Part 5: - Week 1
Week 1Alright, the people have spoken!
First, they wanted HQ upgrades (unanimously so!), and HQ upgrades they will get.
This brings our campaign HQ at home up to maximum, and it gains us a little bonus!
This is a campaign operative, and a special one, in fact. I'll go over operatives in detail later in the update, but for now, just know that they're characters we can move around the map and they do things in the state they're in. This guy raises awareness by 1% in the state he's in. Nothing special, but it helps.
And next, it was decided that we were to attack Michelle Obama on the topic of Fighting ISIS.
Every time you attack an opponent, you get this newspaper thing. I don't get it.
And there's our TV ad, sitting snug between Michelle's HQ and our HQ.
Locally, this pushes her into "oppose" territory on Fighting ISIS, however, that's probably not going to last. That's it for week 1, let's move on to week 2 and see what Michelle does this time.
She still seems to be fixated on buildings - she went to New York and built a second Outreach Center, then went back to Texas and upgraded her Campaign HQ. Seems like she's going for money, awareness, and PR Clout. I'll talk about PR Clout and what it does later as well.
Here's the polls for this week - it seems like Fighting ISIS has actually dropped in importance, while Reducing Wealth Gap has gone up. Not a good start - and I'm not sure if we're to blame here, if negative advertising actually lowers the issue importance for people. Eh, we'll see, I suppose.
Finally, here's a shot of the weekly news wrap-up. You can use this to check and see what the candidates did this week. The small news articles are occasionally amusing, but usually nothing special.
Now, it's time for my second infodump. First, let's go over the concept of swing states. Wikipedia says that "[i]n presidential politics of the United States, a swing state (also, battleground state or purple state, in reference to red states and blue states) is a state in which no single candidate or party has overwhelming support in securing that state's electoral college votes." So if you look at the first page of the spreadsheet, you can get a good estimate on what our swing states are going to be by looking at the "Rep Lead" column in the "Static Data" sheet. If we say that a difference smaller or equal to 5% makes a swing state, we get the following list:
Arizona
South Carolina
Georgia
Texas
New Hampshire
Missouri
Virginia
Iowa
Ohio
Oklahoma
Colorado
Wisconsin
Florida
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Nevada
However, that's too many states. Let's throw out those that are worth less than 10 electoral college votes.
Arizona
Georgia
Texas
Missouri
Virginia
Ohio
Wisconsin
Florida
Massachusetts
Minnesota
If we also take out Texas, which I think we have on lock due to home state advantage, and bold the most important states (worth more than 15 electoral votes), we could get this list of swing states for our game:
Arizona
Georgia
Missouri
Virginia
Ohio
Wisconsin
Florida
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Florida in particular is swing state #1, with it being the #3 state in electoral votes. This is just for your information, as a list of states you might want to particularly target. But whatever, you do your own thing.
Next, I might as well explain the last two major things we need to pay attention to to you - Operatives and Endorsements.
Operatives:
Operatives are what we get when we use our Political Capital, and they're pretty crucial to victory. They are characters just like our candidate, and as such can be moved around the map at a cost of one stamina point and 25.000$. Once we have 5 Political Capital, we can choose from the following Operatives:
- Fixer: This guy allows us to remove an operative of our opponent's from the game.
- Spin Doctor: Gives us a 15% issue rating boost in the state he's in.
- Smear Merchant: Drops our opponent's issue ratings by 15% in the state he's in. Combine this guy with a Spin Doctor, and you can get the swing that might be needed to win an important swing state.
- Consultant: Boosts our awareness by 4 points every week in the state she's in.
- Advertisement Guru: Lowers our ad maintenance costs by 75% in the state he's in.
- Intimidator: Lowers our opponent's awareness by 4 points every week in the state he's in.
- Speech Writer: Gives us a +10 to Charisma and makes our speeches more effective.
- Fashion Consultant: Gives us a +10 to Appearance and makes our ads more effective.
- PR Consultant: Gives us a +10 to Media Bias and makes our interviews more effective.
...er, I'll get to interviews later. Also, the operative we got this week is special in that you can't get him with Political Capital, only by upgrading your HQ. Then again, the Consultant is a far better version of the Political Operative, so whatever.
