The game has been update to Version 0.307.
ADDITIONS
LEGISLATIVE UPDATES
-Adjusted the legislation creation process. You can now create complex legislation - legislation with multiple proposals. You can also name your legislation.
-The process that politicians use to decide how to vote on legislation is now more sophisticated and nuanced.
-Added a way to see politician support for your legislation before you submit it. This information is available when you click the "Support Analysis" button in the legislation creation menu. It will allow you to interact with politicians and learn whether they support or oppose your legislation in its current state. The menu will also allow you to learn why a politician supports or opposes your legislation. You can use this information to adjust your legislation before submitting it.
-Changed the way that the player influences legislative votes. It is no longer based on your relationship with each caucus (where a caucus would vote for any legislation you proposed so long as you had a good relationship with them). You will now have indirect influence on politicians based on your party leadership position (if any), and you will have direct influence based on your relationship with each individual politician. See the notes below for more info.
-Party (and caucus) leaders automatically influence the legislative votes of politicians under their leadership. The amount of influence is not enough to automatically switch their vote, but it can sway politicians who are indecisive about how to vote. The amount of influence that party leaders have can be changed in the advanced options, under the Politicians tab.
-Added an option to directly influence a politician's legislative vote using relationship points. If you have enough relationship points, you can persuade a politician to change their vote. Your relationship points with the politician will decrease. This is particularly effective if you influence a party leader, as they will influence every other politician under their leadership. The number of points needed to influence the vote can be changed in the advanced options (under the Politicians tab).
-Added an Active Legislation menu which will show all active legislation in all jurisdictions. Clicking on an active legislation will bring up a Summary menu that shows the sponsor, bill proposals, bill history (including votes), and any relevant testimony for the bill. This menu also allows you to indicate support or opposition for the bill (which can influence whether other politicians support/oppose the bill - especially proteges).
-Proteges will automatically vote for legislation based on whether the player has indicated support or opposition for the legislation. This applies to all jurisdictions. If the player has not indicated any support/opposition, proteges will decide on their own how to vote. This is a significant update because it allows you to continue influencing city and state level policy (even if your character is a federal level politician).
-Added an option to create legislation on behalf of a protege (in any district/jurisdiction).
-Added “real time” legislative votes. You can now watch every politician vote on a bill in “real time”. You can adjust how quick the process is and you can skip to the end of the vote if you don’t want to watch the process.
-Added a Legislation Archive menu which will show all legislation that is no longer active. By default this menu only stores archived legislation for one in-game year. You can change this in the advanced options. The option is called Legislation Archive Storage Length and can be found in the Nation tab of the Advanced Options Menu. Legislation created by the player will not be reset at the end of each in-game year; it will remain in the archive indefinitely.
-Legislation can be temporarily saved so that you can come back to it later. It does not have to be finished within one sitting. Once you submit saved legislation, it will be removed from the saved legislation list.
-If there is a tied vote in the senate chamber, the vice president will cast the tie-breaking vote.
-Voting for or against a politician’s legislation impacts your relationship score with them.
-Adjusted the process that NPCs (Non-Player Characters) use to create legislation. Legislation should appear more often and be less predictable. The frequency that NPCs create new legislation can be adjusted in the advanced options (under the politicians tab).
-Legislative votes now influence approval rating with voters. Currently this is only applicable for major legislation (and does not include tax legislation). How much approval is influenced can be modified in the advanced options (under the politicians tab) – these variables are divided into executive branch influence, party leader influence, and regular politician influence.
-Added new entries to the Concepts documentation, under the Legislation category. These entries explain some of the new mechanisms in the update. To view the Concepts documentation, click the Concepts button under the portrait of your Chief of Staff (in the Office tab).
SENATE "FILIBUSTERS" (CLOTURE VOTES)
Background: In real life, Senate rules allow for endless debate. This can result in a filibuster, where a senator refuses to end debate in order to prevent a piece of legislation from receiving a vote. This is a tactic that the minority party can use to prevent the majority party from passing legislation. Historically, a senator would have to remain speaking for the filibuster to remain in effect. In recent history, the senate has adopted a practice of calling for unanimous consent to end debate. If any senator objects to ending debate, a floor vote is called to end debate. This vote is called a cloture vote and it requires 60 votes to pass. If 60 senators vote to pass the cloture motion, debate on the legislation will end and it can receive a vote. If there are not enough votes to end debate, the bill is tabled and the senate moves on to the next order of business.
-A simplified version of the cloture vote has been added to the game. Every bill that reaches the senate automatically receives a cloture vote (to end debate). This vote happens in the background (so as not to be a tedious feature for the player). If the player is a senator, the game will automatically vote on behalf of the player (based on whether the player has indicated support/opposition for the bill). If the bill receives 60 cloture votes, it will progress to a regular floor vote. Once the bill has a floor vote, it only needs a simple majority of 50 votes to pass. But, the 60 vote requirement to end debate on legislation essentially means that a 60 vote majority is required to pass any legislation through the senate. This new mechanism makes it significantly harder to pass federal legislation in the game. But, since it is a real life feature of the senate (that also makes passing legislation in the real life senate significantly harder), it has been added to the game. For any players who do not want to use this mechanism, it can be turned off (see the note below).
