Bay 12 Games Forum

I just got a new love slave and it gave the standard option of:

 - Come to the abandoned fertilizer plant as a regular member
 - Stay at University district as a sleeper agent

The thing is though I'm not at an abandoned fertilizer plant, I'm at "Ogden Manpower" (Business front)

Fixed this bug in revision 725. Now when you get the prompt on whether or not to make a new LCS operative a Sleeper, the names of your hideout and their work location are both correctly displayed in full, including business front names and what city it's in.

If Ogden Manpower used to be an abandoned fertilizer plant, sometimes the game doesn't use the Front name.  Happens with some raids & raid-warnings as well.

Haven't yet dealt with it for raids or raid-warnings though... still need to fix that.

I do the same thing as Elodie to level up Disguise, namely going around in one of the armors that has ZERO Stealth value. My personal favorites to use for this are the Donkey Suit and Elephant Suit. I show up wearing one of those at a site, steal just 1 item while nobody's looking, then walk back and forth on 2 tiles near the entrance until either my Disguise skill goes up or a Conservative cries out in alarm. Then I leave the site and come back the next day and do the same exact thing all over again. Within a few days, my Disguise skill is maxed out. And nobody knows who did any of this, since the Donkey Suit and Elephant Suit both cover the face. As far as any Conservative observers are concerned, this was all done by an actual donkey or elephant.

If you keep getting game overs, a good way to avoid losing the game is to avoid taking any risky actions, such as violent activity or things that get you in trouble with the law. However, if you take a risk-averse strategy and try to play things safe, this makes it more difficult to win over public opinion and win the game.

Anyway my suggestion is to repeatedly have your founder go around picking locks but NOT going into the apartments, first at housing projects, then at university apartments, then at downtown apartments, as your Security skill goes up. Once you have high security skill, go into apartments and steal stuff, but only when nobody is looking. If Conservatives get alarmed, get out of there as quickly as possible. Also you will want an armor with good Stealth for this. Tailoring skill and making your own armor is a good way to get armor with Stealth. I would start out with a Trenchcoat, then move up to a Ninja Costume once there is enough Tailoring skill and money, then move up to SEAL Stealth Armor once there is enough Tailoring skill and money. With Stealth you'll be able to get away with doing illegal stuff when people aren't looking, and then they won't be as suspicious of you as they would be towards someone without Stealth. Also build up the Disguise skill too. Also talk to lots of people about issues, max out your Persuasion. And ask lots of people out on dates, max out your Seduction. Then get your Juice up to 200 (Urban Commando) by repeatedly stealing stuff and not getting caught. If you do things right, you won't be wanted by the police for anything at all, but you'll have high levels in several important skills.

After this, you'll want to get a car, which you can either steal or buy. You'll also want a weapon small enough to conceal but scary enough to intimidate. A Combat Knife is excellent for this. Now go to places, ask Conservatives out on dates (they'll probably say yes since your Seduction's maxed out at this point), and then on the date, kidnap them. Kidnapping should work, because you have a scary weapon, and because you have a car that you can drive back to your hideout in, with the kidnap victim trapped inside the car the whole way. Attempting a kidnapping without a scary weapon or without a car is a bad idea, you want those first before you start kidnapping. Then after you get the Conservatives kidnapped, interrogate them. You'll want to wear Bondage Gear for interrogation, it makes interrogation more effective. Your Psychology skill will go up the more you kidnap and brainwash people. If you brainwash them fast enough they'll never get reported missing, and you can turn them into Sleeper agents. Once you're really good at kidnapping and brainwashing you can get a lot of high-level Conservatives as Sleepers.

Once you have lots of high-level Conservatives as Sleepers, have them Laying Low until their infiltration is above 90% or until it is September or October. If their infiltration is above 90% or if the current month is September or October, you'll want them Promoting Liberalism. Having lots of Sleepers do this will be very effective at promoting the Liberal cause. But this does not directly impact public opinion, it impacts how much influence the Liberal Crime Squad HAS on public opinion. Now you'll want to recruit a liberal Programmer with high Computer skill and have them at a different site from your Founder, and have them do nothing but Hacking. This will have a huge impact on public opinion over time, enough to win the game if you never get caught. Having the hacker be at a hideout that has a business front and an American flag flying out front will give them enough cover to avoid being caught, especially if it's just 1 hacker. Also, you'll want a Printing Press set up at the same site that has the hacker and the business front. Then whenever they get documents, you can publish them in the Liberal Guardian newspaper. This is the part that really has a huge impact on public opinion, especially because of the activities of your Sleepers Promoting Liberalism. Then because of public opinion, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President will all eventually become Elite Liberal, along with all of the laws. And if the Conservative Crime Squad starts doing stuff, don't worry, because of your Sleepers' actions along with the documents you regularly publish in the Liberal Guardian newspaper, public opinion will be very much against the Conservative Crime Squad, and everything they do will only alienate the public against the Conservative cause and make Liberalism even MORE popular. You can try destroying and eliminating the Conservative Crime Squad if you feel like it, but if you succeed at that, they will no longer be alienating the public on a regular basis, so public opinion won't move as fast in the Liberal direction afterwards, it will probably increase the number of years it takes to Liberalize the country.

