Part 10: - Extra - A Quick Look At Campaign Mode
Extra - A Quick Look At Campaign ModeSo, remember how I talked a bit about the campaign mode the game added with the latest update? Well, I've since played through both the Republican and Democratic campaigns with my min-maxed custom candidate, so I guess I might as well talk about it and the create-a-candidate mode a bit. First, the candidate I made:
A revamped version of the candidate I posted in the thread earlier, now given the name of the character her appearance is based on, and with the stats crunched down a bit further.
The way the create-a-candidate stats work is pretty simple. You start with flat 5s in every single stat and 10 additional points to spend. Furthermore, every stat point in Stamina, Money and Fund Raising Ability costs two points, since these stats are more important than the others. Also, you get 100 "issue points" that you can spend setting your candidate's stance on certain issues. In my case, I just put the maximum (50 points) into Supporting Fighting ISIS and Supporting Support For Israel, the most popular issues that everybody likes. Now, let's look at the theory behind these stat points. First, the dump stats - the ones I put 0 points into:
- Appearance / Intelligence: These stats only matter in interviews, and you can easily go an entire campaign just ignoring them. The bonuses you can get from them can be nice, but I'd rather have 10 extra points to spend.
- Minority Appeal / Religious: These two only matter for campaign HQs built in states with a large minority/religious population. So 1) it's only going to affect a few states, 2) it's very situational, and 3) the game doesn't even tell you what those states are, from what I can tell. Pass.
- Media Bias: This is a new dump stat for me - originally, I figured that I should have some of it because winning over undecideds is key, and that's what Media Bias does. However, since there is a political operative that gives you +10 to Media Bias for 5 measly political capital points, it turned out that I could use those points elsewhere.
As for the important stats:
- Stamina: Stamina is important, but since it costs 2 points per 1 stat point, you don't want to go particularly overboard. 7 is a good number.
- Money: The money you start with is very important, because having money early means building a lot of HQs early, which gives you a vast array of advantages.
- Fund Raising Ability: Being able to get a lot of money out of wealthy states is also important, but not as much as the stuff you start out with. Once you get that 100% awareness in California money, the difference doesn't matter as much as the difference between 8 and 10 Money would.
- Charisma / Credibility / Experience: All three of these stats funnel into the same thing - manipulating issue scores. Charisma makes ads and speeches more effectively manipulate issue scores, Credibility allows you to more effectively manipulate your opponent's issue scores, and Experience lets you get more endorsements, which give you nationwide issue score boosts. Combine the three and you have an effective campaigning machine.
So that's why Monaca here is the way she is, and from what I can tell, the results work out pretty well. I had her go up against Michelle Obama in an AI simulation, and it was a landslide victory for the Republicans. Anyway, on to the campaign mode opponents. First, the Republican campaign. We go through these in order, with the difficulty of the game starting on Simple for the first opponent and going up one step with every next opponent. So our Cruz/Obama campaign is currently on the difficulty level of the second campaign opponent. Also note that every opponent here was only added to the game in this latest update, with the exception of Bill Clinton.
Jimmy Carter:
Stamina: 7
Money: 6
Fund Raising Ability: 5
Charisma: 6
Appearance: 8
Credibility: 3
Experience: 2
Intelligence: 5
Media Bias: 5
Minority Appeal: 5
Religious: 7
This one is pretty damn easy, and sets the tone for the missions to come - the one issue that is the most important one is the one you hammer on for the entire campaign, and then you win.
Bill Clinton:
Stamina: 5
Money: 6
Fund Raising Ability: 8
Charisma: 7
Appearance: 7
Credibility: 3
Experience: 8
Intelligence: 6
Media Bias: 5
Minority Appeal: 6
Religious: 2
This one is similar - you're given one issue to bang on about constantly, and you're also given a Hollywood Friend too, which gives you more awareness in the state you put him in. The Scandal Monger says that he "halves the opponent's integrity in the target state". One problem: I have no idea what "integrity" is - meaning that there is no stat in the game with that name. I have no idea what this guy changes. Oh well, still a simple victory.
