28 Comments

Reminds me of college when I spent too much time wargaming and not enough time studying. Looks well thought out and a pretty good simulation.

You really don't think either side would use WMD?

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Sep 8, 2022Liked by Tree of Woe

As another aside have you consider doing another piece just on casualty rates, and good starting point would be Dupuy's *Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War*

If you don't want the book here is a link that provides and overview.

https://groundedcuriosity.com/finding-maths-in-the-military/

May also be useful in deepening your wargame of The World War Next as well

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Sep 8, 2022Liked by Tree of Woe

Very interesting, I have recently being considering make a large scale strategic wargame using square or box counters similar to Hearts of Iron 3 to represent units on the board so you can get truly massive/ granular scaling.

With that said I was wondering if you'd be able to take a quick look at the two posts I've made on my own account. About 2 min or less read.

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What is this... Fun + Recreation? Such an Abomination!

Where is the Woe at? I'm here for my daily fix/supply of the Bright White Powder!

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Hey Woe, love your work. Wanted to ask you some technical questions about game design, specifically a game I "developed" a while back. Can I reach out to you? I totally understand if you're too busy. Thanks for all your writing. While I was already getting sufficient woe, my gainz since subscribing have been phenomenal!

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I saw you subscribed, saw this post, saw you were a fan of tabletop wargaming, and quickly counter-subscribed.

I think that means I've used up all my command points. Your turn. :)

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The National Will aspect is novel and potentially very insightful. It could almost certainly be expanded upon in interesting ways to give a complete 4GW model that fully encompasses the moral dimension.

For example, psywar campaigns could attempt to attack the National Will directly. Defending against these might also carry a risk of depleting NW: censorship tends to annoy people, especially in America.

Another aspect that could be included are guerrilla forces. Both China and the US have local malcontent populations, eg Uyghurs and Tibetans in China, and BLM and red staters in the US. The two sides could attempt to fund these forces to destabilize the other, with impacts on NW, mobilization, and infrastructure.

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Here is another game you can play: World War 3 Draft Simulator

The rules are simple. Identify a segment of the population and then use the 3 rules to predict how they will be treated. Bonus points for predicting the second-order effects.

The 3 rules, in priority order, are:

1. Get as much manpower as possible

2. Adhere to woke ideology

3. Avoid draft riots

A few examples...

Women

Woke ideology constrains the options. Women will be drafted. However, the pregnancy exemption remains. The US experiences the biggest spike in birth rates since WW2.

College Students

Vietnam era college deferments, despite loud protests by the colleges, are not brought back. See below for other ways to protect the rich and well-connected.

Parents

Parents not deferred but single parents still get an exemption, especially since women become eligible. During Vietnam this led to a lot of marriages, a single parent exemption will lead to a lot of divorces.

Foreign Nationals

Offer of US citizenship if you sign up. If illegal, choice of deportation or signing up. The latter will lead to more business raids to fill draft quotas.

Workers

The Covid lock-down "essential vs non-essential" distinction comes back. Workers designated as "essential" are exempt. This will be one way the well-connected get out of the draft. Will be highly, highly politicized.

Rich and Well Connected

Many will escape via the "essential" designation. Those who do not will finagle rear area jobs, safely behind the lines. Expect tone-deaf Vogue photo-shoots of famous people in uniform--all well out of harm's way.

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