Thoughts on beating the game.

[Threeist]

It's free. And it's thought provoking all the same, so it's an interesting thing to play with.

It's a somewhat thin take on futurism, and it seems to have its own biases:

1) Every other research project is 'we keep trying until we get it; I get that fusion power really should be a giant effort sink even if we're modelling 50 years out, but nuclear technology has real advances that do exist, and Generation IV nuclear reactors are hardly a try once and get nothing.

2) Contradictory policies are valuable tools to help you advance in spite of their stupidity. You can't actually ban cars, have electric cars, and then get the benefits of both. We would need to have some way to revoke policies to create replacements.

3) We get shortages but never actually address the numbers of farms, power plants, etc. we play around with a flat percentage of sources. Obviously, shortages are a serious problem with a planned economy, and probably would lead to loss of political power much faster than mass extinctions: These are things that could people to starve or die, and largely we just slap some lip gloss on it and it goes away.

4) Population Growth is directly tied to factors like child mortality, lack of education, and the costs to having and raising children. For a game that covers the well being of the world and the year where Human population may hit its peak (2064, at 9.7 billion), the game entirely fails to consider whether we'd need natalistic policies to increase population and simply promotes harsh policies on raising children. Such policies would lead to the serious problems of modern Japan and Russia, both of which are being put in an economic straitjacket.

5) Consumerist policies, for whatever reason, fail to actually increase happiness. Even the Romans managed bread and circuses to better effect. Getting the ideas is worth +1; a life of luxury is worth increased consumption and NO improvement. Consumerism as a poisoned grail that can get short term boosts with long term consequences is an interesting trade off that needs to be carefully considered. As it stands, material wealth fails to do anything as a set of ideas.

6) The Game Theory of this game is all over the place. Ocean bound wind power, cultured meat, and natural gas as a fuel all dominate other choices. When this becomes clear, perhaps a quarter of the game becomes noise.

7) The Late Game is really thin and basically offers a dwindling selection of options you didn't choose earlier. Outer Space is a omega-rofl-you must be kidding level expensive, but the promises of things like Space Based Solar and the cultural achievements of manned missions to other planets are largely ignored. Meanwhile, aside from Phage therapies, there is no direct way to try to fight back against diseases, even though trying to promote quality of life would directly benefit from improved medical care. Things like genetic engineering are also real, but there's no mission to try to eradicate cancer or childhood obesity. You shouldn't run out of projects, ever--there should probably be twice as many of them, so that picking sides and following a path is the only way to get something like Antimatter power, Hydroponic Farming or Cultured Organs.

8) Advances from cards require more digging to find than first glance. I was surprised to find that Industrial Farming was better than small holder farming at the end of my run, even though the stats suggested it was worse, because of reforms that I passed.

///

This game is free, but it's not particularly balanced. There are some fun ideas, but it's not really about trying to continuously find better policies and technology; you have a big batch of them at the start of the game, a quarter of them simply suck, and you have a quarter of lame options at the end. There are some traps to avoid, but it's an interesting concept.

[schnappkatze]

I think that is a fair critique on the game. While I really enjoy the game, it falls into a trap that every "serious game" or "educational game" has a hard time to avoid: The Educational Factor comes in the way of the game mechanics.

If this was designed with fun and options as a priority, it would go different in many cases. You could probably could have several ways to win, e.g. a downsized "back-to-nature" economy that runs on wind and solar power, or an advanced space age civilization that runs on resources from the moon but leaves nature in shambles. You could have a fairness-ending where each country ends up with similar development (maybe by downsizing the wealth of the so called first world nations), or go the authorian route and have a few countries rule over the others.

For this, a lot of additional factors would need to be simulated. Your example with cars is on point: Cars are not really simulated, it is just that every card has an effect on biodiversity, CO2 etc. and their effects play out regardless of other cards (so it seems). My personal favourite was the introduction of meatless mondays in a vegan society. Also the whole "which region is suffering how badly" is pretty underdeveloped. With an authorian win-route we would need to have security forces or armies on the planet to keep the suffering countries in check or sth. like that.
I would love to have a better simulation of all these factors, but I can imagine that the programming effort would be at least a magnitude higher to achieve that.

The other, probably more important thing: It is an educational/political game and has several messages that it tries to get across with its game mechanics. Fusion power is a good example: One might think it would solve all your problems, but it doesn't and relying on the hope of achieving just distracts us from putting in solutions that will reliably work after a few decades.

Especially with nuclear power one's opinion can differ on what the games tries to educate about, but overall it is on the right track to show what policies and projects would need to be done and to show their effects. Yes, switching from coal to wind power would reduce emissions massively. Yes, reducing meat consumption would reduce emissions further, and yes electric cars would reduce the need for fuel etc. etc.

Since the game's main goal seems to be to educate about the ecological crisis and options to avoid it, it would make little sense for the developer to add other paths to "victory" in it, or to nerf e.g. renewable energies. The takeaway message for players is that they know about the ecological crisis, that there are a lot of options to deal with it and to get an understanding of what might work, what will not work etc.

