What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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A game featuring true espionage has to feature true information - existing, propagating, interacting in the game world. How can we achieve this?
In a topical and historical parallel (many of which permeate development of Espiocracy), Claude Shannon offerred an answer in 1948:
Here, he brilliantly focused on the objective flow of information, detaching information from the meaning or the form. Whether you are sending Shakespeare or insults, whether you are telegraphing them or sending them on Discord, this information can be always quantified into bits (nowadays usually represented as 0s and 1s) and then approached from the universal perspective of encoding trasmitters, noise-introducing channels, and decoding receivers.
The game implements information and therefore intelligence in similar way:
Let's explore this system, with plethora of examples from the perspective of Cuba in the game.
Information in the Game World
At the most basic level, many entities in the game have secret states (such as a terminal disease) and execute secret actions (such as preparing a terrorist attack). These, when significant enough, become information in the intelligence mechanics, which is then conveyed (encoded) in various materials.
A few cases for a good start:
When Castro decides to deploy troops in Angola, this information is materialized in the game through military plans, military communication, and change of behavior of military forces in Cuba
Construction of nuclear power plant in Juragua is visible from the ground, air, and space, and therefore can be materialized by witnesses or devices with cameras
After arrival of Mig-21 jets in Cuba, every deployment and flight conveys this information (until it is well known that Cuba procured Mig-21s)
As examples above suggest, materials have different forms, which directly affect how materials can be collected (collection is professional term for acquisition of intelligence).
Physical materials are intuitive: documents, photos, recordings, devices, weapons, fingerprints, presence on the ground, and so on. They can be observed and inspected, some of them also copied, or just stolen.
Mental materials rely on human memory about information or about other materials. They have much higher noise and are forgotten over time but they can reach anywhere, including most critical information. Collection usually relies on conversations, briefings, and interrogations.
Ephemeral materials require immediate collection - eavesdropping on a conversation, intercepting chatter in military communication, observing an action, and so on. People who were a part of such event are also secondary collectors, usually by remembering the event.
Two first categories remain in the world (physically or in minds) and can further propagate through documents, conversations, phone calls, and even rumors (commonly overheard by operatives from intelligence stations). What an intelligence agency does with rumors?
Deriving Intelligence
Once materials are collected, the player is aware of the kind and to what extent a material may potentially contribute. Potentially - because it is extracted through analysis that depends on:
Parameters of the material (such as signal-to-noise ratio, eg. very high in a single photo vs very low in thousands of hours of phone call recordings),
Skills of analysts from responsible section,
Access to specific facilities (eg. DNA forensics),
Agency-wide levels of specialization (in politics, military, digital devices, and so on)
In especially pressing cases, a player may cooperate with more advanced player to extract more information, at the unusual cost of potentially revealing source of the material and details of own operational methods.
Once extracted, information may still remain at potential stage - usually, single material provides only fractional intelligence. To arrive at actual intelligence, operatives usually have to acquire and analyze more materials. For instance, Cuban intelligence agency may first get a hint of incoming guerrilla invasion through rumors overheard by a station in Washington. Then, operatives in investigative way can explore this lead further by wiretapping potentially relevant actors, recruiting spies among Cuban dissidents, conducting risky overflights over places with potential training camps, and so on. This allows the player to further define the details of the invasion, such as date and place, that allow military to successfully and quickly repel it.
Intelligence
Every intelligence agency around the world has its own definition of "intelligence", often complicated by local language. Espiocracy avoids this futile task and instead implements Wittgensteinian approach: intelligence is defined by examples, context, and actual use.
Derived intelligence is used either at national or at operational level. National intelligence contributes to country's international position, available actions, and sometimes even survival. It ranges anywhere from ordinary industrial espionage (eg. trade secrets) all the way to grave revelations (eg. real nuclear position of an adversary).
Operational intelligence, does not interest the government but it is very useful for the player, directly expanding number of available actions. Primarily, it clusters around vulnerabilities and secrets which can be found near all actors in the world.
Derived and even used intelligence remains in the world and has life after life:
Many pieces of existing intelligence with enough tradecraft may lead to new intelligence in the process of inference,
Operatives remember intelligence that they derived - which then can be extracted from them in interrogation... or they may reveal it after defection,
Actors remember intelligence that was distributed to them - so when we steal nuclear blueprints and pass to inventor-actor who has a butler-spy, retelling or even copies of said blueprints may reach the agency that handles that spy!
Intelligence may be sold to other players (again, with inherent risk of revealing own methods, much lower than in materials but still present),
Leaked to press, revealed after years in a book,
And of course it will be also uncovered to the player in the game over screen
Behind The Scenes
► UX for intelligence is not satisfactory yet. Quick sneak peek at work in progress:
► What about false intelligence? Good question! There are a few ongoing experiments, credibility assigned to materials or ability to manufacture false materials (eg. spreading false rumors, sending a walk-in to adversary's embassy with forged documents, producing misleading military chatter...) but they require special care with more iterations to extract the best possible gameplay.
► While it may seem unusual (or even worrying) that a game with espionage in name still substantially changes espionage mechanics after 3 years of development, this is how innovation is made. For a telling case, see "Shadows of Doubt" - a game nominated in Steam Awards for most innovative gameplay in 2023, which was in development since 2015 and made major pivot in core gameplay in 2018. Returning to Espiocracy, the best parts of current gameplay were more or less not possible to be invented three years ago - instead, they required three years of implementing, playtesting, and iterating. You can trace trace this journey in dev diaries, with "Strategic Materials" (DD#11) in 2021 as the first solid stab at discrete intelligence materials, then "Secrets and Opportunities" (DD#23) in 2022 as a implementation of more materials that grew to contribute a lot of fun to gameplay, then "Espionage Gameplay" (DD#47) in 2023 as a wider attempt at unifying and expading these, and now we are here in 2024 with true information.
► Speaking of iterations, I'll drop a screenshot of current mechanics around spies without any explanation:
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on July 5th!
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "I think that the public reaction, as I judge it, has not been one of shock or horror; it has been much more along the lines of - the intelligence services carry out intelligence work, good" - David Cameron about Edward Snowden
Dev Diary #53 - Agencies (3.0)👁️
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Who is the player in a game? Who are you?
(Linguistic disclaimer: this dev diary usually replaces "player" with "you". Apologies to readers who detest "you" form)
Video games of old didn't ask this question. You're firing at asteroids, who cares. Then, as games became deeper, a slice of this depth came from trying to think who is the player - with the exception of many strategy games. In most of them, you're a god, a spirit, a Rube Goldberg machine, just play the game.
