Fun game, I really enjoyed it, and it's easy to get into. I played one quickstart on the easiest setting, then went after the campaign as Bill Clinton. I had relatively easy wins for the first few, then squeaked past Grant by losing the popular but winning the electoral vote. Teddy Roosevelt (who, btw, is listed as "Terry" on the campaign win screen) gave me fits until I hit on the idea of setting up multiple TV ads with a webmaster. Think it took 4 tries.
Against Reagan is where all hell broke loose though. I decided to try to completely stifle my ad costs by hiring a second webmaster. I figured it'd make the maintenance free or 1/16 of normal. Well, surprise surprise when the ads started generating revenue. Reagan went down on my first attempt, Lincoln in two, and Washington in three.
Now granted, Washington has amazing stats, but in the first 9 scenarios of the campaign vs. the Democrats, I've collected an aggregate electoral vote of 4798 to 44, losing a total of 3 states, and one of those was Hawaii because I just didn't notice it turn blue. I clean-swept FDR with like 70% of the popular vote and while Jefferson will be tough I'm sure, I'm not really concerned.
So, what's going on? I figure it's one of three things:
1. Washington's stats are a lot more important than I'm giving credit for and my victory with Clinton was the result of strong gameplay on my part (it was a close match, granted.)
2. The multiple webmaster effect is unintended or a bug. In that case... I don't know how on Earth you beat the top guys... maybe it's me. Maybe I could've still pulled out a squeaker with the effect of one and strong gameplay, but I'm doubting it.
3. The multiple webmaster effect is perfectly valid because it does have a counter -- an army of fixers sent to that state to remove the webmasters leaves you in a very bad state (no pun intended). Washington actually used that counter against me once and it totally devastated me. If that's it, the AI just needs to better recognize and deal with it. Granted, not all candidates will be able to spend the PC to do so, but if they can, they should.
