The Political Process update for 20 December 2021

The game has been updated to version 0.200.

NOTES
With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/

If you experience any other problems, you can post a new discussion in the bug reports forum, by navigating to the community hub, clicking the Discussions tab, and clicking the Bug Reports link on the right side of the screen.

If you want to continue playing the previous version of the game, you can do so by right clicking on the game, going to properties, clicking the betas tab, and selecting the v0175 option.

ADDITIONS

• Added an election night menu that displays all election results in “real time”. The menu includes interactive maps that display results at the state level and at the county level (for applicable election types). The speed that results come in can be increased, decreased, or paused. There is also a button to skip to the end of election night. In the options menu, you can select if the election night menu pops up automatically, never pops up, or creates a prompt. If you select for it to never pop up, it will appear as an item in your schedule.
• Added independent candidates to elections. (This can be turned off in the advanced options, under the Politicians tab).
• Added an option to play as an independent candidate. (NOTE – winning an election as an independent is very unlikely, but you can always adjust the election difficulty to increase the chances of winning).
• Added an option for your character to get married and have children. This can be found in the profile tab, under the Family sub-tab. When the children turn 18 years old, they will be added to your list of protégés.
• Added governors and governor elections for every state (previously it was limited to the player’s home state).
• Added the possibility that governors will run for president, or be selected as a running mate.
• Added an option for the player to select a governor as a running mate.
• Added independent pollsters. They can be found in the election tab, under Polls. Currently, independent polls are limited to senate, governor, and president elections. They can be turned off from the Polls menu in order to slightly speed up the time between each turn.
• Added a dark mode option/style (which makes the User interface darker). It can be turned on or off in the Options menu.
• Added a Favorites tab to the election page and the election night menu. This allows you to easily look at the elections of protégés, endorsed politicians, and favorited politicians. There are several sorting options that allow you to narrow down the list of displayed elections even further.
• Added an option to endorse multiple candidates at the same time, based on various parameters (including political party and policy agreement).
• Added an option to select "None" as your protege's next election.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved the politician summary pages. House and Senate summary pages now have interactive maps that let you quickly look at politicians from a specific state, instead of going through a long list of every politician.
• Improved the election results tab; included interactive maps where applicable.
• Adjusted county demographics so that they are more accurate. (Thanks to Somberg, js29095 (Dolor Mortis), RobbRouth, and Ian Reid for helping compile updated party demographics for every county).
• Adjusted governor elections so that current politicians from both parties will run for an open seat, if the state is competitive. Previously, only current politicians from the state’s majority party would run in the election.
• Adjusted senate elections so that it is more likely for minority party politicians to run in semi-competitive states. In this instance, semi-competitive refers to states where the difference between party demographics is less than or equal to 5%.
• Adjusted the custom election menu so it is now possible to add more than two candidates to each party primary. (There is still a limit of 3 candidates max in player elections).
• Adjusted term lengths and election years so that they are accurate for each specific state.

FIXES

• Fixed an issue where randomizing a politician during customization would randomize your character’s policies instead of the politician’s policies.
• Fixed an issue where the game would not progress, on week 1, if there was a surplus in the highway trust fund and road conditions were very good (under those circumstances, a missing variable prevented the game from progressing).
• Likely fixed an issue where some protégé policies would not match the player’s policies. This was specific to the “newer” policies added to the game.
• Fixed an issue where Medicaid Expansion would not be set to false at the state level when it was set to false at the federal level. This could cause problems when trying to make changes to the state Medicaid program.
• Fixed an issue with loading group presets that would allow a group preset to be loaded after week 6 during an election year. Week 6 is when the primary candidates are determined for elections. If the group is loaded after week 6, it could cause problems with the elections.
• Fixed an issue where the starting date on the house summary timeline graph would be incorrect if the player moved to a new city, or started playing as a protégé who lived in a different city.
• May have fixed an issue where a politician would create legislation to decrease the school property tax, but then vote against the legislation.
• Adjusted Arkansas congressional districts so that districts 3 and 4 have the correct counties. (If you have a saved game in Arkansas, the change could cause problems). If you encounter problems while playing an old Arkansas save file, you can play an older version of the game by right clicking on the game, selecting properties, and then selecting the Beta tab. In the beta tab there is a drop-down menu that will show a list of available betas.
• Added state senate district 35 to Arkansas state senate district (If you are playing a saved game in Arkansas, it is possible it could cause strange behavior).
• Fixed an issue where the wrong candidate would sometimes be displayed (if they had the same name as the correct candidate).
• Various other fixes.

KNOWN ISSUES

• In the "Endorse Multiple" menu, there is no option to endorse multiple U.S. House or U.S. Senate candidates if it is not a state senate election year. This will be fixed in the next small update.
• Some candidate portraits appear empty in certain election types. It may or may not be possible to fix this by the next small update.

NEXT MAJOR UPDATE

• The next major update will be an Events update. I intend to divide it into multiple smaller segments so that I can release updates more frequently. Once I start working on the update, I will attempt to provide weekly progress reports in the discussion forums.