Next update thread

[populist86 26]

5 minutes ago, admin_270 said:

Note: this is all conditional.

A Voting Bloc can be nested, or the basic Voting Bloc. 

It's natural to use party affiliation as a basic Voting Bloc category, but not required.

Within those party affiliation Voting Blocs, you could add a 2nd layer, perhaps age, and the age Voting Blocs are therefore nested Voting Blocs. You can specify this 2nd layer as the same for all party affiliations, or to vary.

Then, you could introduce a 3rd layer, perhaps ethnicity. This again could be the same for all 1st and 2nd layer combinations, or vary.

And so on.

As you can see, adding layers adds complexity fast. The limiting factor for a designer is probably what demographic information is available.

Each Voting Bloc has a desired platform, which is similar to how regions work. So there are issue centres and issue profiles, and these modify the overall platform for that Voting Bloc combination (in this case, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd layer combination).

 

Makes sense, thanks.

Like I mentioned last time this came up, based on exit polls, the common categories are usually race/ethnicity, gender, age, religion. If demographics are at a regional level instead of nationally, then religion is redundant (since state + race/ethnicity predicts religion well). Gender might be less important because while gender splits exist, the male/female ratio is consistent.

[Anthony_270 975]

7 minutes ago, populist86 said:

Makes sense, thanks.

Like I mentioned last time this came up, based on exit polls, the common categories are usually race/ethnicity, gender, age, religion. If demographics are at a regional level instead of nationally, then religion is redundant (since state + race/ethnicity predicts religion well). Gender might be less important because while gender splits exist, the male/female ratio is consistent.

Yes. It might be that campaign designers want to remove simple region based issue centres and profiles, because adding in the demographic info makes that up.

A big part of making a Voting Blocs system is making it easy for designers to get the relevant info.

[populist86 26]

4 minutes ago, admin_270 said:

Yes. It might be that campaign designers want to remove simple region based issue centres and profiles, because adding in the demographic info makes that up.

A big part of making a Voting Blocs system is making it easy for designers to get the relevant info.

I understand now, thanks. So this would replace the regional calculation, then.

I forgot to mention education before. Race/ethnicity and college education predicts enough of voting to handle most dynamics in the USA. I guess education could be combined with race/ethnicity, though? Something like...

White College

White Non-College

Black

Hispanic

Asian/Other

...would be enough to model American elections. You do get some quirks (Cubans in FL, evangelicals in the South, non-religious on the West Coast), but those dynamics can be modeled well enough since we're nested with parties.

I agree with you age is the next best predictor. Because age balance affects turnout (younger voters are lower propensity) in addition to margins. And obviously like you said, these would be customizable for user scenarios.

Sticking to 3 levels might be best because otherwise results probably get noisy or processing is slower, based on what happened with the favorability system.

[Anthony_270 975]

2 minutes ago, populist86 said:

I understand now, thanks. So this would replace the regional calculation, then.

I forgot to mention education before. Race/ethnicity and college education predicts enough of voting to handle most dynamics in the USA. I guess education could be combined with race/ethnicity, though? Something like...

White College

White Non-College

Black

Hispanic

Asian/Other

...would be enough to model American elections. You do get some quirks (Cubans in FL, evangelicals in the South, non-religious on the West Coast), but those dynamics can be modeled well enough since we're nested with parties.

I agree with you age is the next best predictor. Because age balance affects turnout (younger voters are lower propensity) in addition to margins. And obviously like you said, these would be customizable for user scenarios.

Sticking to 3 levels might be best because otherwise results probably get noisy or processing is slower, based on what happened with the favorability system.

Ya, I'll see as I go. The system needs to be able to get relevant data easily in, and not make it a huge headache for designers, while also making game play better. Then, as you noted, there are technical issues here, but I don't believe there will be problems with memory or processing speed as long as voting blocs don't get crazy (100s of them per region).

[Anthony_270 975]

Here we go ...

There are a few concepts involved.

First is a VotingBlocCategory. For example, 'Age'.

Second is a VotingBloc. For example, 'Senior'.

Then there is a VotingBlocCombo (see code below). It is specified by a combination of VotingBlocs. For example, 'Senior', 'Hispanic', and 'Florida' creates a unique 'fingerprint' for how various activities (ads, speeches, and so on) will affect that kind of voter. For example, an ad about a leader who has a far-left position on Role of Government will affect them differently than various other VotingBlocCombo's.

