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Dynamic State Leans Brainstorm


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I'll start with the history of this discussion, for posterity's sake.  In the 1928 playtest, the market crash didn't happen in 1929 as it did in real life.  Therefore, going into the 1930 midterm elections, economy was good, quality of life was good, etc.  However, on the historical era tab, the party modifiers section has most states heavily blue, or less red than before, like it happened in real life.  The reason it happened in real life was because of the market crash and great depression, and the Republicans paid for it politically.  But since in our gameplay the depression hasn't happened, and yet the Democrats are dominating the midterms.  My argument is that if the country was in the situation it is in for our playtest, the Republicans wouldn't have gotten buried in the midterms.

In this particular case, it seems to me that a simple solution would be to tie the party modifiers section to the depression scripted event instead of the year 1928.  From the discussions we were having, it sounds like most of the playtesters are on board with this, since it makes more sense. 

My problem, and this is where the folks on here that have better historical knowledge than I do, is what causes the party preferences change across the eras?  For example, going from the Era of Republicanism to the Era of Democracy, I see that there is a hard shift in many states from blue to red.  I don't doubt there was a shift during this time, but I don't know why it happened.  Was it just a gradual shift away from the Democrats?  Was it the emergence of the Whig party?  My history knowledge isn't strong enough to know these answers, which is where I need help.  Once we determine the reason for the party preference changes, we can look at if it is something that could be implemented easily within the game, by tying it to an event, or keeping it tied to a specific year, etc. 

I was only referencing the party preference shifts in my original comments.  It seems like there is already a mechanism for the census, but I haven't been involved with that to know how well it works.        

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1 minute ago, Umbrella said:

I'll start with the history of this discussion, for posterity's sake.  In the 1928 playtest, the market crash didn't happen in 1929 as it did in real life.  Therefore, going into the 1930 midterm elections, economy was good, quality of life was good, etc.  However, on the historical era tab, the party modifiers section has most states heavily blue, or less red than before, like it happened in real life.  The reason it happened in real life was because of the market crash and great depression, and the Republicans paid for it politically.  But since in our gameplay the depression hasn't happened, and yet the Democrats are dominating the midterms.  My argument is that if the country was in the situation it is in for our playtest, the Republicans wouldn't have gotten buried in the midterms.

In this particular case, it seems to me that a simple solution would be to tie the party modifiers section to the depression scripted event instead of the year 1928.  From the discussions we were having, it sounds like most of the playtesters are on board with this, since it makes more sense. 

My problem, and this is where the folks on here that have better historical knowledge than I do, is what causes the party preferences change across the eras?  For example, going from the Era of Republicanism to the Era of Democracy, I see that there is a hard shift in many states from blue to red.  I don't doubt there was a shift during this time, but I don't know why it happened.  Was it just a gradual shift away from the Democrats?  Was it the emergence of the Whig party?  My history knowledge isn't strong enough to know these answers, which is where I need help.  Once we determine the reason for the party preference changes, we can look at if it is something that could be implemented easily within the game, by tying it to an event, or keeping it tied to a specific year, etc. 

I was only referencing the party preference shifts in my original comments.  It seems like there is already a mechanism for the census, but I haven't been involved with that to know how well it works.        

Correct me if I'm wrong: but what you are suggesting is tying the era demographic changes to a specific event in that era, instead of it happening immediately upon the era shift. The specific event would be determined per era, probably one that is scripted to happen early in the era.

 

An interesting proposition. I leave it to Orange to figure out how that could affect the census.

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5 minutes ago, Umbrella said:

I'll start with the history of this discussion, for posterity's sake.  In the 1928 playtest, the market crash didn't happen in 1929 as it did in real life.  Therefore, going into the 1930 midterm elections, economy was good, quality of life was good, etc.  However, on the historical era tab, the party modifiers section has most states heavily blue, or less red than before, like it happened in real life.  The reason it happened in real life was because of the market crash and great depression, and the Republicans paid for it politically.  But since in our gameplay the depression hasn't happened, and yet the Democrats are dominating the midterms.  My argument is that if the country was in the situation it is in for our playtest, the Republicans wouldn't have gotten buried in the midterms.

