Main Features?

[nimrod123]

Not as hard as you'd think. The CIA has a very neat publication that I think they've had since 1947 - Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments - which is basically what it says on the tin. It is, I believe, published monthly. A check by PDS with CIA's historical office should reveal whether the publication stretches back far enough.

Where it doesn't, here's a thing: The New York Times considers/considered itself a "paper of record" - and back in the 1950s, at least, that included chronicling every cabinet change in every government in the world. (There were fewer, so it was actually practical to do this on a weekly basis.)

i love how the CIA seems to record everything. my school libary had a encylopdia shelf of books with CIA books on it, stuff like HOS, GDP for last 50 years, populations, rough ethnic breakdown, religons per country, gdp on military, and all this is on every country updated yearly

[Hagar]

i love how the CIA seems to record everything. my school libary had a encylopdia shelf of books with CIA books on it, stuff like HOS, GDP for last 50 years, populations, rough ethnic breakdown, religons per country, gdp on military, and all this is on every country updated yearly

Well I doubt it's 'just' a CIA thing, but rather an Intelligence Agency thing... See the Stasi archives for example.

[Cybvep]

Yeah, one might wonder what do they need this stuff for. I suspect that they like strategy games and record everything for this purpose.

[Penta2]

Why the CIA (or their counterparts) need stuff like the World Factbook (undoubtedly what Nimrod is referring to; the online version is a thing of beauty, to a political science geek anyway): This kind of basic data, sometimes classified, sometimes not (for the record, the World Factbook had a classified edition from 1962 and an unclassified edition from 1972 - no idea if they still produce a classified version) is fairly essential to making sense of other, more traditional, intelligence.

[ohms_law]

Yeah, one might wonder what do they need this stuff for. I suspect that they like strategy games and record everything for this purpose.

Actually, that's not too far from the truth. "Gaming", and especially strategy gaming, at least partially got started in various military establishments throughout the world.
Of course, those aren't exactly commercially viable games, but they're not supposed to be. "Balance" doesn't really enter in to their thinking, at all.

[Bronq]

Well I doubt it's 'just' a CIA thing, but rather an Intelligence Agency thing... See the Stasi archives for example.

Stasi, also known as 'Quasi':

[Raph]

Any hope for POP's and an indepth political system like in Victoria being included?

Have to echo this, POPs really give the best representation of nations and their differences and a POP-driven game is very dynamic and makes every subsystem of the game fit together in a beutiful way. However, there's lots and lots of research and balance work when you have such an indirect mechanism at the core of the game.

[El-Fatih]

I hope they implement in this game cultural or national groups, religion and the population growth number like in Vic 2. What I love from Vic 2 is how your population grows and also the national minorities.

[Alojzy]

Have to echo this, POPs really give the best representation of nations and their differences and a POP-driven game is very dynamic and makes every subsystem of the game fit together in a beutiful way. However, there's lots and lots of research and balance work when you have such an indirect mechanism at the core of the game.

Honestly, I don't see this game working without POPs in any other way then railroaded scripting we know from early HoIs and EUs. Which is not something anyone wants to comeback to, I hope.

I still think economic model of Vicky 2 is not really appropriate though. Having one big world market with anyone having access to it beats the purpose of important stuff like european common market, OPEC cartel-like agreements, embargoes and such. It's really important to have local markets going (ineffectively, of course) before you switch to the global level. Also, Vicky 2 was very much raw material and volume of production centered - while in Cold War era it's not exactly the same to have japanese TV/car and russian TV/car. Quality and technological level of goods is much more important now then in the XIX century.

[Selenimar]

while in Cold War era it's not exactly the same to have japanese TV/car and russian TV/car.

Yes, a Russian TV may be also used as AK-47.

[nimrod123]

Yes, a Russian TV may be also used as AK-47.

yes both provided endless entertainment and also double as great baby sitting devices

[Alojzy]

And yet for some reason when the Afghanistan black market poped up, people of the bloc prefered western goods instead of home-made ones. Same with cars and to be fair, anything else.

Quality of the consumer goods was almost as much important factor as the quantity (or rather, constant shortages in case of the bloc).

