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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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.

[h2]Information in the Game World[/h2]

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?

[h2]Deriving Intelligence[/h2]

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.

[h2]Intelligence[/h2]

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
  

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► 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:

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on July 5th!

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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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"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

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 you are?

(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.

[h2]Intelligence Community[/h2]

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).



[h2]Actors[/h2]

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.

[h2]Example: Two Germanies[/h2]

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.
  

[h2]Deeper Funding[/h2]

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).

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► 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.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on June 7th!

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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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"This country wants no Gestapo, under any guise or for any reason" - Harry Truman in 1946

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...

[h2]On-Map Units[/h2]

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).

[h2]Geography[/h2]

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.

[h2]Activities[/h2]

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.

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► 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).

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on May 3rd!

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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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"Cover, dear boy, next to godliness" - John le Carré

Espiocracy is participating in Digital Tabletop Fest: Roll of the Dice, hosted by Auroch Digital.

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.

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

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!

[h2]Cooperations and Conflicts[/h2]

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...

[h2]Diplomatic Structures[/h2]

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)
  
• Collective Treaties, eg. post-WW2 peace treaties, NATO, Warsaw Pact
  
• Special Relationship, eg. USA and UK
  
• 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.

[h2]Staccato of Interactions[/h2]

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.

[h2]International Crisis[/h2]

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.

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► 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.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on April 5th!

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"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"