Era shifting
| Changes at | October 2001 and January 2013 |
|---|---|
| Casts that change over | The Nineties, The 2000s, The Modern Era |
| Casts that do not | The Fifties, The Sixties, The Seventies |
Every game is judged by a cast of voters drawn from the era it is set in. A game that runs long enough to reach a new era changes cast in the month the new era begins. This happens twice: in October 2001 and in January 2013.
When the cast changes
The Nineties cast plays until September 2001. The 2000s cast plays from October 2001 until December 2012. The Modern cast plays from January 2013 onwards. A game that begins in 1996 and runs for a full two terms therefore finishes with a different set of voters from the ones it started with.
The September 2001 attacks are answered by the Nineties cast, because the attacks happen while that cast is still in play. The 2000s cast arrives the month afterwards.
The Fifties, Sixties and Seventies keep one cast for the whole game, however long it runs.
What a player notices
The focus group has new faces in it. The voters who reacted to last month's policy are gone, and thirty different people react to this month's.
The stakeholder groups change with them, because a group's score is made up of the reactions of the voters in it.
The map changes too. Each cast has its own picture of who lives in which state, so the state-by-state results are calculated from the new voters.
The game's writing moves period with the cast. Newspapers, events and reactions are set in the new decade rather than the old one.
Careers across the change
In Career Mode the player has spent years building recognition and support with named voters, and none of that is lost when the cast changes. Each departing voter has a successor in the new cast, and that successor inherits how well known the player is and what the voter thinks of them. The pairings are listed on the Lineage page. A governor who is loved in California in September 2001 is still loved there in October.
Some things deliberately do not move with the cast. The amount of money a campaign raises and spends, and the rival candidates a career faces, are tied to the calendar rather than to the era, so they do not jump in the month the cast changes.
The presidency
A presidency has no memory of individual voters between months, so the change of cast is simpler. From the month it happens, the new voters judge every policy, and the approval rating continues from where it stood.