Espiocracy News

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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(This dev diary is more dev and more diary than usual)

How do you precisely achieve progress in a game of Cold War intrigue?

Better yet, to invoke a one-liner decorating walls of my office: in a full psychological Cold War intrigue maturely exploring espionage, nuclear strategy, ideologies, politics, and conflicts. How do you measure goals in that, what are the main resources, how do you weave feedback loops, and what's the tick-to-tick strategizing in the game?

This should be probably the topic of the first or the second dev diary. Instead, it was described briefly a year ago in the 8th DD, and then mentioned only between the lines. The reason is simple: elemental progression and basic resources are so fundamental to the game that I was in the middle of the endless cycle of implementations, playtests, and course corrections. Reconnaissance-in-force. We could follow Mozilla versioning scheme and discuss Intelligence Agencies 52.0 instead of 2.0.



The answer, on the surface, is surprisingly simple: as the player in Espiocracy, you're the master of people and funds.



These are further divided into a set of 6-18+ basic resources used by every player.

[h2]Money[/h2]

Espiocracy leans into the plethora of interesting contexts - from origin to legality - around money. While this aspect is kept mathematically simple (make no mistake, it's far from a money-heavy management game!), the game world, much like our real world, essentially revolves around cash.

The player, as an intelligence community of a single country, has a set of contributors who monthly subsidize the intelligence enterprise in exchange for access to intelligence reports. In a typical case, these are Department of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Department of Justice. The extent of funding depends on the departmental budget (stemming from the total state budget which in turn is extrapolated from SPI) multiplied by an unorthodox parameter of "trust and need", separately tracked for every contributor.

SPI (State Power Index) is a purely competitive parameter, increased by overtaking other nations in almost any measurable aspect of the game world, be it quality of the military or shape of the economy. The player has limited indirect influence on SPI (for instance by conducting military or economic espionage) - it's more of an asymmetric landscape between nations than a basic vehicle of progression.

In contrast, trust and need are directly controlled by the player. Trust, naturally, is gained through operational successes and lost after failures. Stealing blueprints of strategic weapons increases the trust of military circles, whereas failure to prevent a terrorist attack decreases trust across the board. Here's also where things get interesting - the same parameter tracks also the need for intelligence. Terrorist attacks definitely increase the need, as do regional wars, international tension, or hostile activities. By combining these two aspects into the same coin, Espiocracy explores the uneasy inflection point between real fear and fear-mongering, between failing upwards and making yourself obsolete by being too good. This paradox was the bane of worldwide intelligence funding which peaked around 1989 and was dramatically slashed just a few years later, rendering many intelligence professionals no longer needed... Find what you love and let it kill you.

Contributions, counted in millions of dollars (usually with an accuracy of $0.1M), are divided into three pools: operational, restricted, and illicit. An operational account accumulates the main legal resource - money that can be spent on expansion, improvements, agents, bribes, special operations, and so on. Restricted funds are dedicated to particular areas, for instance American player receives restricted funds from the Department of Justice which can be spent only on the expansion of the FBI. Illicit money comes from breaking the law on the ground, shady contributors, and covert governmental programs along the lines of Iran-Contra. The last kind of pool can be spent only on already covert activities (eg. bribes), more overt expenses (such as hiring staff) first require laundering illicit funds into an operational account.

At the heart of spending money in Espiocracy sits a radical solution: upkeep is abstracted away, all expenses are one-time expenses. Players don't babysit monthly changes in account balance because there is no maintenance cost. Instead of worrying about salaries, you spend money on a hiring campaign that brings in X new operatives. Lore-wise, salaries and other upkeep costs are handled by contributors (you're a part of state apparatus, not a business, after all) but fuzzy explanations aside, it makes for very fluent gameplay with swift feedback loops, skipping straight to the fun, and moving anti-snowballing mechanics into the vicinity of competitive challenges (eg. more operatives means larger attack surface for foreign infiltration).

Speaking of which, contributors form a kind of contributor economy which takes the role of (also) a negative feedback loop, traditionally implemented by upkeep costs. Symmetrically to large successes rewarded with an injection of money, large failures may require covering the damages (eg. of a diplomatic incident). Further significant loss of trust and need leads also to discrete "downsizing" events, where the player has to single out scapegoats, cut down the staff and sprawl in general, to regain the trust. If that fails (or the loss of trust is dramatic), it may lead to the reform (large changes in the structure of the intelligence community, along with purges and downsizing in general), or even loss of contributors. Changes in the composition of contributors can also happen along political changes - for instance authoritarian one-party systems may feature The Party as the main contributor, some totalitarian countries love overarching Ministries of Internal Affairs that heavily depend on the intelligence community, and small democratic states may almost completely do not care about intelligence, leaving it to a single governmental body such as President's Office.

[h2]Staff[/h2]

People form the second half of resources in the game. Almost all tasks are implemented directly by the staff. You can get by (temporarily) without money but falling to 0 operatives is a game-over condition.

