We've been working really hard to get Political Machine ready for next week's beta for Drengin.net users. There's a lot of play balancing issues we need to work out. The multiplayer is starting to come along though.

Probably the biggest things we need to address right now are:

1) More questions for the TV shows. This is something I have to really work on since it's my area.

2) Look at the effect of ads and such more. I'm getting my butt kicked by the AI but it's not always intuitive why.

3) Difficulty levels for the AI.

4) Balance Democrats and Republicans to ensure that it's equally hard/easy to win.

5) Make sure no one thing is too powerful.

6) Introduce partisanship in the states (i.e. make it so that some states tilt more Republican or Democrat than they currently do).

7) Tweak the issues so that while there is variation in states, they don't switch sides. I.e. There shouldn't be a case where Republicans favor Universal health care or Democrats are against abortion rights.

Screenshot from this week.