Rival Powers: Cold War is a grand strategy game set in the Cold War era. This post will give you some insight into the design of the game now and in the future.

Should you buy this game?

This is an early access game and the game is playable but very barebones. If you want to contribute to the development of the game, or you want to buy it at a discounted price, buy it now. If you want the best possible Cold War experience, buy it later. There are issues with the map, such as inaccuracies and missing values, and most countries have very little flavor. Long story short, there is a lot to be done before the game is ready for 1.0.
 I recommend using the Itch.io client to manage your installation, so you don't have to download the entire game again every time it is updated. Expect frequent updates. There should be no crashes, hangs or UI errors, but if you see any please make a thread in the discussion board so I can fix them.

Game Concepts

Here are some of the key concepts that you need to know when playing the game. All of these are subject to change as I add more and more features to the game.

Policies

All countries have political policies that determine the workings of the country, how leaders are selected, how much is spent on the military, and what kind of economic system is favored. You may not always see all the potential policies in a policy category, if you do not fulfill the requirements to adopt that policy.

National Focuses

National focuses are selected by clicking the second row of the header bar and choosing a focus. Think of them as the Focus Trees in Hearts of Iron 4. National Focuses take time to process and give modifiers while they are being "focused on". When they are done, they may also have a number of effects on the world.

Important Values

These values can be found by selecting a country and reading the labels, or hovering over the information labels.

• Military Power is a combination of your country's Military Assets and Army Size.
  
• Military Assets is a resource that grows based on the size of your economy and military budget. You can change these policies to increase or decrease the amount of spending on the military versus the rest of your economy.
•  Army Size is based on your conscription level and the size of your population.
• Corruption is a measure of how well your country is functioning. A high level of corruption means that your economy will stagnate, your military will be weakened, and your population will gain Reform Desire.
  
• Reform Desire is a measure of how much your population wants your government to carry out political reform. Each province has its own Reform Desire. Some political policies reduce reform desire while others increase it. High reform desire under a longer period will increase the Militancy of your population.
• Militancy is a measure of how militant your population is, how upset they are with your rule.
• GDP is a measure of the productive capacity of a country.
• GDP per Capita is a measure of the productive capacity of a citizen of a country or province.
• Investment is how much of the productive capacity of a country is used for investing in economic growth.
• Investment Efficiency is how efficient the investment process is. More investment efficiency means more economic growth.
• Intensive Growth is  how well your economy handles a more developed, more complex economy. Eastern Bloc economies have lower intensive growth and will stagnate as their economies become too complex for their central planners to manage. In-game economies grow slower the more developed they are, but having a high intensive growth modifier can negate this.
• Recruitable Population is the share of your population that is to be included in the armed forces. A higher recruitable population means a higher Army Size. This is primarily affected by the Conscription Law policy.
• Military Expenditure is the share of your economy that is spent on the military. A higher spending means more Military Assets which increases your Military Power. This is primarily affected by the Military Budget policy.
• Spy Defense is how well your country is at dealing with foreign efforts to sabotage or influence the politics of your country.

Moddability

Most of the game content is in the form of the scenario in the assets folder. There you can inspect and edit national focuses, events, etc. or create your own. Check out the existing events, national focuses and diplomatic/covert actions to get a sense of what is possible. If you have modded Paradox games the scripting language should make sense.

Feedback and Ideas

If you spot an inaccuracy in the game world, please create a thread in the discussion board here on Itch, and I will try to fix it before the next update. I fix inaccuracies as I come across them but the world is large. 

Ideas for national focuses, both for history as it happened and interesting alternate history are very welcome, as are ideas for new policies.