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.

Today, we'll dive into gameplay - in the form an AAR, after action report - of the nation chosen by votes on the Espiocracy discord server (invite link at the end).

Welcome to Hanoi, the capital of Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It's March 6th, 1946.

We are playing as the PTBQ - Military Intelligence Department within Vietnam People's Army. Years of French repressions, followed by harsh Japanese occupation, and short cooperation with American OSS, honed our intelligence community into decently sized and skilled force, ranked 28th in the world.

Initial state must be sufficient for now. In a small ravaged country, we won't be able to embark on significant recruitment campaigns. Any arrests (or worse) will be painful - and as a largely unrecognized country, we don't have diplomatic immunity to protect our officers!

This is our homeland:

Between Japanese withdrawal and return of French colonial forces, we were able to forge fragile independence, unified under the authority of Ho Chi Minh. Internally, the landscape is characteristic for new nations with guerrilla warfare and military uprising DNA: strong guerrillas-turned-politicians, famous military leader, still important guerrilla organization, and population with fairly significant influence (due to recent mass participation in warfare). Internationally, we are aligned with the communist bloc but that doesn't mean much in 1946. The USSR licks its wounds, neighboring China is buried in bloody civil war, and colonialist empires from the capitalist bloc have far too large armies to have them sit idly in Europe. Ho Chi Minh, aware of the danger, currently negotiates terms of independence in Paris. He will return either with nothing (and French invasion) or with partial loss of independence. The latter scenario, however, seems incompatible with honest belief in communism of almost all our significant actors. We can see relevant examples inside the colony that we recently separated from.

No recent activity inside Indochina is no coincidence. French administration and military controls public life, keeps actors and their influence low, with the only slightly influential actors sourcing their influence either from religion (Cao Dai and Hoa Hao), from organized crime (Binh Xuyen), or from Paris (the rest). Our entry point will be 6 million of Vietnamese waiting for liberation - but they have to wait until we solidify our existence in the north. To achieve that, we have to aim straight at France.

Naturally, it won't be easy.

Intelligence operations on this hostile ground are not possible at the moment. We lack infrastructure, local intelligence, funds, resources. Speaking of which, let's quickly review current (current for this AAR and for this game build) state of main resources visible in the top bar, which evolved since it was described in previous dev diaries.

From left to right, the player deals in:

• Intelligence Assets - small regional infrastructure established autonomously by officers, used mostly in operations
  
• Official Budget - monthly subsidies from the government, spent on legal and not-completely-secret activities, such as stations or most operations
  
• Black Budget - governmental account with money that can be transferred to other organizations
  
• Illicit Budget - acquired through various illegal means, used for bribes, extremely secret, or quasi-legal activities (and can be laundered back into official budget)
  
• Various small discrete resources, here it is 1 political connection that can be used in domestic lobbying or managing fallout from failed operations

In addition to resources, main parameters - measures of success - also evolved.

From left to right:

• Strategic Intelligence - quantified value derived from collected intelligence materials, relevant to national interests (our main national interest is very simple: "survival of the nation"), with higher value directly contributing to governmental decisions (their choice and success) and to State Power Index (we're currently sitting at 12.4 which is 32nd SPI in the world)
  
• Trust and Need - two critical angles through which the government views our intelligence community, affect anything from budget, operations, purges, recommendations, all the way to background control of government members (!)
  
• Threat - incurred globally and regionally during espionage activities and decreasing over time, higher regional threat makes it more difficult to operate in the region, while higher global threat may lead to purges in the intelligence agency, interest from global press, and even terrorist attacks aimed directly at our officers

There are many more small resources and parameters affecting intelligence activities (for instance: relative currency strength), which will remain for you to explore further.

Back to France, one useful angle could be pushing the country over to communist bloc in the incoming elections. The name: Maurice Thorez.

Operations, as previously mentioned, are not yet possible here. We need an anchor in Europe. Due to local destruction and ongoing governmental issues, the Netherlands seems to struggle with establishing proper security services. In terms of counterintelligence environment, it's a sandbox - we can do anything we want and it will be cheap, at least right now. We send Le Dang Dung's section there.

Meanwhile, an interesting target arose in the region.

Thailand, currently, wants to keep neutral status quo. With their complex recent history, which includes Japanese-supported invasion of Indochina, population larger than Indochina, and relatively large army, they could be a very useful ally in the inevitably incoming war for survival. Hence, we send our most skilled operatives - Ho Trong Ba's section - to establish an intelligence station in Bangkok and then scramble to exploit local political environment.

A month later, we spring into action.

In the meantime, Soviet troops declare the end of occupation zone in the northern half of Korean peninsula. This is a good opportunity to seek cooperation with fellow communist intelligence agency.

It seems that the Chinese communist forces are making progress as well - approaching critical cities, controlling larger area, expanding to Manchuria. They are too far away from our border to establish direct connection on land, to provide them support or to receive support from them. Let's hope that they will close in sooner than later.

Coup operation is in progress, which is a good opportunity to take a look at refreshed operational mechanics.

An intelligence operation now is more direct race in time between attacking and defending intelligence agency (green and red pie above). Attacking player, through operatives preparing the ground and implementing simulated steps, enables better possible outcome over time (stars and "possible" label above). However, in parallel, counterintelligence service works towards achieving chosen goal against this operation (anywhere from observing to... murdering officers). Once minimal positive outcome is possible, a player can order execution of the final step of the operation (top left button). Obviously, rushing minimal outcome isn't really useful, and there are large gains with every better outcome. Many operations become micro-wars of nerves.

In this case, Thai counterintelligence was more aggressive and faster. It isn't surprising, given the grave nature of the operation, and our haste in launching it before settling properly in Thailand. A few officers from the section were arrested, relations with Thailand damaged, and now we have to negotiate way out for our valuable officers...

...and then it gets worse. We were trying to stage a coup while another plot was already in progress, executed by Seni Pramoj.

And it's disastrous news for us. Instead of turning Thailand from neutral to more supportive, we missed a plot of an anti-communist leader!

Due quickly incurred losses in Thailand, our chances of acting against him are negative. Thailand, for now, won't be useful and we will have to apply pressure through other tools to at least stop them from allying with France against communist Vietnam.

Perhaps the European angle fares better.

Indeed, station in Amsterdam continues work in the region, preparing the ground for French operations. However, it is slower than expected and we are still far from successfully approaching Maurice Thorez. Having learned from mistakes in Thailand, we shouldn't rush into this direction. After all, we are relatively safe in the Netherlands even in the case of hot war.

Returning to the homeland and preparation before the war, we'll transfer black budget to Viet Minh. After the collapse of Thai direction and slower progress in Europe, this is the best choice as we approach 1947.

In September, we can define state budget, together with other members of the government. Naturally, professionalization of the army from guerrilla to conventional force should be the priority.

On the front of spies and intelligence, our operatives recruited four agents.

One of them, agent Giap near Vietnamese politician Truong Chinh, is ready for specialized training. Since we are well aligned with Chinh and we don't need special roles inside the country (these are implemented by domestic sections), we'll just direct Giap to advance the career ladder, in anticipation of future service.

In terms of intelligence, stations, exchange with North Korean RB, various operations brought useful results but not critical for current situation.

As the year ends, we receive report about evolution of influential actors in relevant places.

And then, after a few months of further operations, expansion, and preparations...

We will continue this save in the next dev diary.

See you on December 6th!

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:

[discord.gg]

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.

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Many topics near the Cold War and espionage deserve a full separate game. Espiocracy, out of sheer necessity, has to narrow down such topics into a single main angle. That was the case for conventional wars (angle: special forces), diplomacy (international structures), or science and technology (paradigms). Propaganda is another such large topic.

The main angle of propaganda in Espiocracy? Controlling the narrative.


As you can recall from the earliest dev diaries, views (eg. pro-Soviet sentiment or fear of nuclear war) form the backbone of human psychology in the game, giving people memory, motivation, alignment, and so on. In the most naive approach to propaganda, you can just select any view in the game, and then task your assets with promoting or undermining it.

This method, however, merely addresses a view as a black box. It is used in the game as a secondary cheap tool (chosen perhaps by smaller intelligence agencies). Actual impactful propaganda begins a little bit further: with manipulation of the inner workings of views.

Views in the game connect causes with effects - for instance, Germany unleashed WW2 which led to widespread anti-German sentiment at the beginning of the game in 1946. Many other major events before and during the game can create and/or modify views.

Naturally, this doesn't happen instantly, and instead, such events need time to propagate through media, become topics of debates, or reach books and movies. Main propaganda tools in Espiocracy focus on this twilight zone. Players can modify the "how" of the view-making and view-modifying process - they can control the narrative.


When a major event happens in the game (invasion, terrorist attack, political change, international crisis, large accident, and so on), players begin a battle over controlling the narrative around this event.

In simplest terms, "control" is a set of 0-100 parameters, one global, and a few for participating/relevant/superpower nations. Details, such as the initial level of control, are highly dependent on the event and its details. For instance, the story of the Sputnik launch starts as fully controlled by the USSR, and the only thing that the American player can do is slightly subtract Soviet control domestically - whereas the assassination of JFK is more or less carte blanche in terms of control, difficult to take over, prone to be never fully controlled by any party, and then be lost to dozens of conspiracy theories (not only from players but also from other actors in the game).

Between the onset of the event and highly variable moment of people moving on (which, again, depends on many details, other events, and even forms of media), players vie for control by:

• Using geographically and culturally positioned radio stations, newspapers, bribed journalists, partially controlled actors, spies, front organizations, and anything else that can potentially influence the masses
  
• Acquiring related intelligence, documents, recordings, witness reports
  
• Leaking chosen parts to the press, surfacing the event to the government, and further, modifying details
  
• Enforcing censorship (including jamming stations), diverting the attention by popularizing another significant event, supplying strong rebuttals
  
• Preparing forgeries, false flags, accusations, convincing lies
  
• Directly attacking other parties trying to manipulate the event

Once one of the players controls the majority (51+) of the narrative, they can launch propaganda campaigns that exploit the story, modify its perception, and accomplish various small feats along the way.


A propaganda campaign in the game is a kind of intelligence operation that uses propaganda assets (mentioned above, radio stations, and others) to primarily either amplify or suppress the controlled event.

While the main goal is usually obvious (eg. Soviets suppressing the Chernobyl disaster or Americans amplifying Khrushchev's "secret speech"), details and consequences - defined by available assets as well as direct configuration of the campaign plan - forge campaigns into unique adventures that:

• Shift new views in terms of direction (eg. revert pro-X to anti-X), subject (eg. assign blame/merit to another entity), emotional load (eg. from anti-X to hatred of X), and spread
  
• Ignite reactions from actors and nations, eg. smear campaign causing targeted political leader to resign
  
• Lead to new events, eg. Red Scare
  
• Use white / grey / black propaganda methods, utilize totalitarian / free environment, use assets from publishing houses to smuggled samizdat machines
  
• Choose between resonating with one or another set of nations, for instance appealing to Latin American nations while repelling African nations
  
• Associate concept A with B, eg. NATO with Nazis (a common theme in Soviet propaganda)
  
• Have various trade-offs, for instance between simplicity and spread, between costs and vulnerability to counter-propaganda, between exposing own propaganda assets and strength of the campaign, between domestic effect and abroad, and so on
  
• Affect control over this event and potentially over other events

Such campaigns, launched to manipulate fresh controlled events, form the majority of propaganda machine in the game - but there are more variants of them and adjacent details.


Some major events are active for a long time (for instance: wars). In these cases, the battle for control over the event is also a long-term affair where it can frequently change hands, influenced by the evolution of the event, campaigns, and so on.

Manufactured or even false flag events can also become a basis for propaganda. Their main downside, naturally, is the cost of preparing them and much higher vulnerability to counter-propaganda.

Speaking of which, following standard mechanics of intelligence operations, players can launch counterintelligence (in this case: counter-propaganda) operations upon detecting foreign campaigns reaching their soil. Usually, it takes very much a counterintelligence form, with arrests of relevant journalists, infiltrating outlets suspected of being under foreign control or surveilling participating actors to identify their handlers.

In addition to working fresh major events, there are two more special types of campaigns. Future events, such as an invasion of another country, can be preceded by a campaign that engineers consent. Past events, for instance, a past alliance with a universally hated nation, can be modified by campaigns that rewrite history both domestically and abroad.

Outside of controlling the narrative, nations have a set of psychological parameters modifiable through player actions. Some of them were mentioned before (eg. diplomatic weight), others are experimental (eg. atomic ambition), while some are largely integrated with the propaganda tools described above. One parameter from the last category is soft power, developed by international contributions (sometimes unusual, for instance in real history North Korea acquired soft power in Africa by sending... mass gymnastics instructors - an action also available in the game), which then supports battle for control and subsequent campaigns.


The next dev diary will be posted on September 6th!

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If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:

[discord.gg]---
"Anyone can believe a convincing lie; we’ve all fallen for a few. But the blatant lie does some useful things. It reveals the skeptics, or at least the skeptics who open their mouths. It forces the supporters deeper into the web of lies. They have to accept this, knowing it is a lie, and dig themselves deeper. It’s brainwashing, making them choose to accept the propaganda rather than the evidence before them" - author and year unknown