The bulk of staff consists of regular operatives - working mechanically as a currency with internal dynamics. Regular operatives are divided into agencies (eg. for British player there are three separate pools of regular operatives: MI6, MI5, GCHQ), hired with funds, and then (somewhat cynically) thrown in numbers at issues, operations, expansion, and other actions. Each pool is characterized by an average tradecraft level which is increased by training, improvements, engagements on the ground, cooperation with more skillful players, and allows classic quantity vs quality decisions. In addition, regular operatives have limited but impactful office life that includes spontaneous factions forming around views and ideologies, even up to said faction potentially refusing actions, pressing demands, going rogue, or defecting.

Beyond regular intelligence officers, players develop specialized operatives in cycles similar to classic technology trees of other strategy games, with the addition of irregular mandatory investments. Currently (subject to change) there are 12 capabilities - optional specializations:

• Social Engineering
  
• Politics and Diplomacy
  
• Science and Technology
  
• Business and Economy
  
• Media and Culture
  
• Digital Devices
  
• Guerrilla Warfare
  
• Military
  
• Direct Combat
  
• Criminal Investigations
  
• Philosophy
  
• Deep State
  

They are tied to many contexts in the game world: directly contributing to operations (eg. securing better evidence for espionage trial), unlocking available structures and tools (eg. paramilitary training camps tied to guerrilla warfare), influencing events encountered by the player (eg. leaning more into politics or more into military), feeding into asymmetric positions (eg. British player starting with highly developed direct combat thanks to commando experiences in WW2), mirroring the population (eg. less literate countries having a hard time expanding more sophisticated capabilities), and so on.

And then we have top operatives who already received larger separate dev diary. In this, close to the final, iteration of basic resources, top operatives are slightly more impactful operatives who can be both proficient at tradecraft and specialized in a few capabilities. They are definitely not hero units, their main role still belongs to the storytelling layer, but they are embedded in the progression with rather an unconventional mix of mechanics. Instead of the standard choose one out of three random character cards known from many other strategy games involving characters, new operatives are created by the player from a set of positive and negative traits that use a pool of points, not far from character creation in C:DDA. You can increase the number of available points by choosing an alcoholism trait and spending the excess on higher specific skills - or invent a candidate less skilled at the moment but having cheap large potential for the future. As with all other resources, these points will be tied to local contexts and the game world, namely by different weights of the traits. Although it is a departure from the usual realism-first approach, this mode of player agency and flavorful strategic decisions that influence the next decades of storytelling is too good to not feature in the game.

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► Implemented, tested, and dropped ideas included various mana pools (from political influence to approvals in blanco), realistic fiscal years (yearly popup with budget negotiation, yay), worktime of operatives as the primary currency (sort of action points but in real-time), full bookkeeping experience along the lines of Football Manager, and even RPG-like progression in levels from 1 to 100 based on Fallout: New Vegas. Some were bad, some were acceptable, and some contributed features or themes to the current system.

► What about intelligence? Is there an information economy? Yes, it exists but not globally - it has ephemeral, local, discrete value. Experiments on resources included many different approaches to the quantification of intelligence, from counting the number of produced reports to chasing numerical requirements posed by the government, but they all reduced the game to euro-gamish manager of an intelligence mill (and as a bonus, were biased, confusing, and too often broke immersion). In later iterations, I consciously replaced quantity of intelligence with quality. It's a wider question of what this game is about and the answer was never about production chains or chasing green numbers. A smaller or larger number of infiltrated actors doesn't matter when you rewrite history by stealing Khruschev's "Secret Speech", procuring uranium for your nuclear program, and pulling off a coup d'etat on your eternal enemy.

► Note on the realism: IRL state funding of intelligence agencies is diverse, murky, and full of contradictions. Aside from the riddle of representing state funding at all in a game (which is somewhat immersively solved by the simple equation of SPI x Trust and Need), there's an entire ordeal of policies, authorizations, approved items, programs, oversight, competition between departments, red tape, and so on. Some of that made to a game in the form of contributors but I cut off most of these to avoid developing a bureaucracy simulator. Yes, in some parts of the modern world spending money without all these points is a big no-no (until you scroll to the "Controversies" section on Wikipedia), but I'm not too subtle about players playing less as 2022 state enterprises and more as the middle of the Cold War, "we lost accounting books and this sum was spent to weed out traitors who tried to sabotage moon landing", espiocracies!

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

Next up, National Assets on November 25th.

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:



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"Victor spent the money, mostly in West Germany, to bolster labor unions there. He tried undercover techniques to keep me from finding out how he spent it. But I had my own undercover techniques" - Thomas W. Braden, 1967

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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Biological and chemical weapons (BCW) are sometimes called poor man's atom bomb. According to a comparative analysis, BCW can inflict similar casualties as a nuclear bomb at 1/800 cost per square kilometer. This crude calculus pushed unorthodox nations - Canada, Rhodesia, Iraq - to develop their own programs and devise insane plans, such as Chile poisoning the water supply of Buenos Aires in case of an Argentinian invasion.

