Espiocracy
Disclaimer: Trailer & screenshots are early work in progress
GRAND ESPIONAGE STRATEGY
Choose one of 102 countries and guide character-driven national intelligence agency through rough seas of the Cold War. From Soviet KGB and American CIA, up to Israeli Mossad and British MI6, expect different approaches to grand strategy gameplay.
INNOVATIVE MECHANICS
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Espionage finally made as it should be
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Precise modelling of views & ideologies
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Direct links between causes and effects
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System of geopolitically active actors
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Emergent multipolar simulation
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Operation plans, campaigns, and opportunities
MEANINGFUL DECISIONS
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Prioritize grand scale and leave micro to your operatives
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Establish contacts, threaten, exploit, and trade
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Manipulate public opinion, support and establish political factions
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Launch coups and proxy wars, falsify casus belli
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Hunt spies and terrorists, protect internal stability
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Form alliances, prepare all-out attacks, break rules
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Advise country leader on critical decisions such as military interventions
DANGEROUS TIDES OF HISTORY
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Nuclear race: first atom bombs, thermonuclear revolution, mutually assured destruction
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Huge progress in technology, simulated in the game with Kuhn’s paradigm shifts
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After-war poverty, civil wars, controversial past
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Configurable balance between alternate history and determinism
Read More: Best Grand Strategy Sandbox Games.
Supreme Ruler: Cold War
Maybe i’m just weird but this game can have me in a trance for hours micromanaging every little aspect of my campaign to conquer the globe… sometimes through proxy wars, maybe a backdoor deal here and there, and when all else fails I find myself mass producing tanks and rolololing over the various nation states of the cold war world. I never fail to laugh when north korea manages to win the korean war in 1950s sometimes they lose sometimes not, but either way one korea will remain and there will be no 38th parallel line. All in all I find myself understanding how they might’ve thought during the cold war.. the superpowers that is.. I stockpile all these nukes but because of my progress as the soviet union or USA or anyone really I am always too afraid to use them… but that doesn’t stop me from saving and then nuking everything anyway and then reloading when I am ready to seriously continue or I can attempt to rebuild from post nuclear war.. Good game.. I’ve spent 500 hours on it.. at minimum wage in the US.. that’s roughly 3,661 USD I could’ve made. No regrets
– Real player with 505.1 hrs in game
1949: Australian Dictator gets into power and comences a huge resources build up.
1950: gets alliances with India, USA and West Europe. invades New Zealand and invades Indonesia.
1951: Korean War breaks out and Dictator of Australia invades the South to get a slice of the pie. After North Vietnam annexing Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam, Australian dictator invades South East Asia and takes them down in just 3 months.
1952: With a growing Economy and Military, the USA and West Europe desolve there alliance with the Australian Dictator. India keeps the Alliance, due to trade and aid.
– Real player with 249.7 hrs in game
Arms Race - TCWE
Arms Race - The Cold War Era is pretty promising with the way game mechanics work and the AI is good. The recommended strategy in the guide section doesn’t work reliably for me and I ended up using a different strategy. The AI is also pretty good at adapting to what you are doing. The limited 3 budget changes ends up meaning every decision has long term implications.
Most games turn out slightly differently due to the AI choosing different tactics and the randomness of global crisis events.
The game isn’t as full fleshed as say Hearts of Iron but I feel like the mechanics are well thought out and the AI provides a challenge even on easy. It does a good job of abtracting the cold war and reducing decisions to the macro level (‘meaningful decisions’) compared to HoI3/4 which features considerable micromanagement. I personally prefer macro level games (less micromanagement) but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. If you prefer to play M&T in EU4 vs base EU4 or if you prefer to play Darkest Hour/HoI2 vs HoI4 then this is the game for you.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grand Strategy Political Sim Games.
This is a fun little game which plays a complete run in about 2-3 hours.
It runs through the whole of the cold war and includes extensive historical detail and research - history geerks will enjoy looking through the tech trees and space race just reading some of the interesting commentary.
The game itself is primarily about resource allocation - the resources being influence (generated by diplomats) spies, and military. These three resources allow you to control the board through a variety of diplomatic coups and military intervention.
– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game
The Cold War Era 2
Bored while waiting? Please support our developing by playing The Cold War Era! - https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/10404/The_Cold_War_Era_Bundle/
About the game
There can only be one victory, and it all depends on your skill. Who will win? Us or them? Fight your war on earth, in the sky, and in the offices of the Kremlin and the White House for the promotion of your ideology. The prestige of a power depends only on the best qualities of your character - arrogance, deceit, cunning, guile, the ability to take risks and the thirst for power over the world! Do you deserve to be inscribed in the history of the twentieth century? Will your name be in the history books of the Cold War victory?