[DoctorPlague]

The game will feature atomic bombs i suppose. Just my bet!

I just hope they will make it so its not something you do to win, but launching them would be the way all players lose the game. Hoping that it's being realistic.

[DoctorPlague]

Have to echo this, POPs really give the best representation of nations and their differences and a POP-driven game is very dynamic and makes every subsystem of the game fit together in a beutiful way. However, there's lots and lots of research and balance work when you have such an indirect mechanism at the core of the game.

Yeah, but i would not advocate on it being the same as Vicky. Thats very complex and the whole engine is based on those POPs, which is great for Vicky but not for other games perhaps. However population should be represented in some way. A stats screen or some pie charts is often good enough. Sliders and decisions could be a wise way of controlling it. And laws to affect them etc. Like communist law of no abroad travelling for example. I guess several below the hood mechanisms would be possible in such an event.

[Red_warning]

It would be interesting to be able to shift a country's ideology and alliance. Imagine communist America

As usual I'll probably play my first game as Sweden and I really hope there will be a way for me to join either NATO or the Warsaw pact.

[kunadam]

Word market, and free trade zones: De difference is - as far as I know - is that while there is a world market, countries can implement tariffs. Countries entering free trade agreement do not use tariffs between them. Also there was embargo, which forbade trading between certain countries.
I think embargo was already implemented in EU3, and free trade agreements is again not hard to implement. I hope.

[Alojzy]

Yes, but problem with the compatibilty of bloc markets and western markets was not tarrifs-related (well, not mainly), but in the lack of currency reserves.

Trade inside the bloc was based on barter exchange and their currencies were not directly exchangable for the western ones - the official course that allowed you to sell foreign exchange was artificially low, while ability to buy foreign currency was limited by quotas (for example you could buy some small amount when you were going to the western country for the business trip or scientific exchange and such).

It's whole different level of problems to model - it's not Vicky 2, it's post-gold standard era. To buy something on the western markets as a bloc country you need western currency - and to obtain that, you have to sell something in the countries willing to pay in dollar/pound first.

It created a problem with debts as well - bloc countries in significant debt to the western investors (like Poland in 80-ties, after poorly invested loans in 70-ties) had to sell whatever they could and how they could to the countries willing to pay in "real money" to pay their debts.

I'm not really sure how to model world without universally accepted currency (gold) that Vicky had.

[Tiresais]

For all intents and purposes you can model the Sino-Soviet sphere as a market separate from the rest - two rarely crossing and self-contained markets. This is one of the reasons it was so important to influence mineral rich or useful countries from the 3rd world - exclusivity of rare resources for your superpower bloc.

[Alojzy]

For all intents and purposes you can model the Sino-Soviet sphere as a market separate from the rest - two rarely crossing and self-contained markets. This is one of the reasons it was so important to influence mineral rich or useful countries from the 3rd world - exclusivity of rare resources for your superpower bloc.

Not so much for soviet bloc, though. What they needed was not the rare resources, but first technologies and advanced machinery, then when their economy started to fall fulltime, also as basic stuff as food (at some point, USSR started to rely more and more on grain from USA and Argentina). Lucky for them, oil crisis hit at that point western economies hard and selling crude oil to the Western Europe gave USSR decent hard currency income.

I like two world markets system idea though, with only limited exchange between them - it might be sort of simplified simulation of fully exchangable currency vs. internally regulated currencies of the eastern bloc.

[Tiresais]

Not so much for soviet bloc, though. What they needed was not the rare resources, but first technologies and advanced machinery, then when their economy started to fall fulltime, also as basic stuff as food (at some point, USSR started to rely more and more on grain from USA and Argentina). Lucky for them, oil crisis hit at that point western economies hard and selling crude oil to the Western Europe gave USSR decent hard currency income.

I like two world markets system idea though, with only limited exchange between them - it might be sort of simplified simulation of fully exchangable currency vs. internally regulated currencies of the eastern bloc.

Remember they both considered this a zero-sum game - any resources the Soviets could restrict would lead to the downfall of Capitalism in the long-run (Stalin was a very long-term thinker in the views of the Long Telegram)