I have no idea how to win Gregaria in the standard setting.
The only ones voting for me are socialist (12% of population) and commuters (16% of population)- and I haven’t found a way to increase their numbers…
I tried the other way round to get the largest groups to vote for me (capitalists 60-70%); Middle Income (50-60%)) - but no matter how much I do for them, I hardly get more than 25% of their votes… - I tried to look what else the members wanted… - serve the conservatives, do something for the environment… - but time is simply too short. My party has like 4% membership and the opposition 60% plus… - which means I’m having low voter turnout also…
Of course I could try to fiddle with the settings before start (longer term, more socialists etc.), but I wanted to win it in the standard setting!
Is it possible? Has someone achieved a victory in the standard setting? How?
Yes, I’ve achieved it a few times. It’s all about the timing of relative policies really. Basically I do the following:-
(1) Maximise health spending (and community policing) on the first turn. That will eventually solve your health crises, but takes a long time to fully implement hence starting it very early.
(2) Maximise school spending (and micro-grants) on the second turn. This is similarly a long-term benefit, and will solve your teachers strike quite quickly.
(3) Deal with law and order crises by maximising police spending on the third turn.
(4) Next, work on the economy, which is key not only funding your other programmes without unpopular tax rises, but also for dealing with poverty and unemployment costs. Small business grants, science funding, university grants, technology grants and childcare provision should all be maximised for this (will take a few turns). You should also reduce corporation tax, which will boost GDP and prevent a tax evasion dilemma that you’ll get otherwise.
They are the big four. At the end of that, your popularity should be at least in the 30s, and will continue to increases each turn even if you didn’t do anything else. You’ll also be running big deficits, but don’t worry about that, and on no account raises taxes until after the next election.
After that, there are a number of things you can do, but generally I implement a few basic welfare measures (such as disability benefit), the odd popular measure (such as jury trial) and then focus on environmental measures which increases popularity with the sizable number of environmentalists (such as pollution controls, car emission limits, biofuel subsidies etc.).
I find that this will normally take me to around 50% or so, depending on external events. Curiously, though, I find that even if my popularity before and after the election is in the high 40s, I can still win the election comfortably due to turnout. That’s because my party membership has increased, largely due to a high number of very happy state employees as a result of my high public spending which has been in place for several years before the election.