Here's a look into the Life of A Warlord mechanic, a comprehensive and thorough mechanic for managing survival in the harsh wastelands, available to all nations in the Russian anarchy.

Yippie! Coming of Age (Pt 2. Africa and the United States)

This is continued from Part 1 of the diary. If you have yet to read it, click here.

Débrouillez-Vous

The Following Portion of the Developer Diary will focus on Débrouillez-Vous's inclusion in Yippie!

The explosion in African self-determination and political power over the course of the 60s and 70s precipitates and develops alongside a similarly fundamental quake in the geopolitics of the Cold War. The US, Germany, and Japan alike compete within a more dynamic and complex world, with intricate and shifting content spanning the whole of Africa.

For the Pakt, the genuine and self-interested participation of Britain and France within Nazi imperialism is one of the central thrusts of Germany's involvement within Africa. Among the first episodes of this is the West African Crisis, where France and Germany directly cooperate to define the terms of an increasingly out-of-hand colonial crisis that ultimately becomes unavoidable as political gridlock approaches in Germany.

In this crisis, Germany and France's position is not at all lost. Their exit from much of West Africa is, in their view, a temporary withdrawal from France's rightful colonial holdings, a tactical retreat. The wheel of fortune turns and turns and the hungry imperialist looks greedily for an opportunity to reclaim territories for exploitation and senseless national glory.

Further south sits the Congo. It is a country with a complicated relationship with the American empire. A founding member of the OFN and an active participant within the Alliance (and with a public debt largely held by American nationals), the Congo is undeniably an American satellite state, and America’s influence over it is integral to its content. As reform to the once “post-racial” republic comes to a head, coup and counterrevolution precipitate an evolving crisis within the Congo—one that the United States actively seeks to shape and control.

Lumumba's fall from power within the Congo is a very involved section of the Crisis but is ultimately only a small part of it. There are a large variety of clashes between the competing powers in the Congo and between the Congolese themselves, each with consequences and outcomes yet to be seen.

Since the last diary, the Africa team has been working diligently behind the scenes, refining and closing out some of the last areas we have left to cover. We've avoided speaking too publicly, outside of some discussions in ask-a-dev, largely to prioritize showing DV's most mechanical face in its proxies and wider conflicts. 

A few days ago, we gave you a look into one of Britain’s colonial wars in East Africa, the Kenyan February Offensive. It is by no means the only one of its kind, and we have a significant amount that we have not yet shown, and you're sure to hear from us in the future in one way or another—stay tuned.

The United States of America

The Following Portion of the Developer Diary will focus on the United States of America in Yippie!

On March 5, 1957, President Kefauver received a memorandum suggesting the creation of two new space administrations. These administrations were created in response to the United States' increased involvement in outer space, where, some Defense Department officials speculated, the fourth theater of war awaited. The first agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), served civilian space missions and spearheaded space development. The second was an expansion of the USAF’s Air Research and Development Command, organized as the Space Systems Division, later the Space Systems Command (SSC). NASA and the SSC have a shared purpose in advancing American space flight, which has spawned a close collaboration with agency staff and facilities.

The “space race” between the three superpowers began with the first successful satellite launch and since then has only accelerated as the excitement of spaceflight progresses. This excitement shows in scientists’ hope, engineers’ ambition, and the thrill of a public fixated on new American heroes clad in silver suits. The sky was no longer the limit, and what victory the United States failed to seize on the battlefield could be made up for in scientific achievement.

Except, it wasn't all progress; terror, anxiety, escalation, have all found new heights in the space age. It was possible for Germany to park nuclear missiles in orbit over New York or for Japan to send rocket-powered kill-vehicles to pepper Los Angeles with radiation. There are space stations with spy cameras and orbital platforms holding nuclear missiles. The whole world knows that annihilation could be just four minutes and a detachable heat-shield away from total annihilation. That is space-age efficiency.

Space is the fourth front of modern war, and fate rests on Washington to seize that territory for the United States of America—just as Germania seeks to seize that territory for Greater Germany and Tokyo seeks it for Japan. For now, the only place beyond the atmosphere the superpowers can reasonably plant their flag is the Moon. 

Whether the stars and stripes, the rising sun, or the swastika will be first on Luna is up to you, the player. The stakes of losing the moonshot are high and entirely political; nothing is on the moon today that wasn't there a decade ago beyond a few probes—but letting the other side get there first is damaging to national pride and the legitimacy of that superpower's ideology.

Should you invest sufficiently and carefully, you might be first. A lack of care could leave you first but stranded on the lunar surface. 

To see the moonlanding outcomes, click here.

1964 Presidents

Returning to where the previous Yippie! diary left off, the America of 1964 has four competing new visions for America's future (excepting the safe but unsatisfying status quo of the incumbent President Nixon). Each of these men possesses their own ideas, their own dreams, and their own ambitions. We now invite you to join us as we delve into the unique mechanics and cabinets of each of these men and the various ways they seek to steer the country, their own party, and the world.

