I don't know, but do BattleGoat see this game as purely a war-game or do the company has visions for more politics and diplomacy in it?
Diplomacy
* Organizations like NATO, EU and the WWF should be in the game which the countries can join or leave.
* New organizations could be created mid-game. Maybe the UN will be replaced by another similar organization in 100 years? One that will ban dictatorships and not let countries like China & Russia has veto so they can ruin it for everyone.
* Create deals with other countries about building certain structures in their country, or lease them. Military bases for example. The US has many bases in other countries for example. It's possible to use other countries bases in the game now with certain deals, but it could be done more in-depth. Make the deal to take over and run the military base instead of sharing it with the mother country.
* Having many more things to do in regard of diplomatic relations with other countries. If the relations are bad we should be able to try to fix the relations, if they're good we should be able to have meetings with them to continue the good relations.
Internal politics
* We should be able to build new towns. I've seen on the forums that it has been talked about before and that the developers don't think it's realistic, there are no examples from recent times outside of China. I would argue that the reason for that is that new towns are usually established in countries that are transformed from an undeveloped country to a developed country. We don't see it in the Western world today, but look back 100-200 years and it happened all the time, especially in the U.S. In the Arab world it seems to be popular to build new cities too (Iran & Saudi Arabia).
- It would also be good if we could rename constructions that are built over hexes without a name (other than the positioning).
* Political parties. Simply.
- Maybe even a mode that when an election is lost, we get to chose if we want to remain in power with the new rulers or if we want to go into opposition.
- Ban political parties.
- Turning a democracy into a dictatorship or turning a dictatorship into a democracy. It should be possible by both war and diplomacy.
Regions
I know the countries in the game at the moment are called regions, but they should become countries and inside those countries we should get regions. All countries today have several regions inside the country, but they are called different things in different countries.
* Some regions have more autonomy than others. It may be a good idea to let a region have a little autonomy if they demand it if you want to avoid a conflict that may end in the secession of that region.
- In some countries, the regions aren't really noticeable. They just don't have a system where different regions are threaten different. Sweden for example.
- While some countries have a system where all regions have a little autonomy over some things. The U.S for example.
- And some countries let a few regions have big autonomy while some doesn't have that much. Spain (with Basque & Catalonia) for example.
* Ability to create, split or merge new regions as the game moves on. It will of course not always be popular within the regions.
- Splitting a region in a peace deal may cause the people there to be upset and seeking for re-unification in one or another way. Either inside one of the countries it may be the trigger for that region to get a large independence movement. Something like that should depend much on how strong the region is. A region that is made-up mainly by one ethnical group or a culture may not want to belong to a country that doesn't share their culture.
External politics
* Support opposition or rebels in a country if you dislike the current regime. Probably not so useful in most cases and it can easily turn into hostilities between you and the regime you want to take down. One of the best examples of this is the whole Colombia/Farc issue. Where the U.S supports the current regime and the de facto dictatorship Venezuela supports Farc, which almost resulted in a war not so long time ago. This is not the same as liberation. This is more trying to replace the regime in a country without a military conflict, but sometimes it may evolve into an armed conflict even though that was not the purpose.
* More in-depth relations with other countries. More advance trade, political meetings with allies.
* Give the help to solve conflicts in other regions. For example the Israel-palestina conflict where many of the worlds countries are trying to help to solve the conflict. When a war arises in the game, other (neutral), countries will try to negotiate between the involving parties. Every conflict, small or big, should have a "window" where stats and hard-facts will be presented, but also where different interactions can be made, and not only by the fighting parties.
- A list of the obvious ones: Who are fighting?. But also a list of the ones that are trying to negotiate.
- How's the peace-negotiation going? Are the parties willing to still negotiate or are their only goal to destroy the enemy? Maybe then it's time for some neutral countries to intervene and stop the one who are making an genocide. The Kosovo War are a good example of when countries that didn't had anything to do with it from the beginning became involved only to stop a genocide. WWII are another example.
- How much damage has been caused? Both material damage but also human damage.
- Different actions like inviting the different sides into peace talks on neutral ground. Or, for neutral countries, an option to take a diplomatic side, meaning that they are supporting one side but aren't involved in the war. The Israel-palestina conflict is a good example where many countries are clearly supporting one side but aren't involved in any fighting.
- More options to end a conflict. Instead of only having the option to annex we should have several options.
-- Annexing just a part of the country.
-- Giving independence for a part of the country.
-- Overthrow one, or several, governments. What will happen with the heads of that government? Send them to Hague? Execute them? Just let them go? Maybe "give them to the people". Let the mob take care of business.
-- Status Quo.
* Aid
- Simply giving aid to countries that needs it. An easy way to make friends. Could be by sending money, sending food or build a school.
- The UN is doing much of these, but single countries are helping with even more.
Database
I don't know much about programming but isn't it possible to create a "universal database" for a game like this? Where information about countries, cities, units and everything are stored and can be re-used for every title in the series and also built upon.
That would make it easier to create more features as you don't have to create the map over and over again. Now the game has this map with cities and so, for the next version you don't have to worry about that but instead you can do other stuff like adding history to the cities.
