New suggestion (if you have time)
Recommend engaging with other department secretaries on their problems and giving them directions with their policies (if you… know what I mean)
For example, the Secretary of Transportation will warn you that a traffic gridlock is coming due to massive car usage on highways, making logistics difficult and severely impact your economy.
Quick question, so I was having my perfect run as a Rockefeller Republican and I really thought that I’d win in a landslide, and then Nunez came and defeated me in the primary because I was a filthy “Liberal”.
So I want to that whether it’s only my Liberal stat that influences this or my relationship with the party can also help negate this, I had 70% Liberal stat and 52% party approval.
How centrist do I have to be and how much party approval is required for me to avoid Nunez popping up?
Funnily enough I just finished a centrist Republican run for my own testing. The Nunez event chain is triggered based on your ideology stat alone (it can also be triggered if your approval rating falls too low). The cutoff for an ideology challenge is 59% liberal for a Republican (coincidentally the value I reached in my own run), as keeping the stat between 40 and 60 will put your ideology as “centrist”. Values of 60 and above are on the liberal side of the spectrum and values 40 and below are on the conservative side of it.
The party approval stat only measures your approval with your party’s leadership, not necessarily the rank-and-file members of the party itself, which is why that stat isn’t calculated in determining whether or not Nunez runs. Though now that you mention it, I might add in an event where it’s possible to get an endorsement from party leadership to give a small boost against Nunez
Thanks for the reply! Tho ngl I wasn’t expecting to get destroyed by Nunez in the primaries like that, I had 63% approval rating so it couldn’t be my popularity, can you tell me which stats effect winning the primaries?
There are a few things and I might rework them a bit, but here’s how it works now:
Nunez will announce a primary challenge if you 1) are ideologically out of step with your party’s mainstream or if you 2) are incredibly unpopular (under 40% approval). An ideological challenge is the easiest to beat Nunez in, whereas a challenge based on popularity is harder. Both will detract from your overall campaign score (even if you win the primary) as you need to divert resources to deal with him if he announces.
The main way to win right now is just to damage Nunez significantly enough. Spoilery stuff below if you’d rather not know more in-depth information about how this is calculated!
If you have Sam as your Campaign Manager, you can deploy him to give an immediate debuff to Nunez (he will work his connections in the party to make it harder/more expensive for Nunez to get on ballots, get endorsements, etc.). He will also propose a scheme later on to divert likely-Nunez voters from the polls before the Iowa caucus. Regardless of campaign manager, you are able to leak his medical records (I believe this is proposed after the Iowa caucus).
I am planning on making a few changes once I have the chance to play through it. Something that isn’t implemented right now in calculations is the degree of ideological divergence. I want to make changes so that being a “liberal” Republican is different from being a “progressive” one (and vice-versa for the Democratic side). In other words, the farther from your party’s base, the more powerful a challenge he’ll mount.
I also think including your relationship with party leadership and your overall approval rating in the calculation would make sense. I’ll probably add in a brief scene where Congressional leadership can endorse you, stay quiet, or endorse Nunez, and another where the amount of grassroots support/volunteers you’re able to gather is dependent on your approval rating. Having high values in these stats would give you a buff against Nunez, and low values in the stats would do the inverse.
TPH is submitted for publication
Incredibly excited to announce that I’ve just sent in materials to Hosted Games to get The People’s House published, making this my last official writer’s diary for book 1! First off, I’ll go through my final edits to the demo, then I can get into my current thoughts for book 2.
Updates & Edits
Thankful Blabbering
Having finally submitted, I need to (of course) give you all a huge thank you again. (If you’ve heard enough of me and only care about book 2, you can just skip these paragraphs–I won’t take it personally). Before I thank the masses, I need to give an extra-special thanks to @Snowflower and @11110.
If you haven’t followed the thread for a while, these two have been incredibly helpful beta testers for a little over the past two years, helping me to make smaller tweaks and improve the story as I’ve written it over time. Without both of them, I certainly don’t think I’d be submitting the story for publishing today.
I also need to thank all of you–whether you’ve been following this for the past three years or so (when I first announced the rough outline I had on the interest check thread) or if you’ve just stumbled across it during the beta test. All of your kind words have kept me going through the incredibly long process of writing a piece of interactive fiction, and it’s so rewarding to see so many people eager to engage with the story I’ve written.
But, onto book 2 plans, as I’m sure that’s what people really care about!
Plans for Book 2
As I’ve said before, I fully intend on writing a second, and final, book to cover your character’s second term as President. Assuming book 1 doesn’t completely fail–a real possibility I suppose–I’ll likely start working on a more concrete outline for book 2 in a few weeks. I’m sure I’ll have more edits to make to book 1 as it goes through copyediting and review by the Choice of Games staff, but I doubt it’ll be anything too substantial.
For those of you who are interested in hearing what I currently have planned, I’ll share it below. I’ll also organize it a bit in case you only want to know certain parts. Of course, this is all subject to change, but this is what I have in my rough outline as of now:
Broad Features & Policy Areas
Book 2, as I’ve mentioned before, will open with a budget sequence; allowing you to really make substantial policy changes at once–defense spending, tax rates, education, welfare, etc. Outside of the budget sequence, you’ll have the opportunity to take on gun control and possibly even statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. I do have plans for a Supreme Court nomination process, though I’m not sure how engaging I’ll be able to make it–it’s still currently in the plans though.
