The Political Process News

[p]The game has been updated to version 0.353. [/p][p]This update contains several fixes.[/p][p][/p][p]Fixes[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where judicial nominations would be automated for the player if the initial judicial nominee was rejected during a previous administration. The nomination process should have been given to the player, but instead, it was automated. [/p][p]-Likely fixed an issue where an error would occur if there were not enough judges in the circuit court to perform a judicial review.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where politicians would oppose Medicaid Expansion legislation, stating that it was already active. They were not taking into account that the eligibility rate had been adjusted and they should have been evaluating it based on that change.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where politicians would support social security legislation even though no changes had been made to social security.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where community development funds were not saved in the previous budget variable, meaning the community development budget would not update correctly when clicking the Previous Budget button. [/p][p]-Potentially fixed an issue where too many supreme court justices would be nominated/confirmed under certain conditions.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where the player would continue receiving a salary from certain non-elected jobs even if they won an election and started a new job. [/p][p]-Fixed the wording for certain types of legislation that referenced federal funding even though it was a city level program not related to federal funding.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where state trial court judges could remain in their position indefinitely, regardless of age. [/p][p]-Fixed an issue where the player could not resign from a custom job. [/p]

[p]The game has been updated to version 0.352. [/p][p]This is a minor update with several fixes.[/p][p][/p][p]FIXES[/p][p]-Adjusted the process for nominating Supreme Court Justices. If your nominee for supreme court justice is rejected by the senate, you will have the opportunity to nominate a new candidate at any time by navigating to the Actions tab in the Office Summary menu. Previously, you had to wait 30 weeks before receiving a new opportunity to nominate a candidate for the position. [/p][p]-Fixed an issue where the player would be given the opportunity to nominate a candidate for a judicial position even if the player was no longer president. This would happen if the player’s initial nominee was rejected during the senate confirmation process. A new nomination event was scheduled for 30 weeks later, at which point the player might no longer be president. [/p][p]-Fixed an issue where legal career histories would not update.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the endorsements menu where the “Primary Challenge Threat” option prevented the menu from being closed.[/p][p]-Likely fixed an issue where the player would not be replaced as state attorney general if the player accepted a job as the U.S. Attorney General.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where the player, as vice president, was not getting enough donations and political points when doing automated fundraising.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where health coverage metrics displayed incorrectly if universal health care was active.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the election difficulty buttons where multiple buttons would display as “active” at the same time.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where supreme court vacancies would not be filled if the player left the presidency without filling the vacancies. Subsequent presidents would leave the positions empty.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where certain graphs would not display a title in dark mode.[/p][p]-Fixed several issues with absentee ballot legislation. [/p][p]-Fixed an issue where politicians would incorrectly support/oppose a maximum judicial age of 0, thinking that the max age was being lowered, even though a value of 0 means there is no max age limit.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with criminal voting legislation.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the assistant public defender case where the innocent event would trigger even if the defendant was found guilty on several charges.[/p][p]-Adjusted presidential primary colors (democrats) so it is easier to distinguish between them.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the custom event tool where the Update Player Relationship with Character effect did not display the correct character if any other options had been changed in the menu.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the custom event tool where multiple Effect types were missing when creating effects for Pop Up Options. [/p][p]-Fixed an issue with the Custom Event Tool where selecting the “Player is Not in Position” event trigger would cause an error.[/p][p]-Fixed an issue where player savings could not be increased to 100 billion in the advanced player options once the game started.[/p]

[p]The game has been updated to version 0.351.[/p][p][/p][p]If you encounter any problems after updating to the newest version of the game, please report them in the Bug Reports forum, here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/

Note: If you play the game using Steam Deck, you may need to opt into the old framework version of the game. It contains the same content, but uses an older version of the game’s framework. The newer version appears to be incompatible with Steam Deck (at least for some users). To opt into the old framework, right click on the game in your Steam library and click on Properties. A new menu will open; on the left side, there will be an option called “Betas”. Click that. Then, from the drop-down menu, select “oldFrame – Old Framework (Updated)”. It should start downloading automatically. Only try this option if you encounter problems starting the game.

