Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nicholas1111]

I had very, very strong squads, they were destroying everything and nothing could stop them, but most constitution was Arch conservative... I was raiding CCS, I was raiding whole downtown, doing everything, raiding army bases, robbing banks like every day, etc. But I could not change constitution...

This question may seem little stupid but what to do? I have really strong squads but they almost can't change laws...

[FinetalPies]

Laws only change during elections and important supreme court decisions. All you can do is change the public's perception of yourself and those issues. If you have garnered a lot of support come election time, a lot more liberals will be in office and the laws will start to swing in your favor.

That's my half-assed answer, hope I helped. (Also be sure to make use of [A]ctivate liberal -> [A] Engaging in Liberal Activism -> [4] Search Opinion polls)

[Moochoomon]

Laws only change during elections and important supreme court decisions. All you can do is change the public's perception of yourself and those issues. If you have garnered a lot of support come election time, a lot more liberals will be in office and the laws will start to swing in your favor.

That's the fun of the game. The whole point is to maintain years and years of political activism to reach your end goal. You need to keep your squads strong and keep the public opinion a constant liberal to achieve endgame.

[Darvi]

Laws only change during elections and important supreme court decisions.

Also withg referenda, which is easier than the other two since you don't need to get any officials elected first.

[SlatersQuest]

Here's a step-by-step of how it happens:

Constitutional amendments

There are three kinds of constitutional amendments that can be passed. These are:
1. Congressional term limits
2. Flushing the Supreme Court
3. Reaganifying the country

(1) happens if public opinion gets high enough that 2/3 of the state legislatures agree to a constitutional convention. Generally this means that public opinion on all views has to be Elite Liberal (80-100) or close to it.

(2) happens if a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress are elite liberal.

(3) happens if a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress are arch-conservative.

All three need the usual passage by 3/4 of the state legislatures in order to pass. State legislature voting is determined solely by public opinion and doesn't care about laws.


Law changes

Laws are changed four times a year. These are:
1. Congressional legislation, which occurs on March 1
2. Supreme Court decisions, which happen on (I think) July 1 (give or take a month)
3. Congressional legislation AGAIN, on September 1
4. Initiative petitions, on November 1.

Elections for Congress and the President also happen on November 1 in appropriate years. See the actual U.S. Constitution for details (although in the actual U.S. Constitution, it's the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, not November 1).

(1) and (3) depend largely on the alignment of Congress and the President, although moderates will tend to be swayed by public opinion on issues.

(4) depends solely on public opinion.

(2) has nothing to do with public opinion; only the alignment of Supreme Court justices matters. However, there's a 40% chance of replacing a Supreme Court justice every year, which means that the President and Senate select a new one, compromising as they do so. The Supreme Court is also automatically more liberal than normal on Free Speech and Flag Burning laws, but more conservative on Gun Control.


What this means for gameplay is that if you are really, really effective at changing public opinion, the longest part of the game may consist of simply waiting for the government and the laws to catch up, which in Marathon mode can take several decades.

[FinetalPies]

Dude that was awesome, you should paste that into the wiki somewhere.

[Nicholas1111]

Yeah nice one.

[EuchreJack]

Agreed, nice explanation!

[Liberal Elitist]

As of the latest revision (766), there's a 4th type of Constitutional Amendment:

4. Stalinizing the country

(4) happens if a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress are Stalinists.

Of course I haven't yet implemented functionality to elect Stalinists to office, so in practice, this doesn't happen yet. But it will be implemented in some future revision! Yes, the Stalinist Comrade Squad is going to be a real game option that you'll be able to turn on or off on the new game screen! In fact, revision 766 already has this option on the new game screen, if you uncomment the line that says //#define ALLOWSTALIN in includes.h. Most of the Stalinist mode hasn't been implemented yet but some of the basics have. Of course this feature is disabled by default right now since it's not fully implemented, not ready for prime time quite yet.

[Leafsnail]

Generally I win after around 6-7 years (IE after the entire senate has been replaced), or 4-5 years if I'm going for a ridiculously violent approach (with near-perfect elite liberal sweeps in both elections).  Once you control the legislature the supreme court will soon be purged anyway.

[SlatersQuest]

This only happens if you play on standard endgame conditions (i.e. liberals able to pass constitutional amendments). If Election Reform is C+, then even with public opinion being completely on the liberal side, incumbants have at least a 50% chance of remaining in office despite being massively unpopular. Similarly, it's impossible to flush the Supreme Court if you're playing on Marathon mode.

[Leafsnail]

Don't play on Marathon Mode, would be my advice.

[SlatersQuest]

You can play Marathon mode - just expect it to be a marathon. Expect your founder to die of old age (or be close to it) and need to be succeeded by one of xer recruits.

In my playtesting experience, winning the game in Marathon mode takes between 40-80 years, depending on the random draws of supreme court justices stepping down and being replaced. Most of that time, though, is going to go pretty fast, because you'll have defeated the CCS by then and can disband for multiple months at a time taking potshots at AM Radio and Cable News to keep them unpopular.