Choose one of seven great powers — the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia or Israel — and a faction within it. Each plays differently: different tools, different pressures, different ways to fail.
A situation report opens each quarter with global events, theatre shifts, intelligence and up to two crises demanding a response. You spend action points on diplomacy, economic coercion, covert operations, military posturing and prestige — or type whatever you want in plain English and let the engine judge it.
The AI resolves your moves alongside every rival power's: successes, failures, detection, unintended consequences, and the headlines they make. Get caught and the target may confront you — back down, deflect or double down, each trading prestige against escalation.
Every aggressive act risks provocation and every response risks escalation, under the constant threat of nuclear war. The game rewards restraint, not aggression.
Eight domestic metrics track what your statecraft does at home: prosperity, inequality, quality of life, freedom, social cohesion, security, public morale and innovation. Every tank is a school not built, and three simultaneous domestic failures end your government.
After twenty turns you get a final score out of 1000, a historical analogy drawn from how you played rather than what you scored, the turning points that decided it, a counterfactual — and a tombstone: what history remembers you for, in a line.