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Author Topic: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda  (Read 68857 times)

Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #120 on: January 24, 2011, 11:34:55 am »

My hate for Hidden Agenda has been subsiding, and I guess I would like to try out new things to break the game. However, I don't know of anything else to do other than try to replicate the "United States sending military aid to Marxists" glitch. If you would like to suggest me new stuff to do, please let me know now.
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Archangel

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #121 on: January 25, 2011, 01:38:40 am »

How about getting as many notables and politicians as you can killed or exiled?
« Last Edit: January 25, 2011, 01:40:25 am by Archangel »
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EuchreJack

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #122 on: January 26, 2011, 11:32:23 am »

How about getting as many notables and politicians as you can killed or exiled?

Seconded.

GlyphGryph

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #123 on: January 26, 2011, 06:38:54 pm »

So I just played trying to actually do well, and its suprisingly easy if one takes the "realistic communist" approach.

Focus on coffee growers for money, get Elrich out the military right away. He's a douchenozzle who ignores you, while the other guy is actually, *gasp* fairly loyal. Build up some infrastructure. Give the cotton land to the poor, give the dictators estates to coops and coffee. With Elrich out of the way, you can easily get rid of the death squads. Get lots and lots of military and economic aid from USSR and Cuba.

And the best part?

At the very end, you get to publicly humiliate the good ol'USA on the international stage. ^_^
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #124 on: January 26, 2011, 07:36:51 pm »

So I just played trying to actually do well, and its suprisingly easy if one takes the "realistic communist" approach.

It's easy to stay alive, yes, but it's not so easy to get any good result out of that. When you're discussing humiliation, I'm assuming you mean suing the United States in the ICC, but you only get to do that if the US is embargoing you, meaning that you're at a huge risk for default...and there's no IMF to bail you out. I'm also assuming you're not spending money on health care or education to help conserve money since you're wasting most of it due to the huge military buildup you done to provoke the United States in the first place. Also, the Commies tend to want to cut you loose after a while, the maximum they give you is $50 million/season...and you lose out on European assistance in the process.

But...maybe you are right. After all, two people (one on SomethingAwful and La Republique) tried out the Commie approach and said they done well. Maybe I should try that out myself. And after all, you did say realistic; it's possible that you abandoned a few of the more stupid commie reforms: Mandatory Marketing Board anyone? And since you did say you focused on coffee producers, that means you likely gave export producers the highest priority, rather than divide up credits as the commies want.

I'm curious, Glyph. I think I'll try your approach and see if that will work.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2011, 07:40:39 pm by Servant Corps »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #125 on: January 26, 2011, 09:03:55 pm »

Yeah, big focus on exports. Nutrition, medical and education all did decently at first, but did face big cuts when the US pulled out. I never instituted price control, so the nutrition took a while but really started improving towards the end as the small bits I pushed into it actually started working out. Everyone loved me, and though debt was an issue, it wasn't an insurmountable one. They key to financial aid (and military without spending huge sums) is to push Russia and Cuba early and hard, and make regular overtures in an attempt to be a beneficial part of the international community. Seriously, eff the US.

It's still a hard road, but if you were willing to forgo to education/nutrition/medical issues even more than myself you'd probably be able to come out ahead money wise.
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #126 on: January 27, 2011, 11:13:34 pm »

Realistic Communism
Spoiler: Year 1 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Year 2 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Year 3 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Pax Americana (click to show/hide)

« Last Edit: January 27, 2011, 11:26:41 pm by Servant Corps »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #127 on: January 28, 2011, 07:22:34 pm »

Man, that was terrible! Why didn't you just declare martial law? Yeah, Europe takes a hit, but if you've been active in the international community supporting them it shouldn't have been a game killer, and as is it really screwed you over. I declared a state of emergency year two to fight the rebellion, but manage to have it almost completely scaled back by the end of the game.