For example, in the first version of the game every city maybe only has "stats" for the current population. But in next years version you could add stuff like historical population, founding year & demography of the city.
Every city should have different stats on how good they are at certain areas. For example Infrastructure & Crime.
This could be done for almost everything in the game, not only cities and countries. After a while the game will contain much more information about everything even though it's not necessary to re-create all information for the next game.
Warfare
* One thing that bothers me in SR2020 is that when a city is completely destroyed it will never be built up again. It would be better if a city never became totally destroyed. It can go down to 0% but never disappear. Other facilities such as industrial centers or air strips should of course be possible to completely erase.
* It would be nice to use an advanced filter with auto-deploying missiles. I had a few submarines outside the coast and used them to fire Tridents over the whole world. But often the game loaded missiles with a much less range than the trident, which was annoying. I would have liked it if I was able to tell the game only to deploy tridents or missiles with a range over x km to those subs.
* Superpowers should be able to bully other countries a little more. The U.S are doing airstrikes Pakistan, Russia have been occupying Georgian territory for several years and called it "Peacekeepers". So just because a country cross the borders to another country it shouldn't be a 100% chance of war. Colombia killed a few FARC-members inside Ecuadorian territory last year, it became a diplomatic crisis but no war.
- The US-Pakistan example again. I think it should be possible to do military operations inside a country with the help of that countries government. For example if they have problems with partisans. If doing it the "good guy"-way you'll need to wait for approval for your actions which could take a day or two and may decrease the chance of success. Doing the "bad guy"-way of it, you'll just ran over your friends and hope they'll not make a big thing of it. I've heard that Obama aren't ruling that last option out of the Pakistan conflict.
Liberation
This is one of the most important issues, at least for me. I really miss it in the game, and to be honest, it's something that most of the games in this genre don't have even though it should be an important part of a geo-political/war game.
New countries are created all the time in the world today. But we rarely see annexations, which is the only possible "peace" in SR2020.
This could add a whole new way to play the game and especially a whole new way for wars to be created where we can engage.
* Several regions in the world today want independence from their current states. For different reasons.
- Different reasons can be (Of course, some of them have more than one reason):
-- Cultural: If a smaller region inside a state doesn't share the same culture as the rest of the country. Examples: (Basque)
-- Religious: When a group or region in a country doesn't share the same religion as the state, it may sometimes create tensions. Examples: Chechnya
-- Historical: Regions that once was independent but not anymore. Examples: Scania, Isn't an active separatist movement at the moment but it would definitely become if Sweden would start to fall apart or get a war on our soil.
-- Ethnical: Ethnical groups seeking for a country to call their own. Examples: (Kurdistan), Kurdistan are a good example as it also covers five countries, which i think aren't uncommon for cultural/ethnical separatist movements. Romani, Are spread over Europe but without a country. Just like the jews were before. Maybe they will also get a country? In Romania maybe?.
-- Political: Should be possible to happen randomly for all countries. The country splits into two. Both claims to be the "real", and they both get the original countries name but with something that explains their differences. Examples: Vietnam (North & South), Korea (North & South), China (Communist & Taiwan), Germany (East & West).
* Some regions may also just want to change country. They may belong to one country but would rather belong to another. Examples: South Ossetia.
* Every "internal region" in the game should be able to be independence, but some would of course be almost impossible unless the player really funds the separatist movement there, while it should be almost inevitable for some regions to start a civil war for their independence.
* When the separatist country covers more than one country?
- The separatists should be able to be of a different strength in the different countries. Look at Kurdistan who is active in Turkey and Iraq but not as strong in Iran, Syria & Armenia.
* What will the separatists do?
- First of all, they should seek a friendly way to gain their independence. But most of the time a country will not let one of its provinces to break away without a fight. An example of when it indeed did happen though is the Serbia & Montenegro split in 2006.
- When they can't gain independence in a diplomatic way, some will give up but some will start to fight against the government. Violent demonstrations, car bombs/minor attentats (that will lower the morale/scare your population) and other minor violent actions.
- After a while it can evolve into a full military conflict - a civil war.
- If a independence movement has enough support from other countries in the world they may just declare independence without a war. Just like Kosovo last year. Serbia doesn't like it but Kosovo’s support from around the world makes it almost impossible for Serbia to stop it.
* What can the player and AI do?
- The player and the AI should be able to support separatist movements. With money & weapons mainly. It's no secret that Russia recently supported the separatists in South Ossetia & Abkhazia for example. And it's also no secret that the U.S has supported different separatists globally.
- The player and the AI should also be able to support the current regime against separatists if a country gets a problem with it. It should depend on the countries relationship (for the AI).
- The support should be either secret or public. Of course, the secret support could be revealed if you're not careful. And that should not be good for your reputation in the world, and especially against the country you support separatists in.
* Triggers
- One trigger for a separatist movement to become active are of course foreign support, but it should be ways for countries to defend themselves against it.
- Taking good care of the different religious & ethnical groups in the country will greatly reduce the risk of them to start any troubles.
- Allowing a little autonomy for different regions will also reduce the risk of them wanting even more power.
