February 2nd, 2026
This design will require vastly more global variables than Le Morte d’Arthur required. In this essay, I shall make a first cut at defining the global variables set.
Affinity[of whom, for USA]. Affinity[of whom, for China]
These are obvious variables that will control the behavior of independent nations. I see no reason to have the full set Affinity[of whom, for whom]. There just isn’t any need for it.
GDP[USA]. GDP[China]
These are also obvious values that will be affected by trade relationships, tariffs, and sanctions
MilitaryPower[USA]. MilitaryPower[China]
Two more obvious variables
Do I want to add GDP values for each of the secondary countries? How about military power? Here’s a really tricky problem: do I want to add some sort of compilation of resources, singling out countries with lots of oil, rare earths, food production, and so forth? This could get very nasty very quickly. If the player has to juggle all those factors around in his head, he’ll be completely lost.
Are these enough? I want to keep the set of global variables as small as possible; many years’ experience has taught me that large attribute sets only lead to problems when a single verb has primary effects on one variable and secondary effects on others. Even worse is the problem of determining a country’s policy decisions based on a plethora of global variables, some of which have co-dependencies. That’s why I want just one variable (Affinity) instead of a combination such as Respect, Fear, Like, Admire, etc.