Transcript
Speaker: Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Fog of Warcast podcast where we talk about strategy games. um Here today you have Andreas Eriksson, and my co-hosts Magnus and Johan. Hey, hello guys, how are you?
Speaker: Hi, really good, really good. What about you Magnus? Yeah, good as well. I haven't had that much time for gaming since we recorded last time. ah So good to game get into kind of like the game sphere and the mindset.
Speaker: Yeah, same here. i have actually i don't think but I don't think I've played any computer games since last recording because I was um traveling to another city, meeting up with um my partner.
Speaker: so But Johan, you have been playing computer games, right? Yeah, I've been playing... it did To quote my girlfriend, or as we say in Swedish, Sambo, I've been playing too much because I've been playing two games. We had a grand game in our Hearts of Iron 4 group, so I've been prepping for that. We had our game.
Speaker: I don't know when this releases, but we had a game on Sunday. I played Bulgaria. We won. I will not cheer for the Axis win here.
Speaker: because I know what kind of podcast we have. So been playing in a lot of Hearts of Iron 4. But also, in anticipation for today's episode, I played a game that I will highly recommend you to to play, because it kind of it takes the great thing of politics, the great thing of diplomacy, and it kind of meshes it together into this amazing little gem of a game, and it's Caesarian.
Speaker: And it has been amazing. i've i've just yeah I've spent too many hours into this game and it's great, but we'll get into that later on. So I'm just going to stop there. I've been playing too much, essentially.
Speaker: Good hear. Yes. Good, good, good. And I don't know if that's how the game is pronounced, but I will get back to that, I think, in the future. have been doing some prep and research for this episode, apart from just fin i'm thinking about all games I've played.
Speaker: ah Especially I've been looking out on videos and refreshing my memory on the... the sort of disputed strategy game, um democracy free. So the subject for this episode is diplomacy and politics.
Speaker: And I'm going to go to start a little bit on what we mean when we say diplomacy. So essentially, we're trying to talk about any kind of interaction you have with the AI that is not covert action or war.
Speaker: So whenever you have a sort of conversation with the AI, or for that matter, with another player in a multiplayer game, though it's slightly more rare. So this is anything from like negotiations, peace negotiations, trade agreements, just threatening them, just trying to get information from them, having dialogues with them, having any kind of interaction with them that is not part of the war game or the spy game or the assassination game.
Speaker: So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about diplomacy. Do you guys want to add something to that definition?
Speaker: think the silence... speaks for itself? Yes, we're probably going to have to cut that. Most people, the listeners will know what diplomacy is.
Speaker: Yes, I think so too. And politics. Politics I'm not so sure about, but diplomacy, yeah. True. Politics is the part where you get to get your ah leader out lying to the voters, right?
Speaker: um Well, yeah Let's dive into diplomacy because politics is going to get complicated later um but Games do this sort of diplomacy function very differently.
Speaker: I remember the all the ah all the strategy games like Age of Vampires 2. It's not the oldest one, but still fairly old. They definitely had a diplomacy setting. It was technically possible to convince the AI to side with you enter an alliance with you or abandoning an alliance with someone else or with you.
Speaker: or in multiplayer games, this could actually become a significant function. And then Total War games, for example. The diplomacy is quite important there because you can't really fight everyone at once and you need the trade income. And the the trade resources is a main feature of, especially with the first Rome game.
Speaker: And then Civilization games. Diplomacy is incredibly important. There is even a diplomatic victory condition. New World Games has developed this mechanic in various ways. So it is definitely an important game mechanic.
Speaker: But it has also been done in some really weird ways. And I think we can get into that first. like yeah We have done our worst, weirdest stuff before. And like what is the weirdest, the worst? Or what do you want to complain about in how games do diplomacy?
Speaker: Magnus? Isn't this one of the most common things for games to get wrong? I think i think we touched on this. We talked about the worst games ever. ah But this is just a mechanic that...
Speaker: It's so often kind of, if if it's not an afterthought, it's very clear that, okay, we need some kind of diplomacy. And your example of Total War Games, I think, is a good example of that, where diplomacy is mainly about, okay, who do you want to fight next?
Speaker: Or who don't you want to fight right now? And basically, what you do is just, you you can trade, you can declare war, you can have an alliance, and that's pretty much it. ah And it's also very underdeveloped. How do you get other factions to like you or at least not hate you. ah I know that they brought in, mean, you had this option and more or less fleshed out of giving gifts.
Speaker: That's basically it. You want someone to like you? Give them money. I think it's an empire, right, where you can like give them some fancy china, but it's still basically just give them money. And that's pretty much the only way of kind of making sure that other factions don't like you.
Speaker: ah So ah apart from kind of games that are from the bottom up structured around diplomacy. And there are, wouldn't say tons, but there are those games. And I'm sure that we can come up with some of examples of these.
Speaker: ah if it If the game isn't structured around diplomacy rather than war economics, it feels to me that it's it's very often ah poorly fleshed out mechanic ah and it does weird stuff.
Speaker: It's not really how two countries it would interact with each other. ah there are way too few means of exchange. Uh, there are way too few means of kind of influencing their opinion of your faction or your, or of you. Uh, so I, I'd say that it's interesting. I think it's harder to talk about games that do this really well than games that do it badly.
Speaker: Uh, do you think I'm wrong about that? I do actually. I think there are some games that do this really well, but we will get into them a little bit later because i also want to say something about games doing this poorly and about why they keep doing it.
Speaker: Because, like first of all, there are a ton of examples, and I agree with you that one of the main problems is... um The diplomacy is supposed to be almost as big and broad as strategy or as battle planning or battle tactics.
Speaker: but You're supposed to be able to do everything. yeah In historical e told games, you want to sort of be able to or you would like them to be able to mimic history where you essentially solve your cat, your daughter, your castle, your neighboring castle, whatever, for benefits or for weird trades. like History is riddled with... um We are the diplomacy.
