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As a person who hasn't played the game, the whole part of the episode about worker relations and how doing the "right thing" for your workers was just whether or not you had the resources to push the "good button" gave me an interesting idea for a system to complicate matters. I seem to recall some strategy games balancing "giving people what they want" with corruption in some abstract way that just sounds kind of cynical and arbitrary, but I think it could be more grounded.. Consider for example if all labor relations events were grounded on recent events--you get a notification that a worker was injured in a factory, and a few minutes later, you get a notice that there is a demand for more safety structures or unionization. However, the more often you say "yes" to these demands, the more fake labor relations requests you get--requests that give you, say, half or none of the benefit in terms of morale improvement as a result, and half/none of the morale penalty if you turn them down, but all the standard costs and headache. So if you say yes to everything, you will not only end up spending resources on things you don't need, but doing it more often because you get more requests. Saying no to everything means every 'no' is a substantial penalty, but you are bothered less, which some merciless tyrants would appreciate. All it would really take is a little bit of text that tells you what happened, and then a request that is either reasonable or unreasonable afterwards. I didn't think about it until I started writing this, but a lot of games focus very specifically on the current state of the world--in short, you aren't relying on dynamic memory to say, X happened, so Y will happen, or Y happened, did X happen a minute ago? While I'm sure that a lot of games I don't play (especially the big heavy Paradox ones) do engage memory in that way, it certainly seems like a very basic mechanic that could be more widely used.

On the topic of governors as "Great Administrators" -- A couple options 1. Wouldn't it make as much sense for you to be able to convert Great People into Governors? Generals might become a Castellan and Scientists might become an Educator. This would more likely mean that they would each come with their own flavored Governor Bonus, just like they each have their own special action right now... presumably they decided against this deliberately, since it makes as much sense as what they did, it just must not be what they wanted. 2. Otherwise, Great Administrator points would probably come from normal buildings and government Policy. An Economic policy might give you GA points for every Market, or every Temple, Library, Forge, Barracks, etc. These are all things that need administration anyway, and policy would cause the best Administrators to be nourished and rewarded, becoming Great People. Plenty of Wonders would likewise make points as big expensive projects need equally good ongoing management. 3. Tangentially, it would be interesting to retire Great People and have them become your advisers (in the Civ II sense) instead of governors or special effect fodder. It would be fantastic to be able to say that Albert Einstein is my own personal science adviser, rather than just immediately spending him to get whatever his reward is, or sticking him in charge of some troubled city somewhere. That's a lot of portraits and dialog to research and create, but it would be really fun to have as a player. I won't claim that what follows here is a good idea, but it came to mind: Way back in 3MA #51 Rob, Troy, Tom, and Bruce talked about alternative ways to think about research in games, and one of the things that stuck in my head since I first heard the episode is the idea of non-guaranteed science progression, that is, sometimes your scientists are just shooting in the dark and aren't making steady progress towards a technology that has never existed. The idea comes to mind that technologies may start hidden; research boosts would reveal them, and great people or other events would also reveal them, but without knowing that a tech exists, your science points can only slowly or randomly build up technologies you haven't yet revealed, eventually "discovering" a technology at random. This also has a built-in rubber banding, if you discover that technologies exist through trading partners and diplomacy (perhaps you can offer either tech knowledge, or a tech boost, on the trading table), through espionage, or through the advancement of Ages (previous Age tech is always known?). It comes to mind because I imagined that the advisers above were the ones that unlocked things; I imagined you started with no Advisers, but having a military Adviser informed you about Military Tech, and a science Adviser gave you education tech, etc. I suppose there might still be a few hidden and you'd need to rotate your advisers on occasion to reveal them, or else continue investing in blue sky research that might not pan out. It's an idea that would need to be massaged and played with--it would be a very radical change and might be better as a mod or alternate game mode because a lot of people would chafe at having that kind of choice taken away from them. But it is an interesting alternative with a lot of room to poke and prod at things.

I also remember Critical Mass! I never played much of it but I adored the mechanics. I am not sure I ever bought the full game or got very far. The turns were just enough to let you adjust your momentum, but kind of clunky so I would often not be entirely sure where I was aiming if I turned while firing. I seem to recall an early Windows game, very simple, that had a similar turn-based momentum thing but was only there to let you race cars on a little puzzle track, but I don't imagine I'd ever be able to remember the name. Aside from those examples I am not sure I have seen the mechanic anywhere else. He did do interesting games. I think his was the version of Capture the Flag that I remember playing on my computer for a long while, which used cover and line of sight mechanics extensively, but I could be mistaken. The one I remember was, I think, a DOS game that I got on one of those CD shareware collections in the 90s. MOAB intimidated me back then so I didn't really get into it. It looked like there was something there, I just never got into it.

I know I am late to comment on the topic, but since I have started following this podcast (a year or two ago?) I kept wondering if a old favorite of mine would pop up, but it never has. If they remembered it bite-sized gaming would have been a place to put it, so probably not. The game is Slay and is old, dating back to early windows (there are also iOS and Android ports now). I have come back to it year after year because it is an exceptionally light game to play against the computer--I think there is multiplayer on the Windows client but I haven't ever tried it. The game is dirt simple, but something about the mechanics of it are so fundamentally sound that I could play hours of it at a stretch. It's territory control and resource management; you can't invade any hex if an equal or greater force (of the owning player) is adjacent to it. You combine pawns to increase their strength, but doing so increases the maintenance costs. If a territory falls below zero cash on hand, all its pawns die. First level pawns can only capture unopposed, but to maintain a second-level pawn you need at least six squares (which you captured and held with first-level pawns) and can't leave yourself exposed. I love it and would be interested in hearing it talked about.