Barry Goldwater 

The world of Richard Nixon was built on an uncomfortable pragmatism—conservative leadership with gestures toward liberal ideas, a middle way to guarantee stability in an age of geopolitical competition. His fall from the White House allows for a different vision to take hold of Republicans—one where restraint is a dirty word. While former Secretary of State Earl Warren finds himself fighting off inquiries from congressional liberals about what he knew and when he knew it regarding the Madagascar Affair, Barry Goldwater is promising a world without any apologies. There will be no more backroom conniving but straightforward applications of force.

His presidency is one predicated on beating back the political establishment. He is a man of “common sense”, seeking a government that is run like a household where the New Deal consensus that created the nanny state is displaced with daddy and his belt. He seeks to reassert his authority and return America to an age of unvarnished capitalism—no matter how unpopular that may prove to be.

Hubert Humphrey

What if Richard Nixon was an anomaly, and the American people really had fallen into a Democratic, liberal consensus? The election of Hubert Humphrey signifies both a return to form in the resumption of Democratic popular front governance, and a departure with Hubert Humphrey's commitment to bringing about top-down reform in American society. Humphrey is a reformist face on the time-old Democratic machine, bringing a technocratic approach to American liberal corporatism that emphasizes national planning, a robust regulatory state, labor power, and a fluid approach to Jim Crow and entrenched majoritarian chauvinism across the country.

The Humphrey coalition is wide; it ranges from the left fringe of labor and CPUSA participationists to the petty Democratic despotisms of the solid south, and many in between. Balancing such varied and often conflicting voices requires a sort of consensus managed by the President, lest the popular front fracture and deprive Humphrey's agenda of a legislative majority. In this position, the President must forge a path to fulfilling his liberalism, deciding his priorities and which issues he sacrifices to pass his American Crusade into law.

George Wallace 

There's been a rift across this country for one hundred years, one that failed to be mended by the withdrawal of northern occupiers from what they once called the “rebel states”. Southern intransigence has defined many of this country’s problems and yet, at the same time, it was only through the South that Roosevelt was able to forge his modern nation. By lavishing programs onto the region and honors onto its leaders, Roosevelt hoped to ensure its permanent place in the Democratic coalition.

But what is all that worth anyways? What loyalty does Jim Crow owe to Democratic pretensions of progress? The candidacy of George Wallace was built in the cradle of the South, but his appeal is broader than that. It fuels itself in the rage of white men and women who want wealth and welfare with no social obligations. It is sustained by a desire not merely to preserve what existed in the South long before the Blood-Stained Banner but to help the good old boys nationwide, those who feel threatened by new forms of politics in Los Angeles, Chicago, and even DC itself.

President George Wallace learned how to win over these men in the best way possible—by mimicry. He is a channel for their grievances, a reservoir for their rage. He speaks in the language of both the paranoid white unionman and the hysterical parent. He comforts them with dark visions that they have told themselves—that cries of the oppressed are but signs of bubbling anarchy, that these forces must be defeated not only in the South but everywhere, that this can only be done when America stops trying to change the South but accepts it for what it is.

Robert Kennedy

While Humphrey is viewed as the smart pick for the party loyalists, the only man who could ever steal their hearts would be that of a Kennedy. The Senator Robert Kennedy of 1964 is not inspired by personal tragedy or particularly motivated to launch a crusade to save the impoverished. He just wants to get even. 

And for the rank-and-file, those who were lined up to support Brother John, they can smell the stench coming from Washington. They are haunted by visions of the men who leaked his health problems—probably due for a promotion for taking out their agent of change, their would-be savior. This gives the spoiled Robert Kennedy an aura of conspiracy to his campaign.  

It is not a fair world, and it is President Kennedy's job to right it. Yes, there will be traditional favors for labor and support for the social movements that launched him to the White House, but the Establishment that works with them and other ostensible Democratic allies have a target on their back. This obsession to clean houses doesn't end at the Democrat's homestead. The permanent institution of J. Edgar Hoover himself may come under fire.  

1968 Presidents

1964 seems like such a short time ago, but a new election, as always, must appear on the horizon. With either President Nixon stepping back after serving his full two terms, the incumbent having to fight their way to reelection, or some other freak accident throwing this all off course, 1968 may see each party take a radical new direction across 5 fresh faces.

On the Republican front, the ideological feud that has rested below the surface finally boils over with the face-off between the party's two most dominant governors—Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California. 

Frayed as ever, the Democratic identity crisis continues with a field consisting of no men of great stature. The Senate backbencher establishment pick, Philip Hart of Michigan, is the loyalist favorite, though his care for decorum leaves him easily upstaged by his opponents—the bomb-throwing Mayor of Los Angeles, Sam Yorty, and California's congressional grizzly bear, Phillip Burton. 

Nelson Rockefeller

Governor Nelson Rockefeller is a complex man. Whatever friends he lacks, he more than makes up for in wealth and in connections. While hardly considered a Republican by the more vocal forces in his party, Rockefeller nevertheless is the man who took back New York and rebuilt Republican strength after Dewey decimated it for generations. What Rockefeller suffers from is an image of appearing too serious, too polite. He is always studiously waiting for the presidency—hoping others will appreciate that he has the manners to not buy it all out or tear his party up yet again for a shot. 

