Feature You'd Most Like to See

[RFK/JFKfan 11]

I have a few suggestions for the UK version of PM4E.

1. A Campaigns Forever for the game would be cool.

2. On Election Night, especially on the UK Version, it would be helpful if the size of the majority was displayed at the side. Also, having the popular vote in raw numbers in each seat would be good, Finally, there could be an option to type in the results of the previous election on Campaigns Forever (if there is a version for it next time) which makes the computer show the % swing from the last election.

[liberalkid 1]

1. recount

2.network play

3. losing primaries and running in general

4. giving Iowa and New Hampshire more influence.

[WaterBottle 0]

I'd love to see:

1) More parties

2) Be able to actually debate

I remember a really old DOS election game, and in the game you got to set the percentage of your responses (how much time to kill, how much time to actually answer question, how much time to make a metaphor things like that)

3) More CPs: I rarely have enough to do what I want. Just a couple more is all I'm asking for.

4) Network play.

5) Select "All On/Off" option when starting a new game to auto-turn on ALL candidates.This would save me time.

6) More than 32 candidates.

And lastly:

7) VP should be able to make speeches.

[graemp 9]

Polling Day

I have the UK version and yet on polling day, the result delaration times are not given in GMT or BST.

Is there somewhere within one of the files that I can change to settings to show GMT?

If not, could this facility be added?

[Anthony_270 949]

I don't think this can be set to GMT. This will be changed if PM4E UK 2009 is released.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

Polling Day

I have the UK version and yet on polling day, the result delaration times are not given in GMT or BST.

Is there somewhere within one of the files that I can change to settings to show GMT?

If not, could this facility be added?

[graemp 9]

I don't think this can be set to GMT. This will be changed if PM4E UK 2009 is released.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

PM4E UK 2009!!

You may have missed the window on that one.

Suggest you call it 2010

[Anthony_270 949]

PM4E UK 2009!!

You may have missed the window on that one.

Suggest you call it 2010

[mahaadoxyz 9]

Here's an idea I just had:

Polling used to be very very bad, at least by today's standards. 1936 was the first time anyone did a reputable, scientific poll, and I don't think there was much of any attempt at surveying much prior to that. Even in 1948, the last poll conducted in the U.S. was two months before the election (which is what allowed Truman's comeback to be soooooooo unexpected). I wouldn't mind if the scenario designer had the option of setting some of the parameters of polling, like making it more or less frequent, making it better or worse, disabling, maybe, private polling, and restricting the time-frame when it happens at all. Or maybe even, to get even fancier, have the ability to set different pollsters, with characteristic accuracies, "house effects," frequencies, etc. So for current elections one could set Rasmussen to poll very frequently just about everywhere, to be very accurate, and to have a noticeable pro-Republican lean, and set, for instance, the Brown University poll to only occur in Rhode Island, every couple of months, etc. But that might be too hard; I don't know.

[florida 0]

The feature I'd most love to see in a new British PM4E would be the ability to play an election (say a 1983 scenario) and to then play the next election based on those results.

For example, if I play the 1983 scenario and the Lib/SDP alliance get more votes than Labour, but not seats, I'd like to then be able to play the 1987 election with those results.

Would add almost infinite replay value if you could keep on playing elections based on the last one you played, if you chose to.

[Anthony_270 949]

Good ideas - in Congress Forever 2010, scenario designers can set the public and private poll margins of error.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

Here's an idea I just had:

Polling used to be very very bad, at least by today's standards. 1936 was the first time anyone did a reputable, scientific poll, and I don't think there was much of any attempt at surveying much prior to that. Even in 1948, the last poll conducted in the U.S. was two months before the election (which is what allowed Truman's comeback to be soooooooo unexpected). I wouldn't mind if the scenario designer had the option of setting some of the parameters of polling, like making it more or less frequent, making it better or worse, disabling, maybe, private polling, and restricting the time-frame when it happens at all. Or maybe even, to get even fancier, have the ability to set different pollsters, with characteristic accuracies, "house effects," frequencies, etc. So for current elections one could set Rasmussen to poll very frequently just about everywhere, to be very accurate, and to have a noticeable pro-Republican lean, and set, for instance, the Brown University poll to only occur in Rhode Island, every couple of months, etc. But that might be too hard; I don't know.

