Tips for wining! Posted on Saturday, October 2, 2004 I will keep this short and to the point. 1) Build and upgrade your headquarters in the major states with the most ELECTORAL votes. Yes, you can even win your opponts home State. 3rd level headquarters brings in a substantial amount of income. With this income you can easily run your campaign without having to coduct FUNDRAISERS. This will benefit and able you to use your STAMINA points on BUILDING and UPGRADING your HEADQUARTERS (4 points), creating NEWSPAPER adds (3 points), investing in POLITICAL CAPITAL (3 points), purchasing WEBMASTERS (3 points and increases by 1 for each one purchased thereafter) and creating TV adds (3 points). 2) Concentrate on creating adds based on the MAIN overall issues and top 3 of each State you need in order to win. Avoid placing to many NEWSPAPER adds. Just use enough to counter your opponent in that State. DO NOT place any radio adds, instead, invest in political capital to purchase WEBMASTERS. DO NOT place any tv adds until you have placed a WEBMASTER in that State first. DO NOT try and raise the importance of an issue that you might feel strong about, go with the issues that have been selected at the start of each game. NOTE: 6 WEBMASTERS should be all you need to win. Place 1 each in CALIFORNIA, TEXAS, FLORIDA, NEW YORK, OHIO and PENNSYLVANIA. ILLINOIS would be the 7th or alternate State, depending on your Party. Each time you purchase a WEBMASTER, the next one will cost you 1 extra Political point. The 1st one costs 3 points, the 2nd one 4 points, and so on. So PLAN AHEAD and make sure that you will need at least 33 POLITICAL CAPITAL points(3+4+5+6+7+8)=33. 3) Try and beat your opponent to those question marks (?). They are usually very beneficial. 4) DO NOT waste time and STAMINA points on GIVING SPEECHES, or on TV INTERVIEWS. If you know you are way in the lead and just have nothing better to do, then go for an INTERVIEW. It's much better and wiser to purchase POLITICAL CAPITAL. 5) Using ECONOMIC CAPITAL is much more important than using POLITICAL CAPITAL. You can win without a single ENDORSEMENT. The only POLITICAL CAPITAL you should consider using is for those ever useful WEBMASTERS. The other POLITCAL OPERATIVES are not needed, nor recommended to win the game. The exception might be a FIXER to take out the MONEY MAN (he increases your opponents FUNDRAISING ability by 25%. Ignore all the other POLITICAL OPERATIVES. NOTE: All POLITICAL OPERATIVES will cost you an additional POLITICAL CAPITAL point when purchased, just like the WEBMASTER 6) As far as STAMINA points being stored, I tried this on a game and it DID NOT work. I started a game and did nothing on my first turn. On my second turn, I used all my STAMINA points for that turn, expecting to use my reserve points carried over from my first turn. There were none available. Maybe I do not know how this is supposed to work, but I make sure to use all my STAMINA points each turn. 7) Speaking of STAMINA, this is the most important STAT of the game. The more you can get around the more you can get done. If you are creating a character, make sure you give him/her 10 in STAMINA. It will be to yor advantadge when you face the likes of George Washington and his almost maxed out STATS. You will have to go to PROGRAM FILES - UBISOFT FOLDER - STARDOCK FOLDER - POLITICAL MACHINE FOLDER - DATA FOLDER - AND OPEN YOUR CHARACTER CANDITE (Your chosen name) with NOTE PAD or WORD PAD, once there you can EDIT him/her to your heart's content. You can EDIT any charachter in the game as well. Just open CORE CANDIDATES with NOTE PAD or WORD PAD. Here you can EDIT any of them as you wish. 8) If you have not built and upgraded enough HEADQUARTERS (big mistake), and see yourself running low on cash, then you will have no choice but to conduct a few FUNDRAISERS. If this is the case, make sure you conduct them in the LARGEST POPULATED States and that your PUBLIC AWARENESS is high there as well. 9) Make sure that of the MAIN issues that you are supporting, will have a beneficial outcome for you from both Parties and Independents as well (all 3 Parties giving the THUMBS UP on the issue you are addressing). And vice-versa, by making sure when attacking your opponent will have a negative impact (all 3 Parties giving the tumbs down). Try to avoid any issues that have mixed results. You are trying to bring some of the oppossing and undecided (independent) voters to your side, not distancing them more. 10) Lastly, make sure to SAVE your game after each turn, in case you make a bad decision or move. Have fun! I found this game rather easy to play and beat. However, it was somewhat fun and is a GREAT CONCEPT. Although, the game needs some tweeks and especially some added enhancements to make it more enjoyable and stratigically challenging and competitave. I preffered FANTASY MODE to the others. It was a bit more challenging, due that every game is different. One has to write down the States that have the most ELECTORAL votes, and plan accordingly. This gives the computer opponent the advantage on the first turn. It will need it when it plays against me. After that, it's preety much the same. I hope to see this game get BETTER in the near future. It all depends on it's POPULARITY. Only time well tell. GODbless all! Sincerely, Sir Gallahad