Speaker: And of course you can't do all of it in a computer game, or a lot of it would be incredibly game-breaking even if you could model it. But what think becomes clear, both from history and from the fact that diplomacy shows up in games all the time,
Speaker: is that if you don't have it, things also go weird. For example, you can't fight everyone at once, and the only way you interact and decide whom you fight can't be whether you attack them or they attack you.
Speaker: I say this playing yeah or having played Northgard, but that's exactly what you do. But on the other hand, the sort of interaction and the wargame mechanic in that game is also very scaled down. So...
Speaker: But for some reason it keeps showing up because you need something there. You need to be able to do something to other countries or other sort of opponents apart from fighting them.
Speaker: Or am I wrong? Do you have an example of a game totally without diplomacy? I have one that I can... But do you have any good examples of where you can take it out and it still works?
Speaker: Where you can take diplomacy out and still works? Yeah, sure. I mean... did The Command & Conquer series, the Red Alert series, yes, the thing you have in Warcraft 1, 2, and 3, you can take Diplomas out. Yes, you have a Diplomacy system, but that's just being allies during a limited set of time. You can take it out, and it works.
Speaker: But then again, they They don't go heavily to towards diplomacy. yeah I mean, I'd rather take it out like the those games do than have a bad and broken diplomacy system.
Speaker: And I mean, we can talk about Hearts of Iron 4, for example. They have a diplomacy system.
Speaker: that doesn't really work because the A.R.A. is not keen on diplomacy. they Or, well, you you can play like, say, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example.
Speaker: We take it as an example. and The best of the dual monarchies that ever existed. But you can be fighting yeah the Germans.
Speaker: The a Allies are also fighting Germans. The Allies will invite you to this because you are co-blanderant against the Axis forces, against the German Empire.
Speaker: But they will then kick you because you are non-aligned. They are democratic. Then they will invite you again. Then they will kick you. They will invite you. They will kick you.
Speaker: That's a bad diplomacy system, in in my opinion. And then rather having and become a diplomacy system Take it out.
Speaker: in that In that case. And Total War. Don't get me into Total War. Because then we'll be here for three hours. When I explain why and the CA did a really, really terrible job with diplomacy. i i have I can be forgetful and apologetic for the early games. But after Rome 2...
Speaker: which kind of ruined every diplomacy system that Total War has ever had beyond that.
Speaker: Don't. Why did it ruin it? Just shortly. Well, because the AI accepts your propositions, then they break it.
Speaker: They go into alliances with you and they break it. They are not penalized for it, but you as the player are. your your trustworthiness goes down, like Total Warhammer, for example.
Speaker: If you break a treaty, your reliability goes down. People don't want trade treaties with you. They don't want alliances. They are more keen to attack you.
Speaker: But when the AI does it, they are not penalized for it. it It is set from the AI perspective that you are the main villain. regardless of what you play.
Speaker: If you play a small nation, you are still the big villain. We want to kill you because total war. And that makes it a bad diplomacy system. If I'm penalized, but the AI is not, that's bad.
Speaker: If they can break treaties and I can't, that's bad. and It's just not a thought through system. It's, oh, we we are looking at three kingdoms, we are looking at Shogun 2, which have, in my opinion, good diplomacy systems, which is kind of the only thing I can say about three kingdoms. That's the only good part from it.
Speaker: But if you do not adhere to the same rules, why even have the diplomacy system? You get me? Yeah. But you also touched on something that when I thought about diplomacy before before we started this conversation...
Speaker: ah One of the really weird things with a lot of diplomacy systems in strategy games is actually that ah alliances are way too firm. I mean, they tend to hold and they tend to be respected.
Speaker: And this is just so unhistorical. mean, the vast majority or the majority of alliance, if you look at actual world history, they never function the way they were supposed to function.
Speaker: ah when i mean When push comes to shove, when you have to support an ally, and basically, if you do support your ally, you no one ever supports them in as much as they would like.
Speaker: ah And that's if they even i mean respect the alliance. ah Because when push comes to shove, nations tend not to want to go to war with each other if they don't want to see a very clear benefit.
Speaker: yeah So it's basically when when only when you have to go to war or when the downsides are so extremely ah negligible that alliances tend to hold.
Speaker: and Look at the World Wars, for example. There are a ton of countries that join. kind of during the last year of the war, because say they finally say, okay, this side's going to win. Let's jump on the bat bandwagon. We want to be in the winner's camp when the war is finished.
Speaker: They would never have joined the war before that or when when it's unclear who's going which side is going to win. ah So I think that that's maybe the weirdest thing about diplomacy and the alliances, specifically in strategy games, so they tend to hold, which really weird.
Speaker: ah But I i like... I mean, if you if you have to have a diplomacy system, and I'm not saying you have to, I mean, the Ultimate General War series, day and the Ultimate General series don't have diplomacy systems. They just, they start out with you at war, ah and then you're at war.
Speaker: ah There's nothing you can do about that except to win the war. ah They have other problems, and I'll swing back to them later on in this episode, but... um if you have a diplomacy system, I like if i like that it's fleshed out.
Speaker: If you can have multiple interactions, I like, I like ambassador and mechanics. Uh, and I really love when you have a mechanic, which enables diplomatic faux pas.
Speaker: Yep. Yep. Which is great. An ambassador just fucks up and that, that spoils relations because that happened historically. Right. Uh, for example, I mean, the ancestor of our, we're Swedish, uh,
Speaker: of our current king, uh, he almost got, I mean, he almost got lynched by a mob in Vienna. Yeah. If I'm remembering this correctly, don't, don't, don't quote me on this.
Speaker: Uh, because he was just, he was a bad ambassador, way too aggressive. but And the Viennese mob didn't like the French. Uh, and that happened historically. And I like that. It's, it's really annoying when you get, ah for example, in, um,
Speaker: in EU4 when you get this kind of this notice that just says, yeah, diplomatic faux pas, you get debuff to relations with a given country. ah with a given country Really annoying.
Speaker: Also really historically correct. Yeah. Yeah. Andreas? Yeah. um So we've gotten some examples of games which don't have a diplomacy system. I was going to add one of my favorite games, to Total Annihilation.