But the inconsistancy, thats terrible for business. You spent way too much time jumping around - at least partly due to your cabinet. Cabinet choice is important, in my experience, mostly because it allows you to never have to reverse a decision.
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #128 on: January 28, 2011, 09:47:44 pm »

You may be disappointed, I'm pleasantly surprised that I managed to survive so long! Perhaps hopping around may have been counterproductive, but I guess I was just too bored to stick with one issue entirely and wanted to explore the limits of the game (that would explain me refusing to enact the State of Emergency as well).  The fact that I only defaulted at Year 3, Harvest Season suggested that a few minor policy changes may have gotten me through. Comparing the "Radical Moderation" run to this run also showcase a lot of stuff, most important being that I ended up saving money on the war overall due to the early "military build-up" back in Year 1 (I'm assuming the draft doesn't do a whole lot).

Looking back at the "Radical Moderation" run, I saw that I angered the Europeans at the end of Year 1, while in this run, I sustained European assistance for a while before I was forced to choose between surrender and martial law. So potentially, I could have declared martial law and maybe hope it reduce the costs of fighting the war. But there's also one other issue I noticed: infrastructure spending was climbing a whole lot, and I think that it would have been better if I just kept the money in the bank and allowed it to be loaned to the coffee producers. One graph that concerned me is the graph on coffee production: it began a slow drop in Year 2, and I don't really know why that happened. If the spending on the military and infrastructure was taking away funds from coffee producers, I may have really shot myself in the foot. And since you can only slow down military spending, maybe infrastructure spending must be on the cutting block.

What's important is that I have shown that it is possible to do what you did. I'm going to try to reload the Realistic Communist save, and see if the State of Emergency changes anything.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2011, 09:49:27 pm by Servant Corps »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #129 on: January 28, 2011, 10:08:14 pm »

I just did a "kick out Elrich, have the US guide you to awesome" run. Really good healthcare and education, decent handling of loans (and the US and IMF willing to do whatever it takes to see me through despite mounting debt), huge investment in infrastructure.

Only thing that kind of sucked was malnutrition at 60%. I should have switched cabinet members earlier to one who cared about the starvation thing, then I could have had them set up a relationship for the US to sell/ship us a ton of food.

Oh, thats the other thing, cabinet members. I find you can't be afraid to swap them out to do whatever needs doing, and knowing how each one is going to respond to situations is key.

I think that maybe I should have declared a state of emergency to get rid of the Reactos though - even without doing anythign to fight them they were pretty weak since the US supported my government, so a quickly scaled back national emergency might have nipped them in the bud while still being recoverable in terms of US relations...

Honestly, though I basically feel like encounters only matter up to a year and a half to take out coups, and then I ignore them completely and just rejig my cabinet to get what I need.
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #130 on: January 28, 2011, 10:18:07 pm »

I don't think you can declare a state of emergency though; the State of Emergency is proposed as a way to deal with CIA-funded "reactos" once you make the Americans angry; if the United States are friendly with your regime, there's no reason to enact a State of Emergency.

It seems that United States start funding the reactos if Chimerica holds a draft and the Socialists provide military aid...if you do either, the Americans just shrug. I might be wrong, and I need to test this, but I am wondering if it is possible to glitch the game so that the socialists and the Americans send in military troops to fight the 'reactos'.

And yeah, I learnt fairly early on that you should treat the Cabinet as a tool to enact the policies you want, and possibly as a place to appoint people you want to appease.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2011, 10:20:40 pm by Servant Corps »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #131 on: January 28, 2011, 10:35:25 pm »

Oh no, I just played a game where I was practically in bed with the US and there were still a bunch of Reactos. I just don't think they were being supported by the CIA...
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #132 on: February 03, 2011, 01:25:01 pm »

Ugh, I don't feel like playing more of Hidden Agenda, so this is just another bump to say this thread is going inactive again. I should have known my self-loathing of HA runs deep.
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Rolan7

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #133 on: February 03, 2011, 06:05:42 pm »

For a game you hate, you sure have played a lot of it  :P
I gave it a try months ago when you started the thread.  My reign was short and violent - I don't remember who managed to kill me first.  It's a lot more fun reading your playthroughs.
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Servant Corps

