Very interesting concept but still rough around the edges. Alpha version level of rough.
In the demo you plays as Poland on 2022 on the verge of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (in this scenario, they are going to do a USA scenario, Ukraine, Taiwan, Russia, etc) on what is basically a contemporary Total War game with two phases: A hybrid warfare peace phase and a Kinetic warfare phase (open shoot war.)
A Hybrid Warfare / "Peace" phase where you play on a world map managing four stats: The country budget (from GDP by sector to military expenses), social contract (which is basically you "CIV happiness"), military production capacity, your allies support and a stat called escalation (which is shared between you and other countries). When escalation reaches a certain point, the kinetic phase comes into play and it becomes you Total War game grand strategy, you forget about escalation and try to conquering territories in a Total War/Warno/Wargame battle fashion).
This phase you can produce equipment's that you country has the technology (you can produce the T-72 polish variant or RPG-7 in you our factories), you can research new weapons, gain support and buy hardware from other allied NATO countries (instead of producing yours T-72, you can buy Leopards from Germany, Abrahams SEP 3 from the US, Black Panthers from ROK... Himars, Javelins etc), and where the news of the world develop (eg. Russia condemns Nato expansionism (escalation +5), Russia pressure the Baltic States, CIA informs you that they are seeing Russia amassing forces in the Ukrainian border, and this play with your stats, support, escalation, in many ways etc).
And with hybrid warfare you can buy political and hybrid operations like Poland asking for an emergency NATO meeting when Russia invades Ukraine (so you spend escalation, and allied support to gain more social contract and military production), you can order your SOF to bomb the Nordstream pipeline to damage Russian economy (expending support and escalation if you get caught), you can ask for a US military presence in you country (expending social contract, escalation, support etc in exchange for American troops), you can begin a media campaign denouncing Russia arms industry corruption (which hampers the industry output and social contract, if you get caught you lose your social contract),
you can propose a defense pact with the Baltic countries, destabilize the Belarusian government.
One very interesting and controversial point.
They used AI to make Lavrov, Putin, Yankunovich, the Bielorussian "president" and on the other side the Nato secretary to speak accordingly to the game events on the newsreel that plays when you execute or when someone execute the political and Hybrid operations.
I really don't know if this is going to survive to the final game but it's a cool feature.
The battles are your bread and butter real time tactics where you conquer territory to gain support and intel to deploy more troops that you trained on the world stage, call air strikes etc. Functional but barebones. The new thing is you can use electronic warfare to monitor troops emissions, call drone strikes, etc and the enemy can do the same on your troops.
TLDR: It's a Total War game in the modern world with a "card game" component playing modifiers on the game (hybrid and political action) and some really recent warfare concepts that no game touched it yet. I'm keeping an eye on this one it definitely has the potential.
ps. Raptor did a playthrough of the demo not so long ago.