Speaker: And I think there is some kind of lesson in which examples we have and also in the game title of Total Annihilation, but which is that... If you have a game that is essentially sort of short battle focused or war focused between two or a few sides, you maybe don't need it.
Speaker: um The moment you get a like massive map game and where you can map paint and stuff like that, you start to get the problems that, well, you can't fight them all, all the time.
Speaker: You still want to be able to do something with them. And I think you need start adding it then. um So I've been thinking which games have good diplomacy systems.
Speaker: And my favorite is probably, and it's going to be one of my favorites in politics as well, it's actually Crusader Kings. um at least Crusader Kings 2 and 3. And the reason I have them as favorites boils down to something I think is one of the best ways to make a diplomacy system, which is that the AI or the opponent has goals, purposes, things it wants, rather than just having the like or dislike system where you plus points and minus points depending on how well you match.
Speaker: Because that is what, at least on the surface, that is what both Total War games and most of the Civilization games seems to rely on, and a lot of other games seems to rely on this.
Speaker: You have done things which they like, so they will generally opt for diplomatic... um Relations which are positive. You have done things they dislike. they will generally not opt for them.
Speaker: And you get stupid outcomes. Such as you having beaten them down to one territory. And they refuse to make a peace deal. Because they hate you. Fuck you. Or um they have a really silly territory. Standing in the middle of your. like Surrounded by your country.
Speaker: And you have something similar on their side. And they refuse to do a swap. Because they hate you. or whatever. and ah think the best way to solve this is essentially to build the AI around things or like purposes it has, or things it wants out of the game.
Speaker: The same way you do a battle AI in many ways where it tries to figure out the optimal or at least they good strategy to do something and then and then tries to do it.
Speaker: I want their diplomatic encounters where it's clear that AI has a plan. Mm-hmm. I can just agree with that. and i i I have to agree with Crusader Kings, both 2 and 3. I think they have a really good system with that.
Speaker: But also, and and I know I give Paradox a lot of shit for their games, even though I do love Paradox games. But, I mean, Victoria 3, they have a really heavy focus on the internal diplomacy between different groups. They have it also with and the external diplomacy, which I think they do really, really well. And now I'm going to say a game that I know we bashed in the beginning of this podcast, but that this is the one thing I'm actually going to give this game. And Stellaris, they have a great diplomatic play style, especially between
Speaker: different government types, federation, galactic resources, and how the Galactic Senate works. It's a really good system. ah If I can butt in, it's also kind of good that they actually have racism as a mechanic, which yeah which is really, it it should be there. It's there through much of human history, but that's one of the few games that actually adds racism or xenophobia as a game mechanic.
Speaker: And it's one of the games that doesn't take place in human history.
Speaker: But I guess it makes it easier because I think one of the main problems with having like racism and even to some degree religious intolerance in historic games is that it's ah sort of annoying to be the recipient of it if you're also the recipient of it in real life.
Speaker: like It can double down a little bit and ruin your fantasy playing a game, think. Yeah, of course. But I mean, this is the first Paradox game where they actually put in xenophilia and xenophobia because, I mean, we've played between our ah three.
Speaker: We've played a lot of Hearts of Iron. They never touch on the really touchy it subject of playing Germany between 1936 and 1945, which I'm not going to go into here. But here they put it in, and they put in religion, which is kind of the sci-fi trope they play on, ah because we've seen it in Star Trek, we've seen it in Star Wars, we've seen it in The Orwell, we see it in Warhammer 40k.
Speaker: The religious, xenophobic trope, it's there, and if you want to play as it, yeah, sure, I tend to start a game with, yeah, I'm going to play, like, the Empire Man, we're going to do this, but 30 minutes in, it's like,
Speaker: Now this doesn't sit right with me, but but I'm happy the option is there. and But I mean Crusader Kings 3 and Victoria, I think are the most fleshed out diplomatic systems we have from Paradox Games.
Speaker: And they do they do a really good job with that. it in Also, in hindsight, they have some games that really can't handle diplomacy.
Speaker: i think I think there is something to CK3 which is very important here. Apart from giving the AI a purpose or a goal, it also cheats.
Speaker: Because the diplomacy in the CK3 is essentially a role-playing game. um And I think that is sort of clever, actually. Like, if you try to design as part of your diplomacy system around the AI role-playing as a character against you, or in the same world as you, you can borrow some cool ideas from the RPG genre with that reputation system, with shared goals, with competing goals, with sort of quest-like structures around how you can do things for or against them.
Speaker: I do think that's a very clever way to gain access to ah mechanics which don't really come natural to strategy games otherwise. Yeah, but I mean, there's a lesson here for someone who's played Crusader Kings and everyone knows this.
Speaker: You never promote someone who has a high ambition because he will he or she will try to kill you. And you never... ever promote someone who has a spouse with a high ambition because he or she will try to kill you and I like that kind of RPG dynamic in it and it kind of it simulates the the time period it's set in which I like I think it's lovely I think that also works really well with alliances because you can have certain personality traits which are terrible to have on someone in your court, but it's pretty good to have with an ally or with an overlord. They can go out and be nasty to someone else and you're just some supporting character to them.
Speaker: Well, they also do one thing because this kind of touches on, ah I mean, personal politics and who do you want to promote?
Speaker: Something that sprung to mind with me is in Rome, Rome two. So another short little war game, sorry, but ah where are they, you, you never promote someone who's not part of your faction because you don't want them to gain influence as a general or diplomat or governor.
Speaker: ah ge You just make sure that they basically they don't have a function, and that gives them less power. ah But you can't really... do you It's harder to do in, for example, CK3, because if you don't let your vassals have ah positions of power, they will also stab you in the back.
Speaker: So you you at least have to balance it. You don't want to promote someone who's ambitious or dangerous, but you can't you can't just let them languish in obscurity, ah because they will be get pissed at you.
Speaker: So that kind of the kind of shuffles us over its towards personal politics. And of course, that's also a big part of it. or In a fleshed out system, that's a big part of diplomacy as well. Yeah, but it just to finish up this, I mean, we we also have the example. And I know I'm th trashing this game at every chance I get.
