Good evening. You're listening to Three Moves Ahead and I am Len. I am your host for this week,

joined by our friends, freelance writer, Rowan Kaiser.

How many moves ahead? It sounded like you said something between three and 20.

It's some number. It's in that range.

We're ahead, okay?

Standard deviations, you know, there's, yeah, it's, it's somewhere in there.

Hello.

We also have three amaze behind the scenes mastermind, Mike Gillis.

Hey, you there?

And our special guest for this week, visiting lecturer in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Brett Devereaux.

Hi.

Great to be here.

We're glad to have you.

Today's episode is going to be about the concept of the state in strategy games.

And we specifically sort of got this idea from a post on your blog, a collection of unmitigated

pedantry, which I will include a link to in the show notes about, you did one on EU4,

and now there's also one on Victoria 2, which I'm not quite caught up with yet

that we all thought was super interesting.

But before we get started, can you talk a little bit about your background, both as an academic

and as a player of strategy games?

Okay, well, the academic one is a little bit easier. I have my PhD in

ancient history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My area of specialty is

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