congress Forever development, is there any thought of expanding the scope in future editions? I could imagine that you could theoretically enable bicameral elections (i.e., have House and Senate elections simultaneously) and also include the primaries. I might like to see that. One of the major differences between a parliamentary system and our Congressional system is popular primaries, and it actually makes a whole lot of difference.