I recently bought TPM 2012. There are not enough Democrats available. A few Republicans should be added as well.
Some of the characters that you can hire don't indicate if they can be moved or not. This was incredibly frustrating to discover. Also some of the candidate traits seem to have no effect on the game at all. For example opening a community outreach center is suppose to increase minority awareness and appeal. But in reality these things seem to have no effect on the game.
Also the vice president don't really do much of anything. They can't give a speech, and they can't fundraise. Also "The Fixer" doesn't get rid of them even though technically by the rules of the game they should be able to.
Also some issues at the state level never matter at all.
Lastly I blanketed my opponent with negative advertising. But instead of this hurting my opponent they simply adopted that stance and it wound up helping them.
I too thought there weren't enough democrats available, but in defence of stardock, there are less highly visible democrats when there is no contest for who will run for the democrats in the election. And yes, there are a few republicans missing too. I just made all the characters that I thought were missing. There are also lots of them online available.
Most characters in my experience do say whether you can move them or not, however I feel your pain, I hadn't realised that one of the characters can't be moved and ended up with it stuck in a safe state.
All the traits have a slight affect but on different situations. can you be more specific about which of the traits you don't think does anything?
The outreach center does increase minority awareness, however, if you have high awareness in the state already, or the state does not have a large "minority" community, then you will find that the building does not improve anything there.
I also noticed that the fixer isn't working for me, which is quite frustrating, especially on multiplayer, I'm going to look into why taht is, but I am not a member of stardock, so there is a limited amount I can find out.
I find the vice presidential candidates do get a bit useless, especially if you play the longer games, because you end up with 100% awareness, and then they don't have anything to do. but i think the idea is, that he IS giving speeches, which is what is improving your awareness. In reality, the presidential candidate doesn't have a lot of control of the other person on his ticket, that person is somewhat of an endorsement that just adds to things. But I am currently looking into a way of making the vice presidential candidate more useful. but haven't found anything i need for that yet.
The state thing is true, but in reality some issues don't matter atall in some states, or matter so little it doesn't affect it. also it could be because you've done too much in that state already, after a while you won't gain bonuses from speeches or ads in a state, when they get tired of them all the time. I find this in california a lot, where i always try to win because it has a lot of votes.
Sometimes the advertising thing happens. The Thumbs up and thumbs down are an approximation by your team. If you say that so-and-so doesn't support a strong military, then he might say, "yeh i don't", and can gain support from some states for this. this happens in real life, when a candidate says, "he wants to raise your taxes" and the other candidate says "yes i do, because I want to support...." and then they gain support.
You can actually increase the effectiveness in ads by poking around in the xml files.