BCW integrate surprisingly many walks of geopolitical life - military, diplomacy, treaties, and political opinions. Usually, they are handled also more or less covertly and near intelligence agencies. Espiocracy utilizes the unusual player persona, an intelligence community, to allow direct engagement with BCW in the game world:



Their development will be one of the viable strategies for some countries and situations. Their existence, a forgotten threat that was taken seriously during the Cold War. Their cruelty, known but not condemned until treaties of the 70s and 90s arrived. Their proliferation, always problematic for both state and non-state actors up to the modern times.

[h2]Postwar Stockpiles and Progress[/h2]

WW2 has seen the production of BCW in enormous quantities. The game, starting in 1946, will feature these stockpiles as standard world entities on the map - they can be found, moved, stolen, used, or destroyed.

Most of these are already protected by the military and, following the history, soon to be destroyed (by dumping them in the sea). However, their proliferation can become an issue right at the start of the game, with some players even starting the game with active counterintelligence operations. Numerous armed organizations can try to solicit BCW and use them in devastating attacks, with the prime example of Nakam's operation to poison a camp for German prisoners of war in April 1946, which can be intercepted by American intelligence community operating in the occupied zone. (Starting historical positions can be randomized in the initial configuration, allowing the player to avoid the benefit of modern hindsight. Here, gradual randomization can change positions and size of stockpiles, the timing of Nakam operation, target, extent, or even various chances of dropping it and/or replacing it with a different operation.)

In a slight stretch of history, player's intelligence agency is responsible for the further eventual development of new BCW. As suggested by the screenshot, BCW reuse spy gear mechanics (in the meantime spy gear evolved into a more general inventory-like system):

• Modeled weapons include mustard gas, tabun, sarin, novichok, ricin, botulinum, anthrax
  
• Availability depends on developed capabilities (skill-like parameters and specialized staff of player's intelligence community)
  
• Development program requires budget, staff, and time - to research, test, create strategic materials such as blueprints, and establish production lines; after the initial phase, stockpile can be produced at much lower costs
  
• Engagement with BCW universally constitutes a secret (breach of policies/ethics/etc by the player that has to be protected, actively solicited by other players/journalists/actors, causing backlash if revealed), more severe late in the game when counterproliferation treaties are signed
  
• Blueprints and stockpiles can be used not only on the ground (next section) but also as a currency, following the historical case of British services trading VX chemical weapon for US thermonuclear blueprints
  

[h2]Use of Biological and Chemical Weapons[/h2]

BCW slightly expand player agency in intelligence operations. Minimal quantities of stockpiled agents can be used during assassinations, with the classic example of an almost perfect crime utilizing ricin-tipped umbrella. However, the cost of development is still substantial and these operations on their own would hardly justify it as a viable strategic choice.

The main potential use of BCW lies in military operations - especially in defensive plans. BCW are one more building block of the stalemate in the Cold War, prompting the other side to always take into account possible biological and chemical retaliation. Even before 1946, the UK already developed plans to "use sprayed mustard gas on the beaches" in case of an invasion The following decades have seen similar plans, even among the superpowers, with the primary example of the Soviet Union developing robust chemical and biological programs as an important part of deterrence. Actual use of BCW in the game world follows a no-nonsense approach similar to nuclear weapons, where all living entities - operatives, actors, and population - in the targeted areas are directly affected.

Cold War madness: warhead carrying 356 bomblets, each with 500g of sarin. Median lethal dose for a human being is close to 1g.

BCW can also make it to the hands of terrorists. As the staple of the late-game challenges, terrorism will be described in an extensive dev diary in the future - here, it's worth mentioning that from the diplomatic POV, significant terrorist attack utilizing BCW can push the world to rapid counterproliferation actions.

Speaking of which, game world starts with poorly enforced Geneva Protocol from 1925 - prohibition of chemical and biological warfare. The UN and politicians over decades will tend towards proposing a treaty that prohibits not only warfare but also the production of BCW (IRL 1970s), and then further extension to establishing a new special actor for proper enforcement, possibly extended also to destruction of extensive stockpiles (IRL 2000s). Players can try to evade these prohibitions by more extensive counterintelligence protection, infiltrating the actor (as did Russia a few years ago), limiting the actual use of BCW, and other tools of espionage.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next few dev diaries will revisit some of the previously described (already year old!) features near the core gameplay. We'll start with Intelligence Agencies 2.0 - to be posted on November 11th.