Then you just have the votes associated with each leader in the game for that VotingBlocCombo.

[PoliticalPundit 331]

great work, my one thing which I *think you're addressing is that each race is not a monolithic group.

 

hispanics in Florida are vastly different than hispanics in NYC and so on.. 

one of the best parts of the game is seeing how your platform affects various voters differently so anything adding to that is great 

 

[Anthony_270 975]

32 minutes ago, PoliticalPundit said:

great work, my one thing which I *think you're addressing is that each race is not a monolithic group.

 

hispanics in Florida are vastly different than hispanics in NYC and so on.. 

one of the best parts of the game is seeing how your platform affects various voters differently so anything adding to that is great 

 

Yes. In this case a designer might want to create 2 Voting Blocs in the Ethnic Voting Bloc Category, Cuban-Hispanics and Mexican-Hispanics, say, or something like that. Alternately, have the Florida Voting Bloc modify the general Hispanic Voting Bloc.

[TheLiberalKitten 324]

1 hour ago, admin_270 said:

Yes. In this case a designer might want to create 2 Voting Blocs in the Ethnic Voting Bloc Category, Cuban-Hispanics and Mexican-Hispanics, say, or something like that. Alternately, have the Florida Voting Bloc modify the general Hispanic Voting Bloc.

This should be super interesting for campaign designers. 

Especially if we could also set issue positions for the blocs

[Anthony_270 975]

11 hours ago, TheLiberalKitten said:

Especially if we could also set issue positions for the blocs

Yes, each Voting Blocs has a platform that can be set. Note this is then combined with other platforms to create a composite for a Voting Bloc Combo.

[Anthony_270 975]

Updated Unity to the latest version. It now uses C# 8.0, which is a nice improvement over C# 7.

One aspect of C# where I wondered why they didn't do it right, but that they took from C++, was the switch statement. I've always found the switch statement clunky, and was surprised they left the syntax the same.

Behold, C# 8.0 introduced a switch expression which is a switch statement done right for the common case of (among other things) assigning a value based on a variable.

Here's a switch statement as it was written in C# 7.

and here's the same functionality with a switch expression (C# 8.0)

From 25 lines of code to 9. Beautiful and intuitive to understand.

[Cenzonico 230]

22 hours ago, admin_270 said:

Here we go ...

There are a few concepts involved.

First is a VotingBlocCategory. For example, 'Age'.

Second is a VotingBloc. For example, 'Senior'.

Then there is a VotingBlocCombo (see code below). It is specified by a combination of VotingBlocs. For example, 'Senior', 'Hispanic', and 'Florida' creates a unique 'fingerprint' for how various activities (ads, speeches, and so on) will affect that kind of voter. For example, an ad about a leader who has a far-left position on Role of Government will affect them differently than various other VotingBlocCombo's.

Then you just have the votes associated with each leader in the game for that VotingBlocCombo.

I remember seeing Alienated while looking through the XML files. Is it going to get a use now?

[Anthony_270 975]

1 minute ago, Cenzonico said:

I remember seeing Alienated while looking through the XML files. Is it going to get a use now?

Each Voting Bloc Combo has a % alienated, and those can be flipped to undecided (then leaning, then committed). I could review the code currently, but I believe alienated's in the current system can move into a leader's column.

[ochebalboa 0]

Can we have the UK Elections with PR as the voting system please?  

[Patine 514]

1 hour ago, ochebalboa said:

Can we have the UK Elections with PR as the voting system please?  

I've been hounding @admin_270for PR, MMP, STV, and other non-FPTP/Australian system legislative election styles as included options for PI and CI (especially for editor usage for custom elections across the board, given only a minority of legislative elections in the world today use FPTP or the Australian system) for years. It's good to see another voice, more or less, to the growing chorus he won't give a definitive ETA to getting around to addressing.

[Anthony_270 975]

2 hours ago, Patine said:

he won't give a definitive ETA

I don't give a definitive ETA for almost anything.

[IndependentPerson 18]

8 hours ago, Patine said:

I've been hounding @admin_270for PR, MMP, STV, and other non-FPTP/Australian system legislative election styles as included options for PI and CI (especially for editor usage for custom elections across the board, given only a minority of legislative elections in the world today use FPTP or the Australian system) for years. It's good to see another voice, more or less, to the growing chorus he won't give a definitive ETA to getting around to addressing.

