My current project is an American politics/history sim. The closest analogues are Civilization and Crusader Kings. The player will play the role of a single person, with unique skills and traits, and have the ability to run for office (county to federal level), work in unelected government, or focus on achieving party/interest group goals.

What playstyles, if any, would you like to see represented? Any particular features you think the game could not do without?

I plan on starting at 1787 with the adoption of the Constitution. Policies can be set at 3 levels: local, state, and federal, with a specific policy “legal supremacy” determining which of the three takes precedence. Borders of states and territories will be flexible as well, as long as certain other policies are within specified bounds. Policies themselves are just values from 0 to 10, and each AI agent (the player is not alone of course) has specific desire values (also 0 to 10) for policies they care about. Agents can work together to achieve mutual goals, or betray each other's trust via conspiracies (which ideally will be "remembered" by participating agents, allowing for the potential for blackmail on uncovered but still not public plots).

Foreign policy will clearly be necessary, at least to model the acquisition of the West, and ideally more later. I'm not particularly passionate about FP in this game though. My main focus is on letting the player reshape history under alternative visions. What would have happened if slavery had been abolished earlier? Or if the South had won out? (Don't answer these questions, please, just demonstrating my vision)

Can the legal supremacy policy be set on localities, states and federal level, independently?
I know very little about American history and politics, but doesn't it seem plausible for some states ratifying some laws, and some ratifying others, and by extent of that, some states saying that a local law takes precedence, while another locality decides to go with state policies only?

I think this could become very interesting, but also very cluttered. Will you be visualising this with a graph of sorts?

The issue of when a locality can override its own state policies, or when a state can override federal policies, or even more vexing: when a locality can override federal policies, will be a thorny development problem. It has also been a notoriously thorny problem in American history. As a historical example, the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights were not originally understood to apply to the state governments until the 13th and 14th Amendments after the Civil War (that is, it was entirely seemly for a state government to violate a citizen's federal rights). States got to choose what rights their citizens deserved, as long as they did not take power for themselves that which the Constitution specified exclusively belonged to the federal level. That includes the possibility of further delegating powers to localities, so long as the state doesn't delegate any authority reserved to the federal government by the Constitution. The post-Civil War expansion of the Bill of Rights to apply to state governments is called Incorporation, for those curious. A more recent example of conflicting takes on legal supremacy can be found in Kim Davis, the former elected county clerk who asserted the right to deny marriage licenses following the 2014 Supreme Court ruling that legitimized gay marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges). On its face, this was a futile attempt to assert local legal supremacy over federal legal supremacy, and a clear clash of conflicting viewpoints on the issue. The political hot-potato of "Sanctuary Cities" provides another example.

It's also worth questioning whether federal supremacy should even be expected to functionally apply to the far-flung, frontier territories, or whether lawlessness and banditry go hand-in-hand with distance and low administrative organization. Even if the Constitution officially elevates federal laws, who's really on the ground enforcing them? Often a locality, at least for the early history of the country. The federal government tends only to intervene in the administration of the law in cases in which the states totally abdicate their responsibilities (an example: federalizing the Arkansas National Guard to escort the Little Rock 9 to school). In real life at least, a policy is made manifest by its enforcement, not by the words of the law.

How should conflicts between policies, (including but not limited to issues of supremacy) get resolved? I'd like to see something resembling real life: the disputing parties take their case to a judicial court, which decides based on, among other things, the personal beliefs of the judge on the policy at hand, which may be an instance of one of the three legal supremacy policies: state/federal (unique to the nation), local/state (unique to each state and informed/constrained by the federal policy), local/federal (unique to each locality and informed/constrained by the state's policy). As an outcome, the judge might temper the resulting policy score by averaging the scores, weighting either score in the equation by his personal sympathy.

I plan on categorizing policies into abstracted broad categories. The player will be able to view policies by these categories in a dedicated screen, with separate displays for local/state/federal (for the Crusader Kings veteran, consider the title/law mechanic of that game to be analogous to how policies will be tied to geographic areas). Each policy is visually represented to the player by a kind of “progress bar" [I do not intend to imply history is a linear progression towards goodness] or “spectrum," from 0-10, where an arrow points to the current level of policy, and a colored band around the arrow represents the “feasible” or “constitutional” range of change an interested party could reasonably expect to achieve without enacting significant (and politically expensive) Constitutional changes. That “constitutionality” band can move over time without Constitutional change as people become accustomed to a change in policy (one way to think of this mechanic is the band “wishes” that it was centered around the effective policy arrow, and slowly migrates over time if the policy is modified slightly), but only gradually, almost imperceptibly in the lifetime of one person.

