u/MistaBombasticFanta

I made one like this a year ago and now I’m in D.C celebrating my bday

A lot of the worst parts listed here aren’t that bad and they do not fuck with the gameplay experience. It's just me nitpicking.

1972: But a Man.

The Best: The GOP candidates. Yes I know there are only three, but those three are the best standouts. Like I’ve never heard of John Sherman Cooper, but the mod made me want to look him up and I didn't know he was part of the Warren commission and I didn’t know he co-sponsor an amendment with Frank Church to cut funding for the war in Cambodia. And I’ve not seen enough representation of John Tower, the Reagan before Reagan, minus the charisma.

The Worst: The candidate. Looking back on it, it’s not the mod or the modder’s fault that it’s boring, it's the fact that Humphrey is boring. While we all joke about being a GOAT, and this is probably just me, I do not find him interesting at all. He’s your typical liberal American politician from the early-to-mid 20th century. And it’s not like I disagree with his views or anything, but to me, he’s a carbon copy of every Democrat up the Mason-Dixon line. And I know it is kinda hard to make a ‘68 Dem mod, given that only 5 people ran on the primaries, but would’ve done what All The Way did and pulled candidates out of my ___ to make a more interesting project.

Year Zero

The Best: The visuals. I genuinely love how this mod looks. There was a lot of thought put into every little detail, from the VP nominee images in the middle, the tooltips and selecting an answer being a sharpie highlighter, the articles scattered throughout the mod, and even the unused campaign logos that are in the code look amazing. It really helps capture the whole “distrust of the government” vibe.

The Worst: Why Frank Church? Now my biggest gripe with the mod is Frank Church. In my opinion, they could’ve chosen anyone from the moderate-to-liberal ‘76 Dem candidates and you’d get the same result. Jerry Brown was socially liberal and fiscally conservative (basically a libertarian), Mo Udall was the John Kerry of the 70s, flip-flopping on a lot of issues and he co-sponsored the FEC Act of ‘71 (which Nixon broke and he could’ve ran on that), maybe Henry Jackson could be more of a challenge (given that he was a massive warhawk and supported a lot of Nixon’s stupid Vietnam ideas), might I suggest a Draft Ted Kennedy movement since he was the one winning the early polls. But in all fairness, none of them would’ve fit with the premise they wanted to display. But at the same time, I feel like nothing really happens other than Church being the nominee, since it’s still the aftermath of Watergate and Ford is still dealing with it + re-election. I think that it would have benefited a lot if it had the original ‘76 Abyss premise: Agnew’s scandal never comes out, so he’s the president when Nixon leaves, and Church is the nominee, but had to make George Wallace his Vice President to achieve that. Kinda like a deal with the devil type situation.

Duke

Best: It’s challenging in a good way. You are able to lose in a landslide AND win in a landslide with every opponent. It’s not like Hope where even in Disaster you can win over 300+ EVs, or like in Our Revolution when even with the best answers it’s still incredibly challenging. And I really enjoy that just because you have a lot of wins, it doesn’t mean you’ll win in a landslide, where even if you get stuff like good healthcare reform, you can still get blindsided by Gramm.

Worst: The candidate. Again. I’m sure Michael Dukakis is a good man, but from what I saw from both looking at the 1988 election cycle and this mod, the man was just not a good campaigner and a bore. Seriously, if the moderator asked you “If bad man do bad thing to wife, you want death to bad man?” Would you act like a robot and say “No, I don’t want the death penalty” or would you say “Do not bring my wife into this debate, much less with such an obscene and insensitive question. We are here to discuss our nation’s problems.”

Moonbeam

It’s alright. I think this is one of those mods that I don’t have anything good or bad to say about it. I will say it does capture Brown’s “Moonbeam” myth really well.

