Subtractability, Resource Conflicts, Indigenous Sovereignty, Water

[1n7r3p1d]

Hiya!

Just want to say: Huge fan of your game.

A bit about me: I'm a Canadian activist, connected within social justice, environmental and political spaces at the national level. There's things I've been responsible for that you HAVE read about in the paper. I consider myself to be an expert on resource policy, indigenous politics and Canadian security issues in general. I have also vociferously recommended your game to other geopolitics nerds. By way of example, I compulsively read the latest edition of the CIA world fact-book. I have been playing your products since I bought a used boxed version of SR2020 in like 2010-2011 on a whim in the Atrium by the Bay games store (now closed) downtown Toronto. As soon as I saw SR Ultimate (I didn't even know it had been released until Trump Rising was promoted) I snapped it up and have been thrilled with the updates.

I have some suggestions I hope you will take into consideration for future updates:

1) Resource Subtractibility

Resources in Game should deplete over time. This would FORCE players to build new facilities and develop new resources. I understand from an AI perspective that this would tax the engine and likely cause the failure of NPC economies, but there's no reason why I should be able to max out Canada or America's oil production and never have to worry about it again. Your game is set in the era of peak oil. Need and Greed for resources are the precipitating factors in a whole range of geopolitical conflicts. It's no fun playing as Nigeria or Angola if you're not worried about the long term (ie. post-oil). Please model the 'Dutch Disease'

2) Resource Excludability

Blockades, embargoes, protest actions... We need to be able to keep other people from getting the goods: this is the bread and butter of geopolitics. In Canada we have resource conflicts over pipeline development. The ability to ship Canadian crude to market via tidewater is dictated by opposition to oilsands infrastructure, specifically pipelines. I have read in other threads that you don't want to model pipelines because the trades are macro-level. However, the inability to interfere with macro-level trading actually reduces the power of big bloc countries like Russia, China, USA etc. I propose that ALL resource trades require either a direct land connection to the recipient (road/rail and/or transit treaties) OR a merchant-marine similar to military unit trades. This sounds onerous, but it would create strategic opportunities to intervene in sovereign economic matters and create stranded assets. There's not enough of that going on in game. I want to stop Russia from selling its gas to western Europe as Ukraine, dammit!


3) Indigenous Sovereignty/Environmentalism
I'm surprised that in Canada there aren't strong separatist or indigenous groups who actively oppose the state ie. Oka, Gustafsen Lake, Site C. I feel like this dynamic should be modeled at the geopolitical level. Partisan units should have the option of spawning inside these regions, but be handled differently. For example, Canadian First Nations partisans might move to and prevent the operation of resource facilities. However, unlike other conventional military units these partisans don't engage militarily with nearby Canadian military units unless attacked first. Attacking these units could cause several more to spawn and lead to a huge (10-20%) drop in approval, both civic and military. Maybe the probability of presence for the units could be linked to law-enforcement rating? The occupation forces should have 'nationhood' and be able to be negotiated with through some diplomatic mechanism eventually perhaps acquiring a permanent stake (reducing overall revenues) in the resource projects they occupy, or preventing their completion before they disappear (this should be especially true for dams, power plants and extraction like timber or oil). This model can be translated to other regions globally where local opposition exists to resource development. ie. niger delta (oil) Australia (oil, coal), Ukraine (electricity) even the UK (oil) Probability of appearance for these units could be linked to approval rating. Under 30% approval, enviro-partisans should start popping up. Hell, you can have little independent green boats path to/shut down oceanic platforms/oil rigs as well (Greenpeace).

4) Water
Replacing water with Rubber makes sense given the limitations of your engine and the need to rebalance the game to favour small portions of the developing world. However, just as with Oil, subtractable freshwater ought to be a major geopolitical concern. Particularly with respect to a country's environmental rating, freshwater availability should be impacted by policy choices. ie. if you are running a coal-burning, polluting China, fresh water should be correspondingly hard to access. This would give real weight to the Environmental policy beyond international opinion and would reinforce the practical value of making good environmental choices. Modeling things like climate change are difficult given your engine, but the significance of freshwater (particularly in the aftermath of the Flint debacle) underscores that water access is WAYYY more significant than rubber (an industrial/commercial good).

5) Pressure Groups
Sudan is running out of water. As the USA, a nonprofit emails you imploring you to provide fresh water access. You can 1) give a technology which improves water production garnering a 2% increase in approval or 2) give a large quantity of water from your reserve garnering a 4% approval increase or ignore the request for a -1% approval change. Lets face it. A lot of decisions aren't steered by leaders but by the pros or cons of taking action on a given issue in the context of political consequences.

None of these changes are particularly difficult to implement from my understanding. I think these systems would really create a significant level of realism but of course, I'm not sure how the AI could be made to play nice with some of these changes. I decided to post this because these are the things I long for most when I play SR. I took courses in uni on international organizations and have come to regard most of geopolitics as an exercise in the exertion of influence through a wide variety of nongovernmental bodies (including terrorism). I think that your game hits a lot of the right notes but fails to provide a model for NGO influence/power brokering, particularly on macro-level issues like resource development and the environment.

Also, why for the love of god why can't I fly over the pole? :(