Espiocracy News

What's happening / TLDR: This is a small developer diary, a teaser, about 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.

Short intro: after 58 developer diaries (longer than an average book!), standard format of mechanics-describing posts got a little bit stale. We already started experimenting with other approaches such as AARs. Today, on Christmas Eve, we'll try another approach: a teaser - quick look into gameplay through a few never-seen-before detailed screenshots, nothing more, nothing less. In a way, it's a polar opposite of thousand-word dev diaries with almost no visuals. Do not be deceived by the shortness of the diary, however, as screenshots tell the story and reveal new details about the game and its gameplay.











Merry Christmas! The next dev diary will be posted after winter break, on February 7th!

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.

Between two parts of Vietnam after-action-report, we'll make a small detour. As I reviewed the previous diary and prepared the next part, I realized that we mostly skipped management and expansion - which influences significant parts of the hot civil war in Vietnam. Additionally, as Espiocracy's core management & expansion substantially evolved during development (and even since the last dev diary), it will be useful to explore its current shape before continuing the campaign. This dev diary could be named "Agencies 4.0" but, as always, it's not a new version with patch notes, just a full independent diary. Welcome and enjoy!



In the intimidating world of espionage and the Cold War - which the game tries to recreate in the full possible complexity - the main tool is simple: you can order units to conduct activities around the world.







Usually, these orders establish (build) intelligence structures, such as:

• Cells (visible in the example above) - which can for instance roam a warzone to collect military intelligence
  
• Stations - which organize and conduct a full suite of espionage activities in their range
  
• Nodes of smuggling, propaganda, financial networks - which are used in all kinds of operations and activities
  
• Special structures - black sites, radars, export companies, stay-behinds, illegals, and so on
  

This is where it gets more complex: orders depend on player's units, intelligence community, resources, and local environment (including counterintelligence efforts of other players).

[h2]Officers[/h2]

Officers in the game are now organized into three kinds of units:

• Elite Officer - a single officer with relatively high skills
  
• Section - a group of usually 8 officers divided into analysis, operations, and technical roles
  
• Branch - a few dozen or more officers, encompassing a wider range of roles and experts
  

The main intuitive difference is the size. In principle, any unit can be downscaled or enlarged. Then, the size influences how it can implement orders, with a plethora of associated trade-offs. On the most basic level, a cell can be formed only by smaller units (an elite officer or a section), while a station can be manned only by larger units (a section or a branch). Differences compound in more advanced orders. For instance, an elite officer can execute an assassination but cannot handle a large propaganda campaign - while a branch can be active in the entire continent but spies from this continent will have a much easier time penetrating it. Sections, the middle universal ground, can implement most tasks with average efficiency but they are most valuable when specialized - into special, counterterrorist, paramilitary, and other kinds of forces.

To enlarge or create a new unit, you can tap into precious talent pool...



...by launching hiring campaigns:



Every campaign differs in features (mainly sources of new officers). Their availability depends on the local environment and intelligence community. Decisions here influence the new unit, spending, and even tertiary effects - for instance, hiring from diasporas brings in local intelligence on countries from which new hires came in. In the example above, we focused on hiring a mix of young and highly skilled candidates, which costs a lot and quickly depletes the talent pool. In contrast, focusing for instance only on police officers and soldiers is much cheaper but the new unit will be substantially weaker:



[h2]Tradecraft[/h2]

General prowess in intelligence activities - tradecraft (also known as the craft) - permeates many levels of the game. Every officer, every unit, and then the entire intelligence community has a tradecraft level from 0 to 100. These values define the availability and value of all espionage tools.