Hope

Not the worst but certainly not the best: It’s way too easy. “Whaaaat?! A mod about Bill Clinton and the ‘96 election is EASY?! Who would’ve thought.” Okay, I get it. But every mod needs to have some type of challenge. Even winning against Powell is too easy. Now I’m not saying give me pre-update Chris Christie Obamanation or Our Revolution levels of difficulty, but come on. If you’re able to win 500+ EVs on Normal without some kind of event (bad candidate) and almost 360 on Disaster, that ain’t it. But I’ve seen that the new HOPE team is working on making Powell and other candidates much more challenging so that’s great.

Worst: Aura. Now while I think that we are oversaturated with mods with a moral or a critique of the person we are playing as, I feel like Bill Clinton is the perfect candidate to do exactly that. I’m not saying give a story about (insert pseudo-profound moral of the story) but to at least criticize him in some way for taking the actions he did IRL (both personal and administrative, in the endings or the game itself). While I can at least commend Clinton for at least TRYING to pass what he promised, he could’ve not bent the knee to Newt, that was an option. Maybe going all out the GOP given that they did that with your family.

ROC Mods

Best: Technological marvel. These mods are probably the biggest jump in tech on par with StrawberryMaster’s coding. With ROC 2000 Redux, the candidate selector already screams at you that this is a good mod. The Campaign Data Center is great, you can look at accurate polls without going to the map, you can see how far you are in the poll over your rivals and see what percentage of your base is leaning towards who, your variables, and the poll trends. And the endings change depending on your share of the popular vote too (which can lead to some funny moments where you can cheat with Hsu Hsin-liang to get +50% of the vote and he’s like “Not 50%. Not 40%. Just a fragment. A rounding error. A statistical ghost.”) And the fact that this mod just took 2-3 months to be made makes it even more crazy. And don’t even get me started on ROC 2020. You mean to tell me that just one person is able to make a mod with 3 sides, one with multiple candidates, even more variables, while also improving what was in the last mod, again in just 2-3 months? PhoneTall you’re great.

Not even a bad thing: The third party candidates. You can’t win as Hsu Hsin-liang and Li Ao in 2000 ROC or as James Soong in ROC 2020. But they are cool additions for historical reasons.

2004: Four More Wars

It’s a classic Astro mod like the Silent Decade and Men in the Arena. Nuf said.

2008: Icarus

Best: The candidates and how to face them. A majority of CYOA mod’s opponents require you to have a certain number of wins while having a certain variable (example, AC uses your ideology, W. uses if you’re at war or not, Hope uses your ideology and foreign policy) while the special opponents have special variables. I think Icarus has the definitive way to get opponents. Your opponents depend on these factors: What you choose to reverse from Bush’s agenda, staying or leaving Iraq, and repealing or keeping the PATRIOT Act, with having high or low NATO leverage or high Neoliberalism changing how an opponent plays out. Your wins don’t matter, and I think that’s a great way for people who suck at the game to actually get all of the opponents.

Worst (nitpick): The weird use of Greek mythology. Now the whole theme and moral of Icarus is great: Post-9/11 Democrats were too scared to do anything bold fearing burning down a lá Icarus. But having important things being references to mythology (Underworld = GOP, Olympus = D.C, Harpies = Clark’s Base, the Sphinx = I couldn’t tell you, Titanomachy = Russia, etc…) and having Clark himself talk about his colleagues using said references just doesn’t feel right. And if you wanted to make them, probably just have it be that the tooltips are the name of the person/place/event THEN a mention of Greek mythology. Example: “World War III: The fabled Titanomachy. The only reason it’s starting is because an autocrat is looking to bring back his empire.”

Sundance 2008

Best: The lore. I really enjoyed what AstroHunch did by having a website detailing the lore. I specifically enjoyed how they detailed how Romney became Utah’s governor instead of Massachusetts.

Worst: The candidates. Seriously, how is a Lieberman vs Romney election going to be interesting? With Lieberman I get it, the country was getting out of 16 years of Democrat rule, so of course nobody that is actually good is going to run, and they even added John “Senator Gone” Edwards as his canon running mate. But Romney? So now this election is going to be between the most centrist Democrat and a more right wing version of a Republican. Also I know the canon result of Lieberman winning by pure luck is controversial, but I think it has potential. Maybe the results make the electoral college so unpopular that someone introduces a bill to abolish it and it actually passes.

