Do you consider SR 2010 a war game or a strategy game?

[icet]

One thing which needs some clarity is whether the game SR 2010 is a war game or a strategy game? What do you think about it? Of course many would say it is both but just to have some clarification I would request you to give your opinion whether it has more emphasis on war and then strategy or it has more emphasis on strategy and then war? Please post your opinions and take part in the poll. Thanks

[George Geczy]

Interesting question to ask - in fact, Chris and I were just discussing this very question earlier today. I've also thought about it a quite a few times since our release earlier this year.

In our conversation today, we had come across the question of whether to add a few features to the military model to increase military realism in certain areas. The problem is that all such additions tend to add to the complexity of the game - they might be of interest to the wargamer types, but might make Supreme Ruler even more intimidating to the non-wargamers.

And there is also the question of whether SR2010 really has reached any sort of strong acceptance amongst wargamers - for example, are true wargamer types put off by having to deal with an economy, diplomacy, and the other political bits that SR2010 throws in? Certainly games like "Operational Art of War" or "Panzer General" don't add those bits.

And are the "Geo-Political Sim" types put off by having to deal with the military? Do they just want to rule the world using their diplomatic skills, and dealing with those pesky artillery lines just gets in the way?

Obviously a lot of people like the combinations that SR2010 provides, but I do wonder if there are gamers on both sides that don't take to SR2010 because they don't want to play the other bit.

-- George.

[Custodius]

I for one, was attracted to the game because the box indicated it was politics heavy and economically based. I am a big follower of the 'Butter, not guns, win wars' philosophy and thus was attracted to it.

I like building things. I like expanding, I'm a builder.

Favorite game?
Civilization.

Second favorite game?
Imperialism II.

Third favorite game?
Masters of Orion.

You see the trend. So for me to pick up this game, which clearly seemed to be a wargame despite its geopolitical features, was somewhat unusual. As I said to my fiance in Frys electronics: "I have my doubts, but for 29 bucks, I'll give it a shot. And I'm bored of Axis and Allies.

I'm a roleplayer. I enjoy getting in to the story and ideas and concepts beyond my tanks beating up your tanks. I want to know why and how, I want to understand the rationals involved.

I'm weird.

[Il Duce]

It's a bit of both for me.

Sometimes I like battlefield maneuvering, sometime I like diplomacy, econ, and intrigue. A game that offers both is rare. Way back when, KOEI offered several games based on ancient chinese legends that did this, and despite the fact that they were old DOS games, I continued to play them when other games just didn't get it. Diplomacy and alliances and such can offer so much variation in the outcome that these games end up being playable again and again because they are so unpredictable.

SR2010 is very good at striking a balance between these types, so I would say just keep following your gut here, both in updates and in future projects.

[Noble713]

Definitely both, which is what I love.

I enjoy games where you can build a nation from scratch, molding it socially and economically to your own design. However, this is only half of the fun. Taking your personally-sculpted military and leading it in battle to crush your neighbors is not only great fun on a visceral level (YAY! explosions and destruction!) but also for the satisfaction of your creation triumphing over others.

[Baloogan]

I wish there was more... artistic control over a country.

Code: Select all

[ ] is something you can edit
Politics
  Civil Servants are paid [x$] 
    and are recruited from [military, retired military, civilians, political connections]
Law
  Guilty till prooven innocent    [x]
  Innocent until prooven guilty [ ]
  porn illegal                          [ ]  
  honor killings                   [x]
  homosexual activities illegal  [ ]
Military
  Recruitment (% [18] yearolds taken into military) [100%]
  [POW treatment]
  [STABBITY STABBITY SOMETHING SOMETHING]

I like .... horrific amounts of micromanagement.

[The_Blind_One]

I wish there was more... artistic control over a country.

Code: Select all

[ ] is something you can edit
Politics
  Civil Servants are paid [x$] 
    and are recruited from [military, retired military, civilians, political connections]
Law
  Guilty till prooven innocent    [x]
  Innocent until prooven guilty [ ]
  porn illegal                          [ ]  
  honor killings                   [x]
  homosexual activities illegal  [ ]
Military
  Recruitment (% [18] yearolds taken into military) [100%]
  [POW treatment]
  [STABBITY STABBITY SOMETHING SOMETHING]

I like .... horrific amounts of micromanagement.

I second that

[George Geczy]

The question of "horrific" micro-management has three sides to it. 1) It does help create the full "artistic control" feel, allowing you to be a little more immersed in the creation of your own personal domain. 2) It scares a lot of people away who don't like that level of micro-management. 3) It often has little "real" effect.

Issue (2) (scaryness) can be resolved through hiding some of the advanced choices and using ministers, but issue (3) is what tends to concern me more... Things like porn laws or civil servant recruitment tend to (individually) have very minor effects on how a country runs. Taken together your choices may start to add up, but usually only in a bad way - if you select middle-ages autocratic government policies you'll likely hurt your Civilian and World approvals and not really gain much in the process.