On the most general level (intelligence community, player-wide), the game introduces tradecraft schools - not literal school buildings but instead schools of thought. Every player pursues one or more schools (they can be mixed). In 1946, the world begins with the following schools:

• Amateur
  
• Police
  
• Guerrilla
  
• War Veteran
  
• Cabinet Noir
  
• Commonwealth
  
• Cheka
  

They influence almost all angles of expansion in the game: possible max tradecraft, contributions to operation types and specialization, availability of intelligence programs, hiring decisions, intelligence structures, laws, and so on. As names suggest, there are two groups - acquired environmentally (eg. war veteran, after participating in larger war) or belonging to particular countries. The latter group is much more valuable and can be acquired only by receiving training from players that mastered this school, for instance, cabinet noir school through training provided by the French player. Players can also develop new schools (you can usually expect the quick emergence of CIA or Mossad tradecraft schools in most campaigns) but it is an expensive and painful process that requires many risky activities in difficult situations.

To summarize tradecraft schools in one sentence, now progression is more varied between countries and players have one more very valuable interaction (training) with other players.

[h2]Specializations, Programs, Laws, Budget[/h2]

You can pursue 12 kinds of specializations. While nothing changed from their introduction in previous diaries, we can look at an example of one specialization:



You can also regularly launch intelligence programs which now take the shape of multiple small trees:



The legal environment around intelligence agencies is defined by laws and policies:



Various actions can be illegal (executing this action incurs a secret), remain in a gray legal area (not delegalized = legal, but at any point government may delegalize it, which may destroy for instance long-term investments), or be fully legal (giving strong protection from whims of changing governments and sometimes even from failures near relevant actions). By using political favors, you can move up actions to higher legal status.

Also, last but not least, budget calculations now include upkeep:





Now, armed in various units, schools, programs, we will progress to the second part of Vietnam AAR on Christmas Eve, December 24th!

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:

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.

Today, we'll dive into gameplay - in the form an AAR, after action report - of the nation chosen by votes on the Espiocracy discord server (invite link at the end).





Welcome to Hanoi, the capital of Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It's March 6th, 1946.

We are playing as the PTBQ - Military Intelligence Department within Vietnam People's Army. Years of French repressions, followed by harsh Japanese occupation, and short cooperation with American OSS, honed our intelligence community into decently sized and skilled force, ranked 28th in the world.



Initial state must be sufficient for now. In a small ravaged country, we won't be able to embark on significant recruitment campaigns. Any arrests (or worse) will be painful - and as a largely unrecognized country, we don't have diplomatic immunity to protect our officers!



This is our homeland:



Between Japanese withdrawal and return of French colonial forces, we were able to forge fragile independence, unified under the authority of Ho Chi Minh. Internally, the landscape is characteristic for new nations with guerrilla warfare and military uprising DNA: strong guerrillas-turned-politicians, famous military leader, still important guerrilla organization, and population with fairly significant influence (due to recent mass participation in warfare). Internationally, we are aligned with the communist bloc but that doesn't mean much in 1946. The USSR licks its wounds, neighboring China is buried in bloody civil war, and colonialist empires from the capitalist bloc have far too large armies to have them sit idly in Europe. Ho Chi Minh, aware of the danger, currently negotiates terms of independence in Paris. He will return either with nothing (and French invasion) or with partial loss of independence. The latter scenario, however, seems incompatible with honest belief in communism of almost all our significant actors. We can see relevant examples inside the colony that we recently separated from.



No recent activity inside Indochina is no coincidence. French administration and military controls public life, keeps actors and their influence low, with the only slightly influential actors sourcing their influence either from religion (Cao Dai and Hoa Hao), from organized crime (Binh Xuyen), or from Paris (the rest). Our entry point will be 6 million of Vietnamese waiting for liberation - but they have to wait until we solidify our existence in the north. To achieve that, we have to aim straight at France.

Naturally, it won't be easy.



Intelligence operations on this hostile ground are not possible at the moment. We lack infrastructure, local intelligence, funds, resources. Speaking of which, let's quickly review current (current for this AAR and for this game build) state of main resources visible in the top bar, which evolved since it was described in previous dev diaries.



