Most interesting timeline for politics

Hey history and political experts, I'm running a campaign where each player takes the role of a nation, role-playing alongside a bunch of other box nations and such (there was a thread about it a couple days ago). I'm designing the world they'll take part in. It's pretty much a version of our world with obvious analogues to most modern nations.
From a timeline perspective, what time period within say the last 200 years would be a generally good place to start? I think a modern timeline wouldn't work so well due to the excessive influence of the US, same with cold war with US v USSR. What period of time could introduce the players to the world's politics with enough space for them to also influence how events occur?

Napoleonic and post-Vienna Europe, maybe even stretched to Grand Finale of World War I. Balance of powers, shifts in aliances, hell of tension, ballancing on the edge of what happend in the end anyway, freedom fighters from subdued nations, carbonari and communists, colonial empires, keeping countries stable at cost of letting power go into hands of democracy- at slowest pace possible, The Great Game and dozens of minor conflicts... This is the way, user.

Agreeing with this post; 19th century Europe is probably your ideal timeline. Adding to what this user said, it's also good because the European powers were not fighting major land wars in Europe until the German and Italian nationalism came up big in the latter half of the century. This means that the focus can be on politics rather than just straight killing each other, but the killing can be good when the time comes (and it will-- players are violent bastards).

How globalized was the world at this point? America was pretty isolationist during the 19th century, but could a similar nation with more worldly goals have influence all the way over in Europe and Asia?

The United Kingdom was this for over a century.
Hence "the sun never sets on the British Empire".

European languages, in fact French, English and German (in my opinon in that order, French language and culture were influential as fuck, little people in Eastern Europe, Russia and Germany learned English as second language as French was THE THING, poor French faggots cannot get over this being a fade for nearly a damned century) will accomodate you across whole world. Of course, people in Warsaw cafe will speak Polish, Italians in Mediolanian shop will speak Italian (and it's sabudian dialect of IItalian) but in the end there always been heaps of people who can speak various languages, especially after Napoleonic Wars. Also Europe is filled with clusterfucks of grups that have moved from one country to other, enormus Jewish societies in the East, etc.


There is no Big Daddy US of A yet. And for you, that is good. For you have antagonistic empires and nations that have common culture, with distinct qualities for each other and none really has big headstart. History can really depend on Your Guys.

The only thing I'm worried about is too much eurocentricity.

Eurocentricity is almost a requirement for the era if you want players to be roughly equivalent in terms of power
If your players don't mind starting asymmetrically, you could have nascent empires like Japan as well

>Mediolanian

Are you me? I'm used to calling Milan Milan, but I still think of Istanbul as Constantinople, and often need to correct myself
Being a history dork with ancient and medieval history degree friends has it's downsides

I'm trying to do something similar (I think we were inspired by that same post) but I'd like to keep it in modern times. I'm open to alternate history stuff, so what would you change about the modern world to make it conducive to this kind of RPG?

Yup, that may be a problem, as Ottoman Empire is in it's decline (checkout Egipt at the time, it had great potential for reforming it and making european-influenced modern muslim power like Japan did with it's culture). You get Japan that develops great potential, yet also through heavy europeisation... Well, that is for major players. Africa got fucked up