Main Story Arc
The main story arc (as the end of book 1 hints at) will be rising tensions with China. Book 2 will open fairly early on with a sort of neo-space race to put a human on Mars, and tensions will continue to rise into a cold war-like scenario with China. I have a lot of rough ideas and don’t want to overpromise, but I have ideas for proxy wars, nuclear weapons, and the ability for you to kick off your very own Vietnam 2.0! Again, this is all a very rough outline, but the general idea is to somewhat mirror major events from the Cold War with the USSR in a slightly accelerated timeline.
TLDR: Book 2 will be offering the ability for your character to do their legacy-defining actions.
In Conclusion…
Thank you, thank you, thank you again! I really have no idea how long it will take for the story to get published after submission, but I will share what I can with you as I get more information.
If the book does really well, I’ll likely give in to messages I’ve gotten about creating a discord or something to that effect. I’ll obviously continue using the forum as my main way of communicating, but it would be nice to have some kind of community hub for me to answer questions, post polls, and share more regular updates about my other writing projects and ideas with those that are interested in that kind of thing.
Regardless of how the story sells, I don’t plan on stopping writing interactive fiction anytime soon. Aside from my plans for book 2, I have (quite literally) close to 75 pages of story concepts, worldbuilding, and story outlines. I think I’ve grown a lot as a writer since getting started and I hope to keep bringing stories to you all in the future.
Thank you all (one more time) and I’m looking forward to the road ahead!
First of all congratulations ! I assume you’ll still be updating the game after release so I’ll just say this,during the Al Nasri mission I only got the option to send in a seperate unit to divert attention if I had Hill as my VP,as long as I’m a Marine vet my self shouldn’t I get the choice regardless?
Massive congratulations thank you for all of your hard work.
It’s been an honor. Thank you for letting me test the game.
Thank you. Like Snowflower, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be a tester for this game.
I wanted to say congradulations, and while I said I’d try again unfortunately due to reasons outside of either of our control anytime I tried to try any of it’s demos after 2022 unfortunately reminds me too much of events that weren’t your fault, and I just have other things that I need to focus on. Even then because of the current economic situation (and other problems that aren’t related to this), my housing and food budget has been reduced to zero for the foreseeable future. Perhaps I could buy and try and enjoy the full version like I originally wanted to but now I can’t buy a story about politicians and rich people screwing over the public because I got screwed over by politicians and rich people…
In all seriousness how ever I am still very impressed by what you’ve done. You definitely deserve your victory, more than a lot of people. I’m glad I got to help at the beginning atleast, because it was definitely worth seeing.
Very sorry to hear about your situation and wishing you all the best–very grateful to have had your support and hoping your situation improves. Stay strong and keep pushing forward!
It would be cool to have the gun control chapter/debate come up after an assassination attempt on the president (just like how it came up after Reagan was shot).
I can’t wait for the Economics and Geopolitical focus in Book 2 as well, how the war(s) would affect the economy, or how the tensions can be defused, etc.
Maybe it’s for his next WIP? It’s almost Halloween so it’s good time for a new form of monster I think that “Democratics.” Sounds like something outta Malifaux’s Neverborn.
Edit: his. For some reason, I always thought he was female. I dunno why that is, but whoops my bad.
Who is Nunez, I never met him lmao, and what to do with Personal Money, I have like 1.5 to 1.7 Million just sitting there, honestly it be much cooler if MC can grow it more, I mean he is president for 4 years surely his personal money should be increasing, and hopefully in future installment, MC can use it to buy stuff or something else.
I mean yeah it is not to enrich yourself, but still you get president salary, surely you need to get your Wealth increase
If I am a republican that means I need to be either conservatife or centrist for Nunez not pop up huh ?
He primaries you if you’re too out of line with your parties ideals or if you’re too unpopular.
Personal money is really only useful for corruption purposes, and conversely, it’s really only acts of corruption that can increase it because the job of the presidency isn’t too enrich yourself. It’s PAC money that I’d argue needs more increases
In Book 1 it is far less important than your PAC account. If you have (at least $10 million) you can use it in the re-election chapter for a boost, but $1-2 million isn’t enough for any major decision in the first book aside from a bribe or two.
I do have some plans for your personal money in book 2–the ability to offer to pay for your children’s college if they’re the right age for a stat boost is one. There are also plans where your children (if you select the adult age), may run for office themselves. In that case, you’d be able to use your own money to help support their campaign.
To trigger the Nunez event chain you need to be a staunch conservative or conservative Democrat or a liberal or progressive Republican. Being a centrist will not launch a primary challenge.
I use like 50 Million in Media Campaign but my approval ratings not go up, oh and for some reason attorney background is greyed out, why is that ?
the one in re election, that spends 50 Million USD after debating Hoffman
Which media campaign are you talking about? That might help me figure it out.
This background is only unlocked if you choose the lawyer background at the start. If you aren’t a lawyer, you aren’t able to become Attorney General as a background.
