President Infinity v. 3.0.0 sneak-peek for Windows has been released!
This sneak-peek adds 2020 (80+ candidates, 5 parties, 28 issues), improves electoral dynamics to keep party %s relatively consistent when starting from primaries, makes debates matter more, fixes a 0% undecideds bug, improves computer player AI, and more.
Note: this version changes spacebarring to close various screens to ‘n’.
(Note: for goals for this release cycle, Spring 2019, see here.)
If you are a President Infinity owner on subscription (or if you purchased President Infinity within the last year), you are eligible for this upgrade.
This is a comprehensive update.
You can download this release by requesting a download e-mail at the link below. From the e-mail, click the link to the web page. On the web-page, there will be a ‘Sneak-peek’ link.
To update: http://270soft.com/updates-redownloads/
Version information: https://270soft.com/updates-redownloads/president-infinity-version-information/
What’s new in this upgrade from the previous sneak-peek (v. 2.9.9).
- added 2020
- revised electoral dynamics to keep party %s relatively consistent when starting from primaries
- debates matter more > debate news stories +2 spin, can have more news stories
- fixed bug where undecideds were 0% if starting in general election
- improved computer AI
- when win convention, story is +2 spin instead of +1
- fixed bug with viewing momentum bars on map, where would only show 4 of possible 8 and wouldn’t update it clicked up or down candidate arrows
- improved how momentum bars on map display
- Editor > Polls > can set party, leader, undecided, and margin of error %s with a decimal place
- Editor > Endorsers > added search box
- 2016 > Trump > Debating 5 -> 6
- 2016 > Trump, Carson > Relations -> Good
- 2016 > Trump, Huckabee > Relations -> Good
- 2016 > Endorsers > Ann Coulter > Trump > None -> 50
- 2016 > fixed some endorsement dates
- 2016 > Trump > strengthened support committeds in IA, NH, SC
Awesome – thanks Anthony, can’t wait to try it out. Do you have an ETA for the Mac release of 3.0.0?
@Thr33,
If there are no major bugs for this version, early next week.
Takeaways from one quick primary game in 2020:
-Ojeda is described in his bio as a former Senate nominee. He was a former House nominee.
-Romney has very consistent support across the country in his primary bid. He should be stronger in Utah and New England.
-Evan McMullin is named “Mike McMullin”
-Martha McSally is a national endorser, should be an AZ only endorser (mistake from replacing McCain maybe?)
-Being pro free trade isn’t a right wing position anymore. Most Democrats have embraced further trade agreements while the current Trump Republicans have moved to oppose them. For some reason all Democrats align with the Rust Belt free trade position more than Trump does. In my 2020 scenario, I flipped the sides of the free trade issue.
-Trump’s stance on LGBT issues is probably a fair bit more than just center-right.
-Trump is kinda moving away from the War on Drugs, at least on the penalty side of it.
-Warren and Sanders’ colors might be too similar. Massachusetts just looks like a heavy-Sanders state when it’s just mildly Warren.
-Could we get a Favorability-over-time graph?
-Biden is really to the right of his party, not to the left of it.
-I don’t think the average Democrat is center-left on healthcare anymore. The party might need to be shifted to the left.
-There still needs to be work on AI primary behavior. The gang-up-on-the-frontrunner-but-no-one-else strategy is still happening, resulting in strange things like Sanders and Biden nearly coming last in Iowa and New Hampshire (Biden got 0.3% in NH!). Primary candidates seem to attack the current national frontrunner rather than the state’s frontrunner.
-Not sure what the underlying cause of this was, but in the Democratic primaries the undecided amount was increasing and increasing instead of decreasing as the primaries approached. Maybe have the threshold for decisions lower as it gets closer to election/primary day?
-Viewing the national popular vote in primaries is still broken. This is because of setting primary turnout values. This is also causing issues in low turnout states with the number of voters randomly going to small numbers like 3 and causing support to go all over the place.
-Surrogate attributes should probably be 0-10 (0 indicating they can’t do that action – I have newspaper editorial boards being surrogates when endorsed by the newspaper in my scenario and it’s weird to see them out campaigning when they’re meant to just spin). Billionaire surrogates should be much better at fundraising than they are currently, where all surrogates are automatically worse at fundraising than the candidate.