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:



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"Forms of chemical and allied warfare are more humane than existing weapons. For example, certain types of 'psychochemicals' would make it possible to paralyze temporarily entire population centers without damage to homes and other structures" - U.S. Department of Defense in the 1950s

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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To paraphrase Fightclub, we meet at a very strange time in world history. This developer diary yearns for "a work of fiction" disclaimer. For all escapism offered by the Cold War, current threats undoubtedly taint the design of Espiocracy and will shape your reception of the game. It is certainly a work of its time.

Stuart Brown eloquently argues in a fantastic essay that video games as a whole are a work of the Cold War times - "an unintended harvest, a nuclear fruit". From the development of game theory, wider rollout of military wargaming, all the way to the progress in computing, simulations, or networks, the work on weapons of mass destruction was always uncomfortably close to gaming.

It is striking, then, that no video game explores nuclear brinkmanship in depth. A few existing attempts either hand the player a nuclear bomb as an inconsequential eraser tool or reduce sabre rattling into a simple board-game-like race with a doomsday clock. During the period of extensive research & prototyping, I almost fell into the same pit, likely for the same reasons as previous developers. When you peer behind the curtain of global fears and look at scientific details, calculations, tests, and usefulness, you can almost feel... disappointment!

Actually deployed warheads had considerably lower yields than weapons from movies and books, simulated damage and casualties were not far from WW2 strategic bombing, radiation is Pandora's box of popular incorrect assumptions, and nuclear winter has a shaky basis. Modern historians even argue that the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki played merely minor role in the Japanese surrender. Academic books are full of similar findings that downplay nuclear weapons. Their implementation at face value inevitably has to trivialize (already virtual!) nuclear bombs - and what's the point of brinkmanship if you're not afraid of the brink?

Espiocracy has ambition to be the first game that renders the highest kind of justice to nuclear brinkmanship. We follow the words of Janne M. Korhonen: atom bombs are fundamentally psychological weapons. The game will focus less on the scientific modeling of explosions, and more on the exploration of human psychology confronted by constant existential threat. This is, after all, a work of fiction.

[h2]Psychological Conflict[/h2]

We start our tour de force of design with Herman Kahn. In the 1960s he published the famous escalation ladder:



Yes, it's rather unrealistic but the entire long paper features many bright observations. The game builds on them and the ladder itself to create an intelligible backbone of otherwise immensely complex psychological conflict:



Every country in the game world has at least two positions (!) on the ladder. There is a real position, usually known to the leader(s) responsible for nuclear weapons in the country, and then there is externally perceived (probable) position, known to other leaders, actors, and entire populations, set by the combination of threats, statements, credibility, evidence, including also actions of other players. In rare cases, other nations may be privy to the third, secret perception that follows special insight or agreements.

Following Kahn's ladder, steps are not meant to be followed one by one, and instead, merely present possible options of escalation or de-escalation from the current position. Steps are by design very different, some acting as one-time events (a threat is forgotten if not repeated after some time) whereas others serve as default fallback points (past tense and infinitives, eg. after a nuclear test a country returns to expanding stockpile). Admittedly, a ladder is not the best analogy (but it sounds nice and has historical weight). A better analogy can be found near poker chips - as a player, you can bet any amount equal to or higher than bets of other players, you can refuse to bet, you may be forced to bet blindly, and over time you may acquire more chips and therefore be able to place higher bets. Most importantly, during the cycles of bidding you build mental models of other players, and get to know their modus operandi, level of aggression, acceptable risks, limits, bluffs, and mistakes.

Directly understood nuclear brinkmanship happens between real and perceived positions. Play truthfully to establish credibility. Use credibility to bluff. Downplay escalation to surprise the opponent. Decipher the real positions of other players. Beat the drums of war by exaggerating the perceived position of the enemy.

[h2]Real Proliferation and Preparation[/h2]

Distance between positions on the ladder is limited by logical constraints. It's impossible to wage nuclear threats without any real work on the nuclear arsenal - or to threaten with global thermonuclear war with a stockpile of five warheads. Beyond constraints, a larger distance is harder to establish and defend. Completely noncredible threats at best may be ignored and at worst laughed off, leading to the demise of a warmonger's political career.

The real position remains the bedrock of nuclear brinkmanship.

The economy here is clear, brutal, and realistic. Advancing real nuclear posture is always costly, it requires much more effort than advancing perceived posture. Real progress relies on expenditure combined with previously introduced mechanics and corresponding modes of interaction:

• National interests and views motivate the country and actors to pursue a particular level of preparation (also in the context of other countries, especially when countering main opponents)
  
• Scientific and technological progress is achieved in Big Science projects supported by local influential actors, including the important role of global progression from clunky atom bombs ("WW2 with nukes") to MIRVs (full mutually assured destruction)
  
• Uranium is procured as one of the strategic materials, with the optional role of other materials such as stolen nuclear blueprints
  
• Governments assign funds for further expansion of stockpile and strategic delivery systems, decide about deployments and escalation/de-escalation in general
  

In addition to developing nuclear capabilities, nations can influence the real nuclear posture of other nations - with the prime example of non-proliferation efforts (treaties, inspections, anti-nuclear social movements, or even sabotage - historically Eisenhower considered sabotaging the French nuclear program). Indirectly, it also takes the form of (generally) nonescalatory preparation of warning systems, blast shelters, civil defense, and nuclear-proofing state institutions. On the other side of the spectrum, nuclear-capable nations can weigh in for their allies (eg. USA considering tactical nuclear bombing in Indochina to rescue encircled French units) or even be asked for nuclear assistance (eg. Mao asking Khrushchev to provide atom bombs for the invasion of Taiwan).

