[MagnoliaFan]

One of my favorite hobbies is to make board games. This probably stems from playing _Risk_ and _Axis & Allies_ when I was a kid, it inspired me to make my own maps and variants of these games.

I've been immersing myself in the topic of peak oil and geopolitics for the past year. I would like to make a board game based on the events of the past 5 years or so. This board game, whose working title is "Peak Oil: The Board Game" is loosely based on the SSI computer game "Geopolitique 1990" (it was made in 1984). It basically pitted the human (US) player against the computer (Soviet) player for diplomatic/economic/political domination of the world. You could spend money and resources on military, diplomacy or economic infrastructure. My strategy was to spend more money on the economy while letting the soviet player over extend himself by letting him win on brownie points by sucking up to Third World banana despots. My superior economy would eventually allow me to outspend the soviets on the military and I just basically conquered every country in the world by force (of course every other country in the world hated my guts, lol).

My game begins in the year 2000, 10 years after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. I've created basic "Axis & Allies" - like values for the 6 major players (US, European Union, Japan, UK, Russia, China) for GNP and OIL:

United States GNP 10 OIL 3
European Union GNP 10 OIL 1
Japan GNP 8 OIL 1
China GNP 8 OIL 2
Russia GNP 6 OIL 3
United Kingdom GNP 6 OIL 2

And here are the values for the rest of the world:
Canada GNP 2 OIL 2
Mexico GNP 1 OIL 2
Central America (no value, but does have the Panama Canal)
Cuba (no value)
Venezuela OIL 2
Brazil GNP 1
Colombia (no value)
Argentina GNP 1

Scandinavia GNP 2 OIL 2
Eastern Europe GNP 2

Algeria OIL 1
Libya OIL 1
Egypt OIL 1 (plus the Suez Canal)
Nigeria OIL 2
South Africa GNP 1
Africa OIL 1

Syria OIL 1
Israel GNP 1
Iraq OIL 2
Saudi Arabia GNP 1 OIL 3
Lower Arabia OIL 2
Iran OIL 2
Transcaucasus OIL 1
Central Asia OIL 1

Mongolia (no value)
Indochine GNP 1 OIL 1
India GNP 2
Indonesia OIL 1
Philippines (no value)
Oceania GNP 2
Korea GNP 1

These are rudimentary values. I basically calculated a country's OIL value by doing a quick google search on oil production. The world's top 3 oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Russia & USA) get a value of 3. The other oil producing countries get a value of 1 or 2. The GNP value of a country represents that country's access to capital. The European Union basically represents today's EU minus the UK, Scandinavia and Greece (which is part of the Eastern Europe territory).

The GNP values are not realistic--otherwise the US and EU's values would have to be doubled. I only created these values to create a more balanced game.

The 6 players are not aligned, so anything goes. In this game, the players will compete for exclusive trade, energy or political agreements with the other countries in the world (which are all considered neutral at the start of the game). This game could simulate the 2002-2003 events which occurred over Iraq with the US eventually forgoing diplomacy and just taking Iraq by force. Diplomacy plays a major part of the game, if a player is too agressive, this might hurt his favorability rating and prevent him from being able to make strategic partnerships with the other nations. Take for example China's recent taking over of the Panama Canal.

Control of oil will also largely determine a player's economic growth. If a player has too much GNP and not enough OIL, there's a chance that it might shrink by 1 point. If it has a lot of OIL then it might grow.

There are also military units in this game, they are just represented by ground, air or naval units. But there is also military technology represented by long range missiles, nuclear, CBM weapons, etc. The US player begins with the best military technology but has a poor favorability rating, for example.

I will also use humor/cynicism in this game. There will be "Chance" cards where a player can receive a "Monica Lewinsky Card--Smear Your Political Opponents" or even a "False Flag Card--Use domestic terrorist attacks to gain diplomatic sympathy to get free reign on military adventurism for the next 3 turns".

One of the most perfect board games ever made is Monopoly--although it is by large a game of chance, it is a very educational game. What I want this game to turn out like is like Monopoly--it will teach people why world leaders act the way they do.

[julianj]

Interesting.

I like SSI games. Sad that they're defuncto.

are you going to make this available.? I'd like to play it.

IMHO there are about a hundred board games that knock the crud out of Monopoly, including Diplomacy, Junta, Illuminatus (is this a board game or a card game?) and Civilisation (board game version)

[tivoli]

Check out the "Puerto Rico" game

[gg3]

Interesting concept, I'd like to see how it comes out.

Re. Julianj's comment about the demise of strategic scenario games: Seems to correlate with the rise of "twitch" games, of which "first-person shooters" have become the dominant genre. Sad. The devolution of the entertainment industry from promoting use of the cerebral cortex to promoting use of reptilian reflex.

[MagnoliaFan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('julianj', 'I')nteresting.

I like SSI games. Sad that they're defuncto.

are you going to make this available.? I'd like to play it.

IMHO there are about a hundred board games that knock the crud out of Monopoly, including Diplomacy, Junta, Illuminatus (is this a board game or a card game?) and Civilisation (board game version)