Speaker: Imperator that tries to take diplomacy from eu four and from Crusader Kings and just makes a mishmash, not touching on how bad of game it is otherwise, but their diplomacy, the internal diplomacy, external diplomacy is just a shit game. They have two good mechanics. They kind of smush together. And then it's like, why did you even bother having a diplomacy system?
Speaker: You've scaled them the Crusader Kings ah system. You scale down the EU4 system and you're left with something that is, in lack of better words, ours gravy of the worst kind.
Speaker: Well, isn't that kind of like a top tip for game developers? they if If you have a weak or and not so well thought through diplomacy mechanic, you might as well skip it because it's just annoying when it kind of has a big impact on the game, but you can't really play it. You can't.
Speaker: You can't change a faction's opinion of of you, or there are only one way of doing it. ah Because that's also a problem. If you only have one action to take, I mean, you're not you're just going to get so far with gifts in a lot of systems.
Speaker: ah You can give people money, but at a certain point, you just, you can't give them enough. and They're not going to like you more when you've already given the given them a gift three times. You need other mechanics as well.
Speaker: ah You need the opportunity of of a royal marriage or sending a diplomat to increased relations or what it may be. ah So either do it well or don't do it.
Speaker: Before we move on to personality and politics and stuff like that, I want to ask you something like your opinion. Mini games in diplomacy. No. um Magnus is looking confused on the videos we share as hosts. But when i say when when i say what I mean when I say it is minigames, in for example, in the sense of a role in a role-playing game, in like Fallout games, you have a minigame which is lockpicking, where you just do something entirely different from the main game to pick a lock.
Speaker: The same example in a... um In a strategy game, Diplomas, it could be you actually having to figure out the right way to have a conversation, or you have to do some specific other sort of social game, or even some other entirely other game win a diplomatic encounter and gain benefits.
Speaker: Good or bad? In a strategy game, bad. In Dungeons & Dragons, roll for charisma, roll for persuasion. Yeah, sure. and an RPG game,
Speaker: Totally fine with that. In Sid Meier's Pirate, yes, of course, the better I dance with the governor's daughter, the higher the chance I have to marry her. Fine. it But in a strategy game, no, because... No, just no. do not play strategy games for the minigame bit of, oh, how well did you have... a Did you use the right fork or spoon or knife when you had the ambassador's dinner? No, I do not care for that.
Speaker: Sorry. And I'd say bad. And the other the other problem is that the when you have these kind of minigame mechanics, it often gets so annoying after a while because you've done the same task 50 times.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't want to dance again. Don't make me dance again.
Speaker: That is the way i feel at every party. um But speaking of ah dancing and daughters, politics. um So we're going to talk a little bit about two styles of politics in strategy games. First, we're going to move into likeke the the sort of politics that is managing people.
Speaker: and it is essentially the same thing as diplomacy, but instead of the people of your opponent yeah or to like other people, we talk about the politics of managing the people within your faction or kingdom or whatever you're controlling in this game.
Speaker: an example would be... Crusader Kings has the court with people whom you have to manage and there is a lot of personal people politics just giving everyone what they want and having interactions with them.
Speaker: um In the Total War games, the early ones, you... have some degree of internal politics in Empire, for example, with choosing a government.
Speaker: In the previous one, you can do some slight interactions with like marrying your your daughter to someone in Empire. and medieval and then from Rome and this came maybe from Attila onwards they just ramped this up and tried to introduce a governor systems where you can give gifts to your own governors to make them like you better.
Speaker: think Britannia has an influence system and rebellion system and a lot of other games of course has politics and
Speaker: I guess we gotta do the same structure. Bad politics, good politics. What what do we have here?
Speaker: um
Speaker: Well, I think it's... It is quite similar, because I think that... I should say, for me, this doesn't ruin a game. i've or At least i haven't seen where... I haven't ever had the experience, like, the personal politics are so bad, I'm gonna quit this game.
Speaker: If it's annoying, i just tend to ignore it as much as I can, then just... do basic maintenance that's what i do with the total war games in this mechanic i just do it enough so that i don't have to mind it uh which means i get a rebellion every now and then uh basically it's just giving someone a gift every now or then so they they don't rebel and then making sure that they're not marrying off anyone they're they're not eloping with any of my daughters uh and i i do think it's kind of fun but It mostly strikes me that often these systems are just weird.
Speaker: So I'd say that. But it's so clear that yeah strategy games are designed by a bunch of nerds that are like, can we reduce people into a limited number of mechanics and opinions for interactions?
Speaker: ah And that just always gets weird. Whether it's like, yeah, um sure, I can make you count over here, or you will marry one of my daughters, and all of a sudden you will be loyal, which is not if necessarily the case at any point in history.
Speaker: at Your son-in-law won't necessarily like you. He might stab you in the back, ah especially if like you're the Seleucid Kingdom and your son-in-law is also your your nephew.
Speaker: He will still stab you in the back, no matter how much you're related.
Speaker: Yeah, well, ah I can agree with that. And that kind of comes out a lot in single player, but but it also it also makes it more fun in multiplayer. I mean, I have a great example of from Crusader Kings 2, which I played with Pontus, our dear friend, and another friend called a and Jakob.
Speaker: We played, he was the king of France. yeah I wanted to become I didn't want to become the King of France. I wanted to be Marshal of France because that was fun. But then again, he refused to make me the Marshal of France the for no reason. I had the biggest army. I was the best at what I did. But he said, no, I have to maintain my relationship with and my father-in-law, of who is the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker: ah Emperor. So yeah, what did I do? I schemed and threw him out of a window to get one of his sons in who Julia appointed me as the Marshal of France.
Speaker: That is fun. and That's a good system. But talking about bad politics system, I don't know if you've played this, but Galactic Civilization 3 is a game that is a standout bad in politics because and the politics system, its it's just erratic. I mean, factions make irrational demands. They refuse logical agreements. You can have them down to the last settlement.