With that in mind it makes sense, that there are "best options" like ocean wind power and natural gas (I didn't know this was the best option, I am always struggling with fuel) as in reality there are "best options" and the developers seem to think that these are them. You might disagree that this is the case in reality (e.g. with nuclear power), but it makes sense for a semi-realistic educational game to make the things the best option that the developers think are the best option in real life.

These are just a few thoughts - I overall agree with your criticisms and I would love, love, love a simulation game like this on the scale of Civilisation or Crusader Kings, where you would actually simulate energy, fuel and calories in every province etc.

[Arti_Sel]

You should try "fate of the world", it's just a better version of this game and addresses most of your complaints. You need the fanpatch though, for various reasons. It's even got the same socialist-bias, but not to the insane degree this game takes it.

[10ebbor10]

Originally posted by Threeist:

2) Contradictory policies are valuable tools to help you advance in spite of their stupidity. You can't actually ban cars, have electric cars, and then get the benefits of both. We would need to have some way to revoke policies to create replacements.

If properly implemented, these policies could co-exist.

Imagine that land transport consumes 25 fuel.
Passing electric cars lower that to 0 fuel, and replace it with an equivalent amount of electricity.
Passing Ban Cars instead lowers the base amount of fuel consumption.

Unfortunately, Electric cars instead replaces transport fuel consumption with a single fixed electricity cost, regardless of how much transport there is or isn't

[Korvinagor]

Originally posted by 10ebbor10:

Originally posted by Threeist:

2) Contradictory policies are valuable tools to help you advance in spite of their stupidity. You can't actually ban cars, have electric cars, and then get the benefits of both. We would need to have some way to revoke policies to create replacements.

If properly implemented, these policies could co-exist.

Imagine that land transport consumes 25 fuel.
Passing electric cars lower that to 0 fuel, and replace it with an equivalent amount of electricity.
Passing Ban Cars instead lowers the base amount of fuel consumption.

Unfortunately, Electric cars instead replaces transport fuel consumption with a single fixed electricity cost, regardless of how much transport there is or isn't

Alternately, the "Ban Cars" card could also reduce the electricity demand of the "Electrify Road Vehicles" card by say, 50% or so - road vehicles consist of public transportation like buses and delivery vehicles like trucks after all, and the "Ban Cars" policy card specifies only the removal of private vehicles.

[Threeist]

I appreciate the thoughts and I've looked up fate of the world, although that's going to take some thinking before I buy it.

When it comes to contradictions I think the game desperately needs some kind of ability to revoke conflicting policies. Perhaps transportation should simply be another 'statistical balancing' act, with rail, mass transit, car, aviation and pedal power as another allocation puzzle. Banning cars should be really hard to do, but cutting cars and increasing mass transit is probably less difficult than tripling nuclear power plant production.

The game definitely needs some kind of early / mid / late game development, with the game therefore winnable in multiple ways:

-The Retro/Malthusian view of depopulating the world and lower living standard would fix the planet, at the furious objection of humans themselves. This could be the dark road of choosing winners and losers and basically mean turning socialism into IngSoc.

-While I think the game requires some kind of new tech or policy, going right into sci-fi with things like Antimatter power, artificial organs, and mass customization would repeatedly reduce the footprint on the planet. The negatives is that this would require upskilling labor and potentially risking the well being of the world until tech breakthroughs pay off. Technological victory.

-Going all in on Eco/Environmental would lead to natural processes accelerating, potentially leading to victory by events like 'rain forests re-emerge' or 'the Sahel Greens'.

Throughout these methods, we might need the Authoritarians to do dirty stuff or the Consumerists to bribe people into getting what needs to be done. It's too simple to simply marginalize and trivialize their views; it makes much more sense to flesh out their role in this sort of situation.

It just seems like winning is all about mashing down all the options. And that's not really much of a choice in the first place.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Threeist:

...cutting cars and increasing mass transit is probably less difficult than tripling nuclear power plant production.

Tripling nuclear power production is basically trivial with the baseline level of authority you have, though the lack of antinuclear activism in ecosocialist earth (compared to the activism you get if you open new mines to address a copper shortage) is weird.

Nuclear buildout is largely hampered by regulatory and market factors.

Originally posted by Threeist:

-While I think the game requires some kind of new tech or policy, going right into sci-fi with things like Antimatter power, artificial organs, and mass customization would repeatedly reduce the footprint on the planet. The negatives is that this would require upskilling labor and potentially risking the well being of the world until tech breakthroughs pay off. Technological victory.

I don't see how antimatter power and artificial organs reduce environmental impact at all? Artificial organs would improve contentment probably, and antimatter is a fuel like green hydrogen except infinitely less practical in all kinds of ways. (It's got some possible uses in extreme spacecraft concepts, none as a general power source.)

In game terms, the main problem with the pure-superscience approach working are:
-I'm pretty sure ecological remediation is necessary to address extinction regardless of anything else, unassisted rewilding isn't enough. (Am I wrong?)
-Honestly the offshore wind power seems to completely solve power generation, so even if advanced nuclear or space-based solar or something worked, it wouldn't matter.
-The game seems to believe (correctly, TBH) that it's not possible to just yeet all the human activity into space to let the planet alone.

