Simulation and gaming miscellany, 12 August 2015

Some recent items on conflict simulation and serious (and not-so-serious) gaming that may be of interest to PAXsims readers.

The 11th annual conference of the European Social Simulation Association will be held 14-18 September 2015 in Groningen, Netherlands. Topics to be addressed include:

• policy modelling
• social conflict and social simulation
• simulating the social processes of science
• simulation model analysis
• modelling history
• social simulation and serious game
• cognitive models in social simulation
• affiliation, status and power in society
• simulation of economic processes
• opinion dynamics
• models of agreement and affiliation
• social Simulation of land, water and energy
• social simulation and the (lack of) gender in simulation studies

You’ll find a copy of the programme here.

If you missed the Connections 2015 interdisciplinary wargaming conference last month, all is not lost: the various presentations made there are available via the Connections website.

Can you tell who is about to betray you in a game of Diplomacy (or anything else, for that matter)? Science News reports on a study that examined text-based interaction between Diplomacy players for indicators:

Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, colleague and fan-of-the-game Jordan Boyd-Graber, and colleagues examined 249 games of Diplomacy with a total of 145,000 messages among players. When they used a computer program to compare exchanges between players whose relationships ended in betrayal with those whose relationships lasted, the computer discerned subtle signals of impending betrayal.

One harbinger was a shift in politeness. Players who were excessively polite in general were more likely to betray, and people who were suddenly more polite were more likely to become victims of betrayal, study coauthor and Cornell graduate student Vlad Niculae reportedJuly 29 at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Beijing. Consider this exchange from one round:

Germany: Can I suggest you move your armies east and then I will support you? Then next year you move [there] and dismantle Turkey. I will deal with England and France, you take out Italy.

Austria: Sounds like a perfect plan! Happy to follow through. And—thank you Bruder!

Austria’s next move was invading German territory. Bam! Betrayal.

An increase planning-related language by the soon-to-be victim also indicated impending betrayal, a signal that emerges a few rounds before the treachery ensues. And correspondence of soon-to-be betrayers had an uptick in positive sentiment in the lead-up to their breach.

Working from these linguistic cues, a computer program could peg future betrayal 57 percent of the time. That might not sound like much, but it was better than the accuracy of the human players, who never saw it coming. And remember that by definition, a betrayer conceals the intention to betray; the breach is unexpected (that whole trust thing). Given that inherent deceit, 57 percent isn’t so bad.

In the Financial Times, former UK cabinet minister Ed Ball highlights the value of crisis simulations in preparing governments and officials for future policy challenges:

While at the time, I remember spending hours in the European Council listening to the German finance minister lecturing Britain about “irresponsible” hedge funds, even while German banks were falling over themselves to buy US subprime mortgages and Greek debt. It was in that uncertain environment that I decided to initiate our simulation.

It envisaged a lender collapsing after an unexpected legal ruling, and a large UK clearing bank being exposed to huge liabilities as a result, turning a local difficulty into a systemic event. The simulation ended with my tough meeting with the governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the Financial Services Authority. We debated the risk that stepping in might send the wrong message and encourage recklessness by signalling that institutions could expect rescue if they ended up on the rocks. But we decided that the failure of a clearing bank would cause immense damage. So we opted to arrange a takeover.

When the real crisis struck later in the year, it did help that officials had been through that simulation — although I know many of the same arguments resurfaced.

You’ll find the full article here (paywall).

In a somewhat similar vein, Lee Drutman suggests in the Washington Post that the process of choosing among US presidential candidates could be improved by running the contenders through a simulation, rather than debates:

Instead, let’s have our aspirants try out for president by putting them in charge of a simulated crisis: Imagine that a bus is blown up in downtown Chicago, killing 40 people, and the Islamic State claims responsibility. Imagine that a cyberattack takes down the power grid in Atlanta in the middle of a summer heat wave. Imagine that a sudden financial market collapse leaves several mid-size commercial banks temporarily unable to fulfill depositor withdrawals, and instead they must rely on FDIC insurance.

