January 1, 2026. Pick a country and take on its economy, debt, population and political institutions, with the war in Ukraine already underway. Try to get a pension reform through parliament, negotiate with striking unions, or run for a seat on the UN Security Council. From there, events follow the simulation and the decisions made by you and the other governments.

Geoplanetical is a geopolitical simulation I am building on my own. Play as the government or an opposition party in one of 200+ nations and territories. Other countries manage their budgets, change laws, hold elections, impose sanctions and propose alliances. If your game rules allow it, they can start wars too, including against you.

How the simulation works

I want the economy, politics and society to affect each other in ways you can follow:

• A strike takes workers out of businesses and public services.
  
• A coal or gas plant needs fuel to produce electricity. Shortages can raise costs, hold back production and reduce tax income.
  
• A blockade disrupts seaborne trade. Fighting and occupation affect production, supply and the people living there.
  
• More money for hospitals does not solve a shortage of trained staff, beds or medical supplies on its own.
  
• Companies invest and hire according to demand and available resources. More than 100 goods move through around thirty sectors and international trade.

The Agenda brings together approaching deadlines, problems that need attention and events worth watching. Reports help you catch up on changes in your country. Where these numbers come from breaks down approval and stability, and your ministers give advice on their portfolios.

Raise taxes to fund public services? Change the retirement age? Reform the electoral system even if it could cost you your majority? You can shrink the state or expand it, regulate or deregulate, disarm or build up your military. There is no ideology score to chase. Policies affect people, production, public finances and your ability to stay in power.

Parliament can say no

• Change the laws people care about: minimum wage, working hours, paid leave, retirement age, abortion, the death penalty, cannabis, religion, immigration limits and asylum rules. Cannabis policy ranges from prohibition and decriminalization to medical use, regulated sales or a state monopoly.
  
• Get your bills through: check vote forecasts, set your party's voting line and follow debates, executive approval, vetoes and constitutional review. The procedure depends on the country's institutions and the office you hold.
  
• Face the voters: chambers and elected offices follow their own calendars, with partial renewals where the constitution calls for them. Coalitions form after elections, cohabitation can happen, and you can call early elections when your office allows it. Results come in live on election night.
  
• Run your party: raise funds, recruit activists, campaign and announce up to three promises. The game follows whether you deliver during your term, with consequences for your credibility and influence.
  
• Lose an election and keep playing: continue in opposition, try to bring down the government through a motion of no confidence when the rules allow it, take control of the governing party or play as someone else in the same world. Opposition parties with seats can also put forward bills.
  
• Lobby through Cablegram: ask an opposition leader to support your bill or a foreign leader to vote with you at the UN. Your relationship matters, but agreement is not automatic.

Rewrite the constitution

More than 100 institutional choices cover the electoral system, creating or abolishing an upper house, parliamentary powers, executive vetoes, judicial review, term lengths and limits, the selection of the head of state, emergency powers and succession. Monarchies have heirs, regencies and royal decrees.

These choices change who can decide, who can block a decision and how power passes from one government to the next. Some reforms take effect at the next election.

Hold society together

• Social groups: nearly twenty groups with their own income before and after tax, wealth, satisfaction and militancy. They respond to living costs, unemployment, housing and public services.
  
• Unions: negotiate during strikes and compare each union's response to your offer. A promise to change a law or a budget still has to be carried out.
  
• Protests: facilitate, contain or disperse a demonstration, order an armed crackdown or deploy the army. People can die, unrest can spread and an army with low loyalty may refuse to fully carry out your orders.
  
• Housing: introduce rent controls that spread as leases renew, limit eligible mortgage rate resets and fund social housing.
  
• Public services: manage health, education, justice, police, prisons and administration. Set policies, staffing targets and pay, then build schools, hospitals, police stations, courts and prisons province by province. Training and recruitment take time.
  
• Benefits: change pensions, minimum old-age support, child benefits and unemployment insurance, including who qualifies and how much support they receive.
  
• Migration: follow arrivals and departures by age and skill, brain drain, communities and diasporas.
  
• Epidemics: strengthen surveillance, introduce public health measures, control travel from affected countries, fund vaccine research and run vaccination campaigns. New diseases can emerge if you enable them in the game rules. Vaccination uses staff who would otherwise provide other care.
  
• Natural disasters: fund prevention, respond to wildfires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis, rebuild affected provinces and send aid abroad.

Run the economy

• Budget and taxes: set income tax brackets, social contributions, VAT by product category and customs duties. Decide spending, issue or repay debt and control the policy rate when your monetary system allows it, or leave it to an independent central bank.
  
