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Nell Quick
10-30-08, 06:27 PM
Hi, all.

I know I post rarely, and probably this is a silly request now. But being a big fan of geopolitics games, I've recently bought Eversim's Geo-Political Simulator (GPS) and I wondered if anyone else had tried it?

It doesn't seem to be very well known, although it's actually pretty well put-together... It's got lots of nice satisfying screens with things you can tweak, budgetary stuff; new laws you can implement (assuming your parliament will let you, which - I'll tell you now - they won't; even when you're a tyrannical dictator); wars you can start; treaties, the works.

It has one or two very tiny problems. There are a couple of graphics glitches. Including one that, when the inevitable "you've been assassinated/fired/deposed/overthrown" newspaper flashes up, allows you, if you're not careful, to move it off the screen altogether - which means you end up having to force-close the game with Task Manager because you can't click anywhere but on a button that's not on the screen any more...

Plus there're some tiny language problems. The developers don't do English as their first language, I think, and although most of it's pretty well spot on, there are occasionally advisories from your, um, advisors that read like something out of Through The Looking Glass. Generally, even these aren't really an issue.

What is an issue, and what I'd like some advice on, is the apparent impossibility of actually doing anything. Where Superpower II allowed you to do whatever the hell you wanted whenever you wanted with relatively little - if any - real effect on the world, GPS promises big effects, but doesn't give you chance to try anything out. I can see this being realistic for elected leaders - but having recently tried playing as a number of the world's leading dictatorships, I can honestly say that a tyrant's life isn't nearly as fun as you'd think. Quite often my popularity with the people is fairly high: my last game I'd got it up to 71% approval when I was put an end to. Somewhere in the workings there's a number that measures how well your party thinks of you - and that number invariably drops through the floor without me noticing, resulting in the same repetitive snarky phone call from my 'Advisor' (capital 'A' this time - s/he's important, apparently) telling me I'm not long for this world.

So. Any other aspiring dictators out there finding their ebil plans being foiled by faceless party bureacrats? Anyone able to give me any advice on the hidden numbers in GPS?

fatty
10-30-08, 08:40 PM
Thanks for posting this. Did this just come out not very long ago? I'm a Poli Sci major and have always been interested in these kinds of games. I was looking for one a few months ago. I tried SuperPower II but found it to be pretty sterile and uninteresting, especially for the reason you noted (my actions, short of declaring war or launching nukes, didn't seem to carry any weight). Is this one to get?

Nell Quick
10-31-08, 01:44 AM
I think aside from the apparent impossibility of it, it's pretty good. Maybe I am just being too adventurous in what I'm trying to do. Taking dictatorships and trying to turn them into even slightly more free and open societies within my first month of office might be too ambitious. Or, for that matter, taking democracies and trying to make myself into a monarch...

The biggest problem with the game as I see it is that it's not terribly well documented. There's a PDF manual in the download, which gives you some tips, but nothing that isn't more or less obvious from 5-10 minutes' play. But it doesn't go into much detail about exactly what effect any given action is likely to have; and as far as I can tell there aren't any forums or sites talking about the game.

Nonetheless I think it's an improvement on Superpower II, just in terms of the fact that you can actually have an impact on the world, whereas in Superpower II I always felt the changes I made were just cosmetic.

I'm not going to say 'buy it', because a) I don't want to sound like an advert; and b) I don't know whether you'd like it. But the website's here (http://www.geo-political-simulator.com/) if you want to have a look.