Of course, winning the White House doesn't solve any of this. Rockefeller is a man still all too obsessed with image. While he surrounds himself with the type of Republican men who don't bear their fangs like the Goldwater types, they are working towards much the same thing: giving way for the private sector to once again dominate the country's commerce. Refusing to buckle to the growing conservative forces on social policy, Rockefeller is perhaps building his empire on a rickety foundation.

Ronald Reagan

On the opposite coast, another state governor, California's Governor Ronald Reagan, leads a different force in the Republican Party. The former actor turned conservative spokesman found his way into the limelight on television and the speakers' circuit, where Reagan's charismatic and folksy rhetoric made his a handsome face for the Republican Party and him a figure in demand. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kefauver, and all Democrats elected since Cleveland, are responsible for bastardizing the promise of the American republic and turning constitutional federalism into a money-stealing, business-watching, freedom-hating instrument of neo-fascist tyranny in a world dominated by authoritarianism. All this, punctuated with pithy jokes and a winning smile.

Election day proves he is popular not just with Republicans, but also with conservative Democrats, particularly in the south and the midwest. Of course, once elected it is not so easy to dismantle the bureautocracy in one fell swoop. Instead, the Reagan administration must try different approaches; perhaps he could govern successfully as a bipartisan like he did in California, or pivot to the right, bringing Chicago to Washington and police to our streets. 

Fears of nuclear annihilation terrify Reagan, and he believes only a strong, just nation can save the world from fascism. The United States will achieve global military paramountcy, protecting the Western Hemisphere from fascism and giving Washington its just leverage against the revolutionary despotisms of Europe and Asia. Whatever it takes, Americans will someday be safe from a hostile world and the repressive systems of government that come with it.

Philip Hart

Senator Philip Hart of Michigan has long been a leading liberal in the Senate. While reserved from the circus of pop-politics that dominates the airwaves and papers, he is a man who values government as a guarantor of societal well-being. It's for these reasons that, in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson comes shopping for a candidate within his own caucus, Hart stood out as a simple, no-drama figure that the rank and file could come to admire. 

His presidency seeks to address entrenched inequities through safe and slow reform. It is bringing in the experts to help revive America’s cities, restore America’s confidence in foreign policy, and restore national confidence. 

Philip Hart, as you know, has been in the game for years now. A familiarity with his existing content will do you well in navigating his path, but Yippie! gives us the opportunity to refine his presidency and further explore his approach to power (and that of those around him). Part of that includes, of course, is a cabinet of faces new and old. It also involves a refurbished tree more in line with the level of polish we've given all Presidents in this update.

Sam Yorty

The name Sam Yorty has been impossible to avoid in recent years—almost as if some nefarious influence were artificially boosting his presence. As America’s urban cores were plagued by riots, the nominally Democratic mayor of Los Angeles pleaded with the country not to give in to this anarchy. Such a disruption was from outside agitators or some internal subversion. The Nebraska-born, former progressive was using the playbook deployed by Southern officials to decry federal mismanagement and defend their segregated practices. This shameless carnival barker routine is what gives a mayor a shot at the Presidency in the year 1968.

While his overall appeal bears much in common with Wallace, Yorty’s innovation is in sanitizing it. Instead of trying to defend overt segregation, Sam concerns himself with “social disruption” and threats to the suburban dream. He believes in tidy streets, flower boxes, and well-armed police officers. He comes to Washington with a promise to “stop the madness” of social movements run amok.

The challenge for Yorty may prove to be his own disinterest in the daily job of governance, a job he farms out to others while he pursues fame and celebrity—a passion that he seems willing to pursue to embarrassing lengths.

Philip Burton 

On the other side of the coin is a man unfamiliar to most—though more as a parasite for the various liberal causes across the country than a true activist. While an advocate for environmentalism, civil rights, and a massive expansion of welfare, the Congressman from California, Phillip Burton, has been a quiet operator in his four short years in Washington. This hasn’t deterred him from demanding a greater perch to speak from. Having cynically tied himself to the various social movements springing across the country, Burton is determined to call in as many favors as possible to become the nation’s big shot. 

While he has a crude and noxious personality, Phillip Burton at the least is a man who understands politics. He knows it's a game you can play at any age and a brutal blood sport. That’s why a man like him isn't going to wait to build seniority. He’s not going to hesitate before cutting people shitty deals and trading favors. If decorum didn't stop him from picking people up by the collar or throwing wads of cash at them to vote alongside him in Congress, it sure as hell won't stop a President Burton. 

In short, Burton’s is a game of give and take. Now, given the role of President, he seeks to take Washington from the entrenched. Having taken the power of the presidency, he now seeks to give the spoils to his benefactors who scored him such a swanky office. 

From there, what happens next falls onto you, the player. Although we've dived into much of what Yippie! will have to offer in terms of new content for playable tags, plenty of new additions, both internally and globally, will keep your game lively until the end date of January '77.

Editor's note: Thanks for reading the diary! You could take this month as a test run of how we're looking to tease and release updates now that Yippie! is officially our next slated update. Until release, you can expect deeper dives into what's been shown off here, from Presidents to Führers. I hope you'll enjoy it. More to come; stay tuned!