• Debt crises: manage dwindling currency reserves, loss of access to financial markets and default. An IMF program provides financing in tranches tied to budget reviews. Governments with the necessary monetary powers can also create money, with consequences for prices and credibility.
  
• Finance: recapitalize a troubled bank with or without nationalizing it, provide liquidity to a solvent bank, or restructure a company. Manage a sovereign wealth fund, impose capital controls or close the stock exchange.
  
• Ownership: nationalize or privatize a share of a sector, or convert eligible private holdings into cooperatives. Compensation, available funds and the law matter.
  
• Industry: launch investment programs to bring production home, expand exports, create jobs or reduce a critical dependency. The results depend on what your economy can actually build and supply.
  
• Trade: negotiate tariffs product by product, introduce targeted surcharges, respond to trade disputes and impose sanctions. Trade blocs such as the EU, USMCA, Mercosur, ASEAN and AfCFTA can require collective decisions.
  
• Energy and resources: place power plants on the globe, build storage and interconnections, and secure fuel supplies. Prospect and drill, suspend or close extraction sites, nationalize with compensation or by seizure, or privatize. Build strategic reserves. Within OPEC, vote on quotas, exceed yours or start a price war if you are an eligible swing producer.
  
• Energy transition and climate: invest in electrification, hydrogen and new production methods. Follow global emissions and warming, renovate buildings, expand cooling access and prepare shelters for extreme weather. New targets need funding, equipment and time before they change the country.
  
• Transport: build and expand ports, airports and freight connections, including specialized terminals for energy exports. Restrict passage through straits or canals you control.
  
• Tourism, culture and sport: set tourism policy, organize festivals and championships or bid for the Olympics. Venues, security, access and funding all affect whether an event goes ahead.

Negotiate, spy, threaten

• Treaties and aid: negotiate defense pacts, guarantees, non-aggression agreements, military access and intelligence sharing. Arrange foreign bases, give or request military support in money or equipment, and fund civilian aid.
  
• Diplomatic crises: draw red lines, mobilize at the border, deploy ships, patrol disputed waters, restrict maritime traffic or apply economic pressure. You can also negotiate a settlement, accept mediation, make a concession or withdraw your demand. Other governments use these tools too.
  
• International organizations: run for a UN Security Council seat and vote on resolutions, with permanent members able to veto. Eligible countries can apply to join the European Union, vote on its rules and candidates, campaign in European elections, adopt the euro when they meet the conditions or leave the EU. Respond to NATO collective-defense calls. The ECB, OPEC, IMF and IAEA have their own decisions and procedures.
  
• Intelligence: build networks abroad, steal state secrets, sabotage power grids, factories or extraction sites, infiltrate terrorist organizations and attempt to capture their members. Investigate intrusions at home, run counterintelligence operations and publish evidence of foreign involvement when you have enough of it.
  
• Coups: fund a military coup abroad when conditions allow it. Success changes the government; it does not hand you control of the country. At home, monitor army loyalty, pay a bonus or purge the high command. If a coup begins, try to negotiate, resist with loyal forces or mobilize public support. You cannot currently organize your own domestic coup to seize power.

War has a front, and a home front

• Declare war: choose your grounds, from defending an ally to conquest, and set territorial claims. Check whether your grounds are seen as legitimate or as aggression. Before confirming, review the expected international response, your ministers' positions and the costs to stability, approval and existing treaties. Allies do not automatically join an offensive war; you can ask them to take part.
  
• Follow the front day by day: formations fight across a detailed grid, with terrain, supply, encirclements, air superiority and control of the seas affecting operations. Provincial control follows the ground held by your forces.
  
• Give orders to your general staff: set a directive such as holding positions, applying limited pressure or launching a major offensive. Set priorities between theaters and choose a targeting doctrine. You can order an amphibious landing or allow your staff to initiate one. The staff handles unit movements and the landing plan.
  
• Equip your forces: order equipment from tanks to military satellites and fund it through the defense treasury. Orders use domestic industry where possible, with eligible foreign producers able to supply it when needed. Production and deliveries take time. Set replenishment targets for ammunition and missiles, and keep enough money available to pay for them.
  
• Strike without invading: launch an air and missile campaign, then decide whether to end it or escalate into a ground invasion.
  
• Manage occupied territory: administer, repress or expel. Hostility can turn into revolt. Civilian casualties, displacement and refugees affect the population and the response abroad, including relations and sanctions.
  
• Keep support for the war: losses, time and lost ground wear it down. If it collapses, your military can capitulate even if you still have forces left.
  