- A high GDP should also reduce the risk. You won't be successful to support separatists in the U.S states for example. Not unless you disrupts the country in other ways, like fighting a war on their soil or any other way that will greatly weaken the U.S government. But to start a civil war in a country like Nigeria won't be that hard.
- Political rebels should mainly start to be active when the current government is weak. Either if they're about to be defeated in a war or if the current government has a very low support from the people.
- Once a separatist movement has become active it should be very hard to defeat them. Even though your national army outnumbers them by far they won't go down that easy.
Precision bombing
This is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a time, but it would probably need the database-idea too to work as it will need much information about all the cities in the game.
In SR2020 we can bomb cities, but that's mainly just bombing the people in the city without any reason behind it. That's generally not how wars are done these days.
I saw a program on the television a week ago or so about the initial stages of the Iraq War. The U.S bombed Baghdad, just as it is possible in the game, but they only bombed targets that were used by the regime. They didn't attack the people of the city. And in the recent Gaza War we heard many reports on how Israel mainly targeted structures used by the terrorist organization Hamas, but they also bombed the homes of their leaders. In this case it was some collateral damage, but it's hard when the enemy fight without a uniform and hide in the crowd (
). While the government is usually already underground when the war starts, bombing their facilities can have a more symbolic value that lowers the moral of both the leaders and the people.It may be a little too much micromanagement, so it should be an alternative to leave it totally up to the military officers what we'll attack in a city.
I think we should be able to choose targets when bombing a city. Of course, we could still just bomb the city SR2020/WWII-style, but precision bombing are more modern. To do this, it should be an option or so in the military screen where we can plan aerial attacks. Open it and get a list of countries we are at war with and then cities in that country. Open a city and we get a list of possible targets in that city.
- Government buildings: Every capital should have these in the list of possible targets. All types of governmental buildings, from the seat of government to the individual homes of all ministers. Attacking these would give big benefits if your goal is to overthrow the current regime. It would lower the moral of all ministers (simply making them less effective in their respective areas) and attacking individual homes would lower the moral of the attacked minister very much and if you're lucky even kill him. Killing a minister should bring temporary chaos of that area in the country, which would then gradually but slowly come to normal again. So killing the minister of defense could make their armed forces very vulnerable for a short time and very disorganized for a long time. That would give your forces big advantages.
- Infrastructure: Bombing roads, rails, bridges, airports, seaports and stuff like that. It would hit hard on both the military and civilians. Individual Airports and seaports should be individual targets while general roads are more general and every hit lowers the infrastructure stat in the city. Well-known/big bridges should also be individual targets, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate & Öresundsbron.
- Landmarks: Landmarks are already in the game and something we can bomb, but they are not individual and only in the biggest cities. I think all larger individual landmarks in big cities should be in the game in the list of possible targets. Instead of just having a landmark in Paris it should have the Eiffel Tower, Arc the Triomphe and the Louvre. When there's a war between two states this should usually not be the target, but separatist movements should be more prone to attack this type of targets. Doing that should have a huge impact on the moral and prestige of the country, and especially on the targeted city. An example of an separatist movement that detonates a bomb in a city is the 1996 Manchester bombing by IRA. It did indeed not target a landmark, but it targeted the financial part of the city, which are closely associated with landmarks. ETA is notorious for it too. And in a WWIII scenario, i believe that military armies would also start to attack landmarks, even though it's not common in the current conflicts in the world. Maybe the destruction of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad during the Iraq-war can count as an example of when a countries army attacked a landmark of another country.
Statistics
* I really miss that there's not statistics of the wars once they end and the region is erased. At the moment we only have the total kills/death for all wars, and when a country falls it's erased. It would be fun if we could split it and see statistics for the different wars too. And also that the statistics are still there after a region falls or after a peace treaty.
* More war statistics.
- Total civilian casualties.
- Maybe a day-by-day reporting of how the war goes. Example: The first day i lose 10.000 km2 and 10 units but the next day I win 20.000 km2 without losing a single unit. A scenario like that is simply written as a 10.000 km2 win and 10 units lost in the game at the moment.
- Possible more?
* I would like to have demographics in the game. Religion, ethnicity & nationality (immigration). At the moment we have religion, but i don't think the figures change anything during the game.
- Statistics could be made of everything. But the ones I stated are most important for me at least. If the game starts to use a database it would be easier to put more and more statistics in the game.
Other
* It should be possible to ask the UN for building rights or buy land from the UN for different project. Like building a bridge over straits that have a one-hexed UN-line trough it, which is basically every strait. Or for producing oil of the coasts.
* What will the timeline of the next game be? 2030? Sounds a little to far into the future. Maybe the series should change a little and go closer to modern time? So if the next game is released in 2012, the game will start in 2013?
* If they chose to make a database, we could have several different start dates in the game if history is included in the database.
* Of course, the speed issue. But I guess it's something that are high priority and will be fixed as computers are getting better.
This message was written over a long time, I started it over a month ago. So I've probably missed some important things.
! what a lot of words. Wonder if anyone will read this after I went to all the trouble to type. 