All of StrawberryMaster’s mods (ALOT, LBM, TML)

Best: The next evolution of mods. While the community has a bunch of talented coders, I think StrawberryMaster is one of, if not, the best of them all. Holy shit, this guy’s mods are MILES ahead of what has been made beforehand. From having a covert ops mechanic to adding things like county maps and a better results countdown, seriously it’s all just amazing. SM if you’re seeing this, you’re great.

Worst (small nitpicks):

ALoT and LBM: Trump & Romney (I’m adding these together since they have the same problem). I think giving Trump 11 running mates is just too much. As of today, only 6 out of 11 are defined on the wiki. My solution would be to cut out a few. And the same goes for Romney, who has 9 veeps AND on top of that, you can go against 6 alternate GOP candidates. Again, either cut the veeps or remove the candidates.

TML: It’s short. I struggled to think of something remotely negative about the mod so here: The kind of writing this mod has should not be relegated to just 20 questions. At least 25.

Class War: 2016

Best and Worst: The bias. The mod is clearly biased when it comes to its candidates, with Romney being portrayed as an overly weak man, puppet of corporations and while Sanders is praised for sticking to his beliefs, while being reprimanded for moderating. On one hand, it's pretty funny playing as Romney and even picking the least elitist options is as out of touch as it gets, but on the other hand I wish that Sanders would get the same amount of flack. Like portray him as more as a rabble rouser that hypes people only to disappoint them. Although the endings do that already, so that’s why I put it as a best and worst.

American Carnage: Infinity Update

Best: The variable tracker: it tells you your wins, if you’re a Con or Pop, the Outrage, the midterms and judges + the little extra variables from some candidates, all of that is good.

Worst: The way the popular vote works. I get it to play into the vibe that he lost the popular vote by a lot. But it gets to a point that becomes ridiculous. You mean to tell me that I can lose to Michelle Obama by 5 electoral votes, but she somehow wins 84 million votes. It’s even worse with Oprah, where she wins 538 EVs, having a big lead in votes to Trump in all the states, yet somehow Trump still wins 40%+ of the vote. I think this is how EC haters feel like.

A Billionaire, A Revolutionary

Best: The premise. This is definitely the mod’s strongest point. Up until the announcement of this mod, I’ve always wondered why there was no contingent election mod. And one thing that adds to the premise is having the two biggest populists of complete political opposites work together. Is it realistic? No. Is it fun? Yeah.

Worst: The non-flexibility of Bernie and Donald. I think there should be a path for when Trump and Sanders decide to get their parties respective nominations/failing to form Rebirth but still are friends or for when they still form Rebirth, but hate each other. Like I find it silly that the friendship variable is at the max but they still end up going at each other's throats.

But what do you guys think?

More campaign logos, this time it’s TTNW

I didn’t know there was a film dedicated to the Liberty and Liberalism team

How it feels looking at the Project 2024 Playlist

Mod Nostalgiaposting #500

I have discovered how to add music boxes into mods and I’m having way too much fun

As the pot said to the kettle

What do you think is the best and worst thing of these Mods? Pt. 2

thump thump thump This a story thump thump thump about the leading characters thump thump thump of Midcentury American Life

How to destroy the DPP as Foxconn’s Tycoon (GUIDE)

More Than Ever (2025)

In Little Big Man, do you guys know the optimal guide to win Jefferson and Carolina?

The ‘72 DNC mod used AI

Holy shit JFK’s ghost spoke to Tom Steyer

How r/thecampaigntrail describes George W. Bush

Me when Project 2024 comes out and get a 538 landslide as Biden

How Maine voters acted when Platner’s first scandals came out

One got to stay, the other gets forgotten (idk how to title this)

Okay now I know this quiz is broken…

How the W. Team felt having Bush be canonically beaten by a walking corpse and then a turtleneck-wearing antivaxxer

The craziest autoplay I ever got