In this particular case, it seems to me that a simple solution would be to tie the party modifiers section to the depression scripted event instead of the year 1928.  From the discussions we were having, it sounds like most of the playtesters are on board with this, since it makes more sense. 

My problem, and this is where the folks on here that have better historical knowledge than I do, is what causes the party preferences change across the eras?  For example, going from the Era of Republicanism to the Era of Democracy, I see that there is a hard shift in many states from blue to red.  I don't doubt there was a shift during this time, but I don't know why it happened.  Was it just a gradual shift away from the Democrats?  Was it the emergence of the Whig party?  My history knowledge isn't strong enough to know these answers, which is where I need help.  Once we determine the reason for the party preference changes, we can look at if it is something that could be implemented easily within the game, by tying it to an event, or keeping it tied to a specific year, etc. 

I was only referencing the party preference shifts in my original comments.  It seems like there is already a mechanism for the census, but I haven't been involved with that to know how well it works.        

Yeah, I'm kind of the census expert.  If they're using "era" modifers that's technically WAY out of date.  Modifers now change every decade, regardless of era.  That's neither here nor there to the question at hand, though, but something you might want to check with them.

That actually is quite illuminating to what you mean, and in that context, yeah, I think maybe something should be done.  It's late now, but I'll sleep on it, and I have little to do at work tomorrow on a Friday so I'll probably come back with a lot of ideas.  I already have the seeds of a few.  I'm thinking maybe "tier" the state leans or something like that, but like I said, it's 30 minutes before bed, so I'm gonna need to really sleep on it.

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2 minutes ago, Willthescout7 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong: but what you are suggesting is tying the era demographic changes to a specific event in that era, instead of it happening immediately upon the era shift. The specific event would be determined per era, probably one that is scripted to happen early in the era.

 

An interesting proposition. I leave it to Orange to figure out how that could affect the census.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, if tying it to an event makes sense.  I'm guessing some of these changes were just gradual shifts over time, not necessarily tied to a specific event.  In those cases, tying it to a year makes sense.  But in the 1930 midterm example, it makes no sense to have the incumbent Republican party getting destroyed when the country is in good shape.

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2 minutes ago, Willthescout7 said:

An interesting proposition. I leave it to Orange to figure out how that could affect the census.

I guess so I don't leave everyone mystified for like 12 hours like I usually do when I go to bed and then go to work, what I'm thinking is this:  We don't make it *fully* dynamic, but basically having just one set of state leans is indeed not representative of how the gamestate might be.  So I'm thinking we basically construct maybe 3 or 5 (odd number is good, and 7 is probably excessive) *sets* of state leans for each decade, and then depending on various things, the game will call "State Bias Set 1" or "State Bias Set 3", etc.  I think these triggers should be things that are NOT the meters, because meters already affect elections in their own unique ways, and that would be stacking those effects, when really what we want to be doing is mapping the effect of some specific thing, such as the 1929 stock market crash, etc.  So maybe it would be like on the event for that stock market crash, there would be a new field which would say "Switch to State Bias Set 1 Until Overwritten by Another Event" and State Bias Set 1 is specifically the most blue leaning set for the 20s/30s.  Again, it's late, this is just me very quickly spitballing.  I'll develop more this weekend.

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9 minutes ago, Umbrella said:

But in the 1930 midterm example, it makes no sense to have the incumbent Republican party getting destroyed when the country is in good shape.

To be fair to the dominance of the Blues, Blue Liberals are getting a huge bonus due to the state of the meters, not necessarily due to existing state biases. Also it's a midterm so there's another -1 to all reds. 

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Just now, 10centjimmy said:

To be fair to the dominance of the Blues, Blue Liberals are getting a huge bonus due to the state of the meters, not necessarily due to existing state biases. Also it's a midterm so there's another -1 to all reds. 

Yeah, a big reason why I want to test this in just our game first is because I don't want to throw everything out of whack kneejerking as we all have a tendency to do, we can't come to conclusions without data.  Also the reason I'm suggesting multiple sets is so that parties can be both boosted/weakened with events and it isn't just slamming red or blue into a brick wall because we feel like it.

