Game Chronicles Magazine

SuperPower 2 is the only global geopolitical simulation game which allows players to control entire countries. Players control countries in 3 major areas: political, economic and military, but this time, in a beautiful real-time 3D environment. Players build up their own countries and increase their influence in the broader world while competing against sophisticated A.I. Along the way, gamers make use of economic sanctions, political alliances, and military actions to wage their battles.

SuperPower 2 offers the ability to fine-tune each country's performance, from creating or breaking treaties, to making tactical decisions in particular military conflicts.

Features:

Real-World Data: largest database ever assembled for a computer game, using real-world CIA and US Naval Intelligence data
32 Person Multiplayer: play as any one of 193 countries recognized by the United Nations
Political, Economic and Military Gameplay: The unique gameplay from the original SuperPower has been expanded and more fully realized
Create Your Own Mods: using the in-box toolkit, easily create scenarios and trade them over the internet.

Game Chronicles takes a look at this bold new game with an exclusive interview by John Carswell.

GCM: Thank you for you time! Please get us rolling by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about the team behind Super Power 2.
Jean-René Couture: My name is Jean-René Couture and I’m the head guy at GolemLabs, developer of Superpower 2. GolemLabs has grown a lot since we released SP1, both in size and experience. We are now 12 in the team and we’ve been committed to Superpower 2 every day, night and weekend for more than 2 years now.

GCM: For those unfamiliar with the series, please give us a brief description of Super Power 2’s gameplay.
Jean-René Couture: Superpower is a real world geo-political simulator. You get to play any country of the real world, in the present day, and manage that country in making political, economic and military decisions. You play with and / or against 192 other real-world countries to achieve your goals, which can be to conquer the world (always a popular one), but they can also be non-military, even peaceful. You get to play the world as you see it.

GCM: What aspects of Super Power did you most want to improve when setting out to make the sequel?
Jean-René Couture: Everything! We started from a clean slate. We kept the original idea, but we’ve redesigned everything, reprogrammed everything and redone all the art. We wanted to include multiplayer from the start, and also wanted to include complete modability. We wanted a real-time 3D earth, and we wanted both accessibility and in-depth gameplay.

GCM: How much research has gone into ensuring realistic political, militaristic, and financial climates?
Jean-René Couture: Many months. We’ve visited the military and worked with them on the military part and hired PhDs in economics and cultural psychology. We’ve assembled what is probably the largest map database available, and we’re looking into licensing that technology to the US military. All in all, data collection, treatment and calibration probably ate up half of the development time.

GCM: Breaking Super Power 2 down into sections, would you please tell us about the finical/trade/resource aspects of Super Power 2?
Jean-René Couture: We’ve redesigned the economic aspect of the game around the concept of resources. It’s expanded from the original game to include all the sectors of economic activity of a country, from goods to services. The combination of them produces the domestic production (GDP) that in turn affects the budget, debts, etc. When we trade now, we pass through a centralized “market” where countries buy and sell, so it’s not country-to-country like in SP1. But you can still affect countries by attacking producers and/or buyers of specific resources to boost your economy or harm another country’s.
I think the economic side of SP2 is the most interesting one because it opens up a lot of gameplay possibilities. Expert players will be the ones that can play that side the best, because it’s covert most of the time, but the consequences can be very devastating.

GCM: As for the militaristic portion of Super Power 2, what will the player be able to execute in terms of assaults, defense, and feints?
Jean-René Couture: The military sphere encompasses three different things: conventional warfare, strategic warfare, and covert ops. Since SP2 is a game of global strategy, you’re not the one controlling each individual tank. Your role as president of your country is to design the large-scale strategy and let the tactical or operational decisions to those in the field. And with everything happening in real-time, you can have multiple battles all around the world, send reinforcements or pull troops out, even nuke a battle.
The covert ops portion is used for both executing missions abroad and protecting the homeland. You divide your agents into cells that are dispatched all around the world and perform specific tasks and gain experience.

GCM: Please describe player-to-CPU politics and will there also be advanced CPU-to-CPU politics.
Jean-René Couture: Yes, the CPU doesn’t see the difference between human and AI countries, so it won’t gang up on you, or treat the player any differently. When playing games, it’s not rare to witness problem situations arising around the world. After all, we’re trying to model reality as best as we can. A player could take a big country, and just try to police regional conflicts arising here and there. All of these are based on real world data and historical information.
In fact, the only difference for the player is that you can’t chat with an AI country. Other than that, everything is the same.

GCM: Lastly, how much control will the player have over their territory and its people?
Jean-René Couture: A lot more than in SP1. You can create laws like freedom of speech, right of abortion, etc. to influence the orientation of your government. You can decide to outlaw specific religions, languages or political parties (or make them official). The internal politics part defines your political orientation (left to right), and will determine your relations around the world. You can even be booted out of some treaties if you suddenly become too extreme for the other signing countries.

GCM: What conditions will qualify as a “victory” in Super Power 2?
Jean-René Couture: This depends on the type of game. We have pre-set scenarios and gameplay modes that have clear goal and timeframe (i.e. reuniting the former USSR countries when playing Russia within 10 years). Other times, the player decides on his goals and time limits, so the degree of difficulty is in fact set by the player. The AI always plays the same since it’s not necessarily out there to conquer you. The difficulty factor becomes the setting of these games; a player that picks Fiji and wants to conquer the world in 5 years will have a hard time. Some games, like the “simulation” games, can become endless.

GCM: What would you say to those gamers who find the concept of Super Power 2 intriguing but are concerned that they will be bogged down by endless micromanaging?
Jean-René Couture: It’s not a micro-management game. We’ve played games in the office that lasted less than 30 minutes. And you can always let the advisor manage specific parts of your country, so a player that likes nuking stuff can leave the number-crunching to the AI and just take care of the military and politics. But the game isn’t about micro-management. You can go into details if you really want to, but the point is to make strategic decisions.

GCM: Super Power 2 seems to be adding a much stronger graphical element to the series. What can you tell us about what has been added?
Jean-René Couture: Well, everything is in 3D. This gives a much more realistic experience, moving around the globe like that. And all the military units were modeled and textured. The interface is also completely different, presenting the information and options in levels of importance rather than in theme.

GCM: Thank you again for your time. Do you have any last thoughts or impressions that you would care to leave our readers with?
Jean-René Couture: Come visit us at www.golemlabs.com for the latest information, we’re always present to answer questions and listen to suggestions. Our fans’ comments and suggestions helped shape the game that is about to be released. We’ll also soon launch another site to help people mod the engine and give them support, so I hope we’ll see you there, and we especially hope you’ll enjoy the game!