I just played my second playthrough of this game – or attempted to. My first playthrough was as USA and I did pretty well. I was noticing massive issues with voter turnout, but I had enough popularity that even with turnout numbers such as 30% vs 100%, I could still win an election. At any rate, I was feeling pretty good after doing well with USA, so I went on to something that I figured would be more challenging: Zambeezia.
True enough, it was much tougher than my playthrough as USA, seeing as how the GDP was total crap. At any rate, some effective literacy policies got my GDP off of the floor and I was doing pretty damn well, in my opinion. Nearing the first election, I had a popularity of about ~60%, a surplus of about 18$ billion, and my nasty technology problems were all but disappeared. Oh, and crime was pretty much eliminated. I think nothing short of a nuclear war would have prevented a president able to pull his country out of that big of a shithole from being elected again, if it were real life. Well anyway, as you’ve no doubt guessed by now as I wouldn’t be making the thread otherwise, I lost the election.
Horribly.
I was defeated in a landslide. It was something like 66% to 33%, even though I had over 60% popularity. The voter turnout numbers were just ridiculous. People supporting me had less than 35% turnout, and my opponent had about 99% turnout. I kind of wish I took a screenshot before angrily killing the process. I truly feel robbed out of a game where I thought I was doing really well. I also find it a bit ironic that my opponent had nearly 100% voter turnout when Zambeezia is supposed to be an apathetic country.
I’m aware that voter turnout is a huge issue in real life, but it’s never going to be as ridiculous as 35% vs 100%. It’s made all the more ridiculous when you consider that there is no such thing as campaigning in this game. It’s all done by some sort of nonsensical algorithm, and I basically just have to hope people join my party. No doubt that I’ll be shelving this game for a while…
Edit: Oh yeah if anyone has some tips to improve voter turnout I’d love to hear them, though I suspect there isn’t much you can do.