the bureaucrats and their 'history' - I question the insistence on granularity of simulation in such grand strategy, when so often this results in restrictions on player agency. Under the hood might as well be invisible. Many grand strategy games I play require relearning 'how the world operates' because every single dev has their own idiosyncratic (and generally flawed) take on culture and history. In some universes, I operate like an efficient military hierarchy with direct control, while others work to simulate mixtures of class and power within society.. isn't it strange we've come to judge our games of epic warfare and conquest, on the veracity of their bureaucratic simulations?
Given the origins of particular game, I can tell you that the features here are more-or-less the expanded wishlist of the M&T team when no longer limited by the practical concerns of beating EU4 into submission.
As for the specifics of why the extreme granularity? The idea is to have, more or less, a simulation more than a game. What would be most preferable from the perspective of the devs is that, in a simple observation game with no player interaction whatsoever, that the world would roughly follow the trends of history. "Railroading", or forcing particular outcomes to take the contours of history regardless of actual circumstances, are a crutch to make up for a lack of simulation. Given that they're making their own game, I imagine the expectation is that they can remove all such crutches by... well, increasing the granularity of simulation to the point where history repeats because history is represented. Within reason, of course; not all historical events were certainty, but if nothing else true historical outcomes should at least be possible.
The challenge, of course, comes in defining what sort of gameplay the result should have. Is the player's goal to buck history and shape things for themselves, or to try and follow the contours as best as they possibly can? When you run into such overwhelming representation and simulation, actually interacting with the game state can feel downright impossible. Drowning in a sea of numbers can be downright exhausting.
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Topic: Grey Eminence: A 1-Million Hex Grand Strategy Game With Trailer From 1356-1956 (Read 2224 times)