-By default, Senate Filibusters (Cloture Votes) are turned on. They can be turned off at two locations. When you start a new game, after creating your character and selecting your starting location, you can turn off the option in the "Game Options" menu (which is the menu where you enter the City Name and select election difficulty and districts). There will be a heading called "Allow Senate Filibusters". Under that there is a True button and a False button. Selecting False will turn off filibusters, which means bills will only need 50 votes to pass the senate. You can also turn off senate filibusters at any time in the Advanced Options menu. There is an "Advanced Options" button in the main menu (which you can access by pressing the Escape (Esc) key or by clicking the "Menu" button at the top of the screen). Once you are in the Advanced Options menu, click the Nation tab. Scroll down until you see a section called "Senate Debate Rules". There you will see a checkbox for "Allow Senate Filibusters". Uncheck that box to turn filibusters off.
-You can read more about the filibuster and cloture vote process in the Concepts page (under the Legislation section).
-You can use reconciliation bills to bypass the senate filibuster (as reconciliation bills do not permit endless debate). Learn more about reconciliation bills in the New Legislation section below.
-Added "legislation" to change senate rules regarding the filibuster and cloture votes. Generally, politicians are only willing to support this type of legislation under specific (advantageous) circumstances.
-Added an advanced option that allows you to support cloture votes even if you oppose the legislation itself. Essentially, your character will vote to give the bill a senate floor vote even though you intend to vote against the bill on the senate floor. The option is called "Player Filibuster/Cloture Vote" and is under the "Allow Senate Filibusters" option.
NEW LEGISLATION
-Added 7 new election laws to the game.
-Added 17 new proposals to the legislation menu. The majority of these proposals are related to election laws.
-Added the new election laws to the advanced options.
-Added ranked choice voting to the game. Given the current election results system, the game shows the final run-off election results for states with ranked choice voting (and none of the previous round results). That means that you will see some candidates with 0% of the votes. If it is a state level election (governor or senator), the county results map will show the first round of election results (as opposed to the final round of election results). This is done for technical reasons, but also serves as a way to see the first round results and the final round results at the same time. The current structure of elections cannot show multiple rounds of voting (which is why it shows only the final round).
-Added a simplified reconciliation bill to the game. This bill is only available if your character (or a protégé) is president, speaker of the house, or senate majority leader. Your political party must have a majority in both chambers of congress and the president must belong to your political party. You are allowed to create only one reconciliation bill per year. Reconciliation bills are limited to tax/budget proposals and cannot include Social Security proposals. A reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered in the senate, which means it only requires a simple majority to pass in the senate chamber.
-Added the potential for NPCs to create a reconciliation bill around week 6. This is semi-integrated with the budget resolution. If the budget resolution specifies that certain laws should be changed, those laws may be added as proposals to the reconciliation bill. (Previously, the budget resolution process would create individual laws for each proposal, now there is a chance that those proposals will be bundled into a single reconciliation bill.) The reconciliation bill is only possible if a single party holds the presidency and a majority in both chambers. If the player is a party leader (or president), NPCs will not create reconciliation bills.
-Added two new variables to the Universal Health Care bill: a tax deduction variable and a maximum taxable income variable. The tax deduction variable will reduce the amount of taxable income used for this program. If a taxpayer’s income is less than the deduction amount, they will not have to pay any taxes for the program. (This is one strategy for paying for the program without adding to the tax burden of low-income workers). Tax payers will not be taxed on any income above the maximum taxable income amount. It is also possible to set the payroll tax rate to 0% (previously the minimum was 2%).
-Added significantly more options to the abortion legislation.
-Update the legislative process so that electoral college, proportional electoral college, and presidential term limit proposals now require a 2/3 majority vote to pass in congress. Since these proposals require amending the constitution, they have been adjusted to require a 2/3 majority vote. There is currently no state ratification process. If it passes congress, it becomes law. You can always go into advanced options and change any of these laws if you think that the states would not ratify them. But, it is unlikely that they will ever receive enough votes in congress to pass anyway. The percentage of votes required to pass a constitutional amendment can be changed in the advanced options. The option is called ‘Constitutional Amendment Vote Requirement’ and can be found below the Cloture Vote options.
GENERAL UPDATES
-If the player’s protégé is mayor, governor, or president, the player will be given the opportunity to create the corresponding budget.
