I originally found the Palestinian campaign to be easier. This was because I found that the Palestinians are judged by internal opinion and world opinion. This allows one to make moves early on that really angers the Israelis without it necessarily ending your game. Then, when you have the political capital to make changes you can, leading the Israelis to start approving of you more. Your internal approval rating will drop until you get enough Israeli approval to get a major concession at which point its pretty much a straight shot to the finish.

I attempted to use a similar tactic with the Israelis but found it failed utterly because the Israeli campaign is judged on internal and Palestinian approval, not international. Whenever I made any headway with the Palestinians the violence would escalate and everything would be lost. Finally I recalled that there were polls and found that monitoring those was more important than the groups when playing the Israelis. Monitoring the ‘suppression’ poll in particular seems to be key. When it drops too low the violence sky rockets. Again, the general strategy of getting some internal support first and then losing it to get Palestinian approval and then using that approval to get major concessions seems to work.

Now that I’ve figured out ways to do these things I’d say both sides of the game are equally difficult and enlightening. The same general strategy is the same for both but how to do it with your options and the reactions is wildly different. It is, as the tagline indicates a puzzle. When you figure out one side and can’t figure out the other it’s easy to assume asymmetry in the difficulty. However, in this case its just a matter of needing to spend more time figuring out the other puzzle.

Thanks ImpactGames for a great experience!

PS Any chance of an update reflecting the Hamas take over of Gaza?

Anyway, one thing I’ve noticed is that there are a handful of *must* do items for each side. Have you ever played ‘Axis and Allies’? I always lost at this game because I played against veterans who knew the objectives of the game very well . . . they knew — but I didn’t — that if you played country ‘X’, there were certain things one *must* do immediately, or else winning was impossible.

PeaceMaker seems to have this kind of mechanism. For example, as the PLO, establishing police patrols, building a prison, and asking the UN to give aid (which they always do) is extremely important within the first few rounds.

I’m not saying this game is simplistic. I don’t foresee anyone writing a ‘walk-through’ in which you can step by step win the game according to a checklist of sequential actions. The game possesses a fine degree of variability in circumstances. Still, before you speak of the PLO side as impossible . .. I would tinker a bit with your initial moves. They seem to make a huge difference in the general development of a particular game.

On the one hand, it would be nice if both sides were symmetrical, but on the other hand it also occurs to me that in a classroom setting (where I hope to use the game), this would be the beginning of a fruitful conversation on the relative abilities of each side to bring about optimal solutions.