Originally posted by Threeist:

Throughout these methods, we might need the Authoritarians to do dirty stuff or the Consumerists to bribe people into getting what needs to be done. It's too simple to simply marginalize and trivialize their views; it makes much more sense to flesh out their role in this sort of situation.

I don't really think it's wrong to say not every perspective is part of the solution.

And the Consumerists don't have a chokehold on giving people nice things.

[Manyeyedgirl]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

In game terms, the main problem with the pure-superscience approach working are:
-I'm pretty sure ecological remediation is necessary to address extinction regardless of anything else, unassisted rewilding isn't enough. (Am I wrong?)
-Honestly the offshore wind power seems to completely solve power generation, so even if advanced nuclear or space-based solar or something worked, it wouldn't matter.
-The game seems to believe (correctly, TBH) that it's not possible to just yeet all the human activity into space to let the planet alone.

Originally posted by Threeist:

Throughout these methods, we might need the Authoritarians to do dirty stuff or the Consumerists to bribe people into getting what needs to be done. It's too simple to simply marginalize and trivialize their views; it makes much more sense to flesh out their role in this sort of situation.

Except you can yeet all of the industry into space as far as I can tell unless the card is just starting the process either way you shouldn't be able to build a space elevator but not a breeder reactor its ridiculous. Also saying that stuff like offshore wind would solve power gen when you're ignoring the input material to output energy is crazy. In fact the game has a terrible issue of trivializing material costs despite the skeleton existing of a system which actually looks into that depth which would be a more interesting route than importing more outlandish concepts into a game attempting to lean more on realism.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Manyeyedgirl:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

In game terms, the main problem with the pure-superscience approach working are:
-I'm pretty sure ecological remediation is necessary to address extinction regardless of anything else, unassisted rewilding isn't enough. (Am I wrong?)
-Honestly the offshore wind power seems to completely solve power generation, so even if advanced nuclear or space-based solar or something worked, it wouldn't matter.
-The game seems to believe (correctly, TBH) that it's not possible to just yeet all the human activity into space to let the planet alone.

Except you can yeet all of the industry into space as far as I can tell unless the card is just starting the process either way you shouldn't be able to build a space elevator but not a breeder reactor its ridiculous. Also saying that stuff like offshore wind would solve power gen when you're ignoring the input material to output energy is crazy. In fact the game has a terrible issue of trivializing material costs despite the skeleton existing of a system which actually looks into that depth which would be a more interesting route than importing more outlandish concepts into a game attempting to lean more on realism.

That list started with 'in game terms' for a reason. In game terms, offshore wind seems to completely solve power generation. (So long as you've got a base load source or techs that mitigate intermittent power sources.)

In real life probably it doesn't.

[FelixSylvaris]

Some potencial improvments:
+ Reshaping 100% of production cost 0 capital, so it is easy to just manipulate your production. There should be 5 capital for each 5% so moving away from carbon and petroleum would be hard as it should be.
+ The impact on capital from high/low optimism is too low, there should be more reward by keeping people happy.
+ Geothermal goes away after 1 round, the earth core goes off or something
+ There could be a limit of how much area could be dedicated for solor/wind with offshore increasing this space. Not everywhere is perfect space for solar.
+ No faith in nuclear. The 4th gen reactors should be better.
+ Not enought socialism, this game is capitalist propaganda! There could be more introduce socialism cards, which would make population happy. But they will not help with emission and will cost a lot of capital. But if someone wants to introduce socialism let them have it.

It is free game so great job very fun.

[Threeist]

In terms of recommendations, I would recommend Democracy
https://store.steampowered.com/app/245470/Democracy_3/

Democracy is decent at perhaps 20 years of future content, and while it has its own follibles (flat tax + progressive income tax makes absurd amounts of money), it does a lot better job of considering disasters as resulting from policies.

Timetable is a serious critique of the game; for a game that projects a future fifty years ahead, it's very solidly in the twenty minutes in the future trope. In 2070, it's highly unlikely that Europe or North America would 'top out' in quality of life; instead, frontiers of science and medicine would mean that still higher standards of living would be possible.

Nuclear Power is just one of the ways that Half Earth Socialism doesn't dream big enough; nanomachines, internet diversification, human genetic engineering, anti-aging (anagathics), as well as the aforementioned consumerism being a big black void.

But it's a serious thing that a lot of these things are 1 tech to 'win'. Offshore Ocean Wind Power? Cultured Meat? I'm not attached to something like Antimatter or Low Orbit Solar, so much as having to make a second step is organic gameplay with tradeoffs is a real lack of potential.

For a game about revolutionary socialist planning, Half Earth Socialism comes off as arch-conservative. Economic Growth means the rest of the world looking more like the USA and Europe; human population will go out of control unless THINGS ARE DONE. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is not some new project; it was stripped of US funding in 1995 and continues as a citizen effort.

As a learning tool, Half Earth Socialism pushes heavily for a few social policies and R&D projects. But I think a game like this one really needs to follow its heart to a logical conclusion: DREAM BIG. Fifty years is not 20 minutes into the future; hempcrete is not the omega material.