Speaker: And because you want to fight someone else, you say, oh, can we have peace? They say no. They come back next turn and say, oh, yeah, we can have peace for every dime in your empire. And like, guys, I'm about to crush you. do you want to live or not?
Speaker: No, we want all your money. and it's The problem here with the political system in Galactic Civilization 3 is it doesn't really matter.
Speaker: It has no impact of the game, which makes it even more irrelevant. And we come back to what we said with diplomacy. Rather than having a bad diplomacy system, don't don't have it at all.
Speaker: Yes. um I have a bunch of opinions on politics in games, but it actually boils down most of the time to don't have it.
Speaker: um There are some examples which I think have good politics system and which where it adds to something, and i'm going to go I'm going to mention them before we move on, but first I want to slam some games.
Speaker: and The first game I want to slam is unfortunately the excellent game of Thrones of Britannia. where you essentially they they essentially wanted to build in a little bit of CK3 into um Total War.
Speaker: and They have ah ah had already done a weakest attempt at this in Attila, but they wanted to keep building it. And unfortunately, the weak-ass attempt was a way better idea.
Speaker: So what he did was essentially that they you a bunch of governors or a bunch of north nobles, and they needed to have estates to be happy. And they also gave you a bunch of random encounters with them where you need to make choices to keep them happy.
Speaker: The random encounters are annoying, but whatever. The estates are the real problem, because it essentially boils down to them just having few less estates than their ruler, and then they are happy.
Speaker: Fine, good, okay, so I don't need to do anything here apart from distribute estates. Well, I am in a war. I'm conquering a lot of territories. Now I have estates. Now I need to distribute them.
Speaker: Once I have distributed them, ah no problem. And this just becomes a massive pause moment. I just have to pause the game recurringly and... well, it's turn-based game, so essentially i just don't get to click the next turn button.
Speaker: but um But I have to essentially a stop and redistribute land just to get back to status quo. And it doesn't really do anything else.
Speaker: And this is a problem, this is an extreme example of it, but it's a good example also of of of a recurring problem with politics system, that it is essentially just a screen you go into and waste time.
Speaker: Because if you do it right, nothing happens. If you do it wrong, you get a bunch of of issues. But you pretty fairly pretty soon you learn the me de meta for it, and then you do it right every time.
Speaker: Which means that you're essentially just going into a screen and wasting time for no real reason. And this is a major problem, I think, in a lot of games with politics. Even the excellent CK3 has some of these problems where you essentially need to sit around and look at screens just to make sure that all the levers are in the correct places.
Speaker: But in a lot of situations, there are correct places. It isn't really a choice between policies or between ways of managing people. If you have people, you need to do the correct thing to get their numbers going in the right direction.
Speaker: and This is a major problem for me. This is where a lot of new strategy game lose me when I'm starting to play a new game, is when the game essentially starts punishing me for me not paying attention to a bunch of imaginary peoples. It's stuck in my country.
Speaker: I want to play as, often I want to play as sort of the disembodied spirit of the nation rather than the king. But if I'm supposed to play as the king, i want an engaging role-playing game as the king, not just leave sliding and the just checking off the boxes from the game meta.
Speaker: I can get that. I'm just going to brush past you mentioning... Thrones of Britannia. I'm just going to move on from that. Yeah, the cringe every time you try to make Thrones of Britannia a thing.
Speaker: yeah yeah Yeah, you should see both me. It's the most realistic game. It's the only game which actually takes you a couple of years to leave London for Oxford. Yeah, but you should still see me and Magnus every time Thrones of Britannia is brought up. But I mean, there is a game for this that actually does it quite well. And I know, Andreas, you are very...
Speaker: happily correct me on my pronunciation of Caesarian, it it is probably, in my opinion, of the politic games I've played, the best one.
Speaker: It is amazingly good. it it It is ah great game. yeah It is, I mean, it's kind of a unique story-driven gameplay. I mean, you play as a say Anthony Rhein, the newly elected president of a fictional country, which I think I should have written down. i think it's called Swordland.
Speaker: and You've just gained your independence. It's 1953. yeah And to you have to choose, am I going to ally with the West, with the communists, or am I going to going to be non-aligned?
Speaker: what policies should I take in my internal kingdom? How should I and handle this big good cold war situation we are in? And you have moral and ethical choices with, do you fight corruption or do you play along just to maintain stability? And you can come out, as I had but my last game, I i came out as an,
Speaker: Eastern Bloc country and with no freedom of speech, and totally corrupt, a higher class military spendings through the roof.
Speaker: And I got you won. And it's like, yes, I won. Would I like to live in this kind of political utopia? i create No, no, I do not want to be here. And it's a great game because you have the internal politics, but also the external politics and diplomacy.
Speaker: If you haven't tried it, try it. It's a great little gem of a game. ah And they do it so well because it's a game that's just focused on this. They don't have moving troops. They don't have supplies.
Speaker: Nothing like that. It's just solely focused on politics and diplomacy. ah And that's great.
Speaker: So the word is pronounced suzerain, I think. yeah um I actually looked it up. ah Yeah, you cheated. Yes. It's a weird weird word. It's um yeah but actually the way it's spelled. I was starting to Google cesarean, which is something completely different.
Speaker: Yes. um No, but i think I think there are some interesting points here. tried to boil down what I think makes good person politics or personal politics in a computer game, and I think it essentially boils down to it either being you a role playing game mechanics, much like I like me eat in in Diplomacy.
Speaker: Or actually the thing they do, I'm going to say they do it okay in Total War Empire, which is you have a cabinet, choosing a different cabinet gives you different bonuses.
Speaker: You don't get enough bonuses or enough differences in um in Total War, but but you essentially get a little bit of it. And if you want to make it really good, you're also supposed to be able to train your government.
Speaker: essentially set to them in a situation where they level up and give you more or less benefits in different ways. i think that's the best thing. when um when the ah when the port Because this lets me still play as a sort of degree disembodied spirit of the nation, but I can also make choices about people in my empire, and the choices I make determines the direction of my empire.
