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Old 01-26-2012, 07:13 AM   #1
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Default Good political simulation?

I've been looking for quite a while for good political simulation games, administration strategies, but I haven't been able to find a lot. This seems to be a very unpopular genre.

Specifically, I've found just 2 such games, both of which are orientated around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

* Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator from 1990

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r_Coverart.png

http://hol.abime.net/pic_full/dbs/30.../3078_dbs1.png

I can't believe how addicted I am to this game; understanding its flaws, being a game from 1990 itself, the impression with this game grows further.

A bit of a warning has to be made, because the game might be offensive to Arabs, since it is orientated exclusively on the Israeli leader's ability to maintain Israeli survival. This may include an aggressive policy in which Isreal occupies all the neighboring NPC States in the game (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) by brute force; I haven't had very much experience with this because I pursue a strictly defensive policy always, but I think the game doesn't let you occupy Iran and Libya (yes, just because they're neighbors) and that might be one of the biggest flaws. The game war mechanics are just based strictly on front-lines between neighboring nations, so if two countries are not neighbors, there is no possibility of war.

The Arab states all have a unique diplomatic approach and military strength and they will go to war over border conflicts between each other, incidents, etc...Israel has got to ensure that there is no apparent Arab unity against it, in form of an overwhelming coalition, by maintaining diplomatic relations, negotiations, trade...countries are wiped out if they're occupied, if they fall into a civil war (Israel can also incite civil uprising, or, if it wants to maintain that country as a player, help the government quell the rebels) or if they are nuked. However, support of Islamic fundamentalists in the opposition can grow to anti-Semitic outcries and launch a campaign against Israel.

There is a mass of events in the game, including U.S. foreign aid, UN Security Council sessions, the Palestinian problem etc...I like the game's armed forces mechanics especially, because they represent reality better than most strategies (where in just a few months a country has got 1,000,000 soldiers after having just 1,000).

It has a 1997 remake, a very underdeveloped with confusing mechanics and unattractive gaming interface.

* The other I found is PeaceMaker





This is basically, the complete opposite of the above. The player can be either the Israeli or the Palestinian president and the goal is to create a prosperous Israeli-Palestinian Union with two independent nations and Jerusalem as the common capital of both.

The player has got to balance a very big number of both internal and external political factors in his effort to make peace.

There are four steps to victory. The Palestinian president is kicked out by his own people if he becomes very unpopular (among the Palestinians), or if he becomes internationally infamous; while the Israeli president is kicked out of office if he loses popularity among the Israelis, or if he worsens the relations with the Palestinians leading to war.



Both of these games are incredibly fascinating, but they seem like an intriguing base, having so much potential.
Are there really no more video games like these?
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Old 01-26-2012, 10:08 AM   #2
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Default Political Simulation Games?

This genre is my favorite probably, but I could so far find only two such games - Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator and Peacemaker.

Is the genre unpopular or am I just not looking good? Most of the games appear to be from the 1990s...
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Old 01-26-2012, 12:03 PM   #3
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Default

There's Democracy and its sequel Democracy II. I've played the first Democracy and it was actually quite good.

Then there's also Ruler of Nations, but that was very abstract - too many options and no decent tutorial or documentation that explains things.

Instead of calling the genre unpopular, I'd just call it focused on a very small "niche market" within the gaming community.
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