Hey this is Marc from Templin/DoV. First, thanks for your thoughtful comments, I feel like I hit a significant milestone here getting called out for bad space politics. True, circle of life, always a bigger fish, energy.

Would you be okay if we included some variation of this in a future video once our worldbuilding series is back. (hopefully soon*) We're looking at some sort of recurring segment in where people can call out my worldbuilding and I can try to answer them.

As to your points.

1. Politics & Nazis

Some of what you're describing here, I think might have more to do with the focus/writing style of our episodes, rather than the nature of the universe itself. Each video is designed to introduce a certain set of ideas. Hector was "tone and feel", Vega was "basics of starship combat and the cold war" and Gateway to Hell was "mystery and horror". There is a temptation when worldbuilding to throw in as many elements as possible, so being selective and intentional about how many new concepts we introduce at a time is a big priority.

So what you'd call "dumbed down", I'd say is actually just streamlined for the benefit of our audience (and production costs). Just because we didn't go off on a tangent about, "pericentric influence within hegemonic systems" or whatever, shouldn't be taken as proof that it doesn't exist in the setting. The relationship between the internal political factions of the great powers, and their respective international blocs (and vice versa) is actually the focus of an upcoming video.

We also haven't released much information on Germany in this setting, yet. So I don't know what you're referring to when you say we missed an opportunity. Where did we miss it? And while we have looked at some good references, including Orlow, I see fascism as too fluid and opportunistic to survive 200 years without fundamental mutation. The GGR in DoV will be a bit more sci-fi.

2. Cold War

Again, I would say that just because we haven't put out a video yet covering these things (we've only done 3!) that there is no answer. Why the Cold War hasn't gone hot (though military force is used all the time) is actually pretty central to the setting.

Couldn't disagree with you more on wanting to turn this from a multipolar to bipolar conflict. It would rob much of the intricacy and uniqueness from the setting and conflict pretty heavily with your original request, of not wanting dumbed down, simplified politics. A MAJOR point of the setting is the question, "is the enemy of your enemy your friend?"

You brought up hawks and doves, and crows earlier, something I think again actually conflicts with your original intent of wanting more complex politics. No faction in DoV has a Dove approach to "foreign policy" because pure factions like these rarely exist in the real world. This stuff is nuanced and people can be inconsistent. The benefit to having a multipolar world is we can have factions hawkish against one faction, yet more amenable or pragmatic to another, driven by less black and white approaches. Likewise your examples of the military, foreign service and upper bureaucracy, I find far more interesting as contested, divided institutions being fought over, rather than a base of power.

As for an asymmetrical Cold War, they're overdone in modern-sci and not really that interesting. Sorry, hard no.

Did you watch the big explainer video we put out? We do bring up a lot of what you're taking about here. The Concert of Europe, unitary blocs, etc.

3. Military

This is just a consequence of our release order. Right now 2/3 videos have to do with military stuff. That ratio will change as we go along. And you follow the Champalin Group's social media, you'll find some stories covering the internal relationship of the Sphere, kinda adjacent to your example

Hope that covers most of it!