-Roseanne Barr should definitely not be stronger than the rest of the California endorsers (she gives +4 momentum instead of +2)
-It looks like every undated primary is set for its old 2016 value. Maybe instead have the primaries occur where they would if they were in the same block of states as 2016? (e.g. Alaska and Georgia on the new Super Tuesday date instead of their old date of 3/1)
-The Republican Party’s positions need to be moved closer to Trump’s. He’s far too easy to primary.
-The Democratic candidates need more ideologue. All but 4 candidates withdrew by Super Tuesday, which definitely doesn’t seem right.
-Delaney’s portrait is really badly squished.
The sneak peek looks really good. So far no bugs in my test play through. I’ll let you know if i see anything.
Is it just me or does it seem there are a lot more undecideds now? Overall this update is very good IMO. So far in the primaries it seems like everyone goes to undecided (states get as high as 55% in one of my games) and was wondering if intentional or not
That’s true. There are a lot of undecideds!
Cannot create rendering target for tcanvasd2d?
The biggest bug I found was that I was unable to load a save game from a auto save.
also, just remembered, had every single person on and got something about external exception eefface
Two of the items dealing with AI behavior SirLagsalott mentioned seem concerning (a lot of the rest seems to be scenario specific, plus the primary popular vote and the surrogate stuff):
(1) “There still needs to be work on AI primary behavior. The gang-up-on-the-frontrunner-but-no-one-else strategy is still happening, resulting in strange things like Sanders and Biden nearly coming last in Iowa and New Hampshire (Biden got 0.3% in NH!). Primary candidates seem to attack the current national frontrunner rather than the state’s frontrunner.”
Thoughts – The solution you proposed seems like could be something Anthony could do, but isn’t this problematic in situations where (a) you have a candidate who is strong in a state (home state or favorite son/daughter boost?) and (b) on days like Super Tuesday where there are a bunch of states voting at once (where the behavior you mentioned makes sense)? Maybe both strategies should exist, and candidates should adapt a state strategy when there are 1 or 2 contests on a given day, and going after the national leader otherwise? idk
(2) “Not sure what the underlying cause of this was, but in the Democratic primaries the undecided amount was increasing and increasing instead of decreasing as the primaries approached. Maybe have the threshold for decisions lower as it gets closer to election/primary day?”
Thoughts – I think Anthony mentioned this. In one of the prior sneak peaks, there was the opposite issue. Fewer undecideds as the primaries go on. Meanwhile, if there’s a long, drawn-out bitter primary, you’d expect more defectors as it draws out (unless there’s sudden cohesion at the convention, like a unity ticket, or the nominee adopting the runner-up’s stance on a key issue, in the event of a single-issue protest type of candidate). Though I guess if there’s a long primary, and a candidate has clearly lost (and only has a small portion of the vote), it wouldn’t increase the undecided percent too much, it would just make his supporters more likely to defect (though maybe these voters have low party favorability anyway?).
Anthony, have you figured out how to fix these? If it takes a little longer to tweak the AI bugs I can’t speak for anyone else wouldn’t mind waiting longer for the Mac version.
Sorry for my massive blocks of text, just pointing out minor stuff as I find them. And one major issue.
Takeaways from general election 2020 playthrough:
-Almost every Libertarian candidate has a New Mexico +5% boost.
-Why is Ian Schlakman the default Green presidential candidate? I don’t think he’s even declared.
-For some reason, Schultz spent next to nothing of his fortune. In my game he started with $500 million and ended with $472 million.
-The amount of undecideds constantly increased and caused bizarre results. https://i.imgur.com/LOcSQVY.png (poll graph) https://i.imgur.com/AN9RnPM.png (final results)
-Strangely, the observer is only on the ballot in the territories and DC. Despite the territories showing 0 total votes in the election, these totals were included in the observer’s total popular vote (DC only gave the observer about 4,000 votes, but it had over 12,000 nationwide.)
-Why does Kamala Harris subtract 2% from AZ and WI?
-Buttigieg should have higher charisma and stamina.
-Bullock and Hickenlooper’s stats should be swapped.