Well, it would be pretty difficult for him to do South Korea's modern system (FPTP+PR+MMP, I think). Anyhow, I think @admin_270 has other priorities currently.

[Supreme Incompetent Leader 32]

16 hours ago, admin_270 said:

I don't give a definitive ETA for almost anything.

So I've known this for a long time lol....

 

But I'd like to give a little update on the Twitters for my 270soft Wiki account on the next P.I. update. All I want to know is...Will the next release (3.3.7 or not) be a "big" update, or a "small" update? I don't want you to say a "Next month" or any ETA, what to expect-nothing but "big" or "small". Thanks in advance for the eventual reply!

[Anthony_270 975]

2 hours ago, Supreme Incompetent Leader said:

So I've known this for a long time lol....

 

But I'd like to give a little update on the Twitters for my 270soft Wiki account on the next P.I. update. All I want to know is...Will the next release (3.3.7 or not) be a "big" update, or a "small" update? I don't want you to say a "Next month" or any ETA, what to expect-nothing but "big" or "small". Thanks in advance for the eventual reply!

1. Version will be 2021.1.0, not 3.3.7.

2. It's turning into a significant update on the backend. Whether that will translate into significant differences on the frontend is another question, but my goal is faster turns and better save-load.

[Supreme Incompetent Leader 32]

16 minutes ago, admin_270 said:

1. Version will be 2021.1.0, not 3.3.7.

2. It's turning into a significant update on the backend. Whether that will translate into significant differences on the frontend is another question, but my goal is faster turns and better save-load.

I will carry it on! Thanks for the info!!1

[Patine 514]

14 hours ago, Jinsu Kim said:

Well, it would be pretty difficult for him to do South Korea's modern system (FPTP+PR+MMP, I think). Anyhow, I think @admin_270 has other priorities currently.

Why would it be difficult? And his priorities are greatly hamstringing the potential of his game engine, in the broad scale. And "difficult," should not mean, "daunting and give up."

[PoliticalPundit 331]

5 hours ago, Patine said:

Why would it be difficult? And his priorities are greatly hamstringing the potential of his game engine, in the broad scale. And "difficult," should not mean, "daunting and give up."

you really want some South Korean election to be the focus instead of demographics, 2024 candidates.....?? ok man 

[Supreme Incompetent Leader 32]

I’d rather a whole new game be made for South Korea, like we have for Germany.

[Patine 514]

1 hour ago, PoliticalPundit said:

you really want some South Korean election to be the focus instead of demographics, 2024 candidates.....?? ok man 

Any nation's elections that are not thoroughly rigged, predetermined, corrupted, or one-choice-referendums are worthy subject material for scenarios for an election simulator like this one. The great majority of the custom scenarios I make - and most enjoy playing - are in countries and polities outside the United States, and, in fact, American political culture is among the most boring and uninteresting out there. I'd like to see the scenario making options expand to a generic toolkit to make custom options around the world and across electoral history for readily and easily possible.

[Supreme Incompetent Leader 32]

1 hour ago, Patine said:

Any nation's elections that are not thoroughly rigged, predetermined, corrupted, or one-choice-referendums are worthy subject material for scenarios for an election simulator like this one. The great majority of the custom scenarios I make - and most enjoy playing - are in countries and polities outside the United States, and, in fact, American political culture is among the most boring and uninteresting out there. I'd like to see the scenario making options expand to a generic toolkit to make custom options around the world and across electoral history for readily and easily possible.

Again I’ll say it...why not just make a new game customized for these more complicated systems like Germany?

[Patine 514]

2 minutes ago, Supreme Incompetent Leader said:

Again I’ll say it...why not just make a new game customized for these more complicated systems like Germany?

It would be nice if @admin_270would even update the Chancellor Forever engine to the Infinity game standard. He hasn't, despite myself and others bringing it up for several YEARS! The games on the Infinity standard ONLY currently cover presidential elections, and FPTP and Australian system legislative elections, and NOTHING ELSE! They even lack competent coalition-building AI mechanics in PMI and CI, and I still don't believe, if I'm not mistaken, that a PI scenario can have both primary elections and popular vote in the same scenario. This is a big part of the issue I've been going on about.