• Make peace: negotiate annexation of declared objectives you occupy, impose an available political status or seek a ceasefire or armistice. A ceasefire suspends fighting without settling sovereignty.
  
• Nuclear weapons: run a declared or clandestine program, deal with non-proliferation rules and respond to IAEA inspections. Set your nuclear doctrine and alert level, plan strikes in the nuclear war room and determine how to retaliate. A game rule controls whether AI nuclear powers may strike first when facing an existential threat. Soot from nuclear strikes can reduce sunlight, cool the climate and damage food and solar production far beyond the countries hit.

Beyond the map

• Territories: negotiate autonomy, independence or the transfer of an administered territory, including paid transfers and referendums where required. Buying territory is a political agreement, not a way to purchase any province you click on.
  
• Research: more than 200 technologies across nineteen fields, with national programs, licenses, scientific cooperation and joint industrial projects. Agreements can help your research, but do not instantly give you the discovery. New technologies also need to spread through the economy before their full effects are felt.
  
• The Moon: establish sites, build facilities, send crews and settlers, and organize supplies and return cargo. Appoint governors and set colonial charters, with paths to autonomy and independence. Extract helium-3, bring it back to Earth and develop fusion through research and an operating demonstrator before commercial deployment.
  
• Your nation: rename it, draw or import its flag, or choose a historical flag. Presentation mods can also change names, portraits and flags.
  
• Watch the world: a 3D globe with day and night, clouds and city lights. Leaders age, die and are succeeded. TV news bulletins with a presenter report major events.

No end date

There is no year limit or hidden countdown. Keep playing to see the longer-term effects of your decisions: generations age, populations grow or shrink, deposits run out, and forests and fish stocks recover or decline depending on how they are used.

Losing an election or a war does not automatically end your campaign. Losing all your territory or suffering a catastrophic population collapse can end your country's run, but you can choose another actor and continue in the same world. There is no fixed victory condition.

Frequently asked questions

When does a game start? Are there scenarios?
Every new game starts on January 1, 2026, with starting economies, institutions and international relationships based on that period. The war between Russia and Ukraine is already active. There are no alternative historical start dates or scripted campaigns to follow; what happens next depends on the simulation and its participants.

Which countries can I play?
More than 200 nations and territories, including territories with their own administration such as Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong. Some microstates, including Monaco and the Vatican, are not playable. You can switch country or political role during a campaign from the pause menu.

Are real leaders and parties in the game?
No. Leaders are fictional characters and parties use fictional names. New leaders are generated as people leave power or die.

Can I adjust the difficulty?
Yes, through the country you choose and the game rules. At the start, choose the world's Leaders' temperament: Calm, Normal or Tense. This changes how inclined political figures are to negotiate or use force.

You can also allow or forbid AI war declarations and AI nuclear first use, and set natural disasters and new pandemics to None, Rare, Normal or Frequent. Those settings can be changed during a campaign; leaders' temperament is fixed at the start. Turning off new wars does not end existing conflicts or prevent countries from defending an ally.

Do I need to know economics or geopolitics?
No. Choose Learn to play for a guided introduction, Essential guidance for lighter help, or Help on demand. The Agenda, country reports, ministers' advice, tooltips and explanations of approval and stability help you understand what is happening.

Pause whenever you want, use three game speeds and keep named saves alongside autosaves. A built-in cheat console lets you experiment; using cheats that alter the simulation disables achievements for that campaign.

Is there multiplayer?
Geoplanetical is a single-player game.

Is there mod support?
Yes, for presentation: leader and party names, portraits, country flags and additional flags to choose from. Create them in the Mod studio or use mods from the Steam Workshop, then enable them in Manage mods. They load when you start the game.

These mods do not change the simulation or its rules. Larger conversions, such as a 1945 start, remain unlikely because so much of the simulation depends on the rest.

Will the game keep evolving?
Yes. I'll keep fixing bugs, improving existing systems and adding content. I read player feedback, and I also play the game myself: some additions come from things I wish I could do in my own campaigns. The roadmap shows the features I want to work on, without assigning release dates to each one.

A word from the developer

I'm Hugo, the developer behind Polytale Games. I'm making Geoplanetical on my own because I enjoy this kind of game and wanted to build one I could keep playing and adding to.

I care about decisions having consequences that come from the simulation. A policy should need workers, resources, money or political support where it makes sense. Countries should react to their own circumstances and to what you do.

There is no victory screen telling you that you ran the country correctly. A few decades into a campaign, look at your laws, public finances, living conditions and borders, and decide whether you're happy with what you did.

Hugo, Polytale Games