The big change/addition that I would like to see in this game is the inclusion of parliamentary seats and electoral college votes in order to win an election instead of the popular vote, due to the fact that many countries don’t have a proportional representation system for voting (possible new set of policies).
Parliamentary-Style Governments don’t always mean you win the popular vote. In the last Canadian election, Justin Trudeau won a minority government without taking the popular vote. It would be cool to see how many seats you gain or lose based on your decisions, and how well you used electioneering to your advantage.
With the last United States election, Clinton won the popular vote by close to three million votes but Trump won due to his targeting of key swing states, thus giving him the electoral college victory. You could tie electioneering into this as well.
I think these changes could really add an additional layer of depth and realism to the game. Doesn’t have to be a huge change either, it could simply be outputting the seats/electoral college votes below the popular vote.
It’ll be question of complexity v gameplay v Cliff’s workload. If you communicate with him, he might let you know how doable or undoable this could be.
I would like to do more (maybe eventually an expansion) to cover topcis such as encouraging voter turnout, electoral fraud, who can vote, security of voting machines etc. What I think would not be fun is to represent actual constituencies/states for each country.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere on the forums, but basically the issue is that it requires local knowledge for the politics of all localities in all nations by all players. For example, I know the politics of New Hampshire and very different to that of Texas, or Idaho, but does everyone? And how many US born players here can tell me the likely winning electoral strategy in surrey vs Aberdeen, in terms of the UK?
Thats the reason we don’t do it. I think you could do it if it was a pure US-focused game that only let the player play that one country, but I prefer to take an international approach.
That is a valid point, if the game is meant for an international audience that would be simpler! We could just say that you win the electoral college even with 50% of the vote because, oh I don’t know, Florida voted for you?