Main features :
Total war of ideology
Every citizen on the planet supports some kind of ideology. We must force the people of the world to support our ideology by force of arms, political influence, or prestige of our country. It is the only correct one and brings prosperity to the world. Through propaganda, politics, and diplomacy, we will help them think correctly. Those who continue to dissent will be destroyed by the power of our modern weapons, the best and most effective in the world!
Military unit constructor
Under your command are the best design centers of our power and production. Each military unit has different systems. Improve weapons, engines, armor, radars, countermeasures, stealth, and much more, so that the enemy does not have a chance to win on the battlefield. Improve various military systems and build your own units from these systems. Create your own unique unit that will make the world admire its excellence, and make your enemies shake to their core!
Economy and social development
The world should envy and admire our economic muscle and the level of social development for our happiest citizens on the planet. But to do this, we need to work and completely clear our country of corruption, inflation, and reduce the influence of radical groups. Use the ministers and their influence in the parliament to develop our country in the only right direction.
Political development
The adoption of laws in parliament determines the development of our country for decades to come. Every law can have irreparable consequences. Therefore, the parliament always has a heated discussion of different political ideas and trends for its laws. If the laws are too reformist then a coalition of opposition will gather in Parliament to pass such strong laws. Under your leadership ministers can influence parliament to pass laws that will allow our country to continue to be the most attractive country in the world. Our embassies abroad will do everything possible to influence the parliaments of other states and force them to join our ideological alliance!
Additional game features :
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3D map of the world with more than 70 regions on the planet. Each region is individual and has a huge number of indicators - its GDP, army and Navy, leader, Parliament, radical groups, and more.
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a large number of Embassy missions to help regions or Vice versa, change their regimes through military intervention or revolution.
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real historical global consequences that will irreparably happen, and only depends on the experience of Ministers if they happen in our favor or against us.
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in the budget, we have the opportunity to develop the national or private economy. At the expense of the national economy, we can build much cheaper, but the private economy has its own annual growth without government intervention. The national (planned) economy is growing solely at the expense of public administration.
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participation in proxy wars, where you can transfer your units to certain state regimes or Vice versa, to radical groups during a civil war, or to a revolution. You can initiate your own interventions and if there are military bases in the region, then openly provide your military assistance for the sake of dominating the regions.
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the war is divided into military phases, in which you need to overcome certain phases to start a fight in the next. Winning in battle is possible only from the military qualities of units and their number on the battlefield. The unit Builder allows you to build your own military units, the qualities of which need to be developed to win battles and pass military phases.
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Players control game elements such as their political influence, national and private economy, embassy missions, prestige, national monetary fund (savings), political parties, leaders, ministers, parliament and elections, laws, unit designer and systems for all types and branches of the military, corruption, inflation, science, social development for all regions, intervention and revolution, radicals, military morals, military bases and Maritime zones, elections, historical events and much more
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For players who would like to focus only on a specific gameplay, the game allows you to enable AI mode, in which the game will independently take care of different parts of the game’s micromanagement for the player. AI
auto mode is available in economy, diplomacy, military management, and unit Builder.
Bored while waiting? Please support our developing by playing The Cold War Era! - https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/10404/The_Cold_War_Era_Bundle/
Terminal Conflict
Edited review at 106 hours played.
I would definitely recommend this game for anyone interested in the cold war. I haven’t played the game ‘Twilight Struggle’ myself, but I hear it is quite like that game and I reckon if you like that game chances are good you’ll like Terminal Conflict too.
I think game captures the essence of the cold war quite well - USSR vs USA, proxy wars and managing the home front while you’re trying to achieve your goals. Intelligence is a big part of the game, especially with the Eyes Only DLC. War is abstracted, but still challenging.
– Real player with 168.3 hrs in game
In this Cold War strategy game, you assume command of either the USA or the USSR. You compete with the enemy by influencing regions, recruiting historical leaders to your cause, sometimes outright engaging the enemy forces in combat as well. Both factions have unique events, decisions and leaders. Literally every singleplayer playthrough can result in a different conclusion as the AI is dynamic and provides a challenge on its own, although its still no match for an experienced player. One thing to note though, the game is more focused on the political machinations of the Cold War, rather than military. Funding, spying, sometimes even assassinating your way to victory. Despite this, of course, military units still play a large part in the game.
