Early Access reviews said the same thing three different ways: you bleed money, you work two jobs instead of doing politics, and running for office is what bankrupts you. That was not the design. That was a set of numbers we got wrong, and a bug underneath them. Here is what changed.

Running for office no longer bankrupts you
The campaign office used to start charging rent the moment you registered — twelve weeks before the vote, every week, whether or not anything was happening. The people who register for that race are unpaid organizers and small-town councillors. The gate you have to pass to get anywhere was a guaranteed bankruptcy.
It now bills only during the official campaign period, the way a real campaign does. In our own playtest runs the worst balance a life ever reached improved by more than half.

A day job no longer eats your term
Paying for your life used to take most of a quarter's action points. It now takes about a third at the bottom of the ladder — the rest is yours for politics.

Rest and exercise actually work now
Recovery was weak enough that skipping it quietly cost you your action points. Both actions restore substantially more health. How fast neglect kills you is unchanged — that part was never the problem.

More nights
A turn covers a quarter, but the ration of night actions had never been rescaled from back when a turn was a month — one night out every three weeks. Forty-eight actions in this game only happen after dark. The ration is doubled, and short election turns now keep a floor instead of leaving you a single night.

A ceiling that kept throwing your work away
Political capital used to stop dead partway through a career, and everything you earned past that point simply vanished. The ceiling is far higher now. What it buys you in a given roll is unchanged — the extra is a war chest, not extra clout.

Fixed: a turn you could not play
When the calendar tightened to weekly turns, the action-point budget and the price list could end up on different scales. You would look at a full bar and not be able to afford anything on the screen until you ended the turn. Gone.

Election season reads as one page
During a race the turn statement now carries the whole report: turns to the vote, the latest poll, your war chest and how many weeks of it are left.

People who come back
Your rival, your chief of staff and the reporter on your beat are now the same people across a life, by name — and different people depending on the life you chose. What you do to a reporter in act four is waiting for you in act five.

Also

• The opening now says what the game is about.
• The business-card minigame is gone. It was not fun.
• 34 places where the English read like a translation have been rewritten.

Thank you to everyone who wrote a review. All three of the hard ones were right.