From left to right, the player deals in:

• Intelligence Assets - small regional infrastructure established autonomously by officers, used mostly in operations
  
• Official Budget - monthly subsidies from the government, spent on legal and not-completely-secret activities, such as stations or most operations
  
• Black Budget - governmental account with money that can be transferred to other organizations
  
• Illicit Budget - acquired through various illegal means, used for bribes, extremely secret, or quasi-legal activities (and can be laundered back into official budget)
  
• Various small discrete resources, here it is 1 political connection that can be used in domestic lobbying or managing fallout from failed operations
  

In addition to resources, main parameters - measures of success - also evolved.



From left to right:

• Strategic Intelligence - quantified value derived from collected intelligence materials, relevant to national interests (our main national interest is very simple: "survival of the nation"), with higher value directly contributing to governmental decisions (their choice and success) and to State Power Index (we're currently sitting at 12.4 which is 32nd SPI in the world)
  
• Trust and Need - two critical angles through which the government views our intelligence community, affect anything from budget, operations, purges, recommendations, all the way to background control of government members (!)
  
• Threat - incurred globally and regionally during espionage activities and decreasing over time, higher regional threat makes it more difficult to operate in the region, while higher global threat may lead to purges in the intelligence agency, interest from global press, and even terrorist attacks aimed directly at our officers
  

There are many more small resources and parameters affecting intelligence activities (for instance: relative currency strength), which will remain for you to explore further.

Back to France, one useful angle could be pushing the country over to communist bloc in the incoming elections. The name: Maurice Thorez.



Operations, as previously mentioned, are not yet possible here. We need an anchor in Europe. Due to local destruction and ongoing governmental issues, the Netherlands seems to struggle with establishing proper security services. In terms of counterintelligence environment, it's a sandbox - we can do anything we want and it will be cheap, at least right now. We send Le Dang Dung's section there.



Meanwhile, an interesting target arose in the region.



Thailand, currently, wants to keep neutral status quo. With their complex recent history, which includes Japanese-supported invasion of Indochina, population larger than Indochina, and relatively large army, they could be a very useful ally in the inevitably incoming war for survival. Hence, we send our most skilled operatives - Ho Trong Ba's section - to establish an intelligence station in Bangkok and then scramble to exploit local political environment.

A month later, we spring into action.



In the meantime, Soviet troops declare the end of occupation zone in the northern half of Korean peninsula. This is a good opportunity to seek cooperation with fellow communist intelligence agency.



It seems that the Chinese communist forces are making progress as well - approaching critical cities, controlling larger area, expanding to Manchuria. They are too far away from our border to establish direct connection on land, to provide them support or to receive support from them. Let's hope that they will close in sooner than later.

Coup operation is in progress, which is a good opportunity to take a look at refreshed operational mechanics.



An intelligence operation now is more direct race in time between attacking and defending intelligence agency (green and red pie above). Attacking player, through operatives preparing the ground and implementing simulated steps, enables better possible outcome over time (stars and "possible" label above). However, in parallel, counterintelligence service works towards achieving chosen goal against this operation (anywhere from observing to... murdering officers). Once minimal positive outcome is possible, a player can order execution of the final step of the operation (top left button). Obviously, rushing minimal outcome isn't really useful, and there are large gains with every better outcome. Many operations become micro-wars of nerves.

In this case, Thai counterintelligence was more aggressive and faster. It isn't surprising, given the grave nature of the operation, and our haste in launching it before settling properly in Thailand. A few officers from the section were arrested, relations with Thailand damaged, and now we have to negotiate way out for our valuable officers...

...and then it gets worse. We were trying to stage a coup while another plot was already in progress, executed by Seni Pramoj.



And it's disastrous news for us. Instead of turning Thailand from neutral to more supportive, we missed a plot of an anti-communist leader!



Due quickly incurred losses in Thailand, our chances of acting against him are negative. Thailand, for now, won't be useful and we will have to apply pressure through other tools to at least stop them from allying with France against communist Vietnam.

Perhaps the European angle fares better.



Indeed, station in Amsterdam continues work in the region, preparing the ground for French operations. However, it is slower than expected and we are still far from successfully approaching Maurice Thorez. Having learned from mistakes in Thailand, we shouldn't rush into this direction. After all, we are relatively safe in the Netherlands even in the case of hot war.

