I have a few questions about the game

[Klaus]

How do you balance the complexity of the game to make it accessible to both new and experienced players?

How often do you plan to add new scenarios based on current geopolitical developments? Will these scenarios also react to real-life events?

How does the detailed new 3D world map affect the gaming experience compared to GPS 4? Is the performance stable at the new graphics resolution, especially during major conflicts or wars?

The new macroeconomic engine sounds very comprehensive. How strong will the player's influence on individual economic sectors actually be? Can a player dominate or change entire industries of a nation?

How realistic is the simulation of the 3,000 global corporations? Are there mechanics that are based on real economic crises, such as market crashes or corporate scandals?

The simulation of wars and conflicts is described in great detail. How do urban battles and large military operations differ in the new version?

The possibilities for espionage and covert operations sound exciting. How often can players access such mechanics, and how much do they affect the geopolitical balance?

How does the AI ​​react to the player's actions? Is it dynamic enough to respond to unpredictable strategies, or are there predictable patterns?

How do you find the balance between realism and fun? Is it sometimes possible for players to simulate absurd or less realistic situations without overstretching the game mechanics?

[Pericles]

Hello, many question so this requires many answers :)

We use many ways to make sure it's still accessible despite being a detailed simulation. We have a tutorial for the Head of State mode, tooltips in many panels and we rely on character's reactions to give you gameplay hints based on their area of expertise (the ones generated during the first 3 months are important regarding this). In CEO mode, we also made sure some data was not hidden to the player: you got the ability to generate reports to see how productive is your company, reports to see how satisfied are your employees, a panel to see which values are decisive to make sure your product sells well.

The Steam release was the opportunity for us to get a new scenario related to Ukraine (since there was an early access on our website previously), it is indeed tied to real life events but this one plays in 2025. We're thinking about adding a new CEO scenario, but we're not 100% sure about it yet. Worth mentioning we will soon open the suggestions forum in our Discord, depending on what are the most requested things, scenarios could be on the table, but I don't want to make any false hope (there will likely be a lot of features asked and we will only be able to select some of them)

The main point of our new map was literally to make room for the company buildings, ensuring even small countries can get its fair share of companies. The performance is highly related to your PC specs, wars do have a high impact considering the number of units/countries involved.

Depending of the country you're playing, you can have a strong influence on individual economics sectors (the most efficient action being subsidies, but you could also rely on nationalizations). Not only your sectors but the ones from other countries (here the most efficient action being embargoes). Being a simulation, changing industries is something you could achieve in a long-term run. As a CEO you can also dominate entire sectors across the world while starting being not dominant. The are corporate scandals you can reveal (or being part of) and they'll affect negatively the brand and the sales.

Basically the companies act freely on their own and are basically looking for more sales/profits trying to adapt to the market consumption. As is we don't directly generate economic crisis but rely upon in-game events to affect the economy (strikes, famines, cyberattacks, wars).

The main new feature for military operations is also related to our new map, it brings a bit more realism depending on the terrain units will move slower (rivers, moutains) or faster (roads, highways).

Espionage is definitely a strong tool. Basically you can ensure a political party close to yours gets in power (tells a lot about how strong it is), once you got enough agents active in a foreign country every few weeks you get the opportunity to attempt an action (funding a party here). You can also steal a technology to make sure it gets available to your country / your companies. There are plenty of actions available and a well-funded agency is definitely decisive when it comes to influencing the geopolitical balance.

I'm not sure what you mean by unpredictable strategies but I'll try to give you the idea. The AI obeys to the same rules as the player, it does act against him but it mainly acts in a deterministic reactive way. As a CEO, you may notice some attempts to buyout your company, as a head of state a war can happen because the relations are too bad, a peace during war happens because the AI can't ensure it will win or got many casualties, a nuclear weapon can be used because you've initiated a nuclear attack, etc.

It is definitely possible to make less realistic situations, e.g. having an "unusual" ideology in power in a country (compared to the reality) or having a dictatorship becoming a democracy (or the opposite). We try to give enough room for the player to achieve this while having a world being close enough to the one we know when you start a game.