Suggested fixes Fall 2022

[Arkansas Progressive]

@MrPotatoTed Currently the rules for battles do not determine if the next battle is naval or ground one.

[MrPotatoTed]

10 hours ago, Arkansas Progressive said:

@MrPotatoTed Currently the rules for battles do not determine if the next battle is naval or ground one.

I believe you go through naval battles first (rolling 50% chance of another naval battle after each one).  Once naval is done, then you start the ground battles.

[Arkansas Progressive]

Alright. 

[jnewt]

Coming back to the Controversial cabinet appointees, I really think this needs some further tweaking. I was just looking ahead at who @MrPotatoTed President Roosevelt may select for his cabinet, but a few of his real-life cabinet members aren't even going to be eligible, as well as a handful of other Presidents' appointees (I'm using "eligible" loosely here - I mean that even with a 64-32 Senate majority they'll automatically fail because they have Controversial).

1. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace
2. Postmaster General James Farley
3. Ambassador Joseph P Kennedy Sr
4. Fmr. AG A Mitchell Palmer
5. Fmr. Sec. William Gibbs McAdoo
6. Fed Board Member Charles Sumner Hamlin

The three above FDR cabinet members would be dead on arrival if they were nominated in-game, and I can't imagine that's an intended consequence. Have we thought about making it 50/50 for whether a Senator with Integrity will vote Nay on a Controversial nominee, rather than 100%?

[MrPotatoTed]

13 hours ago, jnewt said:

Coming back to the Controversial cabinet appointees, I really think this needs some further tweaking. I was just looking ahead at who @MrPotatoTed President Roosevelt may select for his cabinet, but a few of his real-life cabinet members aren't even going to be eligible, as well as a handful of other Presidents' appointees (I'm using "eligible" loosely here - I mean that even with a 64-32 Senate majority they'll automatically fail because they have Controversial).

1. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace
2. Postmaster General James Farley
3. Ambassador Joseph P Kennedy Sr
4. Fmr. AG A Mitchell Palmer
5. Fmr. Sec. William Gibbs McAdoo
6. Fed Board Member Charles Sumner Hamlin

The three above FDR cabinet members would be dead on arrival if they were nominated in-game, and I can't imagine that's an intended consequence. Have we thought about making it 50/50 for whether a Senator with Integrity will vote Nay on a Controversial nominee, rather than 100%?

We've thought about it, but I think the consensus we reached is that the actual problem is that too many Senators gain integrity (or controversial) and then that dictates all future nominees.  So one cabinet nominee fails, maybe for valid reasons...and then one lucky 1/3 roll means that half the damn Senate suddenly has integrity which impacts all future nominations.  I think we agreed to change that to like a 20% or 10% roll for each individual Senator instead of 100% for all Senators.

[OrangeP47]

4 hours ago, MrPotatoTed said:

We've thought about it, but I think the consensus we reached is that the actual problem is that too many Senators gain integrity (or controversial) and then that dictates all future nominees.  So one cabinet nominee fails, maybe for valid reasons...and then one lucky 1/3 roll means that half the damn Senate suddenly has integrity which impacts all future nominations.  I think we agreed to change that to like a 20% or 10% roll for each individual Senator instead of 100% for all Senators.

The problem is we agreed but we didn't actually do the change so we're all continuing to drown.

[10centjimmy]

1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

The problem is we agreed but we didn't actually do the change so we're all continuing to drown.

Dragging my feet towards 2.3....

[jnewt]

Not a "fix" per se, but I'd recommend the rule that allows Cabinet and Cabinet-level Eggheads to make suggestions to (or in the case of a Pliable and Passive President, decisions for,) the President be limited to just Cabinet members (and Key Advisor). 

For example, in the 1948 playtest, the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, is in my faction, but because he's an Egghead to a Passive and Pliable President, he has more control over whether we invade Hungary than JFK (Note: the Fed is an independent agency and not a Cabinet-level position IRL). It's a bit silly to have the Chair of the Fed give foreign policy advice. The same could be said for the FBI Director, CIA Director, and National Security Advisor giving economic advice.

Edited June 30, 2023 by jnewt
added Key Advisor

[10centjimmy]

For CPU rules on making decisions, specifically for cabinet as above, it would be useful to have a dice roll to weugh between faction self interest and helping the party. Right now in ideologies playtest, a faction is recommending an action that will give a 25% roll for - party preference vs. A choice that would give a 40% roll + party preference,  because the first choice would give 50 pts for lobby.  Not sure how the balance could be made for these types of cpu decisions, but there could be a 50/50 roll when multiple reasons crop up,  such as lobby vs party factions lobbies. Still weighing crisis points higher. 

[ebrk85]

Need to specify in rules that a protégé can only have 1 Kingmaker.

That is a Kingmaker from one state and a Master Kingmaker from another both can't take on the same protégé. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by ebrk85

[jnewt]

I recommend that we reduce the probability of Senators gaining Iron Fist from winning elections. Right now, it’s a 5-6 die roll after winning your third term. My faction in the 1948 playtest currently has nine pols with the trait, the Democratic Party has 25 overall, and six Senators gained it from our last election cycle. 

I’d recommend reducing it to 5%, but perhaps starting with the second Senate term won? (That way it wouldn’t be exclusive to long-term incumbents.) I’m not sure how common the trait is intended to be, but statistically speaking, based on the number of elections won by each IRL Senator, it’d be reasonable to expect a total of about 20.67 of them would have gained Iron Fist by now, which seems far too high. 

[10centjimmy]

Point for debate, not necessarily a fix. 

@ebrk85pointed out there currently are no rules regarding the cpu drafting a party flipping statesman.  Would it be worth it to include a rule to have CPU attempt to dradt an opposing party pol (with the party flying trait, within draftable ideology) of the pol's pv was above a certain number? Like 100 with the new formula? This would only take place with a 50/50 dice roll. 