– Real player with 36.3 hrs in game
Supreme Ruler Ultimate
if you enjoy tactical planning and engagement theory this game tops anything I’ve ever played in my life thus far…. I enjoyed games like command and conquer/age of empires etc. as a boy….. this game eclipses that level of gameplay by about a million times over……..in this games layout and playability it brings about 1000 manageable tasks to hand on a daily (game day) to be tended in order to effectively manage a country; as well as development of that country’s military armed forces which are specific to thier own unique ability’s, mobility, range, and fire power based upon real world specs of each unit as well. It’s an incredible format and if you have an extra hundred hours per week to invest into it then you can really take full advantage of what it has to offer in a complete sense of understanding……. it makes for an incredibly enjoyable experience that can easily account for a fake workday….. you can make a day of work from this game…..easily…….you simply will not recieve a real life paycheck from your work at the end of the week…..lol…..so make sure it’s a labor of love in doing it…….and as a simulator comparable to actual reality a fair one at that… I’ve noticed some flaws in the progression of difficulty on an economic scale that bother me at points…..for example I wanted to improve the difficulty of my economy after I got the gist of managing it on easy…. and it became harder by America destroying thier own economy by conquering Canada and Mexico and going into major debt which screwed the entire world market in time….. and no matter how good my country’s infrastructure became I could not profit from it because every country in the world eventually became broke….. and I could never really make a significant enough profit on anything to ever really get a ahead at any point and so after I militarilly defeated every major military force in the world I decided to cheat and gift myself a few trillion dollars so I could then have some fun with that…….. in reality they would just….print more money (the UN) and tell America to f*ck off….. lol…..America would never actually destroy itself in such a way….. then again…… well I would like to hope not anyway….. you can literally lock and manage every to do in the game, from economy to diplomacy, to research and development of societal techs along with military techs and in addition build a military force of land sea and air units to be deployed unit by unit by unit hand selected to your own desire and discretion…. that’s how I like to play…. because I’m 34/ currently unemployed and living with my Grandmother….. I am incredibly healthy and fit despite my game time I am regimented and decisive with my diet and excercise which is always my top priority….next would be keeping my bunker….I mean my bedroom clean and neat…… and lastly I spend what other free time I have in between enjoying this game as of late…..eh….. I’ve had some odd jobs come up over the past few months…… I’m also an avid reader… I have my laptop going and do real world research often while I am playing….. when you actually run the game at normal speed you will reach a point where you will encounter hours of down time…. if you have good infrastructure and enough money as well as strong alliances in and around your country you can literally issue a series of orders and let the game run untended for up to 2-3 hours at a time….. and it periodically autosaves so if you do that and end up coming back to a disaster you can re-load the game to a point prior to that particular happening….. I……….love……this game…..FANKYOU BATTLEPACK STUDIO! WE LOVE YOU! . -love, Chuck…. lol….Battlegoat studios….. they are incredible and I send them many many many sincere thankyou’s many times over. You guys kick ass.
– Real player with 3588.6 hrs in game
Supreme Ruler Ultimate lets you supremely make the world your bitch. Play as any nation that existed in 1936, 1949, 2018 and beyond in a real time strategy game with so much depth you’re gonna to be drowning in militaristic decisions……such as Do I as 1936 Brazil want to buy Japanese ship designs, produce Soviet Tanks or buy outdated artillery pieces from the french?
[Military Units and Diversity]
Every major nation has a ludicrous selection of nation specific unit designs from tanks, artillery, motorized infantry, special forces, marines, planes, ships, submarines, carriers etc. However a lot of these become outdated or are by the start of the game but are still cool….. Maybe you as 2018 Germany want to rebuild the Bismark idk. Lets say you don’t want to play as the big fish in small pond Europe, the units don’t actually mater because you can just buy the designs from other nations. If you want to play as Portugal you can just buy German or Soviet tank designs to produce yourself (As both countries by 1940 typically have 40+ tank designs and specialized variants. If you ally with a country you can just buy their units directly and have them shipped off to your country. As Mexico if you ally with the United States you can just buy anything they have in reserve….. for a price (This includes nuclear bombs and missiles and ICMBs too).
– Real player with 2000.7 hrs in game
Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game
Darkest Hour would merit an award not only for its terrific value but also for the care put into its playability and historical accuracy. Historical events will generally always occur but sometimes at a different moment than anticipated depending on a number of factors. It is generally impossible to avoid having Stalin’s purges as the Soviet player, or election results in France for instance. But in spite of this, outcomes may be very different from game to game because of all other factors that may come into play. It is a complex game that requires a lot of attention, but that is also very rewarding to play.