Returning to the homeland and preparation before the war, we'll transfer black budget to Viet Minh. After the collapse of Thai direction and slower progress in Europe, this is the best choice as we approach 1947.



In September, we can define state budget, together with other members of the government. Naturally, professionalization of the army from guerrilla to conventional force should be the priority.



On the front of spies and intelligence, our operatives recruited four agents.



One of them, agent Giap near Vietnamese politician Truong Chinh, is ready for specialized training. Since we are well aligned with Chinh and we don't need special roles inside the country (these are implemented by domestic sections), we'll just direct Giap to advance the career ladder, in anticipation of future service.

In terms of intelligence, stations, exchange with North Korean RB, various operations brought useful results but not critical for current situation.



As the year ends, we receive report about evolution of influential actors in relevant places.



And then, after a few months of further operations, expansion, and preparations...



We will continue this save in the next dev diary.



See you on December 6th!

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:

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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Many topics near the Cold War and espionage deserve a full separate game. Espiocracy, out of sheer necessity, has to narrow down such topics into a single main angle. That was the case for conventional wars (angle: special forces), diplomacy (international structures), or science and technology (paradigms). Propaganda is another such large topic.

The main angle of propaganda in Espiocracy? Controlling the narrative.

[h2]Views, Causes, Major Events[/h2]

As you can recall from the earliest dev diaries, views (eg. pro-Soviet sentiment or fear of nuclear war) form the backbone of human psychology in the game, giving people memory, motivation, alignment, and so on. In the most naive approach to propaganda, you can just select any view in the game, and then task your assets with promoting or undermining it.

This method, however, merely addresses a view as a black box. It is used in the game as a secondary cheap tool (chosen perhaps by smaller intelligence agencies). Actual impactful propaganda begins a little bit further: with manipulation of the inner workings of views.

Views in the game connect causes with effects - for instance, Germany unleashed WW2 which led to widespread anti-German sentiment at the beginning of the game in 1946. Many other major events before and during the game can create and/or modify views.

Naturally, this doesn't happen instantly, and instead, such events need time to propagate through media, become topics of debates, or reach books and movies. Main propaganda tools in Espiocracy focus on this twilight zone. Players can modify the "how" of the view-making and view-modifying process - they can control the narrative.

[h2]The Narrative[/h2]

When a major event happens in the game (invasion, terrorist attack, political change, international crisis, large accident, and so on), players begin a battle over controlling the narrative around this event.

In simplest terms, "control" is a set of 0-100 parameters, one global, and a few for participating/relevant/superpower nations. Details, such as the initial level of control, are highly dependent on the event and its details. For instance, the story of the Sputnik launch starts as fully controlled by the USSR, and the only thing that the American player can do is slightly subtract Soviet control domestically - whereas the assassination of JFK is more or less carte blanche in terms of control, difficult to take over, prone to be never fully controlled by any party, and then be lost to dozens of conspiracy theories (not only from players but also from other actors in the game).

Between the onset of the event and highly variable moment of people moving on (which, again, depends on many details, other events, and even forms of media), players vie for control by:

• Using geographically and culturally positioned radio stations, newspapers, bribed journalists, partially controlled actors, spies, front organizations, and anything else that can potentially influence the masses
  
• Acquiring related intelligence, documents, recordings, witness reports
  
• Leaking chosen parts to the press, surfacing the event to the government, and further, modifying details
  
• Enforcing censorship (including jamming stations), diverting the attention by popularizing another significant event, supplying strong rebuttals
  
• Preparing forgeries, false flags, accusations, convincing lies
  
• Directly attacking other parties trying to manipulate the event
  

Once one of the players controls the majority (51+) of the narrative, they can launch propaganda campaigns that exploit the story, modify its perception, and accomplish various small feats along the way.

[h2]Campaigns[/h2]

A propaganda campaign in the game is a kind of intelligence operation that uses propaganda assets (mentioned above, radio stations, and others) to primarily either amplify or suppress the controlled event.

