Actual and Simplified Geopolitics

[Corvidae]

This'll probably be a controversial suggestion but the game is advertised as a geopolitical simulator, yet geography plays zero role in the game.

 

Geography plays an important role in real life history and politics, obviously. A nationsim without geography can only ever have sandbox-based politics, but balancing or even envisioning a fair scarcity system has proven challenging. When treasures were introduced to fight over, the playerbase responded by creating treasure island forcing Alex to cap their benefit.

So my thought is: Adding a beneficial resource will never been balance-able. The players will find a way to game the system. So in order to introduce geographical importance, you have to use the existing resources.

Without further ado, the actual suggestion:

 

Alliance impact

1. Alliances have to choose a continent, all member nations will function as if on that continent. This has very obvious production repercussions but the logic is that alliances, not nations, are the true political unit of this game. In order to have meaningful politics from resource scarcity you have to tie geography to the political unit (alliances).
   1. This could also be swapped out for production maluses instead of outright forcing people onto the alliance continent. So anyone not on the alliance continent will suffer production loss across the board.
   2. This change forces a new dimension of politics so that each alliance must coordinate with others in order to have access to needed resources.
      1. This may not actually be as significant as people think, with the plethora of available resources in the game the market and large bank-holders will still be able to buy and sell resources as usual for quite awhile until the impact of this change will start to be felt.
   3. This could potentially push larger groups into creating "colony" extension AA's. While this may not make a huge difference, there have been many instances in Nationsims where extensions have turned into their own political units and added to the political scene of the game.

Distance Impact

1. In order to keep it simple, a table of "distances" will be made between continents. Distance will play a factor in both trade and warfare.
   1. Example: Europe, Africa and Asia have a distance of 2 from each other. Asia has a distance of 3 from Australia, Africa -> Australia is 4, etc. The further the distance, the larger the impact.
   2. What this could mean for trade: Distance becomes a percentage of food lost when traded. This includes Alliance to Alliance transfers since alliances will have locations now as well. This could also be extended to all resources or the infamous tariffs suggestion could finally make an appearance and make sense.
   3. What this could mean for warfare: Distance becomes a multiplier for different types of attacks. My initial thought is the further the distance, the larger the malus for offensives and a bonus for defensives. Alternatively, further distance could boost navals/air attacks and nerf ground attacks.

 

 

 

tl;dr - continents now have a set distance between them. It impacts trade, war, and production. In order to maximize this into a prominent political feature, alliances are forced onto continents.