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Thanks Brian. I have the most recent reprinting of A Distant Plain on order - so Fire in the Lake and Liberty or Death are keeping me busy in the interim. When you have time, could you elaborate on...

There is a series of board games by GMT games starting with Cuba Libra and ending most recently with Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt against Caesar simulating, to some extent, the complexities of COIN...

Thanks for the advice everyone. I started the game design with what I would consider enjoyable; so I assume a professional/academic audience. I intend to let the play-test phase determine the level...

Thanks for sharing the links. I'm of the general opinion that context determines everything, and so my focus is on developing a strategic-policy level game. I have not thought much about the...

I think I'm simply going to have US leaders labelled with "American" ethnicity, with a few and far between exceptions among some of the diplomatic, aid, and contractor staff. I don't know yet what...

That is what I am leaning towards right now. Some background: there will be operational leaders (people in the field) and policy leaders (people in Washington, Kabul, or Quetta, etc). Anyway,...

A few updates:

- I decided to add ethnicity as a major game play factor. I am still considering how this will influence the basic ruleset since I want to avoid the RPG-like model of different...

I figure I might as well share the concept while I hammer out the remaining details. I intend to set up a quick website or forum in the near future to help facilitate play testing. If anyone is...

I'm currently designing a board game simulation of the Afghan War. I'm about done with the rule book and am developing the supporting appendices (i.e. cards and effects, etc) this week. The idea is...

I do not think a COIN simulator is viable at the tactical level because a COIN simulation is inherently political. Many have already mentioned the obvious problems in modelling the complex...

That's interesting because the points I outlined constitute the framework my buddies and I are using to build a simulation of the Dune universe. We're building the game using PHP coding which...

That would be measured by the prescribed policies/causes. Depending on the intent of the simulation (training or otherwise), the player can define them upon joining, or the game gods can define them...

If I were tasked with designing a COIN simulator, this is what it would look like:

1) Sand-box mode: an established framework to define player interaction, simulating a country similar to the Arab...

Point taken. I only aimed to assert that complex games modelling different theories of power, war, or what-have-you simultaneously are possible. Of course the specifics will take on a different shape...

It's certainly possible from a programming/development side. This model or this one (admittedly with more development time) I think would be very effective. Some games are also a mix of the two,...

Eden,

While you bring up sound objections, I disagree that they make gaming COIN impossibly difficult. Games have reached a point of creativity and depth that most things, given the proper focus...

I imagine that a sandbox model would be the most approrpriate for a COIN simulation. My friends and I are having similar issues in developing a simulation for the Dune universe as there are many...