[Anthony_270 949]

It would add another dimension - the trick is figuring out how to bridge the elections, as what happens in the intervening years determines the landscape for the next election ...

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

The feature I'd most love to see in a new British PM4E would be the ability to play an election (say a 1983 scenario) and to then play the next election based on those results.

For example, if I play the 1983 scenario and the Lib/SDP alliance get more votes than Labour, but not seats, I'd like to then be able to play the 1987 election with those results.

Would add almost infinite replay value if you could keep on playing elections based on the last one you played, if you chose to.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

And I assume the fancier stuff, like setting frequency or creating multiple polls each with their own characteristic, is too tricky to model? Sounds reasonable.

So in 1800, the m.o.e. could be somewhere around 20 or 30? That would probably model having absolutely no data whatsoever...

[florida 0]

Well, for historical elections you could get a rough idea from events which did happen. I suppose that working out the effects on the next election would be tricky, but I guess there could be a range of events which are modelled to give boosts to a party or damage a party, affecting the starting positions at the next election.

I'm no programmer so I don't know how hard it would be to model these things, just thought it would be a really cool feature. Otherwise it is possible to have played an election lots of times as different parties, and to wonder what to do next.

It would add another dimension - the trick is figuring out how to bridge the elections, as what happens in the intervening years determines the landscape for the next election ...

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

[Anthony_270 949]

It would probably be pretty straightforward to model. Define a <polls> section, each with name, party_biased, party_biased_percentage, frequency.

Then have a drop-down list of polls to view. Perhaps have an aggregate number as well, which is various polls weighted in the way the player wants to.

I'm not planning to add it to Congress Forever 2010, but it's possible a P4E12 would have expanded polling options ...

Thanks,

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

And I assume the fancier stuff, like setting frequency or creating multiple polls each with their own characteristic, is too tricky to model? Sounds reasonable.

So in 1800, the m.o.e. could be somewhere around 20 or 30? That would probably model having absolutely no data whatsoever...

[mahaadoxyz 9]

It would probably be pretty straightforward to model. Define a <polls> section, each with name, party_biased, party_biased_percentage, frequency.

Then have a drop-down list of polls to view. Perhaps have an aggregate number as well, which is various polls weighted in the way the player wants to.

I'm not planning to add it to Congress Forever 2010, but it's possible a P4E12 would have expanded polling options ...

Thanks,

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

I look forward to it!

[yougo1000 4]

I would like to be able to have more ad controls like for newspaper ads you can type what they say. Also maybe on election night you could pretend to have commentary and finally you can zoom in on counties on election night.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

Maybe in lieu of complex demographic modeling, one could just set people for how much they appeal in each state. Ideally this would be President and Vice President. I keep playing and if, say, I have a Southern running mate, I'll have them barnstorm in all the competitive Southern states, but of course there's no real point in doing that. But I think there is an effect where, even beyond a direct "boost" that can already be modeled somewhat, people will have regional appeal like that.

[Anthony_270 949]

Right - a regional_appeal number that is optionally set for each state and is a multiplier or bonus for a Veep's barnstorming could easily be created ... then there would be an advantage in running certain Veep candidates in places where their strength is different from the Presidential candidate's. Do-able.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

Maybe in lieu of complex demographic modeling, one could just set people for how much they appeal in each state. Ideally this would be President and Vice President. I keep playing and if, say, I have a Southern running mate, I'll have them barnstorm in all the competitive Southern states, but of course there's no real point in doing that. But I think there is an effect where, even beyond a direct "boost" that can already be modeled somewhat, people will have regional appeal like that.

[RFK/JFKfan 11]

It would probably be pretty straightforward to model. Define a <polls> section, each with name, party_biased, party_biased_percentage, frequency.

