President Infinity next release sneak-peek v. 3.0.4, Windows

41 thoughts on “President Infinity next release sneak-peek v. 3.0.4, Windows”

1. Mac version is forthcoming.

   Dog-piling and undecideds build-up still happens, but less so. Work will continue on addressing these in future releases.

2. This sneak peek is really great! The color picker is very useful and will be very useful as well in the other games too! It’ll make scenario creation be a lot easier!

3. Mike Gravel lives in San Francisco these days, his home state should be California, not Alaska.

4. If you need more polls, they update everyday at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/

5. @Lucas,

   Thanks for this – useful link.

6. @TLK, thanks for this feedback!

   @Emil, noted.

7. Do undecideds still rise to 35%+ in this update?

8. @Chad,

   Undecideds start at around 30% in the 2020 Democratic primary. However, they don’t tend to drop, instead rising towards the first primary. They don’t rise as quickly as in the previous release. This is something I’ll be continuing to work on.

9. Looking forward to PMI UK!

10. @Shane,

    New PMI – UK should be released within a few weeks.

11. Will you be updating Congress Infinity as well?

12. Haven’t played it yet, but what do you mean by “Rep. Tim Scott” to on? Tim Scott is a Senator who is not running for President.

13. @SirLagsalott,

    Thanks for this – fixed to ‘Rep. Tim Ryan’.

14. @TLK re CI, it will be updated, but I don’t know when. Immediate focus is PMI and PI.

15. Alright! Good to know. Thanks for the info.

16. On the latest MAC version when starting the game and selecting the scenario the game window dissapears for a couple of seconds. Can you fix this?

17. @Andres,

    Are you saying it disappears for a couple of seconds and then reappears?

18. Very cool Anthony, thanks for the update. This seems very interesting:

    “• AI > Ground Ops > computer players now make counter-moves when building ground ops
    • Ads > computer players now make counter-moves when creating and running ads
    • computer players now create ads that can be run nationally, instead of just regionally”

    Is there an attribute/stat that determines how good AI players are at the above? Or is it just a common behavior for now that all AI share?

    Also, did you decide on whether to do the AI personality type stuff (in terms of level of aggression) that you mentioned? I guess if you’ve found a way to mitigate high undecideds and dogpiling maybe that’s not a top priority, but it sounds like an interesting feature nonetheless.

19. @Thr33, it’s a general AI trait, but depends on the computer player’s resources (stats and money) in terms of effectiveness.

    AI personality types are planned to be added.

20. Hopefully this has been fixed since 3.0.2 but a couple of games I played with that version lately had the bug where as you got deep into a campaign (I only tried this in campaigns including primaries) eventually you’d get “unable to write game save file” and at some separate point the game would freeze and be unresponsive. I don’t see that in the bug fixes for 3.0.6 so I thought I’d point it out.

21. @David,

    My best guess is this is due to large save game files, which are caused by 1. lots of candidates and 2. the current polling system. The polling system is set to be replaced, and so I believe it is likely that will fix this problem.

22. I’ve always thought the official campaigns were pretty even-handed and politically non-partisan, but I understand there’s been some outside help with this 2020 scenario and have seen some concerning things. One of which is in the endorsers. Endorsers are supposed to be a tangible person or organization who says explicitly “I support this candidate.” But “Russian interests”?? I would say the same thing for George Soros too. Endorsers are people who come out and say “I support this candidate.” This is in my opinion a cheap shot at Trump based on a lie. First, we’re concerned about “Russian interference” are now saying “Russian interests” should be an endorser?

23. Another comment as far as the Libertarian party nomination is not correctly represented here. The Libertarians do not have the same primary system as Democrats and Republicans. They have very few if any popular-vote primaries. The party’s state conventions meet to select delegates to the national convention and that’s where all the voting takes place. The best way to simulate this is that my campaigns use closed caucuses and all on the same date.

24. Sorry but I still see some troubling things with the 2020 scenario that frankly make me question its bias:

    * On issues, why is “Trump Support” an issue? It’s superfluous, the entire election is based on that.
    * Again, Trump has been assigned several incorrect positions:
    – LGBT Issues should be center or center-left. There’s no basis for position of Right.
    – Student debt: Trump really hasn’t stated a position on this, but “far right” is a big stretch. My personal opinion of where he would stand would be that the cost of college needs to be lowered. None of the 7 positions really fit. I’d say keep him “center” BUT cost of college overall needs to be part of this issue
    – Tax rates should be “center right.” Trump has mentioned nothing about a flat tax and the rate cuts have only been modest.
    – War on Drugs is way off. Should be center or center left. Again, don’t conflate his support of the border wall to reduce the flow of hard drugs, with things like medicinal marijuana which he has publicly come out in support of.
    – Either the “Supreme Court judges” is set wrong for him, or the far-right issue itself is misinterpreted. There is no such thing as a “conservative activist” judge, that’s a total oxymoron. The far right should be “Only judges who strictly interpret the Constitution as literally written. No room for interpretation at all.” The far left should be “The Constitution means what we feel it means. It’s an old outdated document and should be subjectively interpreted according to modern standards.” Of course these are both extreme positions but that’s the point of “Far Right” and “Far Left.” All 7 positions need to be re-written.