How would the candidates think through their options? How would they react? And wouldn’t we gain more insight by examining their responses than by discussing why one hopeful sighed inappropriately or checked his watch?

…

Such a simulation would have to be carefully planned, with former government officials or expert actors playing key roles based on meticulously rehearsed stories. In the banking simulation, performers would portray the heads of regulatory agencies and large financial institutions. One could be instructed to offer bad advice — would any of the candidates fall for it? Candidates could also bring in their own advisers and would be free to call anybody they wanted during the simulation (just like the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” lifeline).

Presidential hopefuls could be fed the details of the crisis over a couple of hours, from “advisers” and faux live news coverage. Markets could “respond” in real time, with financial pundits offering different guidance: The government should immediately buy up the failing banks! Don’t intervene, it will only spur more panic! It’s easy for candidates to criticize bailouts or government intervention in the abstract. But what would they do while staring into the abyss of a collapse, faced with only bad and worse options?

At the end of the simulation, each candidate would give a short speech, summarizing his or her response so far and outlining plans to confront the crisis ahead.

A recent report by the European Leadership Network (August 2015) warns that current Russian and NATO wargames/exercises could contribute to an escalation of political and military tensions:

First, while one side may aim its actions at strengthening deterrence and preparing for defensive actions, the other side perceives the same exercises as provocative and deliberate aggravation of the crisis. In the current climate of mistrust, the exercises can feed uncertainty in an almost classic illustration of the ‘security dilemma’ written about by many scholars of international affairs. This uncertainty is further aggravated and elevated into a sense of unpredictability when the exercises are not pre-notified or publicly announced beforehand, as is apparently the case with a number of Russian exercises.

Second, in our view another effect of such heightened activity is an increased risk of the dangerous military encounters between Russian and Western military units of the sort documented by the European Leadership Network in November 2014 and updated since. Some of these incidents and near misses have been connected with increasingly close surveillance of each side’s exercises. For example, there were reports that Russian Su-30 and Su-24 bombers approached close to NATO warships exercising in the Black Sea in March 2015. Also, a number of NATO interceptions of Russian aircraft and ships moving between the Kaliningrad exclave and mainland Russia have been a consequence of ongoing Russian exercises. This has also been the cause of several Russian breaches of Finnish and Estonian airspace.

They recommend that the parties improve and increase communications, and reconsider the value of military exercises in border areas.

Is this Able Archer 83 all over again? While exercies might contribute to increasing political tensions, I really don’t see them sparking conflict: neither NATO nor the Russian military wishes to, nor is really in a position to, fight a major war in Europe.

Global News reports on a shocking revelation of US covert assistance to the Ukraine:

On July 22, the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine released what appeared to be a shocking video: a Stinger, an American-made Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS), was found in the Luhansk Airport. The video shows LNR militants inspecting what looks like a weapons cache, with close-up shots of the various arms and storage boxes with English-language inscriptions on them.

Except not all is as it appears: as the article notes, the weapons are fakes and the images are actually modelled on those from the video game Battlefield 3.

At Foreign Policy, Aki Peretz asks “What Whac-A-Mole Can Teach Us About How to Fight Terrorism.” Not only does he ask it, but he actually asks the game’s inventor for insights.

At The Atlantic, Karl does something similar with his very own ISIS boardgame, which only confirms how difficult the problem is:

A detailed analysis of the situation by the Institute of Internet Diagrams has led to a surprising discovery: It appears that all the players confronting ISIS are competing to see who can devise the largest number of steps, and most convoluted strategy, to overcome the Islamic State. We at the Institute are not sure why they are doing this, but our simulation suggests that they are secretly playing some sort of game. Few other explanations have been judged credible.

Why wargame the Ukraine?

The private sector intelligence and analysis firm Strafor recently posted a video discussion extolling its forthcoming wargame series on Russian intervention in the Ukraine. In it, founder and company chairman George Friedman describes the value of wargaming in the following terms (emphasis added):

George Friedman: Well wargaming goes the gamut from extremely computerized automated models down to desktop gaming. But the purpose of it is something as fundamental to any military analysis. It goes back to Napoleon, to anticipate the issues that you might face as a general or as a politician by taking a look at the what ifs, examining the military capabilities of each side, looking at terrain at which they’re going to fight, understanding the political reasons that they might decide to fight. And then try and understand how likely various strategies are and how likely they are to succeed in them.

