Here's a tech demo of what I've been working on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI
I created a path finding algorithm that can simultaneously path 300,000 units to random destinations at a comfortable frame rate. Units can choose from any of the shortest paths between two points (there are many in a grid), and from those paths, can also choose the path that matches any preferences they have.
Very early stages of development still!
I'll be using old.reddit.com/r/Archapolis if you want to know when the first release is out.
(I don't have an opinion either way, just curious.)
At a country scale some simulation techniques need to change. For example, tilemaps become ridiculously inefficient (a byte per 10m^2 becomes tens of GBs), so they either need some form of compression, or the simulation has to use vector-based maps instead (more like Cities Skylines).
Another quirk is that at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter, and that starts looking just like a normal distribution of the simulation data you put in.
This is very untrue, which is why this problem is infeasible.
It's sort of like simulating every atom of an object vs using Newtonian physics. There is a difference in accuracy, but it may not even become apparent or matter for gameplay.
Nominally it's an experiment to see which government and organizational structures are the strongest, though being a multiplayer game it can devolve into who's fighting skills or automated bots are the best.
My chief complaint with Civilization games is that they've become a history-themed board game. A fun board game, but less and less it doesn't feel like a history simulator.
The problem with "country" simulator is that countries are a more modern concept, the vast majority of human civilization doesn't feature strong nation concept. How do you model a country that goes from Villanovans to Romans all the way to Italians?
How do you model a civilization which can boom and collapse? How can you set the systems up to support things like the mayan collapse or the bronze age collapse? The fall of the roman empire? Technological regression? How technology truly transforms culture, engineering, politics, etc? Adding +1 to a score is nice and dandy but how you simulate your nation having dynamic classes enjoying luxuries based on location, industry and technology?
I want to see that the urban elite are using silver utensils while the farmers are stuck on wood. I want to see that the civilization used wood too fast and used it all up, causing a collapse.
I actually envision the map as a grid with each grid holding information about the people there. Population, class, technology, industry, culture etc. A rural tile would have low population and be influenced by other tiles. An urban tile might be generating let's say `copper age 3` and in a radius around it for some distance, their tools would be upgrading towards that level. But invading and pillaging this urban tile might lead to those levels dropping, setting a region back in many ways.
The hardest part I have is that I just want a pure simulation with no user input. Gamifying it ruins the purity of my simulation and leads to civilization the game!
Overall, RFC essentially builds a new game on top of Civ4. The best part is that there's a number of RFC-derived modmods with varying locales and mechanics. Here's a few that I would highly recommend:
* RFC Dawn of Civilization[0] - An actively developed fork of the original mod that keeps the "vanilla" feel and the global map.
* The Sword of Islam[1] - A Middle East themed variant that although is long-abandoned is one of the most polished modmods
* RFC Europe[2] - Self explanatory. Focused on Europe starting from the rise of the Franks ending with the Industrial Revolution.
[0] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/welcome-to-dawn-of-ci...
[1] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-sword-of-islam-rf...
[2] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rhyes-and-fall-of-eur...
I'm sure mods will make the game somewhat more fun and I'm probably going to buy the game for that reason, but after playing the beta I have absolutely no faith in Paradox's ability to live up to Victoria 2 despite it being a heavily flawed game that ended up being mostly a commercial failure. The worst part about all of this is how much effort they're spending on completely inconsequential things, like replacing the icons for POPs with horrendously ugly, anachronistic 3D characters. Something tells me that it was just an attempt to recoup losses from CK3's development. But don't worry, I'm sure Paradox's newfound console audience will enjoy Import-Export Trade Deal Manager 2022 and keep the company afloat.
It lets you control a small country and build basically everything from scratch, factories, railways, housing.
Honestly it hits most of the points you describe above.
It's a bit more abstract and counter-insurgency focused than your description, but sounds pretty similar.
It's also strongly influenced by Turkish politics, specifically the rise of Erdogan, which was a very complicated time for Turkey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_simulation_game
I recommend:
Conflict: middle East political simulator Shadow President
There's also an interesting one reflecting Stalin's challenges after world war 1 - he has to choose between guns and butter to prepare for the coming conflict with Hitler. Don't remember the name...
If you really want to shape a country in your direction, autocracy, or dictatorship is the only way. Otherwise, you become just another populist leader that always wins elections but nothing changes.
Just like in real life ;)
So... it's pretty realistic then?
Then was killed by a nun who disagreed with my no-state-religion policy. :D
If you were to 'take over Iraq' the first thing will happen is that one of your political challengers will use all of their means to usurp you.