While the main goal is usually obvious (eg. Soviets suppressing the Chernobyl disaster or Americans amplifying Khrushchev's "secret speech"), details and consequences - defined by available assets as well as direct configuration of the campaign plan - forge campaigns into unique adventures that:

• Shift new views in terms of direction (eg. revert pro-X to anti-X), subject (eg. assign blame/merit to another entity), emotional load (eg. from anti-X to hatred of X), and spread
  
• Ignite reactions from actors and nations, eg. smear campaign causing targeted political leader to resign
  
• Lead to new events, eg. Red Scare
  
• Use white / grey / black propaganda methods, utilize totalitarian / free environment, use assets from publishing houses to smuggled samizdat machines
  
• Choose between resonating with one or another set of nations, for instance appealing to Latin American nations while repelling African nations
  
• Associate concept A with B, eg. NATO with Nazis (a common theme in Soviet propaganda)
  
• Have various trade-offs, for instance between simplicity and spread, between costs and vulnerability to counter-propaganda, between exposing own propaganda assets and strength of the campaign, between domestic effect and abroad, and so on
  
• Affect control over this event and potentially over other events
  

Such campaigns, launched to manipulate fresh controlled events, form the majority of propaganda machine in the game - but there are more variants of them and adjacent details.

[h2]Variants and Corollaries[/h2]

Some major events are active for a long time (for instance: wars). In these cases, the battle for control over the event is also a long-term affair where it can frequently change hands, influenced by the evolution of the event, campaigns, and so on.

Manufactured or even false flag events can also become a basis for propaganda. Their main downside, naturally, is the cost of preparing them and much higher vulnerability to counter-propaganda.

Speaking of which, following standard mechanics of intelligence operations, players can launch counterintelligence (in this case: counter-propaganda) operations upon detecting foreign campaigns reaching their soil. Usually, it takes very much a counterintelligence form, with arrests of relevant journalists, infiltrating outlets suspected of being under foreign control or surveilling participating actors to identify their handlers.

In addition to working fresh major events, there are two more special types of campaigns. Future events, such as an invasion of another country, can be preceded by a campaign that engineers consent. Past events, for instance, a past alliance with a universally hated nation, can be modified by campaigns that rewrite history both domestically and abroad.

Outside of controlling the narrative, nations have a set of psychological parameters modifiable through player actions. Some of them were mentioned before (eg. diplomatic weight), others are experimental (eg. atomic ambition), while some are largely integrated with the propaganda tools described above. One parameter from the last category is soft power, developed by international contributions (sometimes unusual, for instance in real history North Korea acquired soft power in Africa by sending... mass gymnastics instructors - an action also available in the game), which then supports battle for control and subsequent campaigns.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on September 6th!

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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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"Anyone can believe a convincing lie; we’ve all fallen for a few. But the blatant lie does some useful things. It reveals the skeptics, or at least the skeptics who open their mouths. It forces the supporters deeper into the web of lies. They have to accept this, knowing it is a lie, and dig themselves deeper. It’s brainwashing, making them choose to accept the propaganda rather than the evidence before them" - author and year unknown

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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There are two layers of diplomacy in Espiocracy: between countries and between intelligence agencies.

Nominal diplomacy has been described in DD#51 and you may remember it as an intricate hierarchy of mostly formal structures. Summits, treaties, policies, doctrines. Secondary diplomacy between players - between intelligence agencies and communities - is nothing like that!

[h2]Implicit Messages[/h2]

Instead, the game assumes "actions over words" as the central idea behind contacts between Stasi, MI6, and others. When KGB tried to insult and threaten CIA officers in Moscow, they didn't send strongly worded letters - they beat them up in the dark alleys and smeared their cars with feaces. In Espiocracy terms, KGB sent an implicit message to the CIA.

