Have you seen "Shadow President", here at Underdog:

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=963

It''s mainly about US foreign policy, use diplomacy, economic aid and armed advisors to roll back the communists.

Theres also the old Infocom text-adventure "Borderzone", about espionage in eastern europe.

Part of the problem is that such a game has goals and objectives which are hard to quantify or qualify. Since it seems you want something with war involved, you can always have the "warm" wars being fought, like Korea, Vietnam, the invasion of Warsaw Pact states (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland), border fights between China and Russia, and things like that. You could do hypothetical what-if's like Korean War 2, Invasion of Taiwan, or even a what if situation if WWII never stopped. The Allies disintegrating and turning into USA, UK, Commonwealth, Canada vs. Russia (personally, I think had this happened, Stalinist and Maoist communism never would have had a chance. Like what if Truman listened to Patton and MacArthur about taking on the "commie bastards"? Imagine if US troops military supported Chiang Kai Shek to defeat Mao, and there was never a Communist China?

Or what if Allied forces halted Soviet aggression into the Eastern European nations?

Now that would be for some interesting gaming. But the trick is alot of it involves diplomacy, public relations, propaganda and espionage which are very human and therefore subjective things. Trying to nail down rules to quantify these things are very hard to do. I read something (forget where) that told about a Russian submarine during the Cuban Missle crisis. Apparently US Destroyers were chasing this submarine and even tossing depth charges. Apparently the sub was taking some damage from being under for so long, and several crew members had passed out due to hypoxia. This sub had lost contact with Russian naval forces, and the commander of the sub and the 3rd in command both agreed to launch nukes, since they believed WWIII had started. Had it not been for the 2nd in command reminding the commander that a launch was not possible without a direct command from Soviet Naval headquarters, WWIII may very well have started right then and there. In other words, one man potentially changed history (an extremely scary thought).

Trying to account for these sorts of things are almost impossible. What if Kruschev hadn't backed down during the Berlin blockade or the Cuban Missle crisis? What if Andropov did something during that assinine Reagan remark "The bombs are dropping in 5 minutes." that put Russian military on their highest military alert since the Cuban missle crisis?

In some ways, it can be a game of chicken between the two players, and if WWIII happens the game is over. Or you could try to have conventional forces duke it out. And if a nuclear war happens, the game is a draw (since both sides lose).


They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin


[edited by - dauntless on May 21, 2003 7:26:02 PM]

quote: Original post by Way Walker

adventuredesign
…should it be a major hit, but who knows.

There in lies the problem… God only knows.

Actually the audience does. In showbusiness at least, in god you may trust, but rely on yourself.



The thing I love about what I do is that it can''t be done with money, intelligence, looks or connections. It requires vision, creativity, imagination and discipline.

I''ve actually been writing this game out for a little while now - nothing technical - maybe its something I could do eventually. Actually I think a game with a good balance between diplomacy/economics and military cand be very commercially viable, I think a good deal of strategy gamers don''t neccesarily want to do away with military conflict but would like a game that includes a variety of options and particularly a good deal of "what if" scenerios - which had been the main idea of the game from the onset. I don''t even want to force the player into "The Vietnam War" or the "Cuban Missle Crises" if the player is playing the Soviets they might not want to put nuclear weapons in any bases anywhere near the United States, or the US may decide not to invade Vietname.

I''d actually like the game to start in the "dying days" of The Second World War so it would be very possible for the war to "never end". Definately warfare in this type of game would have to be a good deal more costly then other strategy games such as Civ -making wars without allies extremely resource consuming and straining on a nation (two or three wars at once would be economically impossible for a single nation). Spying would undoubtably be a large part of the game, the player could also setup puppet regimes in smaller nations (such as the US Intervention in Chilie in the 1970s) and all sorts of things.

In addition to my above comments - obviously something like the Submarine story will be impossible to do (for the game I envision). There are also a good deal more Cold War Submarine stories that are just now surfacing about collisions between US and Soviet subs. However because this game will concentrate on running a nation "minor" incidents such as submarine collisions would only "bog down" play - maybe they could be included as a "random event" of some type - but I don''t like the idea of using those too much.

Also something like the Space Race could definately be put into the game - as a propaganada tool.

I love the idea of random events happening that you have to deal with one way or another.

Also, the idea of having different scales to the action is quite necessary if you want to avoid bogging down the player in unnecessary details.
However, having something *too* streamlined might lead to the "popular" failure of MOO3. Apparently, most people seem to think that the game has lost something despite having been designed to be easier to use.
Personally I love the Total War sort of interface, or if you have a good memory, something like Syndicate.
A world map, then possibly the opportunity to zoom in at a national level to deal with local resources. A technology lab screen, a diplomacy screen. And possibly some sort of "action" screen where you deal with armed conflict, depending on their scale.
I think staying with something abstract is not necessarily a bad idea. Keeping conflicts more on a Risk scale, a board game sort of approach.