The issues are power, control, corruption, clan loyalty, incompetence, dysfunction, bureaucracy, radicalism, laziness, embezzlement, short nearsightedness, lack of key resources, petty infighting, political inconsistency and duplicity from supporting nations, bureaucracy etc..
What happens when the entire system is corrupt? The Judiciary, Police, the Army, the politicians? Everyone is trying to embezzle, selling votes, stuffing ballot boxes, using multiple ledgers, giving their family members jobs, handing out MD's to the rich kids?
Some Billionaire owns the TV Station and is lying about you daily, destroying your ratings. There are protesters outside your door while you're trying to 'plan the buildings'.
The guy who funded your campaign to ascension wants special state-guaranteed contracts.
The rebels in that 'ugly border area' have killed some civilians and the locals want blood.
... and consider that many of the same kinds of constraints exist even in modern countries.
'Building Bridges vs. Schools' is completely pedantic exercise.
They should make the game called 'Saddam' and see how a regular person might fare at that 'job'.
If you get 10 million through corruption you are basically set for life in a positive interest/rent seeking environment because interest acts like a force multiplier on your original act of corruption that gets stronger over time. So your personal goal is to earn as much money as possible, as early as possible and through any foul means. I.e. the reward function strongly favours corruption.
With a negative interest rate, corruption no longer guarantees a high social status and automatic wealth accumulation which means you will have to do honest work until you retire if you want to keep your money. Automatic wealth accumulation is the primary metric that makes money laundering profitable or not. If you can only make 25% of the stolen money clean you can still grow it exponentially over time after it is clean.
If the land value tax is paid out as a dividend then everyone, even the destitute, would benefit from classic USA style homeowner corruption (artificially distorting the allocation of land by restricting it's use).
Another form of corruption would be to spend your student loan on Bitcoin when it was still under one thousand and then skipping college because you "made it". You earned money without producing anything, you are a net negative to society if you don't work for even a little bit.
Marble Age is notable too and has some mechanics unique to the game. Story is mostly the same, but there's three city states with slightly different tech trees. E.g. you'd need to fight the Persians at some point. Athens would be the classic path of farming, making alliances, building a wall and armies. Spartans need to raid for slaves for growth, but hold off on killing neighbors before facing Persians. Corinth would be more trade based and consider buying mercenaries and buying out the other city states.
I've bought all of them because they're an excellent ratio of time for fun as far as games go.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=27773...
https://therealnews.com/afghan-central-bank-calls-us-theft-o...
I lived there for more than a year and a half. The things happening there now are terrible. But you don't know about it, because it's politically incorrect to discuss it right now. It's a massive tragedy.
- World in Flames
- Churchill
- Fort Sumter
- Food Chain Magnate
- A Distant Plain
You are the government leader of a nation and a new pandemic is starting.
The science is not clear yet. How do you manage as the leader? What policies do you set up? What research do you pursue? Along with variables of budgets, economy, population morale, upcoming elections, travel, etc.
If there was a good model of how the policies affect economy especially, it would reveal to the players how hard lock-downs are on the economy.
If the dynamic between the federal state and city governments are modeled, it would show us how actual policy implementation happens. Just even how hard it is to test and track the spread of a pandemic.
This could indicate to people how hard it is to lead in such a situation. At the same time help the player evaluate how things were handled recently.
I probably spent more time playing it (and Alpha Centauri) than Civ.
Build up a civ on 1 planet, scale to multiple planets, survive space whales...
E.g. you are the newly elected president of Afghanistan/North Korea/Iraq/Other etc - now go rebuild infrastructure etc, set policies, see how the country develops as a result. E.g. do you invest in universal healthcare, or transport infrastructure? Is transport infra required while your country is still largely subsistence farming?. What about education - save money there and spend on natural resource extraction? How will that play out over decades and centuries?
It would be nice to have direct control over city-level layout etc - demolish this neighborhood for flood defences, put in railways, major roads etc linking different parts of your country (not sim city levels of simulation, more just at the major civil engineering level of that makes sense - happy for actual city population to grow organically as a result of major works).
Civ gets close, but it's too high-level and more focused on conquest. I want to zoom in and have more control over where major irrigation canals get built, where to best build a nuclear plant, where that bridge should go or which mountains to tunnel through for a railway etc. So instead of the grid being the entire planet, the grid would just be one country.
Edit: I am specifically interested in the "building" aspect (so think civ-style grid with units moving around doing things), and less so on simple a-vs-b decision game model you see in Democracy et al.