Speaker: And if I can't have either of those, I kind of don't want it at all. And now I'm moving on. so you're going to have to stop me if you don't like it. But making political choices, which changes the direction of your empire...
Speaker: is part of the other sort of part of politics in strategy games, where you can have anything from Civ 6 policy cards to tax rates to political technology to political decisions moving in split branches to essentially give you different buffs, different outcomes, different technologies, different things, essentially.
Speaker: Like making choices in your game that determines how the... country or a player, whatever it is you're sort of playing, develops. ah Something that we would probably call either policy or um like the Well, I think it is policy. this is ah This is where, even though I am a major in political science, still my English lacks a little bit of refinement here.
Speaker: I'm not going to mention the fact that I worked in um British politics too much, actually, because then it gets embarrassing. But policy, I think. Yeah, i would I would call it policy. I kind of like that for its a strategy game because it gives you the choice between The short-term and the shortterm advantages or do I play the long game?
Speaker: What benefits me the most? and And I like that because it's a conscious decision that you have to take. Yes, sure, i I can take the short-term goal that I really need. It could help me now.
Speaker: But this would be beneficial for me in... in an hour or in 20 turns or in 10 turns. ah i like that. and I don't know if you agree with me, Magnus, but I see you nodding.
Speaker: No, I love this. And I completely agree with you on the, yes I mean mean, I like personal politics and a game when it actually, if it's, it kind of, it links into policy decisions. If I take this advisor, I get these buffs and these debuffs. If I,
Speaker: If I don't, I get this. If I give him grab this guy, I can have a higher tax rate because he has out those traits. He might have some other negative traits, which I don't want. I like i like that. And like I like policy decisions in a game.
Speaker: And especially when you see one, I think that that's a baseline for good strategy game that, I mean, for example, the and to the the decision to hike up tax rates should have a long-term impact.
Speaker: where the Total War games just scrape by on that. Like, yeah, okay, you can raise taxes and you won't just have an unhappy populace. It will affect your long-term growth.
Speaker: So if you want a better game a better late game, try and keep taxes low, try and grow your cities. I mean, that that that kind of mechanic is a baseline for me. ah What I really like is games like, ah we mentioned Stellaris before where I mean, if if you are an open free trade empire, you will have better growth and you will consistently outgrow xenophobic closed empires. They might be better at war, but you will have other benefits and you might outgrow them. And it doesn't matter if they are, i mean, ship for ship better than you or have a higher impact or a battle for battle.
Speaker: for unit for unit, they have a better, better call higher quality unit. You're just an economic behemoth that will, that will kind of outgrow them and swamp them. Uh, or CK three, which I love, which really, I mean, I would say that the that's really what that game is about more than anything. it isn't about trade inherently. It isn't about world conquest. It's about policy and growing your empire. Uh, and I like that they also,
Speaker: it's it's one of the few games where they actually deal with human capital. yeah yeah So if your population is ah uneducated, that might be easier to control, but they won't be able to kind of, your your economy will grow, will be sluggish and will grow as fast because ah each individual person or each individual pop in that game isn't utilized and can't maximize its potential.
Speaker: ah and you might guess here that I'm politically ah liberal in the European sense, and I i think that Paradox developers are developers are as well. Because other games, they tend to be better to be enlightened.
Speaker: yeah The earliest good sources on like what works for a nation is pretty much Adam Smith. So it it sort of helps. I mean, there are other ah the previous sources, but they tended to be shit.
Speaker: and You can go down other paths, but I like that it has an impact. If if you want to be a strictly socialist country, that should affect your economics. yeah And that's one of the weirdest parts with another Paradox Game, Hearts of Iron, where it's like,
Speaker: Yeah, if you're a strict if you're a strict dictatorship, that might be better for your industrial growth. You're like, tends not to be.
Speaker: You might have a ah more efficient command economy for producing strictly tanks, but ah your population will starve at the same time. I think that game has a, um, I mean, I think it has to do that in order to get the game pace to work, but it is a little bit too fixated with Germany who sort of managed us to sort of force through a fairly working industrial policy for rearmament, but it's not like Italy or France being, sorry, for not France, Italy or Spain being great examples of industrial efficiency in the second world war or the buildup to it.
Speaker: Um, Before we keep talking about paul um sort of policy, I want to make a slight distinction. And this this is a distinction which I don't think most games make clearly, but you can find it in them.
Speaker: And it's the distinction between policy and the tech trees. Because a lot of tech trees have names like implement blah, implement some policy, but it's essentially just a technology.
Speaker: And I think the difference is essentially that policy is a choice. you get one or you get two or more choices and you opt for one, and by choosing it, you don't choose the other one. Whereas technology is something you stack on top of each other, you can arrange it in different orders, but going for good agricultural equipment doesn't prevent you from also going for painting or whatever.
Speaker: ah Whereas going for communism tends to prevent you from going for liberalism. And I think you can do this in any way. You can essentially make a technology a policy by just making it exclusive. but Like if you are learning to mine iron and it for some reason leads to not being able to learn to mine copper, then it's a policy rather than a technology.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I agree with you here. But I also have this, and I'm coming back to another paradox game and with politics and policies.
Speaker: ah Viki 3, Victoria 3, they do a good job with this because you have your policies, but what policies you do doesn't lock you out of the tech tree.
Speaker: I mean, playing Russia, for example, you want to get your people more literate because you get a higher research bonus because the more people that can read can actually get educated and can actually help you with technology.
Speaker: But then again, They can also learn about other systems than the Tsar and Serfdom of Russia, which is a whole different question in this.
Speaker: So how do you how do you want to balance that? How do you want to do it? yeah and I think it's really good it's a good way to to kind of simulate the industrial late 19th century going up to the 20th century with the First World War.
Speaker: It is good. I mean, it it works fine, ah from my opinion, at least.