I have only looked briefly at SuperPower 2 but as I recall they had many of these 'lesser' policies in their available choices; however, individually they made very little difference in that game to how the region and game progressed. On the other hand, Civilization 4 did actually move to add more options in this area than previous Civ versions, with the addition of their 'Civics' system that allows customization of government styles. However even this addition to Civ stays with pretty broad strokes - less than 30 broad policies such as 'Slavery', 'Police State', 'Free Speech' etc.

Supreme Ruler 2010's original design did have more of these minor-policy elements in it, but many were removed because they just didn't do very much or add to game play. One of the remaining ones is the Immigration/Emigration controls panel, that let you set preferences for fine-tuning your Immigration and Emigration policies. That must be one of the most useless panels in the entire game , since the effects are so minor over the short timelines of a scenario or campaign.

-- George.

[red]

Laws may not have much effect, but I'm very much in favor of adding attributes to differentiate regions. There's not actually a great deal separating, for example, the United States and France in this game, but, their populations would expect different things from their government and so on. There's also not much which seems to hold the player accountable to actual needs of their populace. (If there is, it's not in cvars much less game panels and responding to it is like voodoo.) I'll write a few factors I can think up below. You could fit them all on a handy new "State of Region" kind of pop-up on your next game.

Populations' priorities: Factors such as personal wealth, social welfare, economic stability, culture, international cooperativeness/competitiveness, state security, pacifism/aggressiveness, environmental quality, technological level, etc. These importance of these factors would be visible on a pop-up, their individual approval would be itemized right next to the importance, and overall DAR would be more finely tuned to the player's actions. People become less angered by discrepancies the longer they live with them, and their negative effects are reduced. These factors address obvious differences such as why the United States can attack Iraq while Canada could never (politically).

Languages: You can track elite languages and common languages, and adjust social cohesiveness based on the discrepancy. This would be particularly suited to making the game more long-term, because you could have regions stand to gain at least an elite tag for a language if there is sufficient contact between the regions for a certain number of years (itself dependent on their simularities and education spending). I can see how languages might be considered a burden, but I think they've been so important to administering empires that it really can't be ignored. It would make the game far more interesting and realistic... no more 'one size fits all' approach to conquering whoever you like because they're just like you anyway. It comes as close as you can to cataloging cultures anyway, which would be another very significant factor in making regions less generic.

Media: Include a public relations panel which allows the player to choose a media strategy. This would affect population priorities over time, and belli! Its effectiveness could vary depending on the type of media in the country and the existing govtypesuccess variable (e.g., state-controlled media is highly effective in putting the message out, but the people distrust dictatorship).

Social cohesiveness: Take the industrial efficiency effects of DAR and make them dependent on this, along with effects from the above. It would model people being disenfranchised or outcast because of cultural differences, language barriers interfering with media and the market, people generally unable to function together. It would rise with the number of languages under your region.

Oh, and corruption!

[George Geczy]

Corruption? That doesn't happen any more in modern governments, does it?

Though I like your points, and I've made note of them for future consideration. The bit about languages is an interesting idea... Though possibly hard to actually implement into gameplay.

[Il Duce]

I like Red's points above. Perhaps a generalized way of addressing them would be simply to acknowledge cultural distinctions, whether they are linguistic or other types of subtler cultural identities, including, sigh, religious differences. Not that I would be promoting one culture over anouther, but that certainly in history and the present moment, cultural factors probably play the central role in dividing the world. Economic differences generally have a way of working themselves out. A model of anywhere from three to seven cultural characteristics could be applied to each region. These could affect the outcome of all types of interaction, whether it is just civrelate, trade, diplomacy, belli, ...

These values could be simply fixed, or they might have some room for flex over time.

[Firewolf]

Corruption? That doesn't happen any more in modern governments, does it?

Though I like your points, and I've made note of them for future consideration. The bit about languages is an interesting idea... Though possibly hard to actually implement into gameplay.

Of course corruption happens in modern governments. There is always a fat cat taking more than there fair share, trading off some of the governments money into a swiss account or something. Poloice getting bribed or taking the drugs that they confiscated and selling it on

[vishniac]

For me, possessing only the demo (but don't worry! It seems to please me more and more so I'll end up buying the real thing soon), I somewhat disliked what was repeatedly said on these forums: that any scenario was not conceived to last more than 5-6 years.
I am a builder at heart (not that I am afraid of micromanaging my armed forces, mind you!) and I love to build those factories, spare money and repurchase bonds till there's no debt and I can focus on military units, or have a research strategy.

I try to do it but you'll end facing those behemoths of 100s of units made of anti-air and artillery... Hard!
A little more 'fluidity' and time to do things would add (why all those appealing technology when it takes 2 years to get one of them?) Of course, it could just be that I need to pass the first regional level.

I am a big fan of Alpha Centauri and Europa Universalis.

[ozmono2005]

I think its without doubt a strategy game, its certainly more heavy on war aspects but most empire building or strategy games focuss on war to some degree. The game has all the socio-economic and socio-political depth of Victoria and also as much military depth as HOI. It is a combination of the two but thats what makes it a grand strategy game

[ETF]

I agree a "Grand Strategy Game" is probably the best description I would place on the product..............