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Re: Let's Horribly Break Hidden Agenda
« Reply #134 on: February 08, 2011, 01:08:59 am »

In my political science class, we have a book called "Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics", which provided examples of the author, Barbara Gedees, doing example political science studies. One study she did was classifying certain authoritarian regimes into three categories:
Quote from: Barbara Gedees
I initially classified regimes as personalist, military, or single-party. In military regimes, a group of officers decide who will rule and exercises some influence on policy. In single-party regimes, one party dominates access to political office and control over policy, though other parties may exist and compete as minor players in elections. Personalist regimes differ from both military and single-party in that access to office and the fruits of office depends much more on the discretion of an individual leader. The leader may be an officer and may have created a party to support himself, but neither the military nor the party exercies independent decision-making power insulated from the whims of the ruler. I had to add intermediate categories to this classification scheme after discovering how many of the cases simply resisted being crammed into one or another of the original cases.

The way she classified a regime was through a questionare, where a score is assigned between 0 and 1; this score is the sum of "yes" answers divided by the total of "yes" and "no answers. "A regime classification into a nominal category ... depends on which score is significantly higher than the other two. Hybrids are regimes with similar score for two or more regime types."

This made me think...since we know so much about Chimerica...and we know Chimerica isn't a true liberal democracy...what is the regime type of this government? Assuming that we are evaluating the Player's own dictatorship, and assuming the Player aligns itself with one of the three Parties...let's find out:

Is it a single-party regime?
*Did the party exist prior to the leader's election campaign or accession to power? - Yes, all three parties existed prior to the fall of Farsante
*Was the party organized in order to fight for independence or lead some other mass social movement? Yes for National Liberation (they are communists after all), No for Popular Stability and Christian Reform
*Did the first leader's successor hold, or does the leader's heir apparent hold, a high party position? Not Applicable, there is no concept of succession in Hidden Agenda
*Does the party either face some competition from other parties or hold competitive intraparty elections? Yes, elections can be held where other parties can compete against the incumbent party
*Is party membership required for most government employment? No. Though a certain amount of low-level corruption does exist in Chimerica, for the most part, it requires that you at least be a member of ONE of the political parties, not of the ruling party. The higher-echelon jobs, such as the Banker or the Commissioner of Health are not chosen based on party membership.
*Does the party control access to high government office? No, as above.
*Are members of the politburo (or its equivalent) chosen by routine party procedures? I'm going to assume Yes; after hold elections, you receive a letter declaring that one Party has nominated you for the Presidency, suggesting the party has some ability to decide who to nominate, also implying the party is able to determine who gets to lead it.
*Does the party encompass members from more than one region, religion, ethnic group, clan or tribe (in heterogeneous societies)? Not Applicable, the game does not model region, ethnic group, clan or tribal politics. In addition, the population of Chimerica share the same religion of Roman Catholicism (with the exception of Bernie).
*Do none of the leader's relatives occupy very high government office? Yes. You are truly alone in the world of Chimerica.
*Was the leader a civilian before his accession? Yes.
*Was the successor to the first leader, or is the heir apparent, a civilian? Not Applicable, there is no concept of succession in Hidden Agenda
*Is the military high command consulted primarily about security matters? Yes.
*Are most members of the cabinet or poltiburo-equivalent civilians? Yes, there are only two military officers you could choose from: Calderon and Alejos.
6-7 Yes/9 Total
0.66 for Popular Stability dictatorship
0.66 for Christian Reform dictatorship
0.77 for National Liberation dictatorship