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38 minutes ago, Umbrella said:

I'll start with the history of this discussion, for posterity's sake.  In the 1928 playtest, the market crash didn't happen in 1929 as it did in real life.  Therefore, going into the 1930 midterm elections, economy was good, quality of life was good, etc.  However, on the historical era tab, the party modifiers section has most states heavily blue, or less red than before, like it happened in real life.  The reason it happened in real life was because of the market crash and great depression, and the Republicans paid for it politically.  But since in our gameplay the depression hasn't happened, and yet the Democrats are dominating the midterms.  My argument is that if the country was in the situation it is in for our playtest, the Republicans wouldn't have gotten buried in the midterms.

In this particular case, it seems to me that a simple solution would be to tie the party modifiers section to the depression scripted event instead of the year 1928.  From the discussions we were having, it sounds like most of the playtesters are on board with this, since it makes more sense. 

My problem, and this is where the folks on here that have better historical knowledge than I do, is what causes the party preferences change across the eras?  For example, going from the Era of Republicanism to the Era of Democracy, I see that there is a hard shift in many states from blue to red.  I don't doubt there was a shift during this time, but I don't know why it happened.  Was it just a gradual shift away from the Democrats?  Was it the emergence of the Whig party?  My history knowledge isn't strong enough to know these answers, which is where I need help.  Once we determine the reason for the party preference changes, we can look at if it is something that could be implemented easily within the game, by tying it to an event, or keeping it tied to a specific year, etc. 

I was only referencing the party preference shifts in my original comments.  It seems like there is already a mechanism for the census, but I haven't been involved with that to know how well it works.        

Apologies if this is already mentioned later in the the thread as I haven’t read everyone’s comments.

But my immediate gut reaction is that we already have a “Great depression” square on the meters I believe, which already punishes the incumbent party.  It may or may not happen when it historically did, but it’s dynamic and could happen any time with mismanagement and/or bad luck.  

Likewise, we already have nation-wide shifts both positive and negative for the incumbents and various ideologies depending on meters.  
 

So the only thing we really need to do is figure out how/why it needs to shift state by state or regionally, I think. But nationally is already taken care of.

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11 hours ago, 10centjimmy said:

To be fair to the dominance of the Blues, Blue Liberals are getting a huge bonus due to the state of the meters, not necessarily due to existing state biases. Also it's a midterm so there's another -1 to all reds. 

This is why I am asking the folks with more game experience and political history backgrounds.  Do these midterm results seem realistic to you?  I could see a few seats changing, but we went from almost a red supermajority to blue taking control of congress.  I know moderates have a +1 red, and yet I (blue moderate party) did extremely well.    

I also realize that this is one election, and there is definitely randomness involved, so perhaps it is too small of a sample size to make a game altering decision.  But I do think it's something to keep an eye on.

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So I slept (funny how that happens almost every day) and had a lot of free time at work.  Decided I think it should be something completely different... Let's base it on the underutilized Industry system, that could actually make it Dynamic.  Say we just keep one set of state leans, but an event might apply a 10 year modifier to shift all biases in Agriculture leading states (at the time the event fires) 1 blue, or something like that.  It's actually a lot simpler system and more elegant at the same time.  It would be slightly annoying to track in excel, but it's not unprecedented (we have election losers getting -1 for 6 years sometimes), and the way I set up the census doc it'd be fairly easy to track. In the computer game, it'd be really easy to code too.  Most importantly, for ad hoc testing in 1840 alone, we can basically make it up on the fly to see how it works, so it really is the ideal system.

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Another way to adjust in this case is make the great depression Scripted event automatically fire in the 1928-1930 term. Right now it's a 50% chance. 

 

Obviously this would be a problem with railroading history, but just a simple thought for this specific case. 

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5 minutes ago, 10centjimmy said:

Another way to adjust in this case is make the great depression Scripted event automatically fire in the 1928-1930 term. Right now it's a 50% chance. 

 

Obviously this would be a problem with railroading history, but just a simple thought for this specific case. 