MAJOR ADDITIONS [/p][p]-Added judges to the game. [/p][p]-Added a Judicial Review Process: when certain types of legislation are signed into law, they will automatically be challenged. Judges will review whether the law in question is constitutional. If it is found to be unconstitutional, the law will automatically reset to a constitutional value. The Judicial Review Process can be turned off in the advanced options. If you do not want the possibility of your laws being overturned in the courts, turn off Judicial Review. [/p][p]-Added a process for NPCs to appoint judges. [/p][p]-Added a process for the player to appoint judges. Nominating judges whose judicial philosophy aligns with your ideology is a strategic factor in ensuring that your laws are ruled constitutional. [/p][p]-Added a senate confirmation process for judges. If your character is a senator, you will be shown information about the judicial nominee and can specify if you support or oppose the nominee. [/p][p]-Added an option to deny judicial confirmation hearings if your character is the chair of the senate judicial committee. [/p][p]-Added the process for judges to be elected (elections are simple, results are not saved or displayed). [/p][p]-Added an option for protégés to become judges. A “Protégé Judges” section has been added to the concepts document (in the Judicial Branch section). [/p][p]-Added a “Case Archive” menu where judicial review opinions can be viewed. Currently it is located in the Politicians > Judicial Branch tab. [/p][p]-Added the text of the U.S. Constitution in the Politicians > Judicial Branch tab. [/p][p]-Added new judicial laws to the game. These can be found in the Judicial Branch tab among the list of legislative proposals. [/p][p]-Added Judicial Branch information to the concepts menu. [/p][p]-Added advanced options for the Judicial Branch (found within the Nation tab of the advanced options menu). [/p][p]-Added judicial challenges for the redistricting process. The game will automatically calculate whether districts are challenged based on whether gerrymandering is detected. Judicial challenges for districts can be turned off in the advanced options. By default, it is turned on. [/p][p]-Added the ability for the player to challenge any (relevant) active laws as president, governor, or attorney general. [/p][p]-Added Judicial Accountability and Judicial Independence metrics to the Metrics menu. [/p][p]-Added an option to “Mentor” current politicians. Essentially, this is a way to make a current politician into a protégé. Certain conditions have to be met in order for a politician to agree to be your protégé. You have to have a policy agreement above 60%, you have to have 2x as many political points as them, the politician cannot be more than 10 years older than your character, and you cannot disagree on fundamental policy positions. [/p][p]-Added automatic judicial nominations. If you do not want to nominate a judge for every judicial vacancy, you can automate the process. This can be turned on in the Office > Events > Nominations menu. It can also be turned on in the advanced options (next to the other judicial options in the Nations tab). [/p][p]-Added automatic judicial confirmation hearings. This can be turned on in the Office > Events > Nominations menu. It can also be turned on in the advanced options (next to the other judicial options in the Nations tab). If you turn this on, and you are the senate majority leader, the game will automatically grant confirmation hearings for every judicial nominee. [/p][p]-Added an option to ask supreme court judges to retire (if your character is president). You can read more about this in the “Judicial Retirement” section in the concepts document. [/p][p][/p][p]PLAYABLE POSITIONS
-Added a playable law student position to the game. This position is essentially a tutorial to help you learn about various legal concepts.
-Added a playable law clerk position. This position is essentially a tutorial to learn about the constitution.
-Added a playable public defender position. This position includes some introductory events and one trial event. Once the trial event ends, the position will have no additional events. The player’s character will continue to receive a salary, but there is no more gameplay content for the position.
-Added playable judge positions. Positions have minimum playable content. Federal judges may have rare opportunities to evaluate the constitutionality of laws. State judges may have rare opportunities to evaluate the legality of newly drawn election districts. To learn more about judicial content, read the Judicial Branch section in the Concepts document (under the portrait of your Chief of Staff).
-Added a playable Vice President position. If you meet certain conditions, a nominee for president will select you to be their running mate. Currently there are no campaign activities for the running mate. If your nominee wins the election, you will become vice president. Vice president activities are limited to casting the tie-breaking vote in the senate. If the president is removed from office, you will become the new president. A “Vice President” section has been added to the Election category of the Concepts document. There you will be able to learn about the conditions needed to be selected as a running mate.
-Added “shallow” judicial positions such as district attorney, lawyer, and others. These positions provide a salary and political points but do not have any gameplay content. Some of these positions can be used to unlock, or qualify for, higher level judicial positions.
-Added a “Locked Judicial Positions” option to the jobs menu. From there, you can select any of the “locked” judicial positions, rather than waiting to unlock them with the correct experience level.

