Perceptions

So, I can count all the times I’ve used media stunts to change my perceptions on both hands. Mostly I just never think of them. I think the game would be benefitted if there was a notification that popped up on the alerts screen that mentioned that your perceptions are negative or super low. This could serve as a friendly reminder that such media stunts exist.

I also find tho that such stunts are rarely what I want to do. More often, I want to appeal to my base, but I can only do this by giving speeches in the turns leading up to an election. Perhaps on the other turns there could be an option to hold rallies which have muted effects; alternatively, the speeches could be always available, but their effects are amplified in the three turns leading up to an election.

I also wonder if there could be greater detriments for having low popularity/perceptions. I still think the game could be benefitted by having a third “lose state” like premature removal. Currently, you lose if you fail an election or if you anger a specific voter base too much. I think having your leader threatened with Impeachment or a vote of no confidence could be appropriate if you lack support of the general populace. Maybe something like 40% or less general approval has a chance to trigger a recall attempt.

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I also think it’s worth noting how the Compassionate and Strong Leader perceptions are quite well populated with inputs while Trustworthy perception is only affected by events outside of your control and Corruption.

I’d like the opportunity to work towards building all perceptions (since there’s literally an achievement for doing that which is currently extremely difficult to trigger, implying you’re SUPPOSED to be able to max Trustworthyness), and I don’t love rolling the dice on stunts.

Similarly, having all Perceptions radically low would logically call for impeachment proceedings.

While I’m at it, I’d love one or two more “soft power” inputs to Strong Leader, as the Space Program provides. I feel like the Obama era had particular examples of this kind of impression, in which power was eluded to via challenging China on climate standards, unilateralism, peacekeeping, cultural predominance, and above all, sweet free throws

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I agree that the media stunts need another look, as well as the balance of the 3 bars. Some clearer explanation as to how these translate to votes would be good.

I had suggested in the past that a player who doesn’t do media stunts would see an “out of touch” penalty slowly building until they made a public appearance. This is because in my games where my electoral chances are looking at all good I tend to avoid the risk of media stunts.

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For some reason, most of the times all the media stunts fails. For some reason the 50% succed change is more successful than a 90% success rate… what?

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I completely missed that Obama clip XD.

My thought process was that assassination is an unexpected end because the player greatly angered one specific group; recall would be the unexpected end when a great portion of the general population is mildly angered by you. Altho now that I think about it, I don’t kno how necessary that is? It’d need be properly forecasted, but we already have elections modeled in the game which accomplish a similar thing. My gut says there’s some value to keeping players on their toes more and adding in slightly more chaos into the game, but my head is failing to see any meaningful difference between that and the elections we already have.

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Its a very good idea that extremely negative perceptions could maybe be called out on the quarterly report. its probably easy for new players to miss them entirely.
As I recall the election results screen does note how many votes were within the margin of polling difference affected by perceptions (which is its way of guessing how many votes were won or lost due to perceptions). I may not be showing or explaining that very well :frowning:

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While we’re on the topic of unexpected game endings, coalitions need the possibility of snap elections. If you get low in the polls then the opposition parties smell blood in the water and force a snap election. Alternatively, a player who is doing well can force an election after taking a penalty.

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