Say whaaaaat? A Genius Game task???
Da Letter El apricity CaffeineBoost LightWolf Blazade
Main Match 5 - House of Circus
Goal: To be elected POTUS.
Detailed spreadsheet (know this well):
Main Sheet. Note that all calculations are for a fake first round - the dollar amounts in columns N:R of [State List] and the candidate profiles on [Candidate List] will be the only inputs players have control over. You can see how many garnets you start the task with on [Candidate List].
How the task works:
1. Each candidate will declare a party affiliation secretly prior to the task's beginning. These affiliations will be revealed at the start of the task. You may choose R, D, or I as your affiliation.
2. Each candidate will then declare a primary policy and a position. The list of possible policies and positions is on [Issues List]. Note that although each policy and position combination appears the same number of times in the same columns (each R position on each of the ten issues appears five times each in column R1, 4 times each in R2, and 1 time each in I2 - the D positions are the same. The I positions appear 5 times each in column I1, 3 times each in column I2, and 1 time each in both R2 and D2), I made no effort to 'balance' the positions. I have no doubt that some positions influence more close states / votes than others. It is up to each of you to craft a policy platform that can guarantee you 270 electoral votes.
3. Each candidate begins with 100$. You may freely trade money up until the deadline for each voting round.
4. There will be a series of elimination votes that take place. The candidate with the fewest EVs in each round will be eliminated from consideration (though the placement of the task will not be elimination order - see below) for president. So, in the first round, five candidates will split the vote. The lowest candidate in terms of EVs will be eliminated, and four will remain for the next round. The winner is the winner of the final, two-person vote. Prior results will not be considered in the final vote. In the event of a tie in EVs the loser will be determined by total votes won. If that is also a tie (extremely unlikely barring collusion between candidates to submit identical funding profiles, or zero dollars spent by multiple candidates with similar policy positions) then the winner of the round will decide the loser. Ties are broken for the winner in a similar fashion, just with a coin flip deciding if there is a tie in total votes (again, extremely unlikely, particularly as it is incredibly unlikely that everyone will submit a zero dollar spending profile for any round).
5. You may declare a new policy position before each round, along with a new spending profile. You will gain donations after each round equal to the floor of your total votes won divided by 1000 (there are 535,000 total votes split among the fifty states according to their EV - no this is not precisely how this is done in real life before anyone asks).
6. Dollars spent in a given round are gone forever. All cash transactions between candidates (i.e. sending other candidates money) as well as spending by state are revealed at the beginning of each round. Note that it is perfectly reasonable to spend no money and solely use your funds to boost another candidate.
The final order of the players will be determined as follows, with rewards in parentheses:
1. The winner of the presidential election (duh) (token of life + one other token to give to someone else + 10 garnets)
2. The loser of the final runoff election (8 garnets, but cannot be given the token of life)
3. The player who contributed the most in terms of dollars to the eventual winners' campaign MINUS dollars contributed to the eventual losers' campaign (6 garnets)
4. The player not fitting criteria 3 or 5 (4 garnets)
5. The player who contributed the most in terms of dollars to the eventual losers' campaign MINUS contributions made to the winner (Deathmatch candidate)
Note that the three players not in the top two are ranked solely based on the differential of contributions to the top two players. So, suppose that player A defeated player B in the final runoff, while player C gave both 100$, player D gave player A 10$ and player B 20$, and player E gave player C 150$ and player B 50$. In this case, player C would have a score of 0 (contributions to A - contributions to B), player D would have a score of -10, and player E would have a score of 100. The order would thus be:
3. Player E
4. Player C
5. Player D
There will be a fifteen minute time limit to negotiate with other players and submit final policy positions / spending between rounds. I will keep to this deadline extremely strictly so that this task will take no longer than an hour and a half or so. If you fail to submit within the timeframe you will miss the chance to declare a policy and will not spend any money in that round (not spending any money isn't necessarily bad). If you are eliminated from the contest, you may divvy up your remaining funds + any you gained in donations from votes you won in the round you were eliminated to the remaining players as you see fit for five minutes following the round result reveal. As such, each round should take no more than 20 minutes + 2-3 for me to paste in the funding vectors you send me.
Please respond in the thread with availability for next
Sunday, November 11th.