-Added a new tab to the Metrics menu called “Other”. It will be used to show a variety of metrics. Currently, it only displays a “Democracy” metric. A “+” button next to the name can be clicked to expand the menu and display all of the sub-metrics influencing the democracy metric. This should be a fun way to add significantly more metrics to the game in future updates.
-Added an option to move protégés to a new state. The protégé cannot currently hold an office and their next election must be set to ‘None’.
-Adjusted voter turnout mechanics for senate, governor, and presidential elections. Voter turnout laws now adjust turnout at the county level (rather than the state level), relative to national turnout metrics. For example, if county A has less voter turnout than the national average and county B has more voter turnout than the national average, then a state law that allows early voting will increase turnout in county A more than it increases turnout in county B. (County B will still have more turnout than county A, but the margin between the two will be smaller, which could be enough to sway elections).
-Updated default state laws so that the majority of states now have early voting (to match real life laws).
CHARACTER CREATION
-Adjusted the character creation process so that characters look slightly more realistic.
-Added a few new facial features: 3 hair styles, 1 mouth type, 1 eye type, and 1 eyebrow type.
-Added an option to change a politician’s relationship points with the player while customizing the politician. The option is part of the “Advanced” tab within the character customization menu. (The "Allow Custom Characters" option has to be set to True in order to access the Character Customization Menu).
-Added modifiers that influence how likely a politician from each party is to belong to a specific Ancestry. These modifiers can be changed in the advanced options, under the Nation tab, below the area where Politician Gender Ratios can be changed.
CUSTOM EVENT TOOL
-Likely fixed issue with custom events where targeted characters would not be evaluated based on gender (even though they should have been).
-Added an event trigger to the custom event tool that allows you to specify if the player belongs to a specific state. For example, the event will trigger only if the player lives in New York.
-Added custom event triggers for player personal funds, player campaign funds, and player remaining hours.
-Added a “Law Status” event trigger to the Custom Event Tool. The event will be triggered if the specified law meets the specified condition (active or inactive).
-Reminder: the ability to add custom histories through the custom event tool has been added to the tool.
-Fixed the wording in the custom event tool for “Custom Targeted Character Approval”. There were two options that said “Same as Player” and “Opposite of Player”. They should have said “Same as Character” and “Opposite of Character”.
FIXES
-Fixed several issues where the state labor force variable was being increased without increasing the corresponding job variables. Essentially, there were more people being added to the labor force, but they were not being given jobs. This caused the per capita income to decrease. You may have noticed this if the state per capita income suddenly decreased (usually in the later stages of the game), but the city and national per capita income values remained steady.
-Fixed an issue where adjusting the donation modifier for Hard Mode difficulty would actually update the turnout modifier.
-Fixed an issue where political points would not increase for some director positions.
-Likely fixed an issue where a senator could be placed into the wrong senate class if they were appointed to the position.
-Tied legislative votes no longer pass.
-Reduced the likelihood that the sponsor of a bill will vote against their own bill.
-Fixed several problems with dictator mode (related to budgets and legislation).
-Adjusted the code so that it should bypass any errors resulting from a missing (or empty) custom events file. Previously, if an error occurred, the game would not be able to progress to the campaign menu to start the game.
-Removed the “Political Influence” summary from the Concepts menu. It had outdated information that has been corrected in other areas of the Concepts menu.
-Changed the description when opening the Political Points/Influence menu (the star icon at the top of the screen).
-Fixed an issue where the state birth rate would not load correctly when loading an advanced option preset. It would use the default rate for the player’s home state instead of using the saved value.
-Fixed an issue where the game was using the state budget priority when calculating the vote score for national elections. This behavior is appropriate for every other type of priority, but the state budget priority refers to voter concern about the state budget and not about the national budget. Now, the game will use the national budget priority when calculating the vote score instead of using the state budget priority. (This issue could have affected federal elections by reducing the number of votes a candidate received if "Budget" was one of their top 3 campaign priorities.)
-Fixed an issue where the state legislature ignored several of the governor’s budget requests (when the state legislature majority party matched the governor’s party). For example, if the governor requested an increase in funding for libraries (above the default request), the state legislature would use the default request. Since the state legislature majority party aligned with the governor, they should have used the governor’s funding request.
-Fixed an issue with the state budget process where the budget request for emergency homeless shelters was incorrect (it is now higher).
-May have fixed an issue where vice president proteges would run for the presidency without being told to do so (if player was president and decided to not run for another term).
-Fixed an issue where the school board would spend too much money on the teacher budget if there was a budget surplus. The game assumes there is a point of diminishing returns where hiring more teachers no longer has an added benefit for academic achievement (in terms of reducing high school dropout rates). The school board was spending beyond this point of diminishing returns (even though it was not supposed to).
-May have fixed an issue where legislation was created without a sponsor, which could cause a situation where the game could not advance to the next turn.
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 a previous version of the game, you can right click on the game in your Steam library, click properties, then click betas and select the version you want to play. (The most recent version was version 0.268).