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Other Games / Re: Strategy Game Discussion: How Stop Blob? Should Stop Blob? Maybe Blob Good?
« on: February 04, 2022, 08:38:39 am »
Most states in strategy games appear to act like "hive-minds" where everyone acts in lock-step with perfect information. Modeling individual actors would help alleviate the issue, like the Crusader Kings series or even the Tropico series, but not remove it entirely.
Tropico might be closest to a "traditional" strategy game that is able to stop "blob-like" behavior. It's a city builder where war is merely a small part of it, and you already start off controlling the entire island, so if you're fighting a war against rebels or against the superpowers...you must have messed up somehow and now you're fighting for your survival, not for the right to conquer another island. Tropico also allows you to embezzle money from the government and stuff it in a Swiss Bank Account - it's an action only benefits you and harms your country utterly. Tropico also have the benefit of being a very small island, so you could simulate everyone living on said island effectively.
For a strategy game that is really good at replicating a non-blob ecosystem, look at the 1983 game Dictator on the ZX Spectrum. It does so by having the following:
- A point system that rewards longevity, the amount of money you steal from the treasury, and whether you live or die in the inevitable uprising against you. The point system incentivizes caring about yourself, not the state that you run, so you are tempted to run the state inefficiently...because if you do run it efficiently, that state infrastructure might later be turned against you.
- Simulating eight blobs - the army, the peasants, the landowners, the guerrillas, the Leftopians, the Secret Police, the Russians, and the Americans - and forcing you try to balance relations between these blobs, while making influential decisions that help one side or another.
- War being seen as a fail state - if one of the blobs is trying to kill you, you must have messed up badly. You really don't want Leftopia invading you, for instance.
- The ability to run away from a coup attempt rather than escape (in fact, running away with the loot you stolen from the treasury might be a good game-winning strategy...and I have known to anger people in an attempt to provoke a coup attempt so that I could run away, rather than sit in power and risk getting assassinated by the secret police).
It's a fairly simple game compared to Tropico, but what it does simulate, it does so incredibly well.
Hidden Agenda is a mix between a strategy game and an interactive novel...and sits in-between Dictator and Tropico in terms of complexity. There is no point system to encourage you to sabotage your own state, though you may have to deal with an occasional coup (and it being considered a bad thing). There are many more actors in Hidden Agenda though, including influential members and party members, both of whom can back (or oppose) military and parliamentary coups against you. There's no rebellions in the game. Or rather, there are in-game "rebellion" event chains, but I don't think they can seriously affect your chances of survival - all they really do is cause certain influencers to get angry at you, which might provoke a far more dangerous coup attempt that could end the game. So you might want to fund the military not because you're afraid of the rebels, but because you're afraid of the military and you want to appease them so they don't try to launch a coup against you.
Tropico, Dictator, and Hidden Agenda represent Cold War dictatorships in South America. I suppose that causes them make similar game design decisions. I'm sure with enough practice, you can mini-max these games and ultimately build the best possible state, but there's going to be limits to how far you can go. More importantly, it will require a lot of trial and error - something that is not really possible for real life rulers.
Tropico might be closest to a "traditional" strategy game that is able to stop "blob-like" behavior. It's a city builder where war is merely a small part of it, and you already start off controlling the entire island, so if you're fighting a war against rebels or against the superpowers...you must have messed up somehow and now you're fighting for your survival, not for the right to conquer another island. Tropico also allows you to embezzle money from the government and stuff it in a Swiss Bank Account - it's an action only benefits you and harms your country utterly. Tropico also have the benefit of being a very small island, so you could simulate everyone living on said island effectively.
For a strategy game that is really good at replicating a non-blob ecosystem, look at the 1983 game Dictator on the ZX Spectrum. It does so by having the following:
- A point system that rewards longevity, the amount of money you steal from the treasury, and whether you live or die in the inevitable uprising against you. The point system incentivizes caring about yourself, not the state that you run, so you are tempted to run the state inefficiently...because if you do run it efficiently, that state infrastructure might later be turned against you.
- Simulating eight blobs - the army, the peasants, the landowners, the guerrillas, the Leftopians, the Secret Police, the Russians, and the Americans - and forcing you try to balance relations between these blobs, while making influential decisions that help one side or another.
- War being seen as a fail state - if one of the blobs is trying to kill you, you must have messed up badly. You really don't want Leftopia invading you, for instance.
- The ability to run away from a coup attempt rather than escape (in fact, running away with the loot you stolen from the treasury might be a good game-winning strategy...and I have known to anger people in an attempt to provoke a coup attempt so that I could run away, rather than sit in power and risk getting assassinated by the secret police).
It's a fairly simple game compared to Tropico, but what it does simulate, it does so incredibly well.
Hidden Agenda is a mix between a strategy game and an interactive novel...and sits in-between Dictator and Tropico in terms of complexity. There is no point system to encourage you to sabotage your own state, though you may have to deal with an occasional coup (and it being considered a bad thing). There are many more actors in Hidden Agenda though, including influential members and party members, both of whom can back (or oppose) military and parliamentary coups against you. There's no rebellions in the game. Or rather, there are in-game "rebellion" event chains, but I don't think they can seriously affect your chances of survival - all they really do is cause certain influencers to get angry at you, which might provoke a far more dangerous coup attempt that could end the game. So you might want to fund the military not because you're afraid of the rebels, but because you're afraid of the military and you want to appease them so they don't try to launch a coup against you.
Tropico, Dictator, and Hidden Agenda represent Cold War dictatorships in South America. I suppose that causes them make similar game design decisions. I'm sure with enough practice, you can mini-max these games and ultimately build the best possible state, but there's going to be limits to how far you can go. More importantly, it will require a lot of trial and error - something that is not really possible for real life rulers.