Custom Opponent getting stuck in Alaska

[Sandwich ;]

I'm trying to cheese the 50-state sweep achievement by custom making a good character to play and an awful one to defeat, and it's happened twice in a row where my custom opponent flies to Alaska and refuses to end his turn. is it because i put him in the wheel chair?

[vthemighty]

That is odd for sure, is it any of the candidates in the workshop? So far I don't know what circumstances would cause this. Any other additional info or saved games you can share?

I made a Greg Abbott and have played against him numerous times, and never had him get stuck in Alaska. I'm more curious on how you made your opponent bad, or if there was some edge case logic that may have confused the AI.

[Sandwich ;]

Thank you for your interest, I'll describe exactly how I set up the game and set up Steven Strawman:

Presidential
Cakewalk
Choose your party -> Republican -> reagan, bc idk, he had a 49 state sweep
Opponent -> Steven Strawman, happy to be here

Stamina: Sleepy
Charisma: Reserved
Intelligence: Naive
Media Bias: Loathed
Experience: None
Funds: Modest

Party: Independent
Home State: Wyoming
Deck: Authoritarianism

And then I tried to tank him on issues that were either universally accepted or would hurt him in safe democratic states, or just issues which I found very helpful in the game, such as:

The Economy -60
Reducing Inflation -60
Election Fraud Claims +60
Gender Affirming Care -60
Combating Drug Trafficking -60
Energy Independence -40
Green New Deal -40
Lowering Drug Prices -40
Nationalism +60
Racial Equality Initiatives -60
Sanctions on Russia -60
Sending aid to Ukraine -60
Social Security -60
Taxes are theft +60

What usually happens is the game goes on for a bit, I'm placing buildings, giving speeches, and at some point before the first debate he winds up in Alaska and never ends his turn. He'll usually have a building there, upgraded, and maybe a cheerleader too. I've switched up the parties with Strawman as a Republican but only did one run of that, and he never left Wyoming.

Edit: I should also add, I've experienced this with him as the Democrat a few more times, and it happens in AI vs AI as well.

Thank you for your help!
Communism +20

[Sandwich ;]

It may have something to do with how the debate host state is chosen, because I've never been able to get to that point. I know it tries to choose a large, hotly contested state, but if none of the states are close, is it just unable to decide?

edit: no, that's not it. even removing debates entirely, he still gets stuck in alaska on turn 7. I've verified game files, no mods installed, i might reinstall the game. idk, this is pretty disappointing.

[Ventus514]

Could you send your saves over in the official Political Machine discord? We can take a closer look there if you drop your save within the Sitrep open thread. https://discord.gg/jsUh2XpK

[Ventus514]

It would also help if your candidate is uploaded on workshop so we can try to reproduce the issue you see!

[Pelican]

I'm having the exact same issue - custom candidate vs AI custom candidate, after the second debate opposition flies between Alaska and other states until week 44/52, when he remains in Alaska and refuses to end turn. I can't complete the campaign.

[Pelican]

Thankfully I saved my campaign a couple of times and could go back to an earlier week and do some testing. The problem seems to arise when the AI has no battleground states to target. When I backed off and kept California and Washington relatively competitive, the AI flew back and forth between them and New York giving speeches or doing nothing productive. The bug still happened again when I unintentionally locked those states down by activating a deck-specific card for another achievement, but after going back and not boosting anything across the entire map I was able to finish the campaign.

[Ventus514]

Originally posted by Pelican:

Thankfully I saved my campaign a couple of times and could go back to an earlier week and do some testing. The problem seems to arise when the AI has no battleground states to target. When I backed off and kept California and Washington relatively competitive, the AI flew back and forth between them and New York giving speeches or doing nothing productive. The bug still happened again when I unintentionally locked those states down by activating a deck-specific card for another achievement, but after going back and not boosting anything across the entire map I was able to finish the campaign.

I am interested in your saves then! If you could send them over to the channel as well that would be most helpful.

[Ventus514]

Hello! We just pushed out an update live that resolves this issue - let us know if you run into it again-