I really love grand strategy games and their empire building. But there is always one thing the bothers me. Empires can only rise and seldom fall. Most of the time when I see an empire fall in such games It’s because the AI made such a stupid decision that it must be a bug.

In reality empires rise and fall. They all seem to rise and fall in cycles. In Crusader Kings 3 they implemented a cyclic fall of and rise of the dynasties’ china. As Chinese scholars often see the history of china in such a lens.

I would probably like it more when it would be implemented as a generic system for every realm not just china.

I wanted to create my grand strategy like simulation and was interested what scholars think.

An interesting researcher is Peter Turchin. His works are interesting because he uses math to explain the dynamic behind the rise and fall.

I like his works not because they are the best and I believe every word, No. But they are really helpful when creating a computer simulation.

His Works

• War and peace and war : the life cycles of imperial nations
• Secular Cycles
• Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall
• Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History
• End Times : Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

Demographic Component

An important aspect in populations is their growth and the carry capacity of a location. Each location has only enough resources to allow for such a big population. At some point there is simply not enough to sustain a higher population count.