Events

An event is a moment the game puts in front of a government: a strike wave, a defence budget fight between the services, a rival's first atomic test, a diplomat caught in the act. Most events offer a choice between responses, and each response has consequences. Others simply report what has happened. The 1946 scenario contains well over a thousand of them. They range from long national chronicles for the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to the many small incidents that make up a diplomat's career.

The event sheet

You answer an event on a paper sheet. Beside the narrative is an illustration, usually a period photograph. Where no photograph has been chosen, a themed illustration takes its place. Long texts scroll so the responses stay on screen.

Responses are listed as rows. The first available response starts selected, and Confirm Choice resolves your selection. Each row has a glyph and a label, often with a one-line summary and a short description. A locked response shows its requirement in place of its summary. The effects of the selected response are listed line by line, each coloured by whether it is good or bad for you. Hovering a line gives the full detail. A response with no consequences says so.

When an event concerns a treaty, its terms are laid out as on the treaty screen: what the other side grants beside what you grant. Some responses also preview consequences that another country's event will apply, so you can see the full international outcome before you decide.

When events fire

• Dated events are historical beats with a set date. Their conditions are checked only on that day.
• Mean-time-to-happen events have no fixed date. They are likely to happen within some span, and the timing varies between playthroughs.
• State-driven events wait for the world to reach a certain point, however long that takes. The People's Republic of China is proclaimed only once the Communists hold Beijing and most of the population the two Chinese sides control.
• Triggered events respond to things that happen in play: research completing, a first nuclear test, a shift in Threat Levels, an election, a government forming, a reform starting or completing, a faction uprising, a crisis escalating, an organization gaining or losing a member, a battle starting or ending, a focus completed, a treaty answered, a diplomat mission reaching a new stage.

An event can trigger further events for its own country, for named parties, or for every country. This is how the outbreak of a war asks every bystander how it will respond. Each recipient's own conditions still apply, so the prompt reaches only countries it concerns.

Event groups

Many occurrences in play are handled by event groups rather than single events. A group has a chance to fire and a pool of possible events, each with a relative weight. When the occurrence happens, the group rolls its chance. If it fires, it picks one eligible event by weight. A group fires at most one event per occurrence, and separate groups on the same occurrence roll independently.

For example, a group with a 25% chance and two events weighted 3 to 1 produces nothing three times in four. When it does fire, the first event is three times as likely as the second. Weights can depend on the situation. A reform in progress can stall, suffer a setback or make a breakthrough, and the odds shift with how agitated its backers and opponents are.

Event groups also drive diplomat missions. Each month, an infiltration picks a setback, no progress, progress, a breakthrough or discovery. A discovery can open another group for the host's response, such as denouncing the sponsor, covering the affair up, or expelling the diplomat.

Martial law works the same way. When it is declared amid low unrest, an event marks it as Unjustified at once, and if it runs past six months, another marks it as Prolonged (see Coups and Power Struggles).

Fixed outcomes

Every roll is made once, by the session's host, and recorded. Saving and loading never rerolls an event, and the same occurrence can never fire twice. In Multiplayer, every player sees the same result.

How the AI answers

Every response carries an AI weight, which can be scaled by the situation. An AI country picks its highest-scoring response. Its reactions to history are therefore written in the same content the player reads (see Living History).