[h2]Perception of Nuclear Posture[/h2]

The most straightforward case of perception aligned with reality is simple only in theory. Change of posture has to be officially communicated which often sparks the reaction of the population (eg. protests), actors (eg. strong opposing voices), and nations (eg. escalation in response to escalation).

In the short term, it may be easier to downplay own nuclear position. Lack of any public communication and counterintelligence protection may be enough for some time but later will require special actions, costs, and possibly shortening the distance between real and perceived posture. The most famous nuclear scare of the Cold War - the Cuban Missile Crisis - falls exactly into this bracket. Soviet Union covertly deployed missiles near the USA with the intent to later present this as fait accompli (keeping perceived position far from real posture for some time). However, American intelligence community discovered the deployment, politicians contacted the Soviet side who denied the change in posture, services gathered more evidence, government debated on the response, and then in alignment with the conventional and nuclear-adjacent response, President Kennedy communicated the discovery of deception in dramatic televised speech. The crisis was resolved when the American side agreed to scale back nuclear deployment from Turkey and Italy - a move which, curiously enough, was also secret. Both the origin and course of this crisis will be emergently simulated in the game.

Classic brinkmanship of the Cold War usually relied on the opposite approach - rhetorical escalation beyond real assumed position. Up to 1962, virtually all presidents of the two superpowers employed these threats regularly with mixed results. From Truman exaggerating nuclear stockpile in talks with the not-yet-nuclear USSR to Khrushchev bluffing to strike the West over Berlin blockade, threats were met with individually different responses, and this is also the approach taken by the game - in addition to player's input, actors themselves will decide about the response to escalatory rhetoric. It's also worth mentioning that various moves and accidents can also escalate the tension without direct intent of any of the sides, with the primary example of the IRL events from the year 1983 (Operation RYAN, shoot down of a Korean airliner, ordinary NATO exercise, Petrov accident, misunderstood speeches, diseases of elderly Soviet leaders - truly explosive combination).

Third-party interference can take an unusual shape in the area of perception. It's no coincidence that acquisition or even sheer attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is regarded as an escalation - manufacturing evidence of such a position can be a firm casus belli. On the other side of the aisle, society also contributes to the perception: books and movies can popularize a particular country as a nuclear villain, widespread drills and shelters can instill in the population a perception of higher threat than real. In very rare but possible cases, society can even enter a state of mass panic and riots after perceiving particularly severe escalation - that was for instance the fear that caused the British government to block TV broadcasts of "The War Game" (1966).

Globally, the highest escalatory position reached by any country ever sets the bar for nuclear taboo. Breaking it usually leads, on the one hand, to international outcry and possibly even coalitions formed against the first mover. On the other hand, the world gets accustomed to this new level and others may be tempted to follow the steps if the original party maintained the stance and/or was not severely punished.

[h2]Nuclear Blasts[/h2]

Bulk of psychology aside, nuclear weapons in Espiocracy are a real existential danger to all entities in the game world. Nukes should and will supply players with a sense of paranoia, up to the point of losing the game in the case of the death of all intelligence operatives. In addition to nuclear brinkmanship, you can turn on a realistic game rule that enables nuclear accidents akin to Stanislav Petrov case from 1983, ready to derail the game on every single tick of full MAD readiness.

Preparation for nuclear war features a special on-map mechanic: you are responsible for nuclear plans. This includes the choice of precise escalatory step (from demonstration strike to global strikes), timing, warheads, targets, and their saturation. For a bleak flavor, other actors will sometimes weigh-in to amend the plans - as in the case of Kennedy who removed Warsaw from the list of cities to nuke out of private sympathy.

This is also a good moment to explore - in brief - strategic weapon types and delivery systems. Their details are covered by the scientific-technological mechanics but from the perspective of player agency, the game simulates large changes that may be not obvious to the modern audience. In the early decades of the Cold War, bombs are delivered only (and then still primarily) by bombers which take hours to scramble and then hours to arrive at the target, taking high losses on the way. Nuclear plans of the first decades called even for a few weeks of rolling nuclear bombings, a type of war never really depicted in any popular media. After the first 15-25 years, this evolves into a more familiar form of nuclear warfare employed by ballistic missiles. Severe mutually assured destruction arrives relatively late, initially with submarine-based missiles (which are universally hard to disable before the retaliatory strike, unless they are tailed underwater) and fully with MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles which feature multiple warheads per missile launched into space).