Speaker: Yeah, well, it does some weird things as well. I mean, it's it's not like people don't have a concept of freedom or the right to sell or self-determination just because they're they they can't read or they don't have a ah degree of education. And but that's a bit weird. So it is a bit weird that,
Speaker: I mean, educated populace leads to revolution. I mean, it says a revolutions or a striving for revolution. So it does weird things about that. But somehow you have to generalize things in a strategy game. I'm aware of that as well.
Speaker: What I do think is that policy is also one of these they one of these areas. And I'm not going to say don't have policy because we're starting to strip it down in in a couple of episodes. are in the old we will land in the conclusion that the only good strategy game is chess.
Speaker: No, no, The perfect strategy game is obviously a shooter. One soldier, one gun. Yes. So I'm not going to say if you don't do it well, don't do it on this. I really think you should.
Speaker: i mean, policy decisions is a big part of and ground strategy. You should absolutely try for it. But it it does do some weird things sometimes where it's like...
Speaker: And especially if it's kind of the, the file of the false dichotomy you were talking about on the, like, if you choose this, you cannot choose this. Why not?
Speaker: But I think that is, that is what policy is, right? ah So um tipping my hand a little bit to the audience, I do work in politics. And some of the other podcasters here have worked in politics and like,
Speaker: A large portion of what politics is. okay so some Some portion of what politics is. Is conflict. Between wanting different things. But a lot of what politics is. Is wanting both things.
Speaker: But having different orders of priority. Whether you should have this or that. With limited ro resources. Or limited time. And I think if if you could have it all once, there wouldn't be very much politics left.
Speaker: And we're doing another thing which is very common in in politics, which is saying...
Speaker: i Misunderstanding each other. ah I think every game should have a debate section. Of course, I agree with that, Andreas. But it's weird sometimes what games pitch as...
Speaker: I mean, a or B decisions. Oh yes, if you're if you're politically minded, it's easy to get kind of insulted by strategy games. Yeah. And I'm not talking about i'm not talking about the the kind of like the big options for a country, especially from going ah strictly command economy and free trade, which is often is weird and and hard to have and within the same system.
Speaker: ah But For example, I should have really gone into this with a better example, but if we're talking about small-scale policy decisions, I do think that paradoxical teams do this sometimes. We're like, yeah, you can have this or this. You can either go for aquarian agrarian reform or ah you can do something else.
Speaker: was like, well, not necessarily. I mean, you can you can build a tractor factory and a munitions factory. You can't build and how many you can't build infinite amount of factories.
Speaker: but It's weird when games kind of... they They want to push you in to do a bit too clear of a direction by pitting these as decisions where you go a or B. Yes.
Speaker: I think the game we keep keep coming back to here and slam a little bit is Hearts of Iron 4. And I think they should get a pass because they have a massive sort of policy or decision trees.
Speaker: And mean, the fantasy behind these trees is that this is a war taking place over, well, the game tends to take place over less than a decade and the war um maybe five to seven years out of that time.
Speaker: So I think it's supposed to team simulate the things you have the time to do in that time or that time frame. But they also do we just slam weird names onto things. For example, the economy laws.
Speaker: So In the Second World War, the most efficient and most capable producer of and war materials was the United States.
Speaker: And one of the big things they did was that they did not nationalize the production production. They instead sort of just left it to a semi-free market and they placed orders and then American companies largely provided. And that they were able to ramp up incredibly quickly, largely because of this, and essentially supplied the entire Allied side as well as including the Russians.
Speaker: um but in the game, the best economy law, the highest tier, because it's essentially a tier, is the one that is the least free. And it is, of course, silly, but it is mainly as the consequence of them needing to add a name to it that sounds bigger.
Speaker: Well, yeah. I'm... I'm not going to go into the Americans won the Second World War for the Allies with that trope because they stayed out of it until they were attacked by the Japanese.
Speaker: ah Mostly like they did in the First World War, they write in when the sun is setting with the cavalry coming in saying, we saved the day. Yes, well, sure, you also stayed out of it. And if you could have your opinion, you would.
Speaker: Or if you could have it your way, you would also have stayed out of it. But I agree with that economy law, which is weird. And I know we're slamming Harchfire for a bit.
Speaker: But I also tend to agree with Andreas here that it simulates such a small piece of history. It has to go quick. The problem I have with it is that also Paradox open ups for, do you want to take an alternate route okay, we need to have all these things to make you take the alternate route.
Speaker: And I like that you can take the alternate route, otherwise the game would just be the same time after time after time after time again. and But it's kind of a limited system.
Speaker: It's not a bad system. It's not a great system. It's a functional system for what they want to do. But if you want a good policy, politics, diplomacy game,
Speaker: There's better games out there. That's kind of my take on Hearts of Iron 4.
Speaker: Yeah, i just wanted to slam a different game here. I know we need to wrap up soon, but and there's a fantastic little game which we've mentioned before, which is called Ultimate General Civil War, um which does really weird things about politics and policy and basically a role playing as a general. So this isn't the main focus of the game, but kind of in the skill set general.
Speaker: So when you when you spend an experience points, you can spend them in a number of categories. One category is just politics. And that's just, it gives you a certain an an extra percentage of guns and money.
Speaker: Guns and Yeah, manpower. Yeah, manpower and money. was like It's a fantastic view of how politics work. Like, you're a charming gentleman, so you can smooch politicians and get 2% more guns. Yeah, and 5% more manpower because you can orate to the people.
Speaker: but Which is such a bad strategy. game were like yeah and It's not like we're having a kind of a... I'm guessing they're trying to simile just that, kind of how...
Speaker: a nation prioritizes where it puts, where it puts its resources, primarily, you know, munitions and manpower. ah But it's, it's just, it's so dumb that just you can just max this up and now you have a 20% more manpower and money, manpower and munitions, ah guns.
Speaker: thats yeah like But I think that it's a, it's a beautiful example of how you do it where you don't really want a policy or politic system. You're like, It should be in there. Should we just add this as a category?
Speaker: so you have like kind of reading a map. Yeah. You have scouting and you have politics. Yeah. But you also have medicine. If you're trained as a doctor, you get more of your it soldiers back, which is also weird because are you the one moving around to the field hospital, sawing off legs? And yes, you're a good guy. Come on, let's get back into the fight. It's a very weird tree.