Espiocracy, as stated in the very first diary, completely rejects vague-player approach typical for strategy games. The game is rooted in finding, defining, and constantly using the answer to "who is the player". Playing not "as nebulous France" and instead "as defined organization(s) in France" is the secret sauce to making the best possible game out of the Cold War (and beyond), in my opinion, backed first by a few prototypes and now by three years of development.
However, it may be more profound than just nailing the setting. Across many forms of art and entertainment, you can observe historical progress from ">you< doesn't matter" to "actually >you< is very important". Whether it's the development of perspective in painting or the evolution of narration in literature, asking "who are you" and thinking deeply about answers (even if there is no good answer) enriches not only the piece but sometimes even the entire form of human expression.
This dev diary will continue our journey through the alleys of "Who Is The Player" town. Its topic has been chosen in a poll by people who want to read even more about it on top of three full diaries ([1], [2], [3], and many more partially touching it). Perhaps it's not a mere interest in the main idea behind the game but more of a testament to the yearning for answers, new angles, and wider progress of this form of entertainment.
Intelligence Community
Much like other grand strategy games, you begin a new campaign in Espiocracy by choosing your nation.
You are inherently tied to a nation - and most interesting areas of the game, such as nuclear brinkmanship, rely on the power of a state - but you're not a nation.
To be technically precise, you are playing as an intelligence community. You can customize it just after choosing the nation.
(Similar screenshot appeared in previous agency-related diaries, it's posted in current form here for clarity.)
"Intelligence community" encompasses all organizations and individuals tasked with espionage. Out of practical logic and pure necessity (eg. current American intelligence consists of 18 organizations!), the game joins and abstracts away many of them to form two layers of player persona: community-wide (this section) and agency-wide (next section).
On the level of the entire intelligence community, you command budget (more details in later section), important parameters (such as trust and need), and wide forms of progression (primarily capabilities and intelligence programs).
Actors
In terms of actual objects in the game world...
...an intelligence community is just a "mental concept" - an idea, incapable of acting in the world (!). It has to be embodied by active entities on the ground: intelligence agencies, implemented as actors, existing between other actors in the game.
All your actions are carried out by a particular agency and often by a specific section inside such agency.
(Lack of player-controlled agencies means that no actions are possible! This nominally leads to a game over screen. However, all game-over conditions can be turned off, and in this case player spends a short period actor-less, and therefore without ability to act, until new actor(s) are established by the government.)
For many playable nations, both "you play as an intelligence community" and "you play as an intelligence agency" are true - when the community consists of a single agency. This is usually the case for two extremes, either very small communities (such as a department in police forces) or very large communities (usually monolith ministry).
In many other cases, you control up to 3 actor-agencies. If you recall old DD#8, the game at the time had community-wide models - that is no longer the case and now it's flexibly agency-based. An agency is defined by:
Responsibilities. Any of these in any agency: domestic / foreign / civilian / military / signals intelligence. Among many influences (more on that below), most importantly it affects operations as battles. Attacking vs defending sides are not defined by communities (not American vs Soviet player) but by agencies. If you, as an American player, target the Soviet government, it will be CIA vs KGB operation, but if you target Soviet military installations, it will be CIA vs GRU - and in the late game, if you try to hack Russian networks, it may be NSA vs GRU (if Russian player made GRU responsible for signals).
Organizational form. An agency can be: independent / ministry / military / police / foreign / religious / secret organization. Every form differs in costs, incentives, legal boundaries, and possible actions (details evolve during playtesting). Their availability is defined externally and may be a goal in itself, for instance players in occupied countries usually start with pretty limited "foreign" organizations (eg. Arisue Unit in Japan 1946), try to advance independence of the country and progress to more influential & independent forms (eg. PSIA in Japan 1952, a ministry organization in terms of game mechanics). On the other end of the spectrum, after a significant loss of trust and need your community may be forced to be reformed, and resulting agencies may have a less optimal form (eg. in Austria, after independent BVT failed to prevent the terrorist attack in 2020, it was replaced by a ministerial DSN).
The choice between one or more intelligence agencies is a strategic decision, a'la building wide or tall: spreading or stacking responsibilities, diversifying forms or focusing strongly on one organizational form, higher peaks or a higher average of certain traits. In addition, since agencies are full actors in the game world, the number of agencies significantly affects direct player-vs-player operations. 3 agencies mean 3x different targets - on one hand, more targets for the attacker, and more places to defend for the defender; on the other hand, a breach in one agency usually does not spill over to other agencies, and the attacker has to expend more resources to attack more than one agency. If the second hand is more appealing, it's no coincidence. As mentioned above, both in the real world and in the game, a single agency is either very small or very large, with everyone in the middle preferring multiple agencies.
Example: Two Germanies
For any new intelligence community in the game, you can use "Historical" or "Popular" preset:
"Historical" proposes historically accurate community and agencies as of March 1946, while "Popular" gives you well-known agencies of the Cold War. Both options have their place beyond simple personal preference - in some countries, historical agencies were very interesting in 1946 (such as Arisue Unit in Japan), while in other countries they were more confusing and less exciting (eg. historically, in 1946 instead of CIA vs KGB there was CIG vs MGB). Beyond simple numbers, these two also define many other initial conditions. Both sides of the Elbe River provide a good example of differences between playable intelligence communities (IC):
West Germany, Historical IC: Gehlen Org. A small unit of (mostly) Nazi veterans funded by the USA. High experience, tradecraft, capabilities in areas such as military, access to already existing intelligence structures - but also initial low trust, reliance on another country, many internal secrets, and low morale.
West Germany, Popular IC: BFV and BND. Respectively, independent domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. Larger, with a government-supported budget, partially cleaner slate, lower various skill-adjacent parameters, and much higher vulnerability to eastern infiltration attempts.
East Germany, Historical IC: Volkspolizei. Intelligence section in police forces. Mostly controlled and financed by the USSR. Many sections with low skills and almost no ability to conduct espionage abroad.
East Germany, Popular IC: Stasi and HVA. Two ministry organizations (in the real world HVA was under Stasi but the game currently separates them to better simulate their historical activity), respectively domestic and foreign responsibilities. The former with many averagely skilled sections and almost unlimited legal powers, and the latter highly skilled. Both deeply infiltrated but no longer funded by MGB/KGB.