David: I mean in this case we took apart of the maybe six options that Russia might have and the way that western NATO forces might respond. It’s interesting to me as a tool of empathetic analysis. Is that a fair characterization that it is a way to get into the mind of Russian military planners?

George: It is partly to try to understand what’s in their mind. But actually Wargaming is less interested in the intentions of the generals or politicians as to their capabilities. So what you’re really trying to do when you try to model a conflict is to identify those things that are impossible. Casual conversation you may imagine that the Russians have the military to charge all the way to Romania or Poland and so on. In fact, they probably don’t have that capability or anything close to it. Similarly you may assume that the United States has the ability to rapidly deploy multiple divisions to block them in Ukraine. The United States probably doesn’t have that. So the most important thing that comes out of military modeling is eliminating the impossible. Because until you get down into the details, until you consider how much fuel is required to move so many tanks so far, until you’ve really examined that, you seem to have these infinite numbers of options and all sorts of capabilities. And when you look at it carefully you find out well there are really very few options on all sides.

David: Right. So we do a lot of this constraint analysis at Stratfor. In some sense it’s a check on political rhetoric. In another sense it’s a way to perhaps pre-empt even the bluffing that either side participates in. Is that?

George: Well, politicians, generals, businessmen, constantly make statements. The question is not what these people say in that they may be very honest in what they want. But to go to a very simple and unpleasant place: What’s possible? And one of the things that Stratfor does is it does not focus on the intentions simply. But it really focuses on what can be done and what can’t be done. And in the case of military modeling, where this goes back well before Clausewitz, this is essential. You’ve got to really understand what can’t happen.

David: While not being a forecast in the sense that we publish forecasts, it’s nonetheless predictive, in that it takes off the table those scenarios that are not possible and allowing us to examine a more limited number of scenarios that are realistic indeed.

George: Our name is strategic forecasting.

David: Right.

George: And in strategic forecasting what we do is forecast. This is a step in the forecasting process. It doesn’t say that any of these things will happen. It examines, however, which of them would happen, what the consequences would be from a military standpoint and so on. So what it does is eliminates a whole bunch of options and allows you to really focus down on what might happen. This doesn’t even assume that the Russians are going to take any military action. It doesn’t assume that the Americans would respond. It makes no assumption on what political decisions may be made. What it does ask is what political solutions can be made.

This emphasis on wargaming as primarily an exercise in constraint analysis seems a bit strange. Certainly, analytical games can highlight constraints. However, as a method it potentially offers a lot more than simply narrowing down options on the grounds of (physical/resource/capability) viability. A wargame generates some sense of possible adversarial dynamics and interaction. It encourages participants to think about challenges in new ways—a sort of intellectual cross-training of sorts. It may, far from narrowing options, actually enlarge them by generating new ideas. Finally, it can help assess information gaps, critical junctures, and other things that are important.

In any case, it will be interesting to see what Stratfor does—and does not do—with this game series.

h/t Rory Alward 

Simulation miscellany, 27 March 2014

Some recent conflict simulation and serious games items that may be of interest to PAXsims readers:

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The eight finalists for the 2014 Games for Change Awards have been now been selected. The winner will be announced at this year’s Games for Change Festival in New York, 22-24/26 April 2014.

This year G4C will be partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival. As USA Today reported back in January:

In the clearest indication yet that video games are growing well beyond their roots as amusements built on coin boxes and hand-eye coordination, the 11th annual Games for Change (G4C) Festival this spring will take place as part of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where it will host a family-friendly gaming arcade in lower Manhattan.

“For me it’s a huge leap because it means that for the first time we’re bringing Games for Change … to the real person on the street,” says Asi Burak,the games festival’s president.