Lyndon B. Johnson:
Stamina: 7
Money: 7
Fund Raising Ability: 9
Charisma: 5
Appearance: 5
Credibility: 5
Experience: 10
Intelligence: 7
Media Bias: 7
Minority Appeal: 8
Religious: 5
From here on out, things get a bit more tricky. The main important issues in this election are Big Government and Higher Minimum Wage, issues that Republicans oppose by default, so you've got a hole to work yourself out of. However, since my candidate is a master at manipulating issue scores, I get out of the hole with ease and score a good victory.
Woodrow Wilson:
Stamina: 8
Money: 6
Fund Raising Ability: 9
Charisma: 5
Appearance: 5
Credibility: 7
Experience: 7
Intelligence: 7
Media Bias: 6
Minority Appeal: 1
Religious: 7
This one is where things start to get rough. While you have a good issue to work with, since Republicans are big on A Strong Military, Wilson is even more strong on that issue, and he has a flat 10% awareness bonus on every single state, which can cause some problems. The AI has also been continually getting stronger. Still, I manage to beat this one on the first try.
Thomas Jefferson:
Stamina: 8
Money: 8
Fund Raising Ability: 6
Charisma: 7
Appearance: 8
Credibility: 6
Experience: 9
Intelligence: 9
Media Bias: 8
Minority Appeal: 3
Religious: 2
This... is weird. The inherent Democratic dislike towards Traditional Values and Religious Freedom makes it so that at the beginning of this campaign, there isn't a single state that leans Democratic, and a whole ton that leans Republican. With this head start, even the improved AI can't make this a more difficult campaign than the one against Wilson. Very strange.
John F. Kennedy:
Stamina: 7
Money: 6
Fund Raising Ability: 8
Charisma: 9
Appearance: 9
Credibility: 7
Experience: 7
Intelligence: 8
Media Bias: 8
Minority Appeal: 6
Religious: 5
This is the big one. And yes, I know that it's a crime that FDR wasn't in there anywhere. Anyway, we've now gotten up to where the difficulty level is called "Painful", with only two levels above that ("Crippling" and "Masochistic"), and the AI is using a lot of actions that a lower level AI wouldn't (in our campaign, you will note that the AI will not move their VP around the map, so it's very much possible it can pick a useless VP [like Donald Trump for a Republican - he'll just sit in New York and boost awareness in all those states that will go Democrat regardless - though there's one thing that I can not yet confirm: I believe that a VP with a high Money stat will give you more money when you pick them - well, it's why the tickets I ran in these campaign modes were Towa/Trump and Towa/Bloomberg, anyway]). JFK gave me a real run for my money, and I actually had to "cheat" a bit to beat him - when he beat me the first time around, I went and edited the issues my candidate supported from Fighting ISIS and Support For Israel to Curbing Russian Might (the issue names aren't quite consistent) and Funding NASA. That allowed me to sneak away with a close victory.
So, that was the Republican campaign, now, let's take a look at the Democrat one. For this campaign, I actually took screenshots of my victory maps, so we can take a look at those too. You will notice that the Republican campaign is a bit more difficult than the Democrat one.
Ulysses S. Grant
Stamina: 6
Money: 4
Fund Raising Ability: 5
Charisma: 6
Appearance: 6
Credibility: 8
Experience: 2
Intelligence: 7
Media Bias: 3
Minority Appeal: 6
Religious: 5
Note that it says "economic issues" - in reality, that only means that Deficit Reduction is the top issue and that's it. How did I do?
The full god damn sweep. I honestly didn't expect this going into it - I figured a flyover state holdout would turn it into a McGovern-Mondale, but no, I actually managed to flip every single state. You'll notice a fuckton of TV ads in California - this is the basic strategy I developed for the campaign missions:
- Almost every campaign mission revolves heavily around one issue, or maybe two or three.
- TV ads allow you to hit issue scores for every single state while boosting your awareness in every state as well.
- I min-maxed my candidate to maximize the power ads have as well as give me a lot of money to make those ads with.
- So with that in mind, I would build up my base HQs (three Campaign HQs at levels 3, 2 and 2, one Outreach Center at level 3, and one Consulting Office at level 3), raise my awareness in California to 100%, then go to town with fundraisers, then go to town with TV ads.
- And while doing that, I would get endorsements and place operatives as needed.
This base strategy got me through every Democrat campaign mission just fine. In the later ones, it would need some more hands-on campaigning in specific states, but the general gist stayed the same. Note that this probably wouldn't work for our campaign - we don't have the money to play with and our ads won't be as effective that we can rely on only them.