-**Just realized why Schultz isn’t spending money – no one really is. Candidates are making lots of ads but they aren’t running them at all.**
-Bullock can’t be Hickenlooper’s VP 🙁
A few weird things from just my first turn:
1) I had Romney on as Not Seeking, but he received a chain of endorsements in the first few days. And then he withdrew from the end of the week– very odd.
2) I’m playing as Gillibrand, and I tried spinning a story against Trump. For some reason, it gave me a popup of “you are in a non-aggression pact with Romney” Not sure why or how that happened.
3) Funds available numbers are off. Gillibrand entered with around $10mil before starting fundraising. She’s listed at 3mil here.
Just a few weird first observations. Going to play for a bit to see what else happens
@SirLagsalott,
“Trump’s stance on LGBT issues is probably a fair bit more than just center-right.”
Fair bit more which way?
@SirLagsalott,
“The gang-up-on-the-frontrunner-but-no-one-else strategy is still happening,”
Yes, this is known behaviour. I call it ‘dog-piling’. This will be addressed with 1. improved frontrunner AI to protect their lead, 2. Computer personality types including ‘Positive’ candidates who are less likely to attack, and 3. (eventually) Voting Blocs which make certain candidates’ bases of support more solid. There might be other things done to address this.
@SirLagsalott re list of feedback, thanks very much for this. All noted.
@Chad re undecideds,
Yes, this is not intentional but known. It’s probably a bit too high, but in a primary with lots of candidates and no one standing out, is probably to an extent realistic. I might change this.
@Lucas “Cannot create rendering target for tcanvasd2d?”
Can you tell me where exactly you are getting this error? Does it happen consistently?
@Lucas “had every single person on and got something about external exception eefface”
Can you tell me where you got this error?
@Thr33,
They’ll both be addressed – the undecideds isn’t as serious a problem at this point IMO as the dog-piling.
@SirLagsalott “Why is Ian Schlakman the default Green presidential candidate? I don’t think he’s even declared.”
Suggestions welcome.
@SirLagsalott “Candidates are making lots of ads but they aren’t running them at all.”
This is important and noted – thanks for this.
@Mackenzie re 1-3, thanks for this – all noted.
@TheLiberalKitten “unable to load a save game from a auto save.”
Thanks for this – noted.
Ian Schlakman has filed with the FEC, and set up a campaign website, he’s running.
No Andrew Yang??? He is already going to be on the debate stage and in a newest Wisconsin poll has more support then some candidates
@Dakota,
Yang and Williamson will probably be added soon.
@ Anthony,
I Love most of the new update, but I have some questions
1. Why do most of the primary candidates drop out at Super Tuesday. I think this kind of makes it less fun towards the end of primary season.
2. Why is the observer only on the ballot in DC?
3. Probably my biggest issue with the update, the percentages for the General Election during the primaries are still wacky. I had Iowa going dark dark blue but NY going lean red. Will this be fixed soon?
Again, I love the update, this is just some constructive criticism that I think can help the game in the long run
There are two June 10, 2019 starts.
@Anthony re Trump and LGBT
I’d probably put him at Right as the positions of the country as a whole have shifted. Banning transgender people from the military for example is definitely not a center right policy imo.
And for the Green Party candidate, I think Dario Hunter is going to be the nominee. Some local appeal and experience as one of the few Green officeholders in the country.
@NYPlayer,
Thanks for this feedback.
1. Because the math of winning the Presidency becomes a lot harder after Super Tuesday. This seems realistic to me.
2. Observer isn’t actually running. I believe this is to reduce the chance of him getting votes.
3. “I had Iowa going dark dark blue but NY going lean red. Will this be fixed soon?” What was it like once you got to the general election?
@Caprice, thanks – noted.
@SirLagsalott,
Thanks for this – I’ll look up Dario Hunter.
@ Anthony,
I believe the percentages smoothed out a little bit but I also think that the final votes were a tad unrealistic, with Iowa going I believe 56-44 dem and NY going 52-48 Dem.
Thanks for responding to my feedback!
Ok, thanks for this feedback.
the canvas error was when I had the screen full sized, but it seems to vary when. and the eefface message was at the very beginning, with voter detail at 10,000. it would start to load the game, then that error popped up before it finished loading.
I think that candidates are dropping out at a realistic rate. There is no reason we should have more than 4 candidates competing past super Tuesday, or else every convention for the Dems would be contested.