G4C is perhaps the biggest player in the growing “serious games” movement, which uses digital games and simulations for health, education, training and social change, among other uses. The festival last year produced Half The Sky Movement: The Game, a Facebook game based on Half the Sky, the 2009 book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn about the worldwide oppression of women.

Craig Hatkoff, co-founder of the film festival, says Tribeca is paying attention to “the transformative power of gaming” that goes beyond traditional entertainment. He wants the combined event to bring together “the most cutting-edge creators of games, educators, and the world’s greatest story-tellers.”

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GAMEON’2014 will be held 9-11 September 2014 at the University of Lincoln, UK:

The aim of the 15th annual European GAMEON® Conference (GAMEON®’2014) on Simulation and AI in Computer Games, is to bring together researchers and games people in order to exchange ideas on programming and programming techniques, which will be beneficial to the gaming industry and academia. Secondly it aims to steer young people into this industry by providing how-to tutorials and giving them the opportunity to show their ideas and demos to the gaming industry. The conference will concentrate mostly on the programming of games, with special emphasis on simulation, AI and fuzzy sets, and physics related computer graphics. Next to that, all of this will be fused in the topic of computer game design in stand-alone and networked games. Software providers will be able to show their latest packages and give hand-on tutorials for the participants.

Companies will also have the opportunity to seek new talent at this unique event.

GAMEON’2014 consists of three core tracks, which cover, Gaming Methodology, Artificial Intelligence and Simulation, while the other tracks cover peripheral technologies closely linked to games design, like 3-D scalability, facial and skeletal animation, 3D in-game animation etc, mobile gaming and gaming applications.

Further details can be found here.

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The Iranian-based International Studies Journal and the United Nations Information Center in Iran are jointly selecting 45 senior advisors, resident diplomats and their dependents, heads of state organizations, NGO representatives, professors of law and International Relations, and post-graduate and graduated students to participate in a Security Council simulation, to be held in Tehran on 18 September 2014:

The Programme

The programme will cover three specific issue areas:

1. International law and security, peace and human rights;
2. Simulation methods and Research workshops;
3. Global and Regional initiatives to protect peace and human rights.

Preparation

Preparing for a Model United Nations conference can be a very challenging task. One time before the simulation, there will be a pre-conference training workshop for the participants at UNIC-Tehran.

Certificate

ISJ and UNIC will award a certificate to all participants who successfully fulfill the workshop assignments, research, and exercises.

Admission Requirements

1.   An accredited degree in law, international relations or a relevant field of study;
2.  Good command of English or French;
3.  Two recommendation letters by professors or sponsoring institutions;
4.  Your recent photograph;
5.  Letter of application including address, telephone, email and language skills(Persian, English, French);
6. CV/Resume;
7. Payment of 120 Euros (for Non Iran resident students) and 200 Euros (for other) upon admission. This fee covers registration, courses, booklet, ISJ quarterly magazines and lunch.

The registration deadline is 10 July 2014. For further information, contact info@isjq.net.

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We’ve updated our blog post on “Gaming the Crisis in the Ukraine” to include a new matrix game on the situation, designed by Tom Mouat.

Gaming the crisis in the Ukraine

UPDATED 29 December 2015.

I’ve pulled together a summary of recent and current wargame on the Ukraine, which I will update from time to time as new material becomes available. . If any readers have material to suggest, I would certainly welcome suggestions via the comments section, or by email.

* * *

Game designer Brian Train has quickly put together a small print-and-play political-military of the Ukrainian crisis, entitled—appropriately enough—Ukrainian Crisis.

It is a fairly simple, free-form pol-mil game for two players that concentrates on the buildup and resolution of threatened territorial annexation by Russia.

An overt military invasion of Eastern Ukraine is possible and perhaps profitable, but not necessary for the Russian player to win the game. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian player desperately mobilizes to defend himself and build a coalition of allies to support him.

You can download it at Brian’s Ludic Futurism website here. He also discusses the Russian and Ukrainian order of battle in a subsequent post. There’s  a lively discussion of the game and possible revisions at ConSimWorld.