I suggest this because in the 1800 playtest, I attempt to draft Henry Clay across party lines and was successful.  He's a game changer of a statesman, but the CPU would likely never consider attempting to draft him even though they could. 

[ebrk85]

5 minutes ago, 10centjimmy said:

Point for debate, not necessarily a fix. 

@ebrk85pointed out there currently are no rules regarding the cpu drafting a party flipping statesman.  Would it be worth it to include a rule to have CPU attempt to dradt an opposing party pol (with the party flying trait, within draftable ideology) of the pol's pv was above a certain number? Like 100 with the new formula? This would only take place with a 50/50 dice roll. 

I suggest this because in the 1800 playtest, I attempt to draft Henry Clay across party lines and was successful.  He's a game changer of a statesman, but the CPU would likely never consider attempting to draft him even though they could. 

CPU also won't currently draft outside of their draft ideologies even on their own team.

So if wanted to add this in would also to to change to have they attempt ideo outside their draft ideo.

[jnewt]

In the 1800 playtest, I've controlled the Speaker of the House the entire time (currently 1810), so I've assigned committees for blue each time, and only one faction has had anybody eligible to serve as a chair for the committees. None of the other three factions have ever had a single person eligible.

I don't even mind the idea of some inflexibility with assigning chairs, because it doesn't seem uncommon for one person to chair the same committee for years at a time in real life, but the fact there hasn't even been an option on three different factions through ten years seems like an issue to me.

I'd recommend making it slightly easier for Reps to gain Legis (since 2 Legis, or Leadership, is required to chair a committee). Maybe something like three random winning Reps gain +1 Legis right after running elections?

[OrangeP47]

Are you doing gains correctly? Because we're overflowing in high legis people in our playtest.

[OrangeP47]

Quick demo check of our current house in 1840.

Reps

1 legis - 42

2 legis - 20

3 legis - 12

4 legis - 1

5 legis - 4

TBF, it might be a problem your house size, in general, is very small.  You just don't have reps in general.

[jnewt]

44 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

Are you doing gains correctly? Because we're overflowing in high legis people in our playtest.

Don't Reps not get election gains?

[OrangeP47]

5 minutes ago, jnewt said:

Don't Reps not get election gains?

They get gains when they are assigned to committee.

[jnewt]

23 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

They get gains when they are assigned to committee.

Ohhhh right, I'm pretty sure that's been done correctly, so I guess it's just a fluke that no one has gotten more. I'm thinking all of the Legis gains from committee assignments have probably gone to chairs, and that coupled with the small amount of Reps, has led to no one else becoming eligible.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, jnewt said:

Ohhhh right, I'm pretty sure that's been done correctly, so I guess it's just a fluke that no one has gotten more. I'm thinking all of the Legis gains from committee assignments have probably gone to chairs, and that coupled with the small amount of Reps, has led to no one else becoming eligible.

Yeah honestly, early republic, with few states and smaller states and thus a smaller house, you probably just don't have a large pool of talent.  I think that's just gotta be the way it is though, rather than the game itself being broken, because once the country gets larger it's definitely not a problem, and/or the sim runs for a few years to give career tracks/gains times to get in.

[ebrk85]

@OrangeP47 @jnewt since you are questioning my competence (j/k I know you are not really) yes I have been doing the committee member gains. For a house member it's a 5% chance and with the small house we have, yes that has been  a few and far between gain.

[OrangeP47]

2 minutes ago, ebrk85 said:

@OrangeP47 @jnewt since you are questioning my competence (j/k I know you are not really) yes I have been doing the committee member gains. For a house member it's a 5% chance and with the small house we have, yes that has been  a few and far between gain.

Ha, sorry.  It was more of a "well we're not having this problem, and we're doing it right" moment 😛

[Bushwa777]

Making my 1880 draft and noticed that James Withycombe is listed as native born but wiki has him born in England and coming to Oregon as a child 

[jnewt]

The current mechanism for relocations (moving from overpopulated to underpopulated states) seems very unrealistic. In the 1948 playtest, it's led to a lot of us moving New Yorkers to Hawaii, Mississippi, etc. just to achieve a regional balance in the cabinet. In real life, it seems more common for the reverse to happen: a politician moves from a small state to a larger state to help jumpstart their career (Hillary Clinton running for Senate in New York comes to mind).

I'd recommend either adding, or replacing the overpopulated to underpopulated state relocation mechanism, with an ability to relocate politicians based off of ideological and demographic biases. For example, a Mormon politician could attempt to move to Utah (because Utah has a positive bias for Mormons) or a Liberal could attempt to move to Massachusetts (because Massachusetts has a positive bias for Liberals). Increasing random alt-states would be beneficial too.

[OrangeP47]

5 minutes ago, jnewt said:

The current mechanism for relocations (moving from overpopulated to underpopulated states) seems very unrealistic. In the 1948 playtest, it's led to a lot of us moving New Yorkers to Hawaii, Mississippi, etc. just to achieve a regional balance in the cabinet. In real life, it seems more common for the reverse to happen: a politician moves from a small state to a larger state to help jumpstart their career (Hillary Clinton running for Senate in New York comes to mind).

I'd recommend either adding, or replacing the overpopulated to underpopulated state relocation mechanism, with an ability to relocate politicians based off of ideological and demographic biases. For example, a Mormon politician could attempt to move to Utah (because Utah has a positive bias for Mormons) or a Liberal could attempt to move to Massachusetts (because Massachusetts has a positive bias for Liberals). Increasing random alt-states would be beneficial too.

This is a case where it kinda has to be this way for the game to function though.