– Real player with 2008.6 hrs in game
I have 250-something hours in this game, and it is truly worth every cent i payed for it, i think it was like 2$ CAN. As Hoi4 can never hope to run on my system so this was my first hearts of iron game and i think its a good introduction for the series. It does have a steep learning curve and requires some mental capacity, but it is sorta simple when you look at it and its parts.
Some reviews say that the game is rather linear, that is sorta true at a glance depending on how you play. You can choose to play any nation at a variety of start dates and choose multiple paths to go down for your nation, (though not nearly as extensive as hoi4s foucus trees). there are options to go down alt-history in the base game, through the great number of events and decisions. they are limited though, it is impossible to have a communist USA for example, without the use of a little thing called console commands, which opens up alot of opportunities. make canada a fascist industrial powerhouse rivaling germany in might? you can do it, you can cheat your way through alot, but my advice is to use it only for developing minor nations or capitulating a already defeated enemy, or bypassing the script and creating your own scenarios.
– Real player with 812.1 hrs in game
1953: NATO vs Warsaw Pact
A must-buy for any Wasteland veterans, especially modders. Looks great, runs smooth, and the possibilities are endless. We’ll need a navy for Norway, armies for Israel, etc., but that’s part of the bargain. It’s all very easy to do with Notepad ++. I just copied all the commanders from Time of Fury, made the necessary text changes, and have 100 commanders. Of course, I have no interest in building a game with the actual historical military commanders from 1953 :)
In fact, I am considering downgrading the superpowers' unit levels to maybe “3” to give them more to research, while Hungary would be Level 1. Also interesting to bring Turkey into the mix on the NATO front to give USSR something more to worry about. Not really interested in the nuke part of the game, but that may well be very important for the design.
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
Always choose Warsaw!
So I start the game up and are greeted to some screen adjustments. I type it in and proceed to the main screen. Here I can chose to do a fast game, or simply customize a match.
I thought the game was a simple war game in the style of similar games such as the war aspects of Civilization series and age of empires, but as I would discover, there was nothing simple about this game.
I start a match as a NATO country, one of the two factions you can join and NOTHING on the screen makes any sense. I tried to press some buttons, but nothing happens. The game has no tutorial to teach you how to play the game, so I am officially lost. I find the “next turn” button and 5 minutes of the other countries turns go by. At this moment I was so bored from looking at the computer make it’s moves, that I then did nearly nothing and said next turn and the 5 minute hell continued.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Crisis in the Kremlin
Well I’m a Chinese and it’s my first time to write a comment on steam, so if I say something wrong or something you don’t like please forgive me.
For me I want to recommend you to use Romanov or Gromyko. Actually all 4 characters in 1985 have chance to win including Gorbachev, yesterday I play as him and it’s not impossible to save the country but use him will have two problems. One is reformer look like too strong to resist in the CPSU, other one is you cannot extract resources in Africa because you need to make conservative and Stalinism majority to open the mutual-aid in foreign policy part, but you can’t legalize Stalinism when you play as Gorbachev. For Grishin, a conservative, well I think is no problem to use him but I’m Deng supporter. And maybe it’s not a good news that Gromyko died in 1988 though he is really, really good man. So personally I choose Romanov. Year 1985 or 1986 is a better choice because you can change the country more easier.
– Real player with 266.2 hrs in game
It’s incredible really for a game to be so vague in how the mechanics work, so rough in design, so lacking in proper translation (seriously, the translation is a real problem here), and yet, I’d still definitely recommend it to any modern history buff or, of course, any aspiring Red with a taste for revisionism, and what Red doesn’t like a bit of Revisionism? I know I do.
Graphics: Nothing too much to mention here, they’re largely functional, and while many of the event pictures are nice Soviet posters or photographs, beyond that it’s very much just a text adventure with a red border. Not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but don’t expect a 3D sprite of Yeltsin to go stumbling across the top of the screen in his signature drunken fashion. (Hm, suddenly I feel a real sense of loss)
– Real player with 264.5 hrs in game
The Cold War Era
If you have an itch for a Cold War themed game, this might scratch the surface. And by that I mean it’s not a complex, grand-scale type of game, but a rather simple, yet fun and engaging little battle of world dominance which can be played in a single session. In fact it doesn’t even have a save feature, so if you want to go all the way make sure you have an hour or two to spare. It plays sort of like a board game, you start with an equal score in January 1950 as either side (US or USSR) and you have to manage and juggle your resources and instruments (like spies) to influence and obtain new countries which add to your score. The game ends in 2000 when the side with the higher score wins.
– Real player with 18.2 hrs in game
Pretty basic gameplay, but its a captivating time sink none the less. Definitely worth a fiver.
Read the manual before playing, it’s simple to pick up if you’ve done that.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game