OTHER ADDITIONS
-Added the ability to customize judges. The Allow Custom Politicians option must be set to True.
-Added the ability to save/load judge presets.
-Added the ability to save/load judge group presets.
-Added a “Select All” button to the Conduct a Poll Menu.
-Added an advanced option to change the city election year. This can be found in the City tab of advanced options, under the heading for Election Variables.
-Added judicial laws and policies to the advanced options menu (specifically in the Nation tab of the Advanced Options Menu).
-Added advanced options for judicial rules in the player’s home state. This includes things like judge appointment method, term lengths/limits, maximum age, and so forth. These rules are in the state tab, listed after the state Election Laws and Redistricting Laws. They apply only to the player’s home state.
-Increased the maximum savings allowed in the character creation menu from 1 billion to 100 billion.
-Added an advanced option to change the presidential candidate ratios. This allows you to specify how many senators, governors, and mayors will be added to the presidential primaries. In the advance options menu, it can be found under the politicians tab – at the bottom. It is called Presidential Candidate Ratios. You can specify a minimum value and a maximum value. The game will randomly select a number between those values.
-Added a new cloture vote type for judicial branch legislation. By default, it requires 60 votes to end debate on judicial branch legislation. It can be changed in the advanced options or by drafting legislation to adjust the value. The judicial branch cloture vote is distinct from the cloture vote required to confirm judges (which has a value of 51 by default).
-Added a “Select All” button for mandatory policies in the Endorsement Conditions menus.
-Increased the impact of Medicare proposals in the legislation support analysis mechanism.
-Added more nuance for federal sex-education policy. It is now possible to specify a percentage for how much federal education funds will be withheld from states who do not adopt the federal policy. When voting on sex-education policies, the state legislature will take into account the federal policy when making a decision. If the state policy does not align with the federal policy, the state (and city) will lose education funding. Previously, nothing happened.
-Added player statistics for nominating and confirming judges. This specifically applies to judges nominated/confirmed by the player as governor/president and does not apply to judges nominated/confirmed on behalf of a protégé. If automated nominations are turned on, the game may include protégé nominations in the statistics.
-Added a player message whenever a supreme court justice dies or retires, since it is a major event.
-Improved the Predict Election menu so that more states start with a prediction (based on party demographics).
-Updated the election night map so that dark mode has a dark gray background (instead of the default blue background).
-Updated several other maps so that dark mode has a dark gray background.
-Made some adjustments to Dark Mode in the Metrics tab.
-Added Dynamic Political Parties to the advanced options. It can be turned on in the Advanced Options menu under the Elections > General tab. By default it is turned off. It is an experimental feature that adjusts political party demographics gradually throughout the course of the game. Generally, but not always, it benefits the democratic party. This is unintentional and it is unclear why it happens.
-If the player is the president and the sponsor of a bill, the vice-president will now automatically vote in favor of the bill if there is a tie in the senate.

CUSTOM EVENT TOOL
-Added Vice President as an option for the Player Position event trigger.
-Added judicial positions to the Player Position Event Trigger.
-Added Player Age as an Event Trigger.
-Added new laws to the Law Status Event Trigger.
-Added Player Policy Status as an Event Trigger – if you want an event to trigger based on the player supporting or opposing a specific policy, use this event trigger.
-Added targeted character policy position as an Event Trigger – if you want an event to trigger based on the target character having a specified policy position, use this event trigger.
-Added leadership positions to the targeted character evaluation.
-Added an option to force the Vice President to resign (if the vice president is selected as the targeted character).
-Added an effect to give the player a custom job ID. The ID can be evaluated using Event Triggers to determine if the player has the custom job id. You will likely want to use the Event Trigger to evaluate that the player does not currently have a job before assigning them a custom job. The custom job will replace any current job they have, which could cause problems.
-Added an event trigger called “Player Job Experience”. It allows you to evaluate whether the player has held a certain position for a specified number of years. Currently, this applies to judicial positions such as judge or attorney general or assistant public defender.