Speaker: It is. like you You managed to convince one of your surgeons to wash his hands. yeah but It's also fantastic when you capture captured prisoners of war because you can exchange them, but only up to a number of a thousand. So the enemy can only, there's there's a cap on how many prisoners, or all of your prisoners get exchanged, but you never get more than a thousand of your men back. Which is like, why did you even add this mechanic? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, but then then it's like, exchange a thousand, I get a thousand back. If I exchange five thousand, I still get a thousand back. Okay, this is done. It's the only diplomat to push this weight of diplomacy. It's the only diplomatic exchange you can have in the entire game.
Speaker: and is like yeah You can exchange, but you can only have a thousand prisoners. Yeah, but I still love the game. I love it. It's a fantastic game, but it's so stupid. I think it boils down to what I was talking about earlier, that politics is choice.
Speaker: When it is not a choice, when it's just an action with a political name on it, it's not really politics. Speaking of not really politics, there is a game, and think you may have heard of it, it's called Starcraft or Rock Paper Zurg.
Speaker: and it is essentially a game devoid of politics in the sense that you have, I mean, there are more the strategy games which are i have no politics, but It is one of the games where you essentially don't have aronnze seeing branching choices.
Speaker: You have a few in your tech tree where you can go for like a few different tactics. But to a large extent, Starcraft has a strong element of rock-paper-scissor, where Picking the right faction against the other faction gives you a shit ton of bonuses early on, and then picking the right track within that ah sort of faction gives you a bunch of advantages, and it but often boils down to who makes the right choice, and it's very meta-dependent because of it.
Speaker: You don't have as many options to just do a policy choice which makes your protos good against Zergs. ah So, and this is a thing I think is a little bit of a problem,
Speaker: in a lot of strategy games, RTS games, who don't which don't have politics or which don't have branching choices, is that you're stuck just playing the meta of this country or this faction or this um whatever team, whatever they call it in the game,
Speaker: And it has these specific advantages against this specific other faction, so you always play them. And this is one of the things where think politics adds a lot to strategy games, because essentially it gives you one more dial to dial up or down and see how it... It's probably not even a dial, it's something else, but it gives you the option to essentially change your game style mid-game.
Speaker: Opinions.
Speaker: Well, I think you're right. I mean, when you don't... That's why politics is a good... and I mean, it's a good thing to have in a game. Otherwise, it's... it's ah that it's It's not as complex of a game. And complex is often more fun. Not always.
Speaker: But it adds something. It adds another dimension to it. And generally, i like that within ah within a game. That's why I'm a strategy gamer. If I wanted a simple game, I could have played shooters. Yeah, it I can tend to agree here, but I prefer the way StarCraft and StarCraft II are doing it it think to comparison with Age of Empires that have a diplomacy system, which is shit.
Speaker: it It doesn't do anything. it It has no function. But yes, I would like to have a diplomacy policy and politics system just to get a more depth and flavor And as Magnus said, that's why we're strategy gamers.
Speaker: we We like that thing. Excellent. I'm going to add one final topic and then we're rounding off. So we have outed ourselves as at least having some kind of experience in real politics.
Speaker: So I want to just throw up the question, should politics in strategy games be realistic?
Speaker: No. No. they They don't need to be. because you you have such a, the short answer answer there is no, and the longer answer is because you try to, in most write games, you try to simulate a time that either was or is it going to be.
Speaker: I don't feel it has to be realistic because if, when you have someone flying ah mechanical dragon with the machine guns under the wings, no, the politics doesn't have to be realistic.
Speaker: Uh, unless you try to make the setting realistic, then you should have a realistic outcome. That's my answer for that. God, I hope they don't make politics realistic. I mean, ah we don't want the prime minister in your game all of a sudden having a scandal because he stuck his John Thomas in a pig's mouth, which is thing that happened not that long ago in a major European country.
Speaker: ah so mean, you You don't need 100% realism. But I do think that you need to think about, okay, so how does the system work? Is it, is it, it should be, it should at least have be consistent or strive against consistency. I think you summed it up pretty well earlier on that.
Speaker: ah It's a bonus if the other, I mean, the parts with which you're interacting, the party's, strive for something. They have their own goals, which is not just killing you or being obstructive. Uh, so that, I mean, you can be constructive within diplomacy and games.
Speaker: Uh, and I do think that you need more levers to pull if you're going to have a system. Uh, and if you want to call that realism, then I think you should strive for a certain level of realism, but games are fantasy games are escapism. That's why we love them.
Speaker: Uh, and it's okay that it's not a hundred percent realistic, but it should be consistent. Uh, And it should be workable. It should just not be something that happens to you as a gamer.
Speaker: I mostly agree. um You want the thing. I would say the most realistic in many ways of the games we have talked about is ironically Thrones of Britannia.
Speaker: Because whenever someone has more estates than you, you start bickering. I'm going to start with And that's essentially working with politicians is in many ways. You get all these sort of petty motives and stuff like that. And that is just not very fun to play with.
Speaker: So you do, I think, at least want politics idealized to the point of being the big sort of reform politics, or the big sort of decision politics. Because day-to-day politics is essentially us to grown people with a lot of power bickering.
Speaker: And that's not as fun as it sounds. yeah Yeah, no. no That's a better point. I was afraid you were going to round off the episode with the game of the game which shall not be We have to do the Total War episode soon because i can't stand this.
Speaker: I can't stand this. Okay, we can we can probably fit some time to talk a little bit more of Total War, though we we we have done it bunch already.
Speaker: um Unless you guys want to add something more about politics, I think that this concludes our episode. So yeah thanks everyone for listening. Please give this podcast a like or a share or whatever your podcast app allows you to do. Rate us if you can do that.
Speaker: so Subscribe. Subscribe. Definitely subscribe. And apart from from that, I would like to wish you all a good morning, evening, midday, whatever you're having.
Speaker: ah From us all to you all, goodbye. Bye.