Anyway that's how you can beat the game without too much risk. And try and keep your Founder out of trouble. If your Founder ever gets in trouble for kidnapping, a good way to make this go away is to send the person you kidnapped and got reported missing and didn't become a Sleeper on a suicide mission. Just send them out unarmed someplace and have them start fighting Conservatives, and soon they'll be dead, which is good, because if you didn't get rid of them the police would come after both your founder and the person who got kidnapped, and then the person who got kidnapped would rat out your Founder and testify against them in court. Not cool, better to kill them off before they can do that, and it's best to kill them off by sending them on suicide missions. You can also kill or set free a member of the LCS if they're at your base, but that's not good, since killing them makes you lose Heart, and if you set them free they'll go to the cops and rat you out. Suicide missions are the way to go for getting rid of people in this game. The LCS is a terrorist organization, after all.

Speaking of gang members, how do you use a recruited gang member to buy weapons from the black market? I swear that was an option, or am I just misunderstanding how it works? I know you can talk to gang members while wandering around to buy guns but I thought you could buy directly from your own members if you had them.

You can buy weapons from Gang Members or Elite Security, at some locations but not others. The locations that currently work are Housing Projects, Crackhouses, and any of the 3 current/former CCS Hideouts. Also, you can't be wearing a police uniform or police body armor, or else they'll think your a cop. And it won't work if you're naked, since then they'll be all like "Jesus..." And it won't work if people at the site are alarmed.

And no, you can't buy anything from a Gang Member or Elite Security who's already been recruited and is part of the LCS already. I don't think that was ever an option.

That is true. We should make having saved games be in XML be on the TODO list. If there even is an official TODO list. I'm not sure if there is one anymore, there's a file in the source code with a TODO list but it's very out of date (one of the things on the TODO list is adding Desert Eagles to the game, and they've been part of the game for quite some time).

There is stuff about this in the code already, mostly commented out, about a "squad stance". Either covert, normal, or battle colors. Covert would be, you try to avoid detection as much as possible, and are likely to get away with crimes, and have little to no heat or impact on public opinion. Normal would be the current system. Battle colors would be, you openly take credit for every crime you commit, and Conservatives are likely to be alarmed from the moment you step foot in the door of a site, you wouldn't have any disguise or stealth at all, and you'd get huge amounts of both heat and impact on public opinion. It isn't fully implemented yet though. Well I guess it's obvious it isn't fully implemented yet since if it were fully implemented, it would be an enabled feature that's part of the game and everyone who plays the game would know about it by seeing it in the user interface.

Also, sometimes Hicks, Rubes, and Mercenaries will tell the location of CCS safehouse, if present.

(As a note, I think mercenaries should be renamed, since the guards of the CEO House have been renamed "Elite Security, so whenever you find one you know they work with the CCS)

Elite Security (formerly known as Mercenaries) don't all work for the CCS. Some of them actually ARE security, guarding places like the CEO House and Corporate Headquarters. Hicks / Rubes / Country Boys / Rednecks / Yokels are sometimes just know-nothing rednecks (likely the case if you encounter them at an AM Radio Station or Cable News Station, for instance) and sometimes turn out to be CCS members in disguise (likely the case if you encounter them at a Gentlemen's Club, for instance). There are also several other occupations CCS members can disguise themselves as, too. The easiest way to find out which occupations is once you get the 1st CCS safehouse un-hidden and can visit it, check out what occupations of people you run across there. Most of them (but not all) are CCS members in disguise. It is somewhat similar to how a Professional Thief is always disguised as someone of another occupation when you encounter one in site mode.

Yes, I knew that French only had the 2 genders and that every noun is either masculine or feminine, and adjectives and articles modifying a noun must match it in gender. The same thing is true in Spanish, which I have studied. I have also studied Latin, which has 3 genders, as well as a bit of German and Hungarian, neither of which I understand the grammar of very well. I THINK German has 3 genders commonly used for nouns, just like Latin, but I'm not entirely sure. If I recall correctly, the German articles "Das", "Die", and "Der" are for 3 different genders, but I don't remember which is which. But as a native English speaker, foreign languages all confuse me, even the ones I've studied or know a bit of, since I'm just not that good at any of them. I think I've actually even started to pick up on a little Japanese because of watching lots of anime cartoons, although only a VERY small amount, less than 10 words, even smaller than my Hungarian vocabulary of around 20 words. That's why I stick to English, it's the only language I'm any good at. But since my sister lives in Vienna, Austria, I have to know some German for whenever I visit Austria, just to get around. I know a little bit of Hungarian just because I'm half-Hungarian myself and my mom and her family immigrated from Hungary, and whenever my mom got together with my uncles and my grandparents back when I was a kid, they'd all talk Hungarian. As for Latin, I studied it way back in high school, and although I was pretty good at it and knew it pretty well at the time, I've forgotten it almost completely. As for Spanish, I studied it in college, I went overseas to Mexico for a month for language immersion study in Spanish, and for a short time I was actually close to fluent in Spanish, but my skills in Spanish have declined since then and are now back to a low-intermediate level, about the same as my German is currently. My Latin and Hungarian are both VERY low currently, almost nothing now, almost as low as the tiny, minute small amount of Japanese that I know from watching anime. I've never studied or used French, but like most Romance languages, it makes a certain amount of sense to me and I can guess at the meanings of about half the words if I see them written down, just like with Italian.