Comments for Clout: The Game

I'm sure it's totally legit. You should go for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7R7q1lSZfs

I'll be adding a view where you can see the detailed stats of other nations as part of the foreign relations update.

I wouldn't know. I set the nation to the IRL stats of the US originally, and again when I moved the game from alpha->beta. It originally came in very high on the list, ranging between the top and top 3 depending on how I did the ranking formula.

I considered adding this but figured nobody would use it. Realistically, the game is half-dead on facebook because their advertising is borked so I can't really grow the game on that side unless I run reddit ads for it (which is expensive and much more effective when I point them at Kong. Everyone hates facebook!)

It's hard to say. Honestly I haven't completely gotten what I want to do with it worked out. I have a lot of ideas, but I'm not sure which ones are workable until I think some more about how to implement them and incorporate them into gameplay in an interesting and fun way. Some of the ideas I'm working on: defense rating for nations, plays into wars. Wars, obviously. Removal of the generic "tariffs" bills and addition of tariff bills and other foreign relation bills that have a generic base and target a nation (this will make an actual bill as a normal bill introduction would). I have more, but these comments are quite limited in length. Suffice it to say that it'll probably be about a week minimum before I actually open up the foreign relations tab, but you'll likely see new things on the world page and such before that.

I'm sure everyone would like that! But it would also make this a completely different (and much more boring and unfair) game.

Addiction isn't that complicated. It's just a random roll every time you use something. I guess I could make it more in-depth, but I'm not sure it would really add to gameplay much.

Haha... this is because committees and poison pill cost clout. I believe I lock it out once you're negative, and was going to lock it out if you didn't have enough... but then I was faced with the problem where someone might spend most/all of their clout to buy one of those abilities, and then be disappointed that they couldn't use it since they wouldn't intuitively know that it cost clout to play. So I left it able to go negative. I'm not really sure which would be a better solution that players would prefer.

The effects of bills mirror their effects in reality. This is all I will ever explicitly say.

You need to be CT3+, and you use the sticky buitton next to the post button. If you don't see a button and you're using firefox: use a different browser.

I imagine it would take hundreds upon hundreds of years to achieve such abilities, and it's not even clear if doing such things is really possible. In reality, cloning isn't really all that exciting, and it can't really create a duplicate like you're thinking. Even if your base genetic code is the same, it can't copy your experiences and such.

Posting what each bill did would be quite unrealistic and trivialize the game somewhat. Just as a real congressperson: you can only really estimate the effects of your bills.

That's their relative clout tier. Technically you "change" it by advancing in clout tier, but that's not really what's going on.

Thanks for the feedback and support!

CT3+, but there should be a sticky button next to the post button. It will be disabled if you aren't CT3+. If you don't see it at all, your browser isn't displaying something right. The last person with this issue was using Windows 7 with firefox and switched to chrome which fixed it. I'm not quite sure why firefox is displaying that wrong in some instances, and it may be a bug with the rendering engine since firefox on XP, chrome on XP, IE on XP and Safari on XP have no problems.

Let's just say that some bills aren't exactly a good tradeoff in nation stats.

i have fixed the bug in question

In US law, unless there's a law against what you're doing, you're allowed to do it. Therefore child labor laws would necessarily be created to put restrictions on child labor.

connect the gems political games? Now that's a first for me.

[R] is for LRC, actually, but otherwise this is correct.

The help pages need some serious updates. Apologies for that. I'm going to be doing a major overhaul of the help files in the coming week or so after I get some more features in. V1.0 and the beginnings of the lobby will follow.

I don't make that decision. Kongregate chooses which games to put badges on, and they only do so for games with either a 3.65+ or a 3.85+ (can't remember which)

The mission roll happens when you enact the mission, but police protection is computed when the mission actually goes off based on the current game state.

nope. The sender is "unknown" for blackmail.

G Jenk has none as far as I know, though Q has some.

It's random. Sometimes this will happen. Also, nicotine is one of the more addictive drugs in the game (as in real life).

Thanks for the feedback and support! Within the next couple times you come back, I should have moved Clout to V1.0 and have The Lobby in a playable state.

There is no way to see the exact value anymore, which was always the intent. Your status screen will give you a message that gives you a general idea, and the main subterfuge info screen will tell you your chance of reelection.

Dyes aren't used up... so this would be no different than getting 7 of each. You only have 7 equipment slots.

I think if people ask Kongregate to add a forum for a multiplayer game that they do. Many games that are pretty small have one. Also, I've found it's less effective to advertise to political non-gamers than it is to advertise to gamers who are non-political. The gamers don't really care about the political theme as the gameplay is semi-familiar enough, whereas the political folks often just can't figure out how to do anything because they aren't used to video games... and this one doesn't exactly have a shallow learning curve.

Yes. Your health improves by a set amount each day. This amount is doubled if you're hospitalized.

I'll look into making an offsite forum, but won't be adding one in-game. I can probably just set one up on my hosting, though I'm not sure I want it eating the extra bandwidth.

SO YOU SAY

Don't worry too much til you get 2 or 3.

It's called police protection, and it happens automatically. You can also pass bills such as congressional protection and martial law to increase the baseline protection level. It's very effective. If you don't want to be assassinated easily, the best protection is to not do so many drugs that any successful assassination kills you because you constantly hover at 16 health. Every single person who has died from an assassination with the exception of Jenkins was already low due to their own actions. The person that assassinated jenkins just got extremely lucky.

relics increase stats by a set amount.

Not exactly the best use of your money I don't think.

lol... I think all the trolls made people think you weren't joking or something.

Investigations, slander, and of course you can go after their bills or rally support against them from your team, etc.

Wait, recent events? Link me. Also, I don't think I'd want this as a general mission, but I've been trying to figure out a semi-realistic filibuster interrupter, and I think I can work the pieing into that somehow.

The name of an item will generally give you some idea of its stats (there are obvious themes), but I don't list the stats because I'd rather people wear actual outfits than just try to powergame their equipment to be the "best". Realistically, no items are better than others if you're spending an equivalent amount of money. I use a rigid formula to determine item stats to ensure that items are balanced AND useful compared to other items at a similar cost level.

41? Why not 47?

veeeeery little. Some bills have an extremely minimal impact on the nation.

this is true

I figured they'd be mostly self-explanatory. They're all real things. Heroin tends to make you pass the fuck out... I assumed that was well known.

Investigations do more than just uncover scandals. You know how you look at someone at most of their stuff says "unknown"? The stuff that isn't is revealed because of your investigations into that person.

I have no idea why you think this would abuse the system somehow. It doesn't sound like you'd gain anything by doing this.

yep. Guess you'll want to pay attention to that protection level number.

You can now see people's level of protection when you look at them. It was a minor update I added a couple days back.