Bret Devereaux

That's not unusual for strategy games, but it seems really relevant here when players are encouraged to start opportunistic wars that may kill thousands to gain increased tax revenue or strategic advantage. 25/more

The game attempts a dispassionate, non-moralizing view on all of this. Slavery exists (though the slave trade isn't as clearly represented as it might be) and while the player is given the option to abolish it in their state, the game doesn't pass judgement either way. 26/46

Likewise, the game has no moral judgement to lay on violent imperial expansion or war-mongering. Consequences are always expressed in terms of their impact to the state - too rapid expansion can cause instability, but it doesn't cause you to lose your soul. 27/46

Because this is a game about states, most of the player's tools are coercive in nature and the overall model of power is zero-sum - for the player to become powerful and secure, other states must be rendered less so and defeated when they resist. 28/46

You can see this clearly in how the game models trade - trade exists as a flow of goods through trade nodes which can be redirected by either dominating the territory around those nodes, or the sea-lanes near them or both. 29/46

Successful trade policy redirects the trade flows back towards the home port of your country, thereby gaining that revenue and denying it to others. For you to get rich in trade, others must get poor. 30/46

I should note that the trade network is one part of the game that remains solidly Eurocentric; trade moves in a predicable direction and while it can be diverted this way or that in small ways, trade lanes begin in the Americas or Asia and end in Europe. 31/46

Consequently, building a trade empire from places that aren't Europe is usually impossible, restricting non-European states to large territorial empires (generally you either run a small state on trade or a big state on land taxes in the game). 32/46