Tactical weapons, understood as weapons used to win battles instead of crippling entire countries, can be produced in mass numbers and can densely saturate deployed military forces, as was the historic case for Europe. Their use, however... is tricky. From the military perspective, it's not an eraser tool - real plans called for insane density of usage (eg. 136 tactical nukes on 100 km front in the 1977 plan) to achieve measurable results. In the spirit of alternate history, the player will be able to pull this off but the main intended role of tactical weapons in the game is centered around a flavorful menagerie of weapon types: nuclear mines, torpedoes, anti-aircraft rockets, or even Davy Crocketts!

Once the escalation reaches the highest levels and the world veers into launching nuclear strikes, the game takes a no-nonsense approach to the representation of the brief conflict, focusing on interesting points of historical divergence: actors taking direct responsibility for giving an order to strike, possible mutinies along the way, first strike wave and retaliatory second strike, along with the long-term spectre of eventual doomsday devices such as dead hand, dormant submarines, and stationary dirty bombs.

The adventure doesn't end here, at least not yet. Destruction takes various forms and affects all physical objects in the game, from infrastructure to people, through direct incineration in the blast, crumbling buildings, EMP (with different influence on older and more modern devices), flash burns, the spread of radioactive fallout, radiation sickness, entire states collapsing under the weight of casualties, nuclear-free continents preparing for nuclear winter...

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► The first dev diary clearly rejected doomsday clocks. Hopefully, you can now understand the reason - a single global counter would not only significantly limit psychological exploration of the subject, but it would also reduce the role of unreliable intelligence, local contexts, readiness as a tool of its own, and even rob willing players of the real feeling of paranoia due to accidents looming over the world regardless of DEFCON level.

► Among the most interesting-disappointing controversies, nuclear winters occupy the top place. It's a very hairy story about human minds (which will serve as a small inspiration for an event or two in the game). In short, the notion of nuclear winter originated in the 80s from very early and simple simulations of soot from burning cities, with results highly hinging on a few numerical constants. Scientists, riding the wave of the 1983 nuclear scare, huge movies such as "The Day After", and nuclear disarmament talks, saw this as an opportunity to pursue noble anti-nuclear activism and they more or less succeeded, with the help of celebrities such as Carl Sagan. The world indeed believed that the Earth will freeze to death due to soot blocking the sunlight. Later real-world events (such as burning oil wells during the Gulf War) and more precise modeling never fully confirmed these warnings. The latest, most advanced modeling attempts produce rather timid results - 100 cities destroyed by nuclear bombs would simply cancel global warming, lowering global temperature just by 1°C. Even an enormous exchange of 400 MT would cause a decrease in global average temperature by 8°C for a decade, after which temperatures would return to normal... Notably, just two months ago Nature published detailed study that essentially dropped the term "nuclear winter" and instead focused on global famine (which still did not reach some parts of the world, such as Australia, even in the worst case scenarios).

► Nuclear weapons sit at the very heart of the inspiration behind the development of Espiocracy. In addition to mentioned Nuclear Fruit by Ahoy, I always find plenty of interesting takes in Fail Safe from 1964 (IMO the best movie about and from the Cold War), an indie movie by Ben Marking, and obviously classic Dr. Strangelove, always present in subtitles of the diaries.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

Nuclear and adjacent UI is in the middle of reworks, hence no screenshots.

Next up, we'll continue the topic of weapons of mass destruction: Biological and Chemical Weapons in two weeks.

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:



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"Cold War kids were hard to kill
Under their desks in an air raid drill"
Billy Joel

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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Espiocracy is not a wargame. Conventional conflicts follow the KISS principle and are reducible to one sentence: free-moving NATO counters fighting in simulated battles. Design focus, as always, is closer to the unconventional side of the world - Espiocracy is (partially) a special forces game!

Modern special operation forces (SOF) were forged in the fire of WW2, right before the start date of the game. In a true homage to SOE commandos, OSS paramilitary camps, CIA green berets, and many later units, you will be able to pull off famous special operations from WW2 and beyond - parachute deep behind enemy lines, blow up critical targets, pave the way for routes of invasion, or disable dangerous capabilities of the enemy - during conventional conflicts.

[h2]Military Forces[/h2]

The player controls special branch of local military forces. Other branches usually include land army, air force, and navy. Each of them is characterized by:

• Number of active duty soldiers
  
• Number of reserve soldiers, with ability to mobilize them in case of conflict
  
• Condition of an average soldier (includes training, small equipment, readiness, experience etc)
  
• Heavy equipment (tanks, helicopters, fighters, carriers etc)
  
• Quality of command, control, and logistics
  
• Level of corruption
  

Branches are funded from the state budget, changed by initiatives of significant actors (even to the point of favoring branches, eg. Eisenhower advocating for strong air force), and external context (such as technological paradigms or regional instability). In the event of war, branches are generally combined and fight under highest local denominator - brigade, division, corps, or army.

