What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
As we finish the fourth year of development of Espiocracy -- the main game build with working map and buttons was compiled for the first time in June 2021 -- we are at the stage of implementing deeper scenarios, fleshing out mechanics, and looking for last 10xer features (10xing two pillars of the game: strategy & immersion). Today we'll take a look at such a feature.
Main Character
Every player in Espiocracy is now, first and foremost, represented by the spymaster.
From many playtests, it became clear that the game lacks something critical in the middle of its complex mix of espionage and the Cold War. The obvious answer would be a director/chief but a few various implementations failed to solve this issue, and failed even to contribute meaningfully to gameplay. DD#53 referred attempts (as of May 2024) as either too weak or too overwhelming. Since then, however, the n-th approach with careful real-life-inspired design hit the Goldilocks zone, thanks to a few elegant implementations.
Real world position of de jure director of the intelligence community - if it even exists - is often politicized, short-lived, and not really interesting. In Espiocracy, instead, you play as the spymaster: an officer who is de facto most influential in the intelligence community. It may be the chief of leading foreign intelligence agency (historical inspirations: William Donovan, Stewart Menzies, Markus Wolf, Allen Dulles), powerful chief of any larger agency (Yuri Andropov, Wilhelm Canaris, J. Edgar Hoover, Erich Mielke), or outstanding leader of a smaller unit (Arisue Seizo, Zhou Enlai).
From this perspective, on surface, it is a strategy game like any other - you send orders, receive feedback, react to changes - but in a few critical situations, you are just a person facing the wind of history. In domestic civil war, you may decide to switch sides to the rebels, taking loyal officers with you. Upon discovering a domestic coup plot, you may decide to join it (or even to stage it from the first step). You may be directly targeted by an assassin or become one (like the chief of KCIA who personally assassinated his president). When releasing, dissolving, or separating a new country, you may decide to form new intelligence community in the new country. And obviously you will take direct personal responsibility for failures and transgressions, that may end up in forced retirement, resignation, or even arrest and trial.
Succession
These personal consequences, however, usually* don't cause the end of the game. You lose current main character, along with their advantages & achievements, but you can continue as the next spymaster:
Traits of every candidate are defined by three processes.
First, personal history, which is rooted in wider historical events, stemming from a database of events reaching 19th century that is also expanded during gameplay (eg. if your country fights Vietnam War, you may become a Vietnam-War-veteran spymaster - like Stansfield Turner, CIA director in 1977-81).
Second, intelligence service: potential future spymasters take part in operations you order, manage stations, handle spies, and execute other espionage activities. Among notable consequences, a spymaster may "have no face" (like Markus Wolf - which significantly lowers personal risks) or be publicly known. The latter state may be caused for instance by leaked/publicized/gone-wrong operations (famous real life example: Gina Haspel, CIA director in 2018-21).
Third, ties to previous spymaster. As a spymaster, you can appoint a deputy, which guarantees higher pace of increasing attributes over time (and rare special development opportunities). However, it is double-edged sword during succession. If you retired as respected officer, it will be a supporting factor - but you resigned, were fired, or even arrested, it will be a damaging factor, introducing adverse external reactions (eg. lowering government's trust). In worst cases, it may even make such a deputy unavailable during succession due to too close ties to previous disgraced spymaster.
* - Death/loss of the spymaster can end the game if it is your last officer in the world (for instance after the nuclear war...) or when it is caused by conviction in high treason trial (this game over condition can be turned off in game rules).
Personal Contacts
As the most influential officer in the intelligence community, you can regularly develop and exploit personal contacts with significant actors.
Availability of particular targets depends on personal traits and widely calculated proximity between you as the spymaster and the target (differences between personal influence, countries, cultures, ideologies, languages, geographical distance etc). More valuable contacts require longer development time (eg. above 17 months for De Gaulle vs 10 months for French Cinema), which is critical as you can develop only one contact a time, and your career as a spymaster can be as short as a few years.
Once personal contact is developed, as the spymaster you regularly meet the contact and exploit the relation: collect intelligence, enable operations, support spies, influence actions, act as a backchannel for diplomacy, acquire funds and other resources (for instance iron-clad cover tied to highly influential personal contact).
This is a two-sided relation, in which the target will sometimes ask for intelligence, resource, or another favor. Over time, it may become stronger or weaker (to the point of losing contact), and naturally all the contacts are lost when spymaster exits the service - all except for the contact with top actor in the government, as this is a personal contact that exists for every spymaster.
Attributes
A spymaster is characterized by five 0-100 attributes which gently influence many mechanics:
- Respect - Primary factor guiding availability and quality of personal contacts. In addition, affects government's trust, vulnerability to failures of the intelligence community, and negotiations with foreign spymasters.
- Survival - Directly correlates with possible years on the position of spymaster, on the span from one year (lowest survival) to full Cold War (highest survival, Markus Wolf has 100 here). Influences ability to handle failures, shift or take blame, and personal vulnerability to assassination.
- Resourcefulness - Influences income, costs, length of intelligence programs, and quality of additional schemes (such money laundering).
- Instinct - Increases prospective outcome of risky operations, handling high-value spies, supports counterintelligence investigations, in rare cases can fast-track intelligence discoveries.
- Rationality - High rationality lowers operational costs and improves intelligence collection related to national interests. Low rationality makes the officer more susceptible to gaining negative traits, damaging personal contacts, and also allows defection (which may be useful in very rare cases: nuclear option against intelligence community, leading to large purges and reform, and against current government, potentially causing its collapse... obviously with all the disadvantages, such as revealing treasure trove of intelligence to the receiving player; famous historical example: chief of Romanian intelligence services defected to the USA in 1978)
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on the first Friday of the next month: July 4th.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
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"January 24, 1946: At lunch today in the White House, with only members of the Staff present, RAdm. Sidney Souers and I were presented with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden daggers, and the President read an amusing directive to us outlining some of our duties in the Central Intelligence Agency, Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers" - Office diary of William D. Leahy, Truman's military adviser