The pitch: you are an independent candidate, either Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin or Cynthia McKinney. You will compete against snother (not necessarily independent due to game limitations) candidate for the role of chief 'spoiler' in the election. Are you ready to be #3!
Renaming one of the parties as independents
Here's a "work-around" that will let you appear as an "Independent" candidate:
(Please see NOTE at end of post)
-------
Open c:/program files/stardock/TotalGaming/The Political Machine 2008/Data/English/Scenarios/USAModern.PM2ScenarioXML in a text editor.
Find the line that says:
Campaign 2008
Change it to say:
Campaign 2008 - Indy vs. Dem
Now, find the section that begins with
and ends with
Replace that section with this:
Democrat
Democrats
Democrats.png
10
10
255
Republican
Republicans
Republicans.png
255
10
10
Independent
Independents
Independent.png
128
128
128
Now save the file as USAModernIndyVsDem.PM2ScenarioXML
Reload the original c:/program files/stardock/TotalGaming/The Political Machine 2008/Data/English/Scenarios/USAModern.PM2ScenarioXML file
Change the line to say:
Campaign 2008 - Indy vs. Rep
Replace the section with this:
Democrat
Democrats
Democrats.png
10
10
255
Republican
Republicans
Republicans.png
255
10
10
Independent
Independents
Independent.png
128
128
128
Save this file as USAModernIndyVsRep.PM2ScenarioXML
This will give you 2 new scenarios where you can play as:
+ independent vs. a republican
+ independent vs. democrat
------
You could do a similar trick for all the other scenarios too.
NOTE: This only renames one party as "Independents," so it will look like states will have a large support for "Independent" candidates.
For example, if it's the "indy vs rep" scenario, NY would have high support for Indies since it is mostly a democrat state, and it would look like it supported Indies more than Democrats. Also, it would look like the party that replaced the independent party might support or disapprove things they normally wouldn't.
So it may not be perfect, but at least you can get the appearance as running as an independent.
Also, having extra scenario files may prevent you from playing multiplayer. The game will detect it as modified files.
If you only play single player, it wouldn't be a problem. You could always move the files out of the scenario folder when you want to play multiplayer, too.
Download Custom candidates:
https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=74
Once I get the full game (hopefully this weekend.) I will experiment with editing the .PM2issuesxml files. I believe I can create true third parties.