War De-escalation RTS
I've been theorycrafting this idea for a while, and I think an idea like this could work really well as a multiplayer game. This is the general premise.
- A post-ww1 setting, or at least some equivalent fantasy setting with mass media and industrialisation.
- Two or more teams on a large-ish map (around 10km, akin to the maps in R.U.S.E.) which start neutral to each other. Escalating the war is discouraged, but if you can get yourself into an advantageous position to decisively beat the enemy, you gain enough points to win.
- Players play ostensibly as a political party, meaning that if you make unpopular decisions like attacking a neutral neighbour or tanking the economy from over-mobilisation, you get de-elected and instantly lose.
- There are economic aims too, and if you save resources while your opponent builds up a huge military, you are most likely to win, although not mobilising alongside your neighbours leaves you open to unopposed invasion.
- Thus the minute-to-minute gameplay of a match in this game would be about moving armies around as a show of force, perhaps invading small AI countries on the border, capitalising on enemy mistakes or aggression for propaganda purposes, trying to quickly deal with border skirmishes to avoid escalation, etc. You would be able to issue official political statements and denouncements as well as openly chat with your opponent, but it would be up to them if they believed your missiles went off course due a system failure.
The idea is to make the prisoner's dilemma into a metagame. I think something like this would be more interesting the more players you have, although I think they would all have to be on board for roleplaying properly.