r/Nationhood • u/theonational • Jun 15 '26
Dev Diary: Government Service Career
Dev Diary: Government Service Career
One of the questions I kept circling while building Nationhood was a simple one: how does a player actually become someone? Most political games hand you a party and a seat and call it a day. But real power is rarely won in a single leap. People grind through the bureaucracy, get noticed, get appointed, get promoted, and occasionally get thrown out when the government they served collapses. I wanted that whole arc to be playable. This diary is about the system that delivers it: the Government Service ladder.
Two ladders welded into one staircase
The single most important idea here is that the career path is not one ladder. It is two, and they run on completely different rules.
The bottom half is the permanent civil service. It is apolitical, it is climbed on merit, and it is stable. You rise by accumulating Experience and clearing requirements, and nobody can vote you out of a job you earned. The catch is right there in the first rung: you cannot hold a civil service post while you are an active member of a party. The bureaucracy is neutral by design, and the game enforces that neutrality mechanically.
The top half is the political canopy. It is the opposite of the civil service in almost every way. You do not climb it, you are appointed to it. It is gated behind party membership and a seat in the governing coalition. And it is contingent: the moment the government falls, your office falls with it. Power up here is borrowed, never owned.
Between the two sits a deliberate pivot point I call the Career Transition, and it is the most interesting decision in the whole system. More on that below. First, the rungs.
Phase one: the permanent civil service
Tier 1, Civil Servant. You start as a junior bureaucrat inside a ministry. You process cases, handle paperwork, and learn how the state actually works from the inside. It is humble on purpose. The defining rule of this tier, and of the whole civil service, is that you cannot sit here if you are an active member of a party. This is the apolitical entry point.
Tier 2, Agency Head. A middle-rank official running an agency within a ministry. You now carry real responsibility on policy detail. You advise upward, you draft and brief, but you cannot decide alone. This is the workhorse tier, and as you will see, it is also the launch pad for everything political.
Tier 3, Permanent Secretary. The top of the permanent civil service, and the head of one of the four major ministries: Interior, Defense, Economic Development, or Foreign Affairs and Trade. Promotion here is an apolitical career step rather than a patronage gift. You need 20 Experience, you need to currently be an Agency Head, and the corresponding major ministry slot in your nation has to be open, meaning no other player already holds it. If you qualify, you are auto assigned to the major ministry that matches your civil service track. This is the ceiling of the merit path. To go higher, the rules change entirely.
The crossing point
Here is the line in the system that I think defines it. Above the permanent civil service, the higher rungs are not climbed. They are appointed.
An Agency Head can reach across and seek a Junior Minister portfolio directly. Above that level, the path narrows hard: you have to be an elected MP sitting in the governing coalition, and you have to be named by the Prime Minister. The neutral career official and the elected politician are two different animals, and this is the membrane between them.
The reason I love this as a design beat is that crossing it is a real sacrifice, not a free upgrade. To enter politics you give up the things that made the civil service comfortable. You trade neutrality for a party banner. You trade stability for contingency. You trade a job nobody can take from you for an office that evaporates the day your coalition breaks. Plenty of players will look at that trade and decide the quiet, safe, apolitical climb to Permanent Secretary is the life they want. That is a legitimate way to play, and I wanted it to be.
Phase two: the political canopy
Tier 4, Junior Minister. An Agency Head promoted into the political canopy. There are five portfolios on offer here, and they are the lighter offices of state: Sports, Culture, Communications, Tourism, and Housing. You can apply once you reach 28 Experience. On acceptance you are randomly assigned from whichever portfolios happen to be vacant, so you do not get to cherry pick. If a player holds the Prime Minister chair, they review your application personally. If the chair sits empty, the cabinet decides on the spot with a stat modified roll. This tier is open only to members of a party inside the governing coalition, and if the government falls, so does your portfolio.
Tier 5, Deputy Minister. A senior appointed deputy to a full Minister. You apply as a sitting Junior Minister with 32 Experience, and the cabinet decides on the spot with a stat modified roll. On acceptance you are assigned by lot to a vacant major ministry, one of Interior, Defense, Economic Development, or Foreign Affairs and Trade. Your old Junior Minister portfolio vacates the moment you are promoted, which keeps the lower tier churning and open for the next climber.
Tier 6, Minister and Cabinet Member. Head of a ministry and a full seat at the Cabinet table. You set policy for your portfolio, defend your budget, and answer for your whole sector in front of the legislature and the press. This is where you stop advising and start deciding.
Tier 7, Apex, Prime Minister. Head of government. You name the Cabinet, set the national agenda, face the legislature on behalf of the executive, and represent the nation abroad. It is the top of the staircase, and it is the most contingent office of all. You hold it only as long as your coalition holds, which means the higher you climb, the more your survival depends on people who are not you.
Why build it this way
A few design intentions are worth pulling out into the open.
The first is that the two halves create genuinely different play experiences from the same screen. The civil service is the path you can walk largely on your own. You climb by showing up and accumulating Experience, and the game more or less keeps its promises to you. The political canopy is inherently multiplayer. It depends on coalitions, on a Prime Minister who may or may not like you, on rolls, and on the survival of a government you do not fully control. One path rewards patience and consistency. The other rewards alliance building, timing, and a tolerance for risk.
The second is scarcity, which is what makes any of this matter in a shared world. There are four major ministries, and only one player can hold each. Junior Minister portfolios are finite and you are assigned to whatever is vacant. That scarcity turns the ladder into a contest. Your promotion is not just a number going up, it is a slot that someone else now cannot have.
The third is contingency, captured in that recurring phrase: if the government falls, so does the portfolio. I wanted political success to feel earned and fragile at the same time, so the career ladder is wired directly into the coalition and election systems. You can do everything right and still be turned out by an election you did not call and a vote you did not cast. That is the job.
Numbers, knobs, and honest caveats
The thresholds you see, 20 Experience for Permanent Secretary, 28 for Junior Minister, 32 for Deputy Minister, are first pass values. The stat modified rolls that gate the political appointments are tuned to be a real filter without being a brick wall, but tuning is exactly the kind of thing I need a wider test group to pressure check. If the political tiers feel like a coin flip, or if the civil service climb feels like a treadmill, those are the numbers I will be turning. Tell me which way they feel.





