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.
There are two layers of diplomacy in Espiocracy: between countries and between intelligence agencies.
Nominal diplomacy has been described in DD#51 and you may remember it as an intricate hierarchy of mostly formal structures. Summits, treaties, policies, doctrines. Secondary diplomacy between players - between intelligence agencies and communities - is nothing like that!
Implicit Messages
Instead, the game assumes "actions over words" as the central idea behind contacts between Stasi, MI6, and others. When KGB tried to insult and threaten CIA officers in Moscow, they didn't send strongly worded letters - they beat them up in the dark alleys and smeared their cars with feaces. In Espiocracy terms, KGB sent an implicit message to the CIA.
Many actions in the game send such messages. Usually, they are more subtle, happen along the way, and depend on the results. For instance, an attempt to intercept an intelligence operation can send one of four possible implicit messages:
A message may also be non-deterministic or even detrimental to the sender. British intelligence community in WW2 famously cracked the Enigma code but no less effort was put in efficiently using gained intelligence in a way that does not reveal that Enigma has been broken. The game implements this fascinating psychological conundrum partially also through implicit messages.
In one more psychologically inspired implementation, some actions may send a few potential implicit messages, out of which the receiving player chooses one of them - essentially, the player is interpreting the action.
And this is where we arrive at the receiving side. What such a message actually changes in game mechanics?
A message mainly expands agency of the receiving player. It is always associated with a set of new available decisions. When KGB foils too many British agents and MI5 finally deciphers it as a penetration of the network, the British player now has critical new knowledge that opens new reactions:
(Funky paper scrap UI is obviously work in progress.)
Sets of reactions depend on some details (situational, level of tradecraft, levels of capabilities) but they are generally known by all players, easily inspectable through tooltips, and in that way they slightly gamify mind reading, with an espionage twist. Through actions and attached messages, you can force the hand of another player, broadcast your intentions, bluff in ten different ways, gain or lose trust, begin further contacts, and so on.
More Direct Interactions
While implicit messages can always be sent, more advanced forms of contact are tied to two bilateral parameters which are calculated from background situation (such as relations between countries) and further modified by players (including implicit messages).
- Mistrust - Always positive value, increased by players through anything from chaotic operations to defectors, lowered by various gestures of goodwill. Defines degree of general contacts, between third-party mediators (very high mistrust) to borrowing/lending operatives (very low mistrust).
- Communication Channels - Developed by players during any interactions (including hostile ones) and structures (eg. an intelligence station in another player's country), lost over time through lack of interactions. Defines quality and theoretical availability of contacts, which may in some (usually very tense) situations transcend any level of mistrust.
These two contribute to the plethora of inter-player actions. In addition to a few hinted at above, they include spy swaps, defusing espionage scandals, increasing embassy staff quotas, exchanging intelligence, informal non-interference deals, joint operations, training and know-how transfer, larger alliances such as Five Eyes, and so on. (The list still evolves but it is mostly situational so obvious enough, as far as diplomatic options in strategy games go, that it was initially described in the 8th dev diary.)
Black Market
Last and probably least, the game tries to further expand interactions between players by enabling covert trading through third-party (underworld) entities. In one of the previous AARs, the existence of black market has been hinted at. Here's how it looks currently:
In short, intelligence can be sold on the regional black market to another player - both sides do not know their identities and the transaction has therefore an indirect unpredictable cost of handing over intelligence to another player in the game (eg. trading a secret of domestic politician allows someone else to blackmail said politician). Details are subject to further evolution, probably towards the participation of private entities (history is full of available inspirations: paper mills, private eyes, journalists, info brokers, hacked databases etc).
Behind The Scenes
► Yes, the game has a button for roughing up CIA officers in Moscow (and any other officers in any other city)
► True BTS: "It's year YYYY, I'm A in B, what do I do?" is usually the first question I ask during game development, followed up by finding answers as close to real life as possible (eg. for A = Allen Dulles and B = CIA there's full autobiography available). Implicit messages are one of many direct results of such an approach. Sometimes mechanics ultimately evolve far from original answers, usually to follow better gameplay, but their historical roots still usually enrich mechanics. For instance, CIA obviously did not sell intelligence to other agencies on any kind of black market but... they did buy a lot of materials from, what they called in the 50s, "intelligence peddlers" and "paper mills" which in turn partially acquired and smuggled materials from intelligence officers behind the Iron Curtain. This contributed to the "through underworld" part of the black market in the game.
Final Remarks
The next dev diary will be posted on August 2nd!
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
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"In subsequent negotiations, SIS proposed a mass PNGing [persona non grata-ing, expelling] of Soviet intelligence personnel in the UK. (...) We cannot consider any such proposal because of the obvious and certain retaliatory steps which will be taken by Soviet authorities" - CIA report in 1962, edited for clarity