    While I’m at it, the “LGBT” issue is conflating gender neutrality with sexuality. Trans issues, if they are in here at all, belong in a separate issue.
    Same for “Russian interference.” If you want to make it an issue of something like election security, fine. But again Russian interference and whether Trump’s investigation was a witch-hunt or not, are, objectively speaking, related but different issues. For example, Mueller could “be a dirty cop” even if the Russians aren’t innocent. Too many issues being conflated here.

25. @David re ‘Russian interests’, thanks for this, noted.

26. @David re Libertarian primaries, noted.

27. @David re issues,

    Thanks for this feedback – I’ve noted this for when we’re updating the issues.

    A few comments.

    “why is “Trump Support” an issue? It’s superfluous, the entire election is based on that.”

    Because Trump is unusually contentious. I think it makes sense to add it as an issue.

    “the “LGBT” issue is conflating gender neutrality with sexuality.”

    Yes, this is combining two issues. It’s simply to reduce the number of issues, but perhaps these should be separated – we’ll see.

    ““conservative activist” judge”

    Yes, this should be reworded. Perhaps ‘strict constitutionalists’ or something like that.

    “Russian interference.”

    This issue will be reworked now that the Special Counsel has submitted its report.

28. Thanks for your attention @anthony_270admin. Here is what my suggestion is for the Supreme Court issue:

    FL: The Constitution is just an old document that has no relevance in a modern “tolerant” society. Judges should consider “international law”. Consider expanding Supreme Court.

    L: The Constitution is a living document and needs to be interpreted according to modern standards that didn’t exist in the Framers’ time.

    CL: Judges should stay true to the general meaning of the Constitution, but the Framers weren’t perfect, like the 2nd Amendment was written when “assault weapons” didn’t exist.

    C: Balance originalism with understanding that America has changed in ways the Framers couldn’t forsee.

    CR: Stay true to the general meaning but some interpretation is needed. As Antonin Scalia said, “Freedom of the Press” doesn’t just mean newspapers.

    R: Precedent should be considered. But the Constitution is not otherwise a living document and must be strictly interpreted to its text, including amendments.

    FR: Only strict constructionists need apply! The Constitution means exactly what it says it means. Nothing more, nothing less. No room for interpretation or precedents.

29. “Russian Interference” should, I think, be renamed “Mueller Report” especially since the investigation is over. Suggestions:

    FL: Bill Barr is hiding something. He and Mueller and the Russians are in league with Trump. We need to investigate indefinitely until we find something.
    L: Barr needs to release the entire report. If not, he’s clearly working for Trump and they both need to be impeached.
    CL: No criminal charges are warranted against Trump. But Congress still needs to perform oversight. It was a worthy investigation.
    C: Mueller had a fair chance to complete a needed investigation. Now that it’s over, let’s move on.
    CR: The investigation is over. No collusion. They said “wait for the report” and we did. No more to see here.
    R: We need to investigate how the Trump-Russia investigation happened in the first place, and see if Obama’s White House weaponized the intelligence community against a political opponent.
    FR: Mueller is a dirty cop and the DOJ and FBI are compeltely corrupt. The only collusion happened by Hillary and the DNC.

30. Speaking of issues, I notice that all issues for each region are set to “inherit,” yet different states have different positions on different issues, so where are they inheriting from? For example, California has “left” on abortion, while Arkansas has “center right”. Yet they both are set to inherit.

31. Disregard the previous comment, I see that all the different issue positions are not inherited.

    Sorry to nitpick, but again on the “Free Trade” issue. The left side of this issue seems to be more about labor issues, things like workers rights, conflating with the unions issue.

    My thought would be that this isn’t really a left-right issue. But if it is, the difference I see would be totally free trade (right) vs. trade deals and tariffs (left), it has nothing to do with workers rights and labor practice in any way.

32. @David re free trade,

    On the left, trade is usually linked with labour issues and so on. Hence ‘fair trade’ coffee and so on.

33. @David re issue position description suggestions, thanks for this – noted.

34. I feel as though this may come across wrong, but it should probably be said.

    President Infinity is almost unplayable in it’s current state. The issues with candidates dogpiling has gotten WAY worse, and the polling in Iowa fluctuates so much, with national frontrunners having 0% of the vote.

    I like the idea of more undecided voters, but without the planned voting blocs it makes anything that happens prior to Iowa and New Hampshire pointless. If Warren wins in Iowa, she’ll blow out Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, etc even though Biden may have been polling well at the beginning of the scenario.