Then have a drop-down list of polls to view. Perhaps have an aggregate number as well, which is various polls weighted in the way the player wants to.

I'm not planning to add it to Congress Forever 2010, but it's possible a P4E12 would have expanded polling options ...

Thanks,

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

It would also work well for PM4E UK. The polls have been wrong quite a few times in UK General Elections, most notably in 1970 and 1992.

[tb75 0]

Will Congress Forever have a scenario creator now or in the future?

[Anthony_270 949]

I would like to see a scenario creation tool released. This will probably not be like Campaigns Forever. Rather, it will be a guided XML editing tool. It will not be released initially, but anyone who wants to delve into the XML will be able to create scenarios with a text editor (or XML editor) right away.

Anthony Burgoyne

http://www.TheorySpark.com

Games that spark the political imagination!

Will Congress Forever have a scenario creator now or in the future?

[wrestlingking235 2]

I think for the President Forever series, there should be a feature of hiring, or firing, campaign managers. They can make or break a candidate, so I think the managers would have some stats that affect the player's performance.

[LordTC 0]

The feature I'd like to see most is voter loss. This would be a way for scandals to move voters from committed to swaying and swaying to undecided as the results of scandals/attack ads etc.

Long campaigns have serious flaws in this game, which can be exposed by playing with fog of war off. In my 2008 primaries campaign Florida had 0.0% undecided voters before the conventions occurred, and pretty much the entire electoral map was set, which really killed a lot of the fun in campaigning, and created many turns of nothing at all happening.

There needs to be some way to have campaign effects that bring voters back to neutral. I think the natural dividing line is positive effects increase voters for you, and negative effects take voters from the other side, and I recognize this is a major engine change but its needed if the engine that runs a 6 week Canadian campaign is to be used for the year long primaries + general election campaign.

To elaborate, ideally doing this on an issue by issue basis rather than total momentum. There are problems with using total momentum as +30 vs +1 is irrelevant unless there are undecided voters in the state, while in real life +30 vs +1 will either flip voters or make them far more likely to show up at the polls resulting in a significant surge.

[LordTC 0]

I've thought for a long time that an amzing way to do ads would be Markets, not States.

for example. I live in New Jersey, but New Jersey has two main markets. New York City and Philly. If you were a politician you would come to NJ, but your ads would be put on those two markets.

The change would be that the New York City market would affect NY, NJ, and CT to a point and you could be much more precise in advertizing.

Also, this becomes more effective since different parts of a state have different politics and concerns.

I'd like to see a media markets approach to add buys also. I'd also like to see being able to buy rating points for an add and have the effectiveness be the # of Ratings Points * Strength of the Ad.

Ultimately I'd like to see states broken down into smaller units also. Ideally you'd have 1 or 2 parts for a small state, and 3 to 10 parts for a big state (10 being say California, 3 being Tennessee). These parts would be grouped into regions and ideally you'd have regional issues (taking the ethanol pledge in Iowa affecting the great plains for instance). The map interface would likely have 4 possible choices of display: 1) Regional 2) State 3) Atom (whatever your smallest unit ends up being called) and 4) media markets. It should allow you to choose to barnstorm in a state (it picks the atom for you) or an atom (you pick the atom) based on whichever map you are on.

Lastly, give an option to get rid of 1-week turns entirely, it creates all sorts of problems with being unable to spin stories, and with Ads being broken (pay 1 day get 1 week).

Note that having the effects/impacts of various ads/whatever fade over time would model importance of having to save money for the last minute ad blitz. This game has kind of the reverse of real life situation where once the undecideds make up their mind you can't get any traction so you're encouraged to go for broke as early as possible, and if you have no money for ads down the stretch it won't hurt you.

[gax23 0]

Probably a long shot, but I'd like to see more career-oriented gameplay. After the election ends, it'd be fantastic if the game carried on and allowed you to set policies etc for your term in government. In opposition, you could still make speeches, spin press etc. Playing through one election is all well and good but I'd love to be able to take it one step further and fight multiple successive elections. A full political career game (UK based) is something I've been looking for for years.