FIXES
-Fixed an issue where SNAP and TANF would be eliminated in a Democratic reconciliation bill when they should have been expanded.
-Fixed an issue where the game would not create state house and state senate party leaders after moving to a new state (when retiring and playing as a protégé from a different state). This could have caused problems where the game would not progress to the next turn (after loading the save file).
-Fixed an issue that could cause military expenditures to become NaN (Not a Number - undefined), which could cause the budget menu to stop working.
-Fixed an issue where the game might stop advancing to the next turn if the vice president elect was a protégé who held a leadership position in the state house or state senate.
-Likely fixed an issue where state redistricting rules would not be updated when the federal government established national redistricting rules.
-May have fixed an issue where the Influence Multiple button in the Legislation Score Analysis menu did not influence enough senators to bypass the cloture vote. The game assumed you needed 51 votes instead of 60.
-Likely fixed an issue where governor protégés would be removed from the protégé list if the player moved to a new state.
-Fixed an issue where the game would not allow you to move a protégé to a new state house, state senate, or U.S. house district (even after suggesting that you move them because the redistricting process made their current district uncompetitive).
-Fixed an issue where some elections could have duplicate candidates (mostly, if not entirely, senate elections).
-May have reduced the chances of proteges being duplicated in elections.
-Fixed an issue where the game would generate independent polls for previous senate elections on week 19. This could cause issues where the line graph would not generate for the senate race because the poll from week 19 did not match any of the subsequent polls.
-Fixed an issue where player’s notable events would not update if they sponsored a bill and signed it into law as president.
-Fixed an issue with the endorsement mechanism. If you threatened a primary challenger against a candidate as a condition for endorsement, and the candidate rejected the condition, the game would give you a prompt asking if you wanted to run a protégé against the politician. There was a problem where clicking “Yes” to this prompt would not have any effect and the prompt menu would remain open. That problem has been fixed.
-Fixed an issue where an incorrect variable was being used during votes on “constitutional amendments” (proposals that require 2/3 vote to pass), which might have prevented legislation from progressing to the next stage in the legislative process.
-Fixed an issue where politicians would create an Automatic Voter Registration Act but it would not include automatic voter registration as one of the proposals.
-Fixed an issue where the previous budget button did not update the corporate tax rate.
-Likely fixed an issue where nationally mandated legislature redistricting did not have an effect.
-Fixed an issue where senate general elections might not include all candidates if the election was in a state with non-partisan primaries where more than 3 candidates advanced to the general election.
-Fixed an issue where voter intention polls would not include all candidates in states where non-partisan primaries sent more than 2 candidates to the general election.
-May have fixed an issue where certain policy position support values would go outside their intended range of 0% - 100% support.
-Fixed an issue with Renewable Energy Tax Credit legislation at the state level. The support analysis menu was showing NaN values for every politician because an incorrect variable was being used.
-Likely fixed an issue where state level foster care funds could be exceedingly large after moving to a new state.
-Likely fixed an issue where a party leader would indicate support or opposition to legislation (in a news event) that did not match their actual vote for the legislation.
-Fixed an issue where funding for teacher training programs was excessive if the school board had a large surplus.
-Likely fixed an issue where total military spending would not update when using the “Balance Budget” button.
-Fixed an issue with the advanced options where attempting to specify a certain number of initial congressional members did not always work correctly.
-Likely fixed an issue where same day registration would cause voter turnout to be 100%.
-Additional fixes.[/p]

This is just a quick update to address an issue that prevented the game from working for some players.

The "framework" used for this game has been updated to its most recent version. This should help prevent problems for some users. When you first start your game, you will likely receive a pop up notification stating that some features may be unavailable. You can click "OK" and the game should start normally. After this initial pop up notification, you should not receive any pop-up notifications the next time you start the game.

A Judicial Branch Update is currently in development. It is undergoing beta testing and new features are still being add. It should be ready for release in the next month or two.

The game has been updated to Version 0.31. This is just a small update to add a new preset to the Election Simulator.

Additions

-Added a 2024 Presidential Election Preset to the Election Simulator. The preset comes preloaded with the candidates and conditions for the 2024 presidential election. The purpose of the preset is to allow you to have the fun of trying to predict the election without the hassle of setting up all of the basic conditions for it. You can make your own adjustments and see how it influences the outcome. To access the preset, go to the Election Simulator, click New Election, select President, and then select 2024 Preset.