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Matthew Palmer's avatar

I love the concept! Sounds like a highly abstracted version of a Paradox game, though the environmental aspect is novel. My only initial concern would be with the timing - I'm not sure quite sure how the jumps in time perspective between layers would work in practice, especially if being played by multiple human players.

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Bryn Williams-Jones's avatar

A couple of thoughts/suggestions:

1) To augment the educational potential, have a mode where players can put the game on pause (or slow things down) to do research on particular theory, science, etc. relevant to a certain decision matrix and then have this open a link to Wikipedia (or an open science repository) with a set of relevant fields/topics/themes identified. So like a leader with a decent civil service to advise them, they can skill-up by learning with the polisci, business, economics, environmental science, etc. literatures today have to say on certain choices.

2) Give the choice to play with certain pre-set ideological approaches (e.g., capitalism, imperialism, socialism, neoliberalism, etc.) that govern behaviours or choice-sets; but always also the option to free play. This could be a fun way to explore the consequences of how ideologies shape decision making, often ignoring the scientific evidence or realities.

3) Could also have preset opposing states that take ideological stances, so helps the player learn how to deal with a world made up of different ideological leadership/state identities, alongside more pragmatic opponents who are not ideological but instead very self-interested/interest-driven.

4) It would be fun if there was a way to bring in media as part of inter-state/province relations - e.g., player could invest in a strong information warfare/propaganda arm to shape external perceptions as well as internal state views of the decisions of government.

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