Brian’s game  has also generated some discussion among gamers in the region about the ethics and practicalities opt designing a game about a conflict that is still current (and which could go “hot”). See, for example, the discussion of the Russian gaming site Tesera (Google translated version here). Some seem to think that his game is more than a game, and indicative of broader policy or popular thinking on the crisis.

Brian has also posted (24/11/2014) updated rules to his website.

He has now (02/12/2015) posted completed new rules:

The game now concentrates specifically on the first 6 months of the crisis, from Yanukovytch’s departure in late February 2014 to about the time of the adoption of the first Minsk Protocol in September. This was the period in which a large and overt Russian military intervention might have taken place, and while violence continues in Ukraine, the main threat of a military invasion seems to have passed.

Two important changes to the game include: game is lengthened to 8 turns, and instead of there being a pre-invasion and invasion phase of the game either player can declare a Combat or a Strategic turn . This gives players a bit more time to fill out strategies, and fits with the stop-and-start nature of how the crisis played out militarily. Following on from this, the map has been revised slightly and the cards also have additional or changed functions.

Still no NATO units.

The latest files for the game are here, and links are also on the original page:

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Even before the crisis, Brant Guillory was (rather presciently!) in the process of producing an operational-level wargame of civil war in a future Ukraine, Next War I: Orange Crush – Civil War in the Ukraine . You can follow its development on BoardGameGeek or at the Bayonet Games website .

Following a series of contentious elections in which both sides accused the other of support from outside the country, the Ukraine began to fracture.   What started as competing protest marches in the streets rapidly escalated into a shooting war between the different factions.   When the President of the Ukraine finally ordered the Army to restore order, several units revolted, and the President appealed to NATO for assistance.

Ignoring Russian warnings against intervening, NATO provided a small UK-led force, which the Russians countered with a reinforced mechanized corps, plus reinforcements from their Belorussian allies.   The US sent their available forces to the Polish frontier, hoping that their deterrent effect would stabilize the situation.

The Ukrainian “Interventionists” (so named for their favorability toward Russian “intervention”) had organized their own fighting force around the two mechanized brigades (and assorted smaller units) that mutinied against the national command.   Russian operatives assisted in arming and organizing the “101 Brigade” from provinces near the border; other partisans throughout the Ukraine also took up arms on the Interventionist side.

The Ukrainian government incorporated their volunteers into the standing army, hoping to avoid any public relations backlash from having irregular forces on the battlefield, as they attempted to paint the conflict as a civil war in which the Russians were meddling and NATO were invited peacekeepers.

The first battles were joined near Lvov, as the Interventionists bypassed Kiev and pushed as far west as possible, hoping to prevent the NATO forces from establishing a bridgehead in the Ukraine. Russian and Belorussian reinforcements arrived from the north to try and flank the existing Ukrainian national forces before NATO could join the fight. The Americans were moving through Poland, but had concerns about the security of their supply lines.

Earlier this month Michael Peck gave a preproduction version of the game a try at Foreign Policy magazine.

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Finally, there is one already-published  game on the area set in the modern era, Millennium Wars: Ukraine, This was designed by Joe Miranda and published by One Small Step games in 2003:

Millennium Wars: Ukraine presents a possible invasion of Ukraine by Russia later this decade. Scenarios put the Russians in the roles of seizing oil, driving to the Black Sea, or pursuing fleeing rebels while NATO forces move to aid Ukraine. External political events can impact the ability of both sides to prosecute their desired strategies.

The BoardGameGeek page for the game can be found here. A 2014 update for the game will be available shortly from the publisher at the end of September 2014.

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Digital wargamers have been examining military conflict in the Crimea too. For example, have a look at Flashpoint Ukraine 2014, an impressively detailed current order of battle and scenario depicted by the Baloogan Campaign (@BalooganCamp) using the Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations platform by Matrix games.

OPERATION TIGER RIFLE examines an attempted NATO amphibious landing in the Crimea:

The Russian Federation has taken Crimea by force and within 48 hours a major NATO assault is planned. You must clear the way for the HW Bush to lead an amphibious assault group. Destruction of the 11th Anti-submarine Ship Brigade and (most importantly) the S-400 and Bastion ASM located near Sevastopol is required for the amphibious landing.