    That’s another issue. Candidates tank far too fast currently. By Iowa, no candidate usually has more than 8% of the vote nationally, and it makes no sense.

    There needs to be some sort of reasonable limits for the polling changes, and further changes to the AI behavior. I would go as far as to say that poll percentages cannot change beyond a certain amount in a certain timeframe. For example, a candidate cannot lose 25% in a single state in a two month period. This specific example probably wouldn’t work out, but you get what I mean.

    You could also do something about diminishing returns for attacks. For example, if Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Jay Inslee all attack Sherrod Brown in Iowa, the effectiveness decreases by, say, 35% per candidate, starting with the candidate with the highest attack power and descending from there. Again, maybe not the specific number, just an example.

35. “The issues with candidates dogpiling has gotten WAY worse, and the polling in Iowa fluctuates so much, with national frontrunners having 0% of the vote.”

    I haven’t seen this, so I’m guessing this happens in certain situations. Anyone else have this happen?

36. @CalebsParadox,

    What start dates are you using? Are you playing from the earlier start dates, or closer to the primaries start?

37. I’m playing in the default start date, November 3rd 2019.

38. OK, I can say continuing to improve game dynamics re dog-piling is on the to-do list.

39. So I’ve been away from this game for some time, and I recently re-subscribed to see how progress was going on things. After having played a handful of games and trying my hand at the campaign editor, I have a number of suggestions to put forward. Some of these I may have mentioned in the past, and I’m not sure how difficult some of these suggestions would be to code into the current engine. These suggestions are also not in any particular order of priority.

    – When you automate surrogates, there should be an option to have them concentrate on barnstorming or on fundraising. As some surrogates are specialized, it is strange that there are options to automate them as barnstormers or spinners, but not fundraisers.

    – The cost for organization and foot-soldiers should scale according to the population of a region, in much the same way that advertisements do. There probably still be some sort of flat cost, but organization and foot-soldiers in California should not cost the same to maintain as those in Wyoming.

    – The favorability system needs to be better explained “somewhere”. While I am excited as to its potential, at the moment I have no idea how to interpret the data shown or how it would effect any campaign. It isn’t obvious how to improve your favorability beyond moving your issue positions towards the national or regional center.

    – You should be able to recruit more than a single surrogate at once. While I have some issues with how surrogates are implemented in-game, the lack of being able to recruit more than one a time creates a massive back-log where you are constantly “retraining” surrogates, and many potential surrogates remain under-utilized, if they are utilized at all.

    – If foot-soldiers are inactive, they should not cost the same as when they are active; besides a small flat cost, their financial requirements should scale with their level of activation. For example, if a foot-soldier is being hit with a multiplier of 2/3 as they are between 30 to 60 days out from the general or the primary election, their cost should be scaled by (~0.66).

    – There should be an option to restrict the activities of certain candidates and parties to certain regions. This is extremely important for representing favorite-son candidates who weren’t actually seeking the nomination, and for Parties that had a strong regional focus and not much appeal outside that region. Right now the equivalent would be if the Bloc Quebecois were to, despite having no reason to, campaigning in British Columbia in Prime Minister Infinity, or the Scottish Nationalists in Southeast England.

    – This is a bugbear of mine, but I still don’t understand why, when entering percentages in regions for candidates or parties, you have to work with whole numbers exclusively. Having previously worked with Campaigns Forever where I could work to the tenths or hundredths place, its never been clear to me why this change was made, and it makes working with smaller parties rather difficult when their support doesn’t cleanly translate to whole numbers. Is this a stability issue with the engine, or something else?

    – Endorsers remain quirky, in that they are still endorsing candidates that they “really” should not be endorsing, like Senator Jim Inhofe or the NRA endorsing Hillary Clinton. A lot of this unfortunately I think comes down to the fact that in order to receive an endorsement, the player or candidate needs to spend a command point (or up to five) in order to confirm it. Often, even in the general election, there simply aren’t enough command points available to make such an investment worthwhile except for a select few endorsers. In light of this, I’d argue that candidates not have to make any sort of investment to confirm the endorsement, and that once a candidate hits 95, that number ticks up once a turn on its own until its confirmed. A candidate can still invest in an endorsement should they so choose, and they may have to to beat out another candidate, and it’d remove most of the present quirkiness.

    – I believe that the “How-Well-Known” stat should be returned, and I’m not quite sure why it was removed in the first place. There are obviously certain candidates that have more of a presence in the national consciousness then others, and it remains strange that lesser known third party candidates can supplant major candidates in the news.

    – There needs to be some way to “deactivate” regions that don’t have any electoral votes from being a point of interest in the general election; it can be annoying when surrogates spend their time or foot-soldiers are assigned to Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands.

    I’m sure I’m forgetting some things, but those seem to be what I have noted at the moment.

40. Any update on the Mac version

41. @Ariostos, thanks for this!