Many actions in the game send such messages. Usually, they are more subtle, happen along the way, and depend on the results. For instance, an attempt to intercept an intelligence operation can send one of four possible implicit messages:



A message may also be non-deterministic or even detrimental to the sender. British intelligence community in WW2 famously cracked the Enigma code but no less effort was put in efficiently using gained intelligence in a way that does not reveal that Enigma has been broken. The game implements this fascinating psychological conundrum partially also through implicit messages.



In one more psychologically inspired implementation, some actions may send a few potential implicit messages, out of which the receiving player chooses one of them - essentially, the player is interpreting the action.



And this is where we arrive at the receiving side. What such a message actually changes in game mechanics?

A message mainly expands agency of the receiving player. It is always associated with a set of new available decisions. When KGB foils too many British agents and MI5 finally deciphers it as a penetration of the network, the British player now has critical new knowledge that opens new reactions:


(Funky paper scrap UI is obviously work in progress.)

Sets of reactions depend on some details (situational, level of tradecraft, levels of capabilities) but they are generally known by all players, easily inspectable through tooltips, and in that way they slightly gamify mind reading, with an espionage twist. Through actions and attached messages, you can force the hand of another player, broadcast your intentions, bluff in ten different ways, gain or lose trust, begin further contacts, and so on.

[h2]More Direct Interactions[/h2]

While implicit messages can always be sent, more advanced forms of contact are tied to two bilateral parameters which are calculated from background situation (such as relations between countries) and further modified by players (including implicit messages).

• Mistrust - Always positive value, increased by players through anything from chaotic operations to defectors, lowered by various gestures of goodwill. Defines degree of general contacts, between third-party mediators (very high mistrust) to borrowing/lending operatives (very low mistrust).
  
• Communication Channels - Developed by players during any interactions (including hostile ones) and structures (eg. an intelligence station in another player's country), lost over time through lack of interactions. Defines quality and theoretical availability of contacts, which may in some (usually very tense) situations transcend any level of mistrust.
  

These two contribute to the plethora of inter-player actions. In addition to a few hinted at above, they include spy swaps, defusing espionage scandals, increasing embassy staff quotas, exchanging intelligence, informal non-interference deals, joint operations, training and know-how transfer, larger alliances such as Five Eyes, and so on. (The list still evolves but it is mostly situational so obvious enough, as far as diplomatic options in strategy games go, that it was initially described in the 8th dev diary.)

[h2]Black Market[/h2]

Last and probably least, the game tries to further expand interactions between players by enabling covert trading through third-party (underworld) entities. In one of the previous AARs, the existence of black market has been hinted at. Here's how it looks currently:



In short, intelligence can be sold on the regional black market to another player - both sides do not know their identities and the transaction has therefore an indirect unpredictable cost of handing over intelligence to another player in the game (eg. trading a secret of domestic politician allows someone else to blackmail said politician). Details are subject to further evolution, probably towards the participation of private entities (history is full of available inspirations: paper mills, private eyes, journalists, info brokers, hacked databases etc).

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► Yes, the game has a button for roughing up CIA officers in Moscow (and any other officers in any other city)


► True BTS: "It's year YYYY, I'm A in B, what do I do?" is usually the first question I ask during game development, followed up by finding answers as close to real life as possible (eg. for A = Allen Dulles and B = CIA there's full autobiography available). Implicit messages are one of many direct results of such an approach. Sometimes mechanics ultimately evolve far from original answers, usually to follow better gameplay, but their historical roots still usually enrich mechanics. For instance, CIA obviously did not sell intelligence to other agencies on any kind of black market but... they did buy a lot of materials from, what they called in the 50s, "intelligence peddlers" and "paper mills" which in turn partially acquired and smuggled materials from intelligence officers behind the Iron Curtain. This contributed to the "through underworld" part of the black market in the game.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on August 2nd!

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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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"In subsequent negotiations, SIS proposed a mass PNGing [persona non grata-ing, expelling] of Soviet intelligence personnel in the UK. (...) We cannot consider any such proposal because of the obvious and certain retaliatory steps which will be taken by Soviet authorities" - CIA report in 1962, edited for clarity