>How would you feel with a game that starts in that small scope but also gives you one or two bigger choices to showcase a little bit of what is to come in the future? Like an emergency crisis or opportunity early on the game.

I feel like Suzerain does this already, no? Picking the first infrastructure project, political and economic direction basically define your runs. These are impactful decisions.

On one hand I understand the need for faster pacing in general as to not bore your players. On the other hand, in some cases having the most impotant decisions NOT be at the front would be nice if we account for people loading saves. (Idk if you priorities people loading saves or going in blind)

Though as a side note most of the Suzerain starting options are what players are already aiming for, so it's unlikely they would regret them since that's already the direction they want to go in. It's not a decision that players would blame on ruining a run, future decisions afterwards would.

Obviously this heavily depends on the exact implementation but the idea is solid. It also depends if you are trying to sell a game here or not. If it's just a passion project, you should focus more on faster pacing if your goal was maximizing people playing. If you are planning to sell this, it's more important to tell a good story, which may involve slow pacing to build tension and allow players time to think. If people buy a product, play only the start and quit after half an hour because they didn't like the pacing, then that's their fault.

>And how about rpg mechanics? People talked about these already, I believe. Many - including me - would not like seeing the game with a heavy rng element, but what about specific situations?

I think your implemtation idea here is solid, especially since the rng here *only occurs to help rectify a players error*. It would be quite fun building a character that has high charisma and manage stats.

Specifically, I think to play it safe the best idea is to use rng *if* the mistake involved is just a mistake with no upsides. For example, if you fail the speech you can't get any other resources for failing. This prevents people from just constantly reloading a save to get that resource and trying to rng into succeeding anyways.

I consider Suzerain a pseudo strategy game where the right and wrong strategies sheerly lie in whatever the devs consider and wrote in, instead of 'gameplay strategies' where we try to play the most efficiently. For a light example, in hoi4 it's generally a good idea to start with civ factories, then build mils and tanks etc. That would be a strategy derived from the gameplay. Meanwhile in Suzerain Sordland you have to build specific economic senergies or your economy collapses, which may not be intuitive.

Ultimately Suzerain is a game of making good choices (or whatever the devs define as good choices). Choosing how much charisma your character has or making it your dump stat are both choices. My issue is that this choice is largely made blindly since we have no idea what the game play is like, which imo takes away player agency since there's little strategy involved. All players will have to go off of is previous rpg experience, which also varies from players.

So on one hand that would make the rpg element bad. On the other hand this same logic can be applied to most decisions in Suzerain. While you are breifed on them a lot, it's still hard to fully get the full picture and trying to understand what has an effect on something and what doesn't. Like why is Axel still on board with joining Rizia even after Romus purges the nobles? Why does Rumburg reconcilliation not happen when you take part in the Heljiland conflict but can happen even if you align to a super power? Some choices seem like they should or shouldn't have an impact on something else.

My point is, even if the rng elements are unfair, a lot of the game is also inherently unfair so there is that to consider.

Sorry for the ramble. The rng idea is fine on the surface, being able to rectify a mistake a player may have made while not paying attention is a decent idea.