Starting from the end of WWII is a great idea, too But when exactly ? From 1942 (IIRC) and operation Barbarossa ? Or from the capture of Berlin (and the subsequent division of Germany) ?
I think depending on the focus of the game, you could start either in the middle of the conflict (and then the game would be mostly focusing on armed conflicts), or at the beginning of the peace negotiations (and then the focus would be on diplomacy and strategy).

Fascinating stuff when you think about it

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I was thinking 1945, when the war is winding down - actually depending on the nation you play the game would start in either 1945 (for the USSR, US, Britian, Canada)

or 1949 for other nations such as France, West and East Germany and China etc.

I''m thinking 1949 because it was the year the USSR got the bomb and the year China "went communist". As for Shogun style battles because of the time period of this game I think that type of thing wouldn''t make sense, we don''t have large armies of thousands of troops marching across fields to meet a similar army on the opposing side of the "board". I would like to have a bit more of a tactical element to the game rather then just a Risk style "move the piece into a terriory and roll the die", I was thinking a fair sized world map divided into tiles like Civilization so you can get a bit more "detail" in where units move.

I believe Barbarossa was a bit later than 42, but I don''t remember now exactly....hmmm, wait, maybe I''m confusing Barbarossa with Kursk....

Anyways, I agree with Demonlir, I think the dying days of WWII, like maybe the beginning of 1945. That way you could still have Germany alive but barely kicking, and the Japanese reeling but still in the game too. More importantly it''s hard to say what Russia will do. In some ways it was a race for both sides (UK, America vs. Russia) to capture Berlin. So how that pans out would be interesting. Of course, at the time, America felt it needed help from Russia to put another front against the Japanese. Which is strange considering Truman would have known about the progression of the Manhattan Project by the time the Yalta conference was in full swing. He even made an allusion to Stalin about an ace up his sleeve.

So imagine instead if Truman had decided NOT to want Stalin''s help vs. Japan, and actually tried to tell Stalin that America and England would "capture" Germany. I seriously doubt Stalin would have allowed Churchill or Truman the chance to capture the man responsible for killing several million Russians (I forget how many exactly, but if you include ALL slavic people, the Germans massacred far more Slavs than Jews). So obviously there''s a problem there. And if America doesn''t want Russia''s help against Japan, it''s possible that Communism will never have a chance to infiltrate into China, and therefore Korea or Vietnam.

There''s also the possibility of the Colonial Powers fighting for their old colonies. While basically all of them failed (India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belgian Congo, South Africa, Suez just as examples) what if England, France and Holland had succeeded?

Sometimes I''m amazed game designers never do history or alternate history gaming for their ideas.


They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

quote: Original post by Demonlir
Okay I realise the term ''Cold War" doesn''t mean an actual war, that would be a "Hot war". But what I mean when I say I want a game set in the "Cold War" period is a game set from the end of WWII onward (it could go past 1991 if there is no "winner" by then). There would definately be a good deal of diplomacy but even I feel a game with just diplomacy might get a little stuffy after a while - also we''d have vietname style wars - the player would want to keep certain minor nations from "switching sides" so an invasion of that smaller country would be possible.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert, or possibly even Red Alert 2 is what you are looking for. It is a real time strategy game based in an alternate universe where the Russians pretty much started World War 2 rather than the Germans. Not quite the same EXACT setting, but pretty close. There are spies and such in the game also. It is a little older, but you''d probably like it.


Divinus Entertainment
Land of Relics Art Director
http://divinus.net

quote: Original post by Demonlir
As for Shogun style battles because of the time period of this game I think that type of thing wouldn''t make sense, we don''t have large armies of thousands of troops marching across fields to meet a similar army on the opposing side of the "board". I would like to have a bit more of a tactical element to the game rather then just a Risk style "move the piece into a terriory and roll the die", I was thinking a fair sized world map divided into tiles like Civilization so you can get a bit more "detail" in where units move.

I was thinkin of Shogun at the strategic level, where each of your armies is represented by a single miniature of the general.
It''s like playing Risk, if you will.
I would have prefered a more informative map, with a way to quickly visualise resources and points of interests in each region, but hey, it cant be perfect

Civilization was nice, but I like the abstraction level that a purely regional map provides.
Although it''s true that it would destroy the potential for defining strategic locations by yourself (that would tie in with the Thread on strategic locations and how to identify them).

Personally I agree that a dice rolling, board game kind of resolution would be sweet. It certainly doesnt detract from the overall complexity of a game, only make you think more carefully and on a higher level than the tactical/battle level.

Ever tried Chaos Overlord (by New World Computing)? I loved the mechanisms of this game. If you have a chance, download it on an abandonware site, it''s worth a try, just to see simple mechnanisms provide some real fun.

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !