Suggestion regarding map-painting and immersion

[mbiodude]

Loving this game so far! Can't wait to see where it goes with regards to Cold War and Foothold scenarios.

Have been thinking about map painting and the recent nerf to 'shenanigans', and am wondering what you fine folks would think about the following as something perhaps more immersive than the present situation? Currently, you can form superstates including shenanigan-like meganations, though at least on the validation branch you can't go as far as you used to if you engaged in shenanigans. You do this primarily through research. It's a bit odd, however, that regardless of the situation on the ground, research lets you do this.

I do like the idea of research locking things. What if what you could potentially do was less restricted in terms of hard-coding restrictions (capitol shenanigans turned off), but instead what happened boots-on-the-ground in your campaign played a bigger role?

It's kind of odd to be able to merge Pakistan and India, historical mega-rivals, together just because of a research. Under what circumstances could you imagine this happening? It would take a lot. Might it happen in a circumstance where nuclear winter has happened, or there's an enemy Alien Administration going around conquering? That might do it.

Possible triggers for unlocking tier I or tier II unifications, in addition to research:

Unification candidate has had at least one of its armies nuked.

Alien Administration has used nukes.

Alien Administration has a GDP exceeding that of unification candidate's biggest potential member.

Nuclear winter, some global reduction of GDP in a short time.

Just some ideas, I'm curious what y'all could think of that would make the sociopolitical story this game tells, maybe a bit more immersive than it is at present.

Any of these could be considered political, social, or economic crises above and beyond merely aliens existing that could make previously unthinkable unions possible.

Kind of goes with the logic some have proposed, the idea of letting aliens get reinforcements through the wormhole as an event, if the player is doing extremely well. This would be the converse, things that could happen if the player is struggling.

Let bigger unifications become one possible tool to help a player in a more-challenging run. But something that is less plausible, as people on the ground wouldn't see the need for such things, in a run where humanity is faring relatively better.

[SillySMS]

1) The research is supposed to represent bringing together the conditions for these unions. "But lol, mebbe Canada can join the US" does not require months of research from top scientists; it's the PR campaigns and political maneuvering that is challenging.

2) Without a deep overhaul of multiple game systems, map painting kind of needs to stay. It's the bandaid fix required to let the player reasonably control most of the world in the absence of mechanics to support control of many smaller nations... and given that multiple victory conditions (including Servants and Academy) have a hard requirement for map control, nevermind denying nuclear weapons to your rivals, the game needs to continue to permit global control.

Right now, without forming new meganations, you'd be staring at enormous CP costs, a flood of minor nations being couped/purged by AI factions, research/miltech overwhelmingly dominated by China and the US, and minor nations' economies in slow freefall due to how poorly the economy priority works with small IP budgets.