Endorsements:
Endorsements are pretty simple. When we get PR Clout, we can buy Endorsements with them, which are flat bonuses to issue ratings in every state. Now, there are two (technically three) kinds of endorsement - they're split between Republican and Democrat endorsements, with the caveat being that those that don't belong to your party will cost you more PR Clout to get. The Republican endorsements are as follows:
- Christian Confederation: 5 points to Opposing Abortion Rights, 10 to Supporting Religious Freedom
- National Foreign Policy Committee: 10 to Supporting Fighting ISIS, 5 to Opposing Iranian Nuclear Deal
- The National Gun Owner's Association: 5 to Opposing Big Government, 10 to Supporting Gun Rights
- Tea Party Movement: 5 to Opposing Big Government, 10 to Supporting Tax Cuts
- US Chamber Of Business: 5 to Opposing Big Government, 10 to Supporting Reducing Unemployment
If our first endorsement were to be a Republican one, it would cost us 8 PR Clout.
And the Democrat ones are:
- National Civil Liberties Union: 5 points to Supporting #BlackLivesMatter, 10 to Supporting Gay Marriage
- National Association For Women: 10 to Supporting Abortion Rights, 5 to Supporting Gay Marriage
- National Organization For The Support Of Colored People: 5 to Supporting #BlackLivesMatter, 10 to Opposing Repealing Obamacare
- National Union Action Network: 5 to Opposing Outsourcing Jobs, 10 to Supporting State Unions
- The Environmentalist Club: 10 to Supporting The Environment, 5 to Supporting Supporting Green Jobs
If our first endorsement were to be a Democrat one, it would cost us 16 PR Clout.
Finally, there's one more "endorsement" - "National Organization". This isn't so much an endorsement as it is using PR Clout to rally your forces, which expresses itself as a 2 point awareness boost in every state. This one is the most expensive of all, clocking in at 20 PR Clout, if it were to be our first one.
All endorsements become more expensive the more you get.
Now, I know what you're all thinking: "Should we snipe the #BlackLivesMatter endorsements away from Michelle?" Honestly, I think it's not worth it - at least not without us securing our own important endorsements first (most notably the National Foreign Policy Committee). Since grabbing Democrat endorsements is more expensive than Republican ones, the cost-benefit relation gets worse, so they're not as effective. However, in the end, it's up to you. Finally...
Interviews:
I've mentioned interviews a few times, might as well explain them, even if they haven't come up yet. Interviews are pretty simple as well - when the game decides to make an interview available, both candidates will be told that there is an interview opportunity available in a certain state, much like political opportunities. However, unlike political opportunities, interviews are partisan - both candidates get an opportunity, so you can't take it away from your opponent.
So you decide to go on an interview on a knock-off 60 Minutes, or a knock-off Colbert Report, or whatever else they have, how does it work? Simple - your interviewer asks a question, and you need to answer it. The answers you can give depend on your Intelligence stat, and you also need to make sure it resonates with your base. Don't go into an interview as a Republican and start talking about the wonders of gun control. Of course, it will be up to me to answer those questions anyway - you see, there's a 60 second time limit on every question you get, so I can hardly do voting on that. Instead, I'm just going to answer the questions to the best of my ability, and we'll see how it goes. However, I can't do anything if I get fucked and all I get to pick from is shitty answers.
But we'll get to that once we get to our first interview.
VOTING
Alright, so the campaign kicked off with HQ building and attack ads. What's next? Do we want to go and plop down some level 1 HQs in some states, maybe do some speeches, maybe some ground game ads... we've still got lots of options.
Campaign Assets:
- 610.000$ cash, 90.000$ income per week from HQs
- 11 stamina
- 0 PR Clout, +0 per week from HQs
- 0 Political Capital, +0 per week from HQs
Possible Actions:
- Move candidate or any operative to another state (cost: 1 stamina, 25.000$)
- Create a ground game ad in the current state (cost: 3 stamina, 50.000$ up front, 3.000$ per week - requires an issue and what direction it should go, i.E. "I Favor", "I Oppose", "Opponent Favors", "Opponent Opposes")
- Create a TV ad in the current state (cost: 3 stamina, 450.000$ up front, 30.000$ per week - requires an issue and what direction it should go, i.E. "I Favor", "I Oppose", "Opponent Favors", "Opponent Opposes")
- Give a speech in the current state (cost: 5 stamina - requires an issue and what direction it should go, i.E. "I Favor", "I Oppose", "Opponent Favors", "Opponent Opposes")
- Fundraise in the current state (cost: 3 stamina)
- Build a new building in the current state (cost: 4 stamina, 250.000$ - requires that a building has not yet been built in this state)
- Upgrade a level 1 building to a level 2 building in the current state (cost: 4 stamina, 500.000$ - requires a level 1 building in this state)
- Upgrade a level 2 building to a level 3 building in the current state (cost: 4 stamina, 1.000.000$ - requires a level 2 building in this state)
Spreadsheet