There is a lengthy discussion thread on this at the Matrix Games website.

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Tom Mouat has put together his own quick wargame of the Crisis in Crimea, which he has kindly passed on to PAXsims. This takes the form of a free-form “matrix game”:

Matrix games are different to normal Wargames. In most of those games you compare lists of statistics and peer at complicated books of rules containing someone else’s idea about what things are important, before rolling a dice. It takes a long time and can be very difficult to explain to a newcomer. Instead, in a Matrix Game you simply use words to describe why something should happen, the Umpire or the players (or both) decide how likely it is and you roll a dice. If you can say “This happens, for the following reasons…” you can play a Matrix Game.

The game involves up to six-players: Olexander Turchynov, Victor Yanukovych, Barak Obama, Vladimir Putin, the European Union and China

You’ll find the map here, and the guidelines, roles, and other supporting materials here. You’ll find it an interesting introduction to how a matrix game works (although you really need to see one in action to get a full understanding).

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Kickstarter features a proposal for a tactical boardgame based on the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Kiev, pitting demonstrators against the authorities. You’ll find more details here. (The game has since been withdrawn.)

* * *

Majdan is a game of the Euromaidan protests by the Polish game company Symeo Games. According to the game summary at BoardGameGeek:

Majdan is trying to simulate events which took place in Ukraine in January and February 2014 during what is called an “Euromaidan”. The players create the political situation of this state on their own. Depending on their strategy, the paths of Ukrainians future may develop in many different ways. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the moral loser will always be a faction which decided for the force solution fighting for control over districts as the first and allowing the blood to be spoiled.

The goal of each faction is to gain as many Victory Points as possible, i.e. retain the power in hands of Government and his supporters or to create a new government by the opposition.

Victory Points are scored by taking Control or getting Support in 25 districts, which differs in value. When two factions meet in one district there is a Struggle (for Support or Control). To win a Struggle, players use Cards which portrays means used to win: Masses (supporters of Government or Euromaidan), Militia, Berkut, Army, Specnaz, Media or Titushki. Cards have different values (value part of them is defined by a dice roll). For example, Media has value 5 in Struggle for Support, and 0 in Struggle for Control.

Players has several types of action to choose: get a Card, initiate a Struggle, influence a district, make an peace offer. 5 Actions made an Action Round. 6 Action Rounds makes an complete game (unless someone get to automatic victory earlier).

Majdan reimplements Pomarańczowa Rewolucja game – mechanics was slightly changed, as district values on the map. Cards was changed (new images and its quantity).

All changes were fit to the 2013/2014 political situation on Ukraine.

h/t Volko Ruhnke

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Battlefront has introduced Combat Mission: Black Sea, as part of its Combat Mission series:

Combat Mission: Black Sea is a military simulation depicting a fictional 2017 conflict between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. Following the events in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Kiev government and Russia continue to clash over the status of the contested regions. This culminates several years later in a dramatic announcement by Ukraine that they will be joining NATO and the EU. Tensions explode as Russia perceives a direct threat to Russian citizens and deploy troops to the Ukrainian border again, while Western governments, welcoming a chance to expand NATO and EU influence eastward, mobilize as well. The escalation continues until the summer of 2017, when a large firefight erupts between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the Donetsk region. The next day fighting flares up on the border, and on a dark early morning in June 2017, pre-positioned Russian and NATO forces roll forward into Ukraine.

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The private sector intelligence and analysis firm Stratfor will be unveiling the results of a series of analytical wargames of the Ukraine crisis in March. You’ll find the introductory video to the series here, and some initial PAXsims thoughts here.

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The Polish gaming magazine Tactics & Strategy might be producing a game of the Ukraine crisis, Mariupol 2014-15. Their website is here.

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In an article in Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 21, 2 (April 2015), Richard E. Ericson and Lester A. Zeageroffer an analysis of strategic interaction in the Ukraine crisis through a game theoretic lens.