I would be heavily against this, even if not for the fact I am trying to make this about more than just the great depression.

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19 hours ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Apologies if this is already mentioned later in the the thread as I haven’t read everyone’s comments.

But my immediate gut reaction is that we already have a “Great depression” square on the meters I believe, which already punishes the incumbent party.  It may or may not happen when it historically did, but it’s dynamic and could happen any time with mismanagement and/or bad luck.  

Likewise, we already have nation-wide shifts both positive and negative for the incumbents and various ideologies depending on meters.  
 

So the only thing we really need to do is figure out how/why it needs to shift state by state or regionally, I think. But nationally is already taken care of.

The issue is that without the Great depression occurring, there is nothing to justify the state leans moving to their decade set points. It's not the meter leans, but the actual shifting state biases. 

The country shifts hard blue because of the Great depression, but that hasn't happened yet, so there's no reason for the shift. The meters can be whatever, but it's the base lean that needs a reason. Which is where the rest of the discussion comes in.

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1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

So I slept (funny how that happens almost every day) and had a lot of free time at work.  Decided I think it should be something completely different... Let's base it on the underutilized Industry system, that could actually make it Dynamic.  Say we just keep one set of state leans, but an event might apply a 10 year modifier to shift all biases in Agriculture leading states (at the time the event fires) 1 blue, or something like that.  It's actually a lot simpler system and more elegant at the same time.  It would be slightly annoying to track in excel, but it's not unprecedented (we have election losers getting -1 for 6 years sometimes), and the way I set up the census doc it'd be fairly easy to track. In the computer game, it'd be really easy to code too.  Most importantly, for ad hoc testing in 1840 alone, we can basically make it up on the fly to see how it works, so it really is the ideal system.

We would need to figure out what industries would shift a state right, and what would shift them left.

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6 minutes ago, Willthescout7 said:

The issue is that without the Great depression occurring, there is nothing to justify the state leans moving to their decade set points. It's not the meter leans, but the actual shifting state biases. 

The country shifts hard blue because of the Great depression, but that hasn't happened yet, so there's no reason for the shift. The meters can be whatever, but it's the base lean that needs a reason. Which is where the rest of the discussion comes in.

Oh I understood. I support removing the historical bias other than starting with whatever bias is accurate for your start date.

I only meant that we don’t necessarily need a whole new system to replace it. We might be meeting the need between meters, Gov actions, and industry/census impacts.

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2 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Oh I understood. I support removing the historical bias other than starting with whatever bias is accurate for your start date.

I only meant that we don’t necessarily need a whole new system to replace it. We might be meeting the need between meters, Gov actions, and industry/census impacts.

Gotcha. 

If we do away with the historical biases like you describe, then we would have to rebook how politicians come into the game. 

A red California at the modern day, or a Red Rhode Island or Blue Idaho or Wyoming could create issues with standard politician parties.

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16 minutes ago, Willthescout7 said:

We would need to figure out what industries would shift a state right, and what would shift them left.

The bias shift would be from the event.  The industry would merely be for determining what states shifted from that event at that moment.

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The industry idea is certainly interesting.  I'm not against seeing how it plays out in the 1840 playtest.  Personally, I liked the idea of different biases better, but I think I'd need to see how they both played out to have a strong opinion either way.

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Just now, Willthescout7 said:

So would you rewrite events to accommodate this or create new ones or a mixture of both? Just for complete clarity.

I was basically going to have us "play it out".  Since Tyler is in charge of the events in 1840, every time he rolled us an event that he thought should trigger a bias shift, he'd flag it and we'd live add a new effect to it right then and there, for the purposes of our playtest only.

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1 minute ago, Umbrella said:

The industry idea is certainly interesting.  I'm not against seeing how it plays out in the 1840 playtest.  Personally, I liked the idea of different biases better, but I think I'd need to see how they both played out to have a strong opinion either way.

The problem, I realized, with creating the sets is that they're still completely arbitrary, and switching between them is probably too complicated for us to model unless we want to completely rewrite the game.  Last night I was thinking from a programming perspective, and from that viewpoint, it's easy.  From a "what the hell are we doing historically" perspective though... uh......

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