Is it a military regime?
*Is the leader a retired or active general or equivalent? No.
*Was the successor to the first leader, or is the heir apparent, a general or equivalent? Not Applicable, there is no concept of succession in Hidden Agenda
*Is there a procedure in place for rotating the highest office or dealing with succession? No.
*Is there a routine procedure for consulting the officer corps about policy decisions? Yes, either the colonel calls for an Interrupt or we can consult the colonel in Encounters.
*Has the military hiearchy been maintained? No, the army merger is in place.
*Does the officer corps include represenatives of more than one ethnic, religious or tribal group (in heterogeneous countries)? Not Applicable, Chimerica can be assumed to be homogeneous.
*Have normal procedures for retirement been maintained for the most part? (That is, had the leader refrained from or been prevented from forcing his entire cohorot or all officers from other tribal groups into retirement?) No, the National Liberation Sub-Commander outwardly try to attempt forced 'retirements' when the Chimerican Army is united, and at any given moment, half the army can be purged, either because of elections or due to Presidential intervention.
*Are merit and seniority the main bases for promotion, rather than loyalty or ascriptive characteristics? Not Applicable, not enough information to tell the difference between the two.
*Has the leader refrained from having dissenting officers murdered or imprisoned? Yes, he has no way from actually murdering or imprisoning these officers.
*Has the leader refrained from creating a political party to support himself? Yes, he has the three main parties to rely on.
*Has the leader refrained from holding plebiscites to support his personal rule? Yes.
*Do officers occupy positions in the cabinet other than those related to the armed forces? It's incredibly possible, for example, appointing Alejos to the position of Agricultural Minister, but it's up to the individual Presidente to decide if he wants to do that, and I personally treat the Cabinet as a tool of policymaking, so I'd say "Not Applicable"
*Has the rule of law been maintained? (That is, even if a new constitution has been written and laws decreed, are decrees, once promulgated, followed until new ones are written?) Yes.
5/9
0.55 for Popular Stability
0.55 for Christian Reform
0.55 for National Liberation

Is it a personalist regime?
*Does the leader lack the support of a party? No. It appears that when you hold elections, you will always be nominated by a Party.
*If there is a support party, was it created after the leader's acession to power? No.
*If there is a support party, does the leader choose most of the members of the politburo-equivalent? No.
*Does the country specialist literature describe the politubor-equivalent as a rubber stamp for the leader? Yes, you are always overwhelmingly appointed to be a Presidential nominee, even if you do policies contrary to that of the party.
*If there is a support party, is it limited to a few urban areas? Yes for Christian Reform, being the least popular of the three parties and primarily urban-based. No for National Liberation and Popular Stability, who have more broad-based appeals.
*Was the successor to the first leader, or is the heir apparent, a member of the same family, clan, tribe or minority ethnic group as the first leader? Not Applicable, Chimerica can be assumed to be homogeneous.
*Does the leader govern without routine elections? Yes, the Presidente takes power in a junta, and thus do not have to worry about elections until, possibly, half-way through the game. Even then, he doesn't have to worry about a second election.
*If there are elections, are they essentially plebiscites, that is, without either internal or external competition? No, elections are hotly contested by the two other parties.
*Does access to high office depend on the personal favor of the leader? No, the Commissioner of Health still keep her job even when she loath me for cutting her funds.
*Has normal military hierarchy been seriously disorganized or overturned? Yes, there is currently an army merger.
*Have dissenting officers or officers from different regions, tribes, religions, or ethnic groups been murdered, imprisoned, or forced into exile? Yes, the army purges do have to happen after all.
*Has the officer  corps been marginalized from most decision making? No for Popular Stability: Colonel Ehrlich controls labor policy and land reform...as well as military spending. Yes for National Liberation and Christian Reform, the officer corps only deal with military policy.
*Does the leader personally control the security apparatus? No, the army and the police acts mostly independent, though the Presidente can give guidance.
4-6/10
0.4 for Popular Stability
0.6 for Christian Reform
0.5 for National Liberation

Conclusion:
The highest score (0.77 for NL, 66 for PS and CR) for all three parties is in fact the Single-Party System...so the government that runs Chimerica is a Single-Party Regime. "Military Regime" still scored respectively well, in keeping with the idea of the military running the show in Chimerica, but the Single-Party System just scored at least 0.1 points more.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2011, 01:12:13 am by Servant Corps »
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