[h2]Before a War[/h2]

Every country maintains a set of war plans. Their existence and details follow national interests, webs of alliances, state of military, temporary opportunities, and sometimes even personal grudges of leading actors. At the very least, there are defensive war plans which contain largely standard data (such as C&C, bases and their protection, defense lines, useful retreat and counterattack paths) and their main value lies in protection/stealing. Offensive war plans, on the other hand, are highly prized materials, prepared both "just in case" and before real operation, which - when captured by the defending side - can decide about the fate of war.

One of the inspirations behind war plans in the game

Players take part in unconventional planning before real wars - on the level of special forces and nuclear targeting (next dev diary). Utilizing player agency slightly larger than real life, other branches generally follow opportunities established by the player. For instance, special forces breaching particular part of border will be followed by conventional forces, sabotage on particular direction will be assisted by air assaults, strategic reconnaissance and its results will guide movement of armies, and so on.

[h2]Course of a War[/h2]

After a war is declared or border skirmishes evolve into larger conflict, the war relies on two strategic halves. Belligerents compete for strategic targets on the ground: cities, airports, railway junctions, sea ports, and high value actors such a head of state. They are defended, conquered, denied (by encirclement, strategic bombing... or nukes), and then used to enable strategic movement which generally means offensives and counteroffensives (and lack of movement - holding the line), naturally leading to direct simulated battles.

Rapid offensives and counteroffensives of the Korean War

Inspired by highly mobile warfare of Korean War, Operation Desert Storm, and Seven Days to the River Rhine, combined units swiftly cover larger swaths of terrain both when pursuing the enemy and when retreating. Actions are dependent on the state of military branches (which can significantly change during the conflict) and terrain details (to, i.a., approximate strategic role of the Fulda Gap).

After initial (planned) special operations are carried out, the player is able to react on the battlefield near both described halves. You can conduct raids on strategic targets, rescue protected strategic assets (from hostage situations to easing encirclement), harass movement via ambushes and sabotage, enable new opportunities, train local guerrilla forces, and so on.

There's no war score, only a natural competition for targets and means to conquer/defend targets. All sides usually maintain communication channels which are used for small agreements such as temporary ceasefires or exchanges of POWs, which pave the way for deeper negotiations and eventual final peace deal. Third party countries often exert pressure on belligerents and may attempt to resolve situation with tools such as UN peacekeeping forces. Actors inside involved countries not only do not pause activities but sometimes even see conventional wars as an opportunity to climb the ladder - for instance via coup against government which poorly handles unpopular war.

Last but not least, every conventional war is a boon for military intelligence. From interrogations to captured equipment, all participants acquire vast knowledge about the enemy, actors, technology. At the same time, other agencies may infiltrate conflicts to acquire at least part of the treasure trove.

[h2]Alternate Approaches[/h2]

Rich history of military conflicts and their representation in games (also in the professional wargaming context) supplies many possible takes. The topic of military intelligence alone is vast and deserves many espionage-focused games. Espiocracy chose SOF angle - what were the other considered options?

• False intelligence game, following the likes of WW2 deception (Operation Fortitude!)
  
• Donald Nichols simulator, a man who built his private empire of targets, bribes, and spies in every unit during the Korean War - it's impossible to summarize his biography in one paragraph, so here's a taste: when his enemies dispatched an assassin to kill him, he was informed about the plot by his vast network of sources, murdered the perp, and then buried the body near his office as a warning for future plotters
  
• Embedded military intelligence units, deciphering precise movements, incoming attacks, working out tactical and operational layer of a war, creating and resolving fog of war
  
• Psyops side of the war, heavy-handed war-time propaganda, encouraging surrenders and defection, motivating own soldiers
  
• War room with constantly incoming intelligence with various levels of uncertainty that is then used to make decisions on the battlefield
  

Many of them were a source of precious inspirations and are featured in (very) limited form.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will progress from conventional to nuclear wars.

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:



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"Weakness and irresolution unavoidably lead to war" - Odd Arne Westad

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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John Lewis Gaddis cleverly compared the Cold War to the Peloponnesian War. Grand strategic stalemates, he wrote, dominated statecraft of both conflicts. Individual victories and defeats were irrelevant in the face of larger attempts to break the stalemate, put the enemy in an unfavorable position, and subdue the opponent in the long term.

This observation not only fits the scarcity of hot wars in the Cold War - but it also aptly characterizes a few conventional conflicts that did erupt during the period. Rather than wars of tactical opportunity, they were almost exclusively total wars of destruction and survival. There was nothing subtle in Korean War, Arab-Israeli Wars, or Operation Desert Storm. Naturally, this level of gravitas requires special decision process behind these rare but important ends of modern foreign policy.