Deeper Funding
Speaking of financial gameplay, let's take a quick look at its current iteration at the end of the dev diary.
Multiple contributors described in DD#32 were proved to subtract more than add to the game. Instead, now the player can:
Receive monthly and yearly transfers from the government based on State Power Index x trust and need (if the community is funded by the government)
Find customers (intelligence term), governmental or otherwise, who subsidize certain activities and buy intelligence
Develop less-official sources of income, anywhere from extortion (a story as old as any intelligence agency, especially in autocratic countries) to middleman cut (eg. CIA received 5% of the Marshall Plan funds)
These feed into three main accounts:
From left to right (first value is the number of available sections): official (spent on anything roughly legal), transferable (can be moved to another entity, usually used to fund various actors), and illicit (spending without oversight, not available for official expenses such as hiring).
Behind The Scenes
► Some strategy games introduce obvious and very intuitive embodiment of the player as a single individual - a leader, a manager, a king, a director - in the game world. There is no director in Espiocracy. The idea was considered seriously and even partially prototyped but it failed (as I like to say, it subtracted more than added). In small part, this can be attributed to the ephemerality of a director of the entire intelligence community - many countries don't have one, and those which do, usually assign very limited powers to such a person. In larger part, implementing a director (even of an intelligence agency instead of a community) anywhere near the real world (as is the ambition of the game in all mechanics) is surprisingly mundane, administrative, and political. For instance, George Bush senior was the director of CIA, in between working in a US-Chinese office and in a Houston bank... And in the largest part, it failed because it can be implemented only in two equally bad ways. Either as a very weak flavor/vanity player persona (and then we're just wasting an opportunity to associate the player with something strong in the game world) or as an illogically influential player persona in the world of Cold War intelligence agencies (and then we're lowering immersion, which is the opposite of what we primarily aim for with good player embodiment). There is a middle ground for some places for some time (eg. Markus Wolf) but it's too finicky / local / short-lived to meaningfully chase in this game.
► This diary does not mention domestic conflicts between agencies (eg. CIA vs FBI) because they do not exist in the game. While it is a frequently requested feature, I see it as a slippery slope into a bureaucracy simulator - and a world map would be pretty bad interface for bickering between Langley and Washington, they are just a few pixels apart! On a more serious note, it is one of the few rare cases where implementing realism / historical accuracy is in conflict with the player as an intelligence community. If you control both CIA and FBI, a turf war between them is just an exercise in anti-player frustration. There's only a tiny single "red tape parameter", with very limited influence on the game (higher value primarily leads to slightly longer actions, eg. it takes more time to establish an intelligence station) - which I introduced on purpose to avoid implementing domestic inter-agency conflicts and instead distill any such cravings into a little silly number.
► "Customers (...) who (...) buy intelligence" - yes, it's a new thing, intelligence mechanics at the heart of the game received new layers of depth and this will be probably the topic of the next dev diary.
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on June 7th!
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "This country wants no Gestapo, under any guise or for any reason" - Harry Truman in 1946
Dev Diary #52 - Sections 🚶
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Hello there!
Espiocracy always have had stormy relation with intelligence operatives. Does a grand strategy game need such individuals at all? How should they intersect with nations and large organizations? Where is the balance between irrelevant storytelling vessels and overwhelming hero units?
Their design & implementation varied wildly over time, from detailed Football-Manager-like top operatives (DD#9) all the way to abstract resource-like pools of people (DD#32). Many iterations later, we arrive at the obvious staple of strategy games...
On-Map Units
The game gives you sections: on-map units of 8+ intelligence officers working mostly on the same task and in the same place.
Recognizing that the cliché trope of lone rockstar spy does not fit the game, Espiocracy finds inspiration in real-world teams such as GRU's Unit 29155, Mossad's Kidon, CIA's Special Activities Division, countless crews in intelligence outposts, units of special operations forces, and even police sections (since many players in Espiocracy partially control local police).
At the same time, sections retain individual personality both in identification - usually through most-skilled operative - and action.
Individual officers have different tradecraft (general 0-100 skill), roles, and can be responsible for logically solitary tasks, such as a recruitment pitch at a meeting (note, however, that the entire recruitment operation is executed by the whole section: analysis, observation, counterobservation, way out in case of an ambush, and any other step taken into account by operational simulation).
Geography
Sections are based in intelligence structures - usually the HQ or a station - from which they autonomously execute background espionage activities, such as developing low-level agents, and from which they can move to execute player's orders. In an interesting Cold War twist, as units on the map, sections usually do not traverse the world province by province and instead can just fly from one nation to another. (Naturally, there are exceptions, for instance infiltration through a green border or... insertion by a submarine.)
Traditional role of distance here is taken over by a granular intelligence environment. To fly in without falling immediately into counterintelligence observation (which would preclude doing anything of substance), a section primarily uses regional covers.
A cover is developed over time by a station working with the region (where region usually equals a continent). "With" instead of "in" is used here deliberately because geographically the game implements the intelligence/political concept of "centers of gravity" - deep connections between countries that transcend distance. France, for instance, is the center of gravity for many African countries...
...and therefore you can establish a station in Paris to work on the African direction. Returning to flights and covers, your operatives may develop African covers in Paris and have - in the faithful logic of espionage - good reasons to fly from Paris to an African country without raising much suspicion.
That is, if local counterintelligence landscape permits it.
Countries differ in terms of counterintelligence capabilities, which in turn influences what a section needs to travel. Easier landscape may require no cover at all, while more severe situations may require more than one cover, bribes, certain level nation-specific local intelligence, or even agents on the ground paving the way.
The landscape is affected both by external factors - it's easier to avoid surveillance in war-torn Europe or among late-game crowds in the air - and internal decisions - from Cold War Kenya famously having just a few MI5 officers, all the way to creating police-state like modern North Korea which is inaccessible to almost all intelligence agencies in the world.
Activities
All major espionage tasks are implemented by a section. Usually, its tradecraft directly contributes to the outcome:
In many cases abroad, activities (especially: operations) become duels between attacking and defending (counterintelligence) sections. Involved teams and officers are directly affected by any gunfight, murder, arrest, expulsion, spy swap, and so on. True to the resilience of intelligence agencies, the damage is usually temporary - any officer can be replaced and tradecraft often can be regained over time. Moreover, officers themselves undergo a standard cycle of life: move between sections, leave the intelligence community, retire, or... become a turncoat.
Moles in intelligence agencies are recruited directly inside sections. Such a spy gives direct insight into the section's orders and intelligence. This is especially useful when a mole is in a section tasked with counterintelligence against player's operations - like in the case of Kim Philby working in the Soviet department of MI5.
Behind The Scenes
► Meta-dynamics are in the works. Hiring, firing, purges, scouting, borrowing, various special types (not only special forces but also for instance a K-9 section) - all of these undergo iterations to elicit as interesting gameplay as possible.
► Comparison to units suggests a few standard questions. Can you stack sections? Partially yes, multiple sections can usually crew the same structure (with caveats such as bilateral quota on embassy staff), but also partially no, because some activities (such as an intelligence operation) are limited to a single section. Can you wipe out a section? Yes, a well-prepared ambush is enough. You can also nuke them out of this world. How many sections a player has? Roughly 1-30. How much micromanagement is there? While the design of this game does not operate on such subjective terms (micro is often just a synonym for grind; in that case, I can safely say that the game avoids grindy gameplay), sections are intended to act as an expansion of player's agency, a set of tools that before/after usage is semi-autonomous.
► Speaking of embassy staff, diplomatic covers underwent quite a few iterations in the game, and will probably evolve a little bit more. In the context of this dev diary, currently regional covers are usually non-official (= not diplomatic, arrested officers may be prosecuted) unless they are used in a country with established intelligence station and official diplomatic relations (which is not obvious in game's timeline, for instance East German player won't have diplomatic relations in many places around the world).
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on May 3rd!
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
This annual festival celebrates tabletop-inspired games and the dedicated game studios that make them. From March 7th to March 11th, you'll find demos, previews of upcoming titles, panels from developers, and game discounts too.
Here's a title for those of you who play rogues and other shadowy characters in tabletop games.
Espiocracy is our upcoming grand strategy game based on the Cold War, where you personally lead an intelligence agency from one of seventy-four playable countries. Intrigue and subterfuge are the tools used to stage coups, influence elections, and wage proxy wars.
Command operatives, re-write, and skirt the edge of nuclear brinkmanship.
Wishlist Espiocracy now and lead your agency in 2024.
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Welcome back!
Today we will explore diplomacy, an absolute master of the Cold War, and a supremely important subject for Espiocracy.
(It's probably the last large mechanical topic in the diaries before we dive back into minutiae and AARs, which means that this diary is in the older heavier style. Also, linguistic disclaimer: "diplomacy" here includes many elements of wider international relations, following standard vocabulary of political games, and to avoid confusing references to "IR".)
Diplomacy in strategy games is usually implemented by personifying countries: giving them attitudes/opinions on one another, the ability to insult, offer gifts, trade favors, or enter almost-marriage-like alliances. This model is rooted in board games where every faction is indeed a human player who has real opinions on other players. However, as we travel further away from the roots, it makes less and less sense. In the case of Espiocracy, with 150+ countries in the Cold War (and beyond), complex frequently changing governments, and the player playing as an intelligence community - this model simply would not work. I know because I implemented it by default three years ago...
Many iterations of research / prototypes / playtests later, we are finally pretty close to really solid diplomatic gameplay in Espiocracy.
Keeping the unusual player persona at the center of mechanics, this model allows the player to interact at every stage with all the existing elements of diplomacy, not only in their own country but also in many other countries around the world!
Cooperations and Conflicts
The game completely drops abstract opinions/attitudes between nations. In many - most interesting - cases of the Cold War, it was not possible to reduce relations between two countries into a single opinion value. Take for instance stormy relations between France and the UK in the early Cold War, where both countries worked towards NATO and the EU, while at the same time they were sabotaging each other in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Following this and many other historical examples, countries in Espiocracy have multiple ongoing mutual cooperations and conflicts over defined subjects.
Cooperation or a conflict is the middle matrioshka doll of diplomacy.
Inside, it contains individual international actions. They are both defined by and dictate the depth of a relation. Two countries in new economic cooperation do not trust themselves enough to establish free trade - first, they have to pave the way with investments, loans, imports, and other less significant actions. Conversely, a diplomatic conflict does not (usually) begin with severed diplomatic ties, and instead crawls through overtures such as canceling diplomatic events or expelling diplomats.
While a plethora of actions can be managed through more general relations, a plethora of relations can be managed through more general...
Diplomatic Structures
Real-world diplomacy loves structures, protocols, frameworks, and everything in between. This fact is subtly represented in a few strategy games but, as if bound by murky "opinion" parameters and people universally rolling their eyes at the word "policy", this aspect seems like a missed opportunity. In my humble opinion, similarly to nuclear brinkmanship, diplomatic structures make a fantastic game-building clay!
Espiocracy implements main tools of diplomacy as a way to start / define / end multiple cooperations or conflicts in one sweep, with possible extension to details such as emphasis on particular actions or exchanging actions belonging to two different subjects.
Non-exhaustive ordered (from the least important to most important) list includes:
Implicit Alignment, eg. anti-communist countries cooperated to quell communism by default
Informal Deals, eg. East Germany sent weapons to Arab states during the Six-Day War, and in exchange, they recognized the sovereignty of the GDR
Retaliations, eg. a set of countries ended military cooperation with Russia after the annexation of Crimea
Bilateral Treaties, including Alliances but usually more ambiguous, eg. the Finno-Soviet treaty of 1948 with its complexity (Finland partially traded independence, mainly by being obligated to reject the military cooperation with the West, in exchange for neutrality that would stop the USSR from coercing Finland into future Warsaw Pact... kind of)
Coalitions, usually a temporary structure to jointly wage a conflict, eg. a coalition of 42 states for the Gulf War
Policies, meta-decisions about cooperations or conflicts which do not have to target specific countries, eg. Hallstein Doctrine (in game mechanics it's closer to a policy than a doctrine) in which West Germany refused to engage in diplomatic relations with any country that recognized East Germany
Doctrines, powerful sets of global meta-decisions available only to significant figures from significant countries, eg. Truman doctrine pledging support for democracies against authoritarian threats
In addition, diplomatic structures have meta-dynamics: they can evolve into waves (eg. a wave of retaliations where even smaller countries can retaliate in the shade of international crowd), their proclamation or modification can become a significant event on its own that is met with a diplomatic reaction (classic case of Warsaw Pact forming 5 days after West Germany joined NATO), their implementation may be ceased, a policy may expire due to impracticality of enforcement, and so on.
Staccato of Interactions
Diplomacy in the game advances, similarly to the real world, one contact at a time. Rich tools of inter-governmental communication - intermediaries, contact groups, summits, visits, letters, phone calls - define the pace, basic availability, and evolution of relations (eg. Czechoslovak attempts to form a local security pact contributed to the formation of Warsaw Pact), and most importantly: a large layer of diplomats who are influenced by intelligence agencies.
The ability to pursue these interactions (and all other diplomatic actions) is primarily tied to diplomatic weight - a parameter rooted in the general position of the country (State Power Index), modified further by independence, legitimacy of the government, recent diplomatic successes, international credibility, and actors directly responsible for diplomacy. By partially decoupling material and diplomatic position, it allows nations to diplomatically punch much above their weight... or become unreliable unwanted partner even despite superpower status.
This is where a casus belli, the good old staple of strategy games, comes in. Grave actions (such as an invasion) have a high weight threshold, often higher than achievable diplomatic weight. However, it can be lowered by an expanded Cold War variant of casus belli: a "diplomatic justification". Weaker nations can prepare sophisticated justifications against a targeted nation, often in secret coalition with other nations. For instance, the "unification" claim was not enough for North Korea to invade the south, both historically and in the game, and instead, the invasion was preceded by two years of uprisings, complicated negotiations in Moscow and Beijing, and finally a month of calls for elections, conferences, and peace talks. On the other hand, heavy-weight nations or leaders may follow "might makes right". Justification can be presented post-factum, much like Brezhnev vaguely explaining the invasion of Czechoslovakia a month after it was executed, or hand-waved, similarly to Lyndon B. Johnson's communication around the invasion of the Dominican Republic.
Following deeper the rabbit hole of Cold War diplomacy, the game also features international incidents. These constitute an inherent cost of many actions, for instance, deployment of a naval group (which can run into mines or a shoot-out with vessels from another country), a nuclear test (fallout risks), a space launch (falling rockets and satellites), and many espionage activities. An incident at best may be settled through deconflictive actions and at worst may escalate into an international crisis.
International Crisis
A crisis in the game is a rare named event, with a limited lifetime and participants, punctuated by a string of confrontations. In a way, it's a diplomatic war.
Crises can originate not only from incidents but also from significant enough actions (across many mechanics) that involve significant enough nations. Berlin Blockade and Cuban Missile Crisis are classic historical events represented primarily as international crises in the game. For more examples, you can consult the fantastic International Crisis Behavior database which has been an indispensable help in the development.
When a crisis begins, belligerents enter a cycle of (usually fast) turn-by-turn escalations and deescalations, with high risk and high gain, which sooner or later have to end in a resolution.
The chart above hints at the current implementation but details are subject to larger changes. If you are familiar with game theory (as a mathematical field, eg. the famous prisoner's dilemma), you may suspect that this kind of mechanic can be surprisingly difficult to implement in a satisfying way. That is true, this two-player game inside a game can collapse into spectacular opposites of what was intended (eg. a countdown to war instead of a diplomatic stand-off). Hence, this section is limited to communicating mainly the intent, without burdening you with methods of achieving the intent, as they will certainly evolve.
Behind The Scenes
► Gifts and insults can rarely happen in the game, on the fringes of diplomacy. The former relies on local traits of a country giving it special types of gifs available (eg. panda diplomacy), and the latter can be executed by actors trying to gain domestic clout (eg. Reagan calling the USSR an "evil empire").
► There's not a single "national interest" mentioned in the dev diary because this mechanic was retired due to its very repetitive redundant nature. As it turned out, views (especially combined with the tools described above) are more than enough to motivate actors.
► How does this system fit into schools of thought in international relations? If we can argue that classic (opinion-based) implementation of diplomacy is closest to the constructivist school, then diplomacy in Espiocracy is in a very small fraction constructivist (when individual actors overwhelm foreign policy) and mostly stays in a superposition between liberal (eg. states often mutually dependent, international frameworks, internal interest groups) and realist (eg. power politics, interest-driven rational decisions, states acting as coherent units) approaches.
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on April 5th!
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "Much of the diplomatic traffic of Third World states was vulnerable to cryptanalysts in both East and West. On the eve of the 1956 Suez crisis, the British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, formally congratulated GCHQ on both the ‘volume’ and ‘excellence’ of its decrypts ‘relating to all the countries of the Middle East'" - Christopher Andrew in "The Secret World"
Christmas Special 🎄
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Today we return to the tradition of Christmas Eve with micro-AAR (after action reports) from casual Espiocracy gameplay. Welcome to the second installment!
We play as Argentinian SIDE, starting on March 6th 1946.
Unlike many countries at the start of the game, Argentina was not directly affected by WW2. Instead, the nation underwent an essentially bloodless coup which ended the reign of Ramon Castillo and paved the way to presidency of Juan Peron. (In this run, pre-game simulation already resolved the election which historically happened in June 1946).
Our starting position, however, suffers from other disadvantages. For instance, Argentina has only a few scientific and technological paradigms mastered. Out of useful new paradigms, SIDE suggests government subsidizing development of penicillin and rocket engines. For now, electronic dreams, not to mention participation in the nuclear race, are far beyond our reach.
We will tackle the problem head-on: by prioritizing electrification and industrialization in the state budget.
Intelligence-wise, we are in relatively remote place but thankfully we our operatives speak Spanish which makes expansion into many countries much easier.
Chile is our first direction of expansion, an almost obvious choice, given rocky history of relations between Chile and Argentina, active diplomatic disputes, and very long border which gives plenty of opportunities to covertly infiltrate the second country. In addition to expanding in Chile, we will slowly get a hold over domestic power centers, starting with local catholic church.
Let's check for a moment what happens on the other side of the world...
Civil wars spreading in Iran, China, and Indonesia!
On the home front, we conduct more operations against domestic actors. Here, we will recruit a family member of an Argentinian writer in exchange for employing said person at an influential organization.
In the meanwhile, civil wars spread to Mongolia.
And mainland China is overrun by communist forces in 1947, rather early.
A few months (and domestic operations) later, we may be ready for more offensive operations on Chilean ground. The first, pretty tame venture is discovered by local DINA just three days after the launch:
A series of other failed operations and increased external pressure on our counterintelligence apparatus lowered trust of local government in our capabilities - which is directly translated into available funds - from initial 47% to 40%.
However, Peron consolidates his power and establishes de facto dictatorship which cynically increases the need, bringing funding almost to the starting level.
While we carry out further operations and Spanish-themed expansion (such as a station in Lima), our neighbor undergoes a coup.
This event contributes to tensions in the region and Chile becomes our diplomatic adversary. New tools, "border build-up" and "invasion", become available.
In Peru, Belaunde becomes the president. The name rings some bells... as it turns out, in earlier days of Lima station, we acquired an opportunity to subvert him!
Although we don't have practical ability (or motivation) to execute such operation, we can sell it for pretty high price on the black market:
Disabled because I was too excited and sold it before taking the screenshot
We could launder illicit funds but it's more efficient to just steer them into another wallet, here through establishing cooperation with a Peruvian political leader.
Slow and reasonable expansion in our part of the world brings first results: solid increase of State Power Index.
Electronic and nuclear future is a tad closer.
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Dev Diary #49 - International Organizations 🌐
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Good design of any product, counterintuitively, sometimes shouldn't be about the end result and instead should focus on the process of making it.
The Empire State Building was built in less than a year and one of the main principles behind its design was... schedule for trucks with concrete. It may be compared with the World Trade Center towers which, despite superior technology, took a decade and went far over budget to complete. While architects of the first building organized the site around trucks arriving every minute (!), the director of the second project prioritized the end result and "continually fought against compromising his architectural vision in the face of various practicalities" (more).
Game development resembles a construction site. In this context, there are mechanics that may be good for the game - and desired by the players - but which will also encourage poor or lazy code, slow down progress, or even contribute to development hell.
Having observed the development of a few mods trying to make a game out of the Cold War and modern times, I can risk a hypothesis that one of such areas is a detailed international organization, especially the United Nations. It's a graveyard of good intentions. There are endless structures, actions, details, ripple effects, and edge cases that may be really fun to read about. You could make entire games about a large room in New York or Brussels. And the players! There is always a subset of people very passionate (and vocal) about these organizations. Even in the case of this diary, folks started speculating on "what new mechanics will be revealed".
The answer is: none. Espiocracy, deliberately, uses already existing mechanics to capture the soul of international organizations. Funky details may be slowly added in the form of accumulated content (or mechanically after the release) but I intentionally avoid any deeper implementations for the sake of good design.
Control and Member States
The game features the most influential organizations in the framework of actors.
Primary gameplay around them is focused on control. Standard actors by default have full control over their actions. For instance, many players begin with full control over their actor agencies...
...which then can be chipped away by other entities, as shown in the previous diary, and in the following example of a Soviet player controlling a Polish player:
In contrast, international organizations usually have minimal control over their actions - with exceptions such as ICJ launching investigations - and the rest is distributed between member states.
These are usually not equal. Different levels of control approximate diplomatic prowess, participation in the Security Council, or the role of the USA in NATO and the USSR in the Warsaw Pact (or observer members with nil control). As with any other actors, control gates access to proposing and ordering actions. Proposed action, depending on its details, may be further proceeded through debating-voting mechanics borrowed from governments of Espiocracy.
Types of actions depend on the subtype of the organization. Examples include:
Legal (eg. ICJ): settle a dispute, set up an international criminal tribunal
Military (eg. NATO): invade, conduct exercises, share nuclear weapons
Regional (eg. EU): integrate economies, fund less developed countries, agree on military action
Common Interest (eg. BRICS): promote common views, coordinate responses
Global, Dynamic, Spyable
In addition to evolved control mechanics, influence takes here slightly different angle:
Global influence of international organizations stems mainly from legal prerogatives and the participation of member states. Typically for actors, internal life of the organization reflects and influences the external world. United Nations - or any other organization - may evolve during a campaign into a much more influential or much more toothless entity through natural actions such as taking in powerful members or catastrophically failing in a mission (eg. the IRL death of Secretary-General in Congo in 1961).
Naturally, the dynamic nature lends itself also to the set of international organizations. All of them may be dissolved, new ones may be established through a single decision or from a series of summits, organizations may create subsidiary organizations (eg. the UN creating ICC in reaction to events analogous to war crimes of the 1990s), members may join, leave, be expelled, and so on.
Finally, let's take a brief look at more unusual espionage beats associated with international organizations:
A HQ with diplomats from many countries is naturally a hotbed for espionage
Membership gives access to good covers for operatives, allowing them to infiltrate HQ and target other members
For the host country, it creates interesting gameplay of both the easiest access to many useful targets and of harsh reality of dealing with a nest of spies in the homeland
Final Remarks
This was a brief diary, unlike the AAR coming on December 24th - stay tuned!
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "Protocol, alcohol, and Geritol" - Adlai Stevenson, US ambassador to the UN, about diplomacy (1967)
Dev Diary #48 - Actions 🔨
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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One of the earliest diaries used a metaphor of "symphony of history played by an orchestra of ___ where you modify the ensemble in the middle of performance (by assassinating the violinist and blackmailing the pianist)". Back then, the gap was filled by "views". Although they still play important & unique roles, two years later more appropriate word is "actors". These significant individuals and organizations, from political lingo: those who can act, shape history directly via actions. Today we'll look into these actions.
Basic Example
Let's start with the simplest example: an artist creating an art piece. Such action has just a beginning, an end, and a result. In a naive simulation, writers are intrinsically motivated by fame and beliefs to write books. In the game, player agency is injected straight into this motivational vein. As an intelligence agency, you can covertly nudge actors towards actions.
Naturally, it's a battlefield between players who compete over a limited number of actors and limited ability to influence their actions, the latter measured by level of control. This intuitive 0-100 parameter can house surprising complexities (such as a politician simultaneously influenced by multiple players or a satellite intelligence agency - yes, it applies also to players! - infiltrated and manipulated by a superpower player) but at the most basic level, it's just a result of successful espionage combinations.
A domestic artist with low influence in a country destroyed by WW2 can be relatively easily snatched up with one or two operations.
Here, two agents close to the actor are enough to bring the level of control to the desired 40+.
As the actor is a film director, creating an art piece means shooting a movie:
Details of the action also depend on the level of control. Influencing the name requires higher control than ours, and so does nudging the actor to avoid the view held by the author. However, it's enough to drop the pro-communist tone. In addition to the cost of bribes and others (0.2M), we will also covertly enhance the reach of the movie. It's also worth noting that the entire process is carried out in the field by agents who run into the risk of being discovered by the actor (and abroad also by local counterintelligence services) with each intervention.
After the action is finished, its result further lives in the world. With enough luck and quality, it can spread in the region...
...influencing people...
...and intersecting many mechanics, as always in Espiocracy. The movie can be now censored in particular countries, the change in the prevalence of views may influence particular actors and their actions, fame gained by the author may subtract our level of control, and so on. In this playthrough, the story ended in a very human way, an ending which will happen sooner or later to all of us:
More Complex Actions
Espiocracy features nearly 100 actions. Many of them explore the nooks and crannies of the world and various mechanics. They may:
remain covert in certain phases (eg. during fleeing from the country) or as a whole (eg. a meeting known only to involved parties)
require a minimal level of influence (eg. enough to gather people for a protest)
use resources (eg. financial support)
depend on external processes (eg. a reaction to ongoing civil war)
have very different temporal (eg. immediate public critique) and spatial (eg. diplomatic tour across many countries) features
and more...
In particular, actors forming the government can use state apparatus via governmental actions. They are also available to the player who - as an intelligence community - is usually a part of the government. For instance, the Soviet player can see these:
(Note the protest and protest-related decisions.)
Similar actions, depending mostly on the required influence, are available to members of the Soviet government. In further complexity (that's why we started with simple movies), governmental decisions usually have two thresholds of influence. A higher threshold allows an actor to directly order an action to be executed, which - in dance with influence mechanics - organically simulates differences between political systems and the power of people inside. A lower threshold allows an actor to propose an action which is then considered by governmental bodies.
This is the case here, where an actor - probably Beria - proposes a crackdown on protests.
(Crossed lines were not added artificially, they are used in the game to cover hidden information. This action is nominally covert. However, as member of the government we know about the process and can reasonably suspect who's behind it.)
A proposal is subject to a vote in the politburo (in which the Soviet player has one vote) which legitimizes it as a state-level action instead of an actor-level action:
That doesn't mean that an actor is now completely separated from the proposed action. When it backfires and sparks a new guerrilla group...
...it can also haunt the actor originally responsible for the mishap:
International Chess
In a slightly more complex world of international relations (IR), the game runs into a classic conundrum of many methods multiplying many targets. A standard set of four simple international actions (subject to change)...
...expands into at least 4 actions x 200 countries = 800 possible actions for every actor participating in IR, de facto much more because established relations allow more specific actions. Imagine meaningful UI and efficient AI for that! This conundrum has been solved by giving IR meaningful frameworks.
An example of such a framework is an international issue, here represented by the "Iran Crisis" from the perspective of the Soviet player who can - as do other actors in the government - propose escalating or settling the matter:
Issues can touch territorial disputes, military presence, peace negotiations, unification, and many other facets of diplomacy (including multiple facets within the same issue). Multiple rounds of negotiations still function as actor actions, which means that they can be voted on by the government, their details can be adjusted, and they operate within the entire espionage gameplay, including... manipulating foreign decision-makers into precise international decisions.
This dev diary hints at IR in the context of actions. In the future, the topic will receive separate deep DD.
Reactions
Returning to Iran, we can also observe meta-complexity of actions:
After Pahlavi began liberalization, other influential actors in the country reacted with critique. This is possible because an action itself also exists in the game world (as "a thought") and therefore can be the subject of other actions. Reaction can also spark further reactions - such as Pahlavi imprisoning critics - and in that way building reactive world from natural chains of actions.
(What's happening in the north-western Iran? USSR still occupies the area in early 1946 and shields the civil war waged by the Azerbaijani guerrilla. Black ink represents a region controlled by separatists with a granularity of the game's ~5x5km grid. Arrows show recent battles and gains for either side, depending on the direction of the arrow. Obviously work in progress.)
Moddability
The system of actions in its all complexity is also fully moddable. Actions can be modified, replaced, added, and actors are robust enough to make use of any of them. The level of code flexibility is set with a few interesting total conversion mods in mind - one of them is a potential UFO / X-Files / conspiracy theory mod. For such a mod, we can add a new action using XML:
And then either use hooks to existing actions (perhaps ambush actions could suffice here) or write new ones in C# Harmony patches. Et voilà!
Final Remarks
As always, screenshots show work in progress and contain countless incorrect details (yes, Russians shouldn't really "meets members of Kyrgyzs" on the 9th screenshot but they did in this playthrough...).
See you on December 1st!
---
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "Every cause produces more than one effect" - Herbert Spencer
Dev Diary #47 - Espionage Gameplay 🕵️
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Best ideas can be conveyed in one sentence. For Espiocracy, it's roughly: play as an intelligence agency in the golden era of espionage. Such ideas, however, can pave the road to hell. There are usually multiple reasons why an exciting approach has not been implemented yet - and why it stays that way until someone stubborn (and stupid) enough executes it.
Anticipating these issues, development was preceded by a critical analysis of espionage systems in other games. Conclusions not only pointed to the long list of avoidable sins but also suggested a few significant chicken-or-egg conundrums that need direct solutions:
Player persona undermines political leaders or political processes or both (DD#1)
Intelligence missions are either inconsequential or cause disruptions too frustrating for a strategy game
Combination of many possible targets and methods creates decision space difficult to logically use or even represent in the interface
Espionage happens in small rooms, dark alleys, bugged devices - places distant by principle - and featuring that in a strategy game leads to abstractions of abstractions of distant abstractions
Core gameplay has been designed from zero to solve these fundamental problems. However, it still took countless iterations over two years to arrive at a solid implementation. It is mature enough to finally receive the big-picture view in the 47th (!) developer diary. Buckle up!
Following the formula of recent diaries, we'll explore the topic from the perspective of two different countries and times (although this time it will be much more static and text-based, as always due to construction site of a game).
West Germany and East Germany, 1960s
There's no better place to start than a conflict between East German Stasi and West German BND. Both players come from opposite ideologies and blocs, competing over the highest stakes possible - statehood, cold war going hot, even a risk of becoming a nuclear wasteland.
This is right where the espionage angle shines. Playing as the BND, there's no single "Damage East Germany" button. There are dozens of them in the form of usable materials (intelligence assets, essentially).
Every one of them can be weaponized. This is where espionage becomes instantly palpable instead of abstract: we can mobilize East German dissidents for a propaganda campaign, publicize secrets to break promising careers of East German generals, or exploit risky opportunities to get critical insight into nuclear posture across the border. More than just dropping abstraction, this system prefers unique discrete resources over continuous numbers (such as tactical intelligence; previously seen in some dev diaries, now completely phased out from the game), helping both with intuitive immersion and with establishing more manageable decision space for players.
Over time, these assets matured like wine into five categories:
Controlled Actors (nationally significant individuals and organizations). As always in Espiocracy, a lot revolves around actors. They are by design an ideal target for intelligence operations and perhaps the most critical backbone of an interesting espionage system. Here, the battle is more precisely fought over control, a limited 0-100 parameter that can be chopped off by any number of entities (including non-player ones, eg. a political leader controlling a political party).
Agents. Disposable people who can be used in operations and other actions, usually associated with professions, backgrounds, or indirectly with some actors.
Strategic Materials. Documents and other materials that can influence entire populations and nations.
Secrets. Accounts of controversial actions or traits of an actor, which can be used to blackmail, control, or eliminate.
Opportunities. Ability to pursue an operation, use any other asset, exploit vulnerability, and so on.
Naturally, players never acquire an abstract agent or an unknown opportunity. Assets in these categories are extensively derived from the high stakes of the Cold War. Here are sample tools that you can use as an intelligence agency to wage a war of ideologies:
Controlled Actors: political leaders, political parties, authors, celebrities, top media
Secrets: actions or traits in conflict with professed ideology
Opportunities: breaking stories potentially promoting an ideology (such as the Moon landing) or subverting an ideology (such as launching an invasion)
Every tool has specific modes of maintenance and use, and many of them can interact with each other, some even to the point of operational combinations where through an opportunity you acquire a secret which is then used to control an actor who then provides a steady supply of agents who later...
Returning to the BND, we can try striking the heart of the East German apparatus by revealing that the party has many members with Nazi past. Potentially, it may lead to tensions inside the Warsaw Pact, political purges, and temporary paralysis in the government. On the espionage level, it will likely open many opportunities amid the chaos and disgruntlement.
From the perspective of Stasi, this would not come like a bolt from the blue. Intelligence agencies usually know secrets of domestic actors (especially Stasi) and in the scope of counterintelligence, players are also usually aware whether the knowledge about such secrets is wider or more narrow. Stasi likely knows or suspects that BND can use this secret. East German players therefore can engage BND in operational games to rob them of the secret - for instance, destroy the evidence or defuse it through diplomatic backchannels. And when the time of use comes, it can be still met with countermeasures (eg. censorship) and even counterattacks (obviously, accusing West German parties of the same sin).
Moreover, these assets are also a battleground between intelligence agencies. The secret from the East German communist party may be falsely manufactured by the Stasi, served to precisely surveilled assets, and an attempt to use it may burn West German opportunities, agents, or even controlled actors.
United Kingdom, 1950s
Tense situation between the two Germanies resembles Carl Sagan's quote about the nuclear arms race ("two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five") but it's not the case for many other playable countries. When there's no mortal enemy at the gates, espionage gameplay can become more expansive and geographical.
Fading empire of the United Kingdom is a good example of such an angle. Instead of collecting secrets and exploits, British player in Espiocracy is usually more concerned with another set of core espionage mechanics: networks. Players build networks as a foundation for all the other activities. Their nodes (and connections in some cases) are primarily used to handle assets and conduct operations.
There are three main types of networks:
Espionage. Usually intelligence stations (DD#44 although already slightly different; in one sentence, these are foreign outposts, often located in embassies, which safely host operatives on the foreign ground).
Smuggling. Routes to covertly infiltrate and exfiltrate people or move objects (usually strategic materials, from weapons to uranium ore), usually with the use of geography such as mountains or green borders.
Propaganda. Entities influencing particular countries (not necessarily the host, for instance a Russian language radio in allied Portugal).
Once the financial market becomes globalized (usually in the 70s-80s), players can weave a fourth - financial - network to move and launder money. Potentially, later a fifth network may appear (internet/hacking, currently in early tests).
British player can, inter alia, pursue more aggressive domestic nuclear program by establishing smuggling routes from Congo and then acquiring and moving uranium ore (a strategic material). Geographically, this also may coincide with reinforcing propaganda network in Africa to limit decolonization. More intelligence stations may not be needed at the moment but some fundamental presence - larger than IRL history where MI5 staff in Kenya counted just a few officers - will be important to limit the influence of French SDECE and some of the anti-colonial players.
Networks, in principle, are one more step at making espionage more palpable. As the previous example of East vs West Germany shows, they aren't necessarily very important for medium-sized players (although there's some limited role in two Germanies, especially of smuggling routes, that was omitted for clarity). Instead, interestingly, this part of core gameplay serves both the largest global players (like the UK) and the smallest ones - like Andorra, which becomes an important node for some networks and therefore its minuscule intelligence section of local police can still tap into fascinating opportunities and other intelligence assets (not to mention later gameplay and becoming tax heaven!).
Behind The Scenes
► If you're following this dev diaries for a long time (or worse: if you're reading them all in one shot), all the espionage mechanics in this dev diary compared to bits and bites in previous dev diaries may be rather confusing. Sorry for that! It's a low price for transparent development in the open. We made a long way from initial naive ideas such as "contacts and targets" to current comprehensive combinations of dissidents and smugglers. ► Many core improvements were driven by an unusual approach to AI, as described in 39th dev diary. Most notably, chess-like implementations, terminology, and lessons helped to shape intelligence tools by looking at some parts of player agency as pieces, movements, threats, captures, sacrifices, and so on. ► The list of sins in espionage mechanics, mentioned in the introduction, is quite long. Among the most important ones that this game attempts to avoid are: focusing on the most boring parts of the intelligence world (eg. bureaucracy, knowledge tax, corruption), prioritizing non-interactive background sections of espionage (such as signals intelligence), lack of meta-espionage balance (severely too much or not enough spy-vs-spy), lack of differences between countries and intelligence agencies (despite vast IRL gap between, say, KGB and intelligence section of Canadian police forces). ► In a few more significant core changes that didn't make it yet into this dev diary: awkward and outdated "top operatives" evolved into mechanically aligned "top sections"; abstract-ish parameters such as local intelligence evolved into meaningfully composed parameters of parameters (local intelligence now consists of familiarity with language, topography, and so on); control over actors slowly solidifies as a rich mechanic that even influences players directly, eg. Soviet player partially controls actors of satellite intelligence communities.
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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
--- "The Intelligence Services of East and West have given Europe over fifty years of peace - the longest the Continent has ever known. They did so by keeping their leaders from being surprised" - Markus Wolf, chief of East German HVA
Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale
Hi everyone! Espiocracy and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out!