Richard Nixon:
Stamina: 6
Money: 9
Fund Raising Ability: 6
Charisma: 5
Appearance: 3
Credibility: 1
Experience: 9
Intelligence: 9
Media Bias: 2
Minority Appeal: 0 (wow)
Religious: 4
This campaign is basically just a regular one. Both candidates having no Credibility basically means that I can't use attack ads as effectively, so I just blanketed the airwaves with positive ads about me.
And the result was another resounding victory.
Theodore Roosevelt:
Stamina: 7
Money: 8
Fund Raising Ability: 9
Charisma: 9
Appearance: 5
Credibility: 7
Experience: 7
Intelligence:
Media Bias: 2
Minority Appeal: 5
Religious: 6
Wall Street Regulation isn't as important as A Strong Military, so Roosevelt has a head start on us, but he can't compete with the ad blitz either.
Again, not a lot of competition here.
Ronald Reagan:
Stamina: 7
Money: 8
Fund Raising Ability: 8
Charisma: 9
Appearance: 7
Credibility: 7
Experience: 9
Intelligence: 7
Media Bias: 5
Minority Appeal: 4
Religious: 5
This is a kind of interesting one - the extra money and starting with a Money Man means that we can milk California even faster and even harder, which only helps us. Also, during the endgame of this campaign, I was crowing from the rooftops about how I, the Democrat candidate for presidency, love tax cuts, in order to win over independents.
Essentially, Reagan got out-Reagonomics'd.
Abraham Lincoln:
Stamina: 7
Money: 4
Fund Raising Ability: 8
Charisma: 8
Appearance: 3
Credibility: 9
Experience: 9
Intelligence: 8
Media Bias: 5
Minority Appeal: 9
Religious: 7
Lincoln is where I start running into some speedbumps. #BlackLivesMatter being important is good for us, but the Confederate Flag Display being important isn't. However, since the former is the more important important issue, we have an advantage out of the gate. Furthermore, having three Intimidators (reduce opponent's awareness in target state by 4%) means we can target particular states and deal a heavy blow to Lincoln's awareness. However, the AI is strong enough at this point that holding certain states is no longer tenable.
So during this campaign, I fought like a motherfucker over Texas, but in the end, it just wasn't possible to hold it, and it went hard Republican in the end. And because of that, I ended up losing a fair share of Southern states, but still, a fairly solid win. And of course, I ended up screaming about how much I love displaying the Confederate Flag since my standing amongst Democrats was solid as hell and it was the easiest way to get to Independents.
George Washington:
Stamina: 8
Money: 8
Fund Raising Ability: 8
Charisma: 9
Appearance: 4
Credibility: 6
Experience: 8
Intelligence: 6
Media Bias: 8
Minority Appeal: 4
Religious: 8
Big Government being the top issue is bad for us, and the AI is on top of its game against us, so this isn't a good start. However, note the map being covered in political opportunities to start with.
They weren't fucking kidding. This campaign was basically won by me in the first few weeks, because I beelined for all those opportunities and found a fucking goldmine. Two Money Men (meaning that payouts from California were increased by 50%), two Movie Directors (meaning creation costs of my beloved TV ads in California would be cut by 75%), some Cheerleaders (double awareness gains in a state), some Media Darlings (improve all ratings in a state), some Rich Donors (straight up get one million dollars), and not a single negative one amongst all of them.
So while I found it even less possible to win flyover states, I could spam the everloving fuck out of TV ads and straight up get 100% awareness in every single state while pushing a lot of Democrat issues, which secured victory in a lot of important Democrat states. I lost some particularly painful states - Ohio and Virginia were states where I put a lot of effort into and I lost them by a hair - but in the end, victory was achieved, and it was achieved securely.
So that was the campaign mode in short. Nothing all that special, but it's nice to have a particular challenge put before you with little things that make the challenge special.
Also, to close things out, here's this guy that was also added with the latest update:
Mike Pence:
Stamina: 5
Money: 5
Fund Raising Ability: 5
Charisma: 5
Appearance: 6
Credibility: 5
Experience: 7
Intelligence: 5
Media Bias: 4
Minority Appeal: 4
Religious: 8
Wow. So exciting.