This dev diary explores some parts of the what, how, and why behind grand strategic decision-making of Espiocracy. Wars, in one sentence, are declared to pursue or protect national interests.

[h2]Governments[/h2]

Player persona different than a nation or a nation spirit opens entire fascinating avenues of politics that can expand the grandeur of grand strategy gameplay beyond usual approaches. Here, a government is not a single-minded entity - it is a group of influential actors, including the player, which jointly makes grand strategic decisions.

In a rabbit hole of sorts:

• Actors are appointed to precise governmental bodies (such as two chambers of legislature)
  
• Governmental bodies set legal powers of residing actors in the decision-making process
  
• Bodies, legal powers, and appointments are defined by the constitution and electoral law
  
• Constitution and laws can be crafted, amended, and changed by appropriate bodies
  

(Dot chart doesn't work yet.) In this case, after the election, parties will try to form coalition government, appoint prime minister (probably Petr Zenkl from victorious CSNS), divide cabinet positions, and start working on a new constitution since Czechoslovakia in 1946 has more or less unregulated constitutional situation. In the real life, communist KSC won the elections, Gottwald became prime minister, and then the government worked - with a coup along the way - to craft communist constitution. Alternate history right there, just 2 months in!

It's not exactly correct, still needs work on historical accuracy. Sham elections in the USSR do happen in the game though and can be somewhat relevant for internal factions of the communist party.

This level of detail gives voice to political leaders, cabinet members, political parties, military leaders, and naturally the player. Legal powers at the moment include the ability to propose an action (such as a declaration of war), and then down the line approve, reject, or veto. Ideally, the game will follow roughly realistic paths where for instance members of a political party sponsor a bill, which is then voted in parliament chambers and has to be signed by the president (whose veto may be rejected by a significant majority in the parliament). Granularity is defined in the context of precise actions - establishment of an embargo may follow a different path than signing a strategic treaty.

Legal back and forth is supplied by an unlimited amount of politicking. Actors can meet, convince each other, exchange favors, provide evidence, exert pressure, threaten, and so on. In especially important cases, such as joining NATO or declaring wars, a covert meeting takes place, where the most influential members of the government (including the player) jointly decide about the future of the nation.

[h2]National Interests[/h2]

After exploring what and how, we need the why to complete the picture.

Populations and all actors profess views - mental stances towards subjects, for instance, "fear of nuclear war". National interest is a special form of a view, narrowed down to a single stance ("focus on"), common for many actors and usually for the entire country.

Examples include:

• Acquiring nuclear weapons
  
• Rebuilding country after war
  
• "Supporting free peoples of the world"
  
• Opening foreign markets
  
• Promoting human rights
  
• Preventing the emergence of hostile major powers or failed states
  
• Controlling neighboring countries
  
• Preserving neutrality
  
• Protecting own citizens abroad
  
• Survival of the nation (in terminal cases, often near hot wars)
  

National interests mark n-th evolution of various foci, threats, and mission trees that were tested in Espiocracy. This time, it's flexible and dynamic guidance for actors, point of conflict between entities in the world, capture the flag for the player, and attempt to decipher very convoluted geopolitical situation of the Cold War and beyond.

Let's explore details of a seemingly obvious national interest: rebuilding the country after the war. Members of the government may pursue actions that advance this case - sign treaties to acquire materials, enter alliances that will revitalize the economy, and accept investment offers with strings attached. There may be conflicting ways to achieve the goal: some actors may argue for the communist model of industrialization, whereas others may vouch for the capitalist approach. The government may subsidize particular sectors of the economy, increase the influence of industrial actors, allow trade unions to thrive, and be especially sensitive to labor strikes. Player as an intelligence agency may procure strategic materials, industrial blueprints, and technology, monitor the delicate balance between investment and exploitation. Most importantly, since national interests are generally objective (well-known internationally), enemies may outright target them, disrupting the efforts with a plethora of tools - from propaganda degrading the country in the eyes of investors to outright sabotage of industrial facilities - which can be intercepted, counteracted, or prevented from happening.

Even this kind of simple and non-aggressive national interest (literally building tall) can become a bone of contention. Imagine what happens when it comes to nukes, ideologies, populations, territorial disputes, colonies, or terrorism!

National interests are set dynamically by the situation (such as destruction -> rebuilding), military logic (such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons -> prohibiting other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons), and direct political decisions (including covert ones, with the acquisition of nuclear weapons being one of them). Returning to the declaration of war, national interests here usually take the place of the good old casus belli (with CB still possible but less significant), where "protecting all Americans abroad" as national interest becomes one of the arguments for invading Grenada in 1983 (600 U.S. citizens studying medicine on the island).

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

Now we're ready to explore Conventional Wars in Espiocracy, to be described in the next dev diary

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:



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"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow" - Henry Palmerstone, British Prime Minister