@undefined Is it possible to extend this game system to countries other than the United States, or sf or fantasy worlds? For your reference, here are some ideas I thought about before.

Personal ideas about the system extend.

1. Politics during the Cold War

A simulation game of the politics of the Soviet Union, other Eastern European countries, or fictional countries that mimic those countries.

Specifically, it deals with either the Khrushchev era, the Gorbachev era, etc., and it takes a rough path, such as whether to reform, take a conservative attitude, or take a reactive attitude in the political or economic field. Decide it and put it into a concrete policy.

And based on that, the political mechanism reacts to change the state of the country, or the policy cannot be implemented, and the centripetal force only declines.

2. Developing country politics simulation game

Simulates the politics of developing countries like the “hidden agenda” of the old dos game.

Specifically, it is desirable to set it in a fictional country in Africa, considering the recent trends in international politics and economic development. It may also be good to set the stage in a country just after the revolution, like the original "hidden agenda". (Of course, if you want, you can use a real state such as South America or Africa.)

3.The theme is "isekai tensei" or "isekai koueki".

These words are difficult to explain well in English with words used in novels of the special genre "light novel" written in Japanese.

If you dare to explain, "isekai tensei" is a high fantasy whose main character is transformed into a parallel world, and "isekai koueki" is a low fantasy where the parallel world and our world are connected.

And “isekai ten’i” is also a sub-genre of “isekai tensei”. The difference from the general “isekai tensei” is not reincarnation but warp into the parallel world as it is, and there is a considerable frequency that organizations and nations get lost in the parallel world rather than individuals.

What I want to see personally is the story of “isekai ten’i” or “isekai koueki” set in a parallel world with the level of technology, culture, and politics very similar to those of the 80s or the present day. In many cases, the parallel world is often set as a fantasy world, so I would like to see a story that is not bound by it. (Of course, it's not a bad idea to set up in a fantasy world, or set up in a world where a primitive fantasy country and a modern scientific civilization coexist Or a combination of various other technologies and times.)

Another idea is to create a story from a parallel world world perspective. The general “isekai ten’i” or “isekai koueki” stories are mostly from the perspective of the real world, so I would like to see what is not.

There is also an idea to combine these two ideas.

Finally, it might be possible to develop a game that combines any of these ideas.

I'm reluctant to include other playable nations initially because my knowledge of US history is much more developed than my knowledge of other nations (typical of American education). It would be a fun goal after developing something domestic that I was satisfied with. I did consider trying to extend the game across the whole world with multiple nations, but some back-of-the-napkin math told me I'd run into memory constraints: too many variables to track for too many AI agents. Maybe someday.

Two of my favorite books actually seem to be anglophone variants of the “isekai tensei” story (Erewhon: or, Over the Range and Herland). I have strongly considered using a fictional setting since I'm fairly certain some people will be upset by the under-discussed aspects of American history that I plan on including (one: the 1930s Business Plot. What would WWII have looked like with the US joining the Axis? Horrendous for all involved, no doubt). There are a number of consequential moments in American history that led to (or could potentially have deepened, depending on how the events played out) true horror being unleashed. Truthfully, if my game didn't allow the player or the AI to perpetrate barbaric mass violence, I wouldn't consider it a fair simulation of history and the evil men can do, in which case audiences might find it more palatable to play with creatures like Lemmings or something. Then of course the evil loses its punch and becomes a triviality.

@undefined ok And are there any plans to support mods in this game? Also, please tell us about the current development status and roadmap.

What do you think of the idea of ​​connecting parallel worlds, including contemporary worlds like “isekai Koueki” and fantasy worlds, different histories and other star worlds?

I wouldn't release it without some kind of mod support, but that will have to be informed by the architecture of the game, which I'm still designing – release is years away at this point. I made this thread in case someone had ideas that made me think “Man, I wish I had thought of that sooner so it wasn't such a hassle to include.” As they say, intelligence is learning from your mistakes, wisdom from the mistakes of others.

I think that an isekai koueki style is out of scope for my project. It could potentially be “faked” with mods later by separating the gameboard into two zones with a conventionally impassable barrier between the two.

@undefined Are you planning on creating a game website or a thread to teach progress?

Perhaps at some point, for me personally social interaction and marketing are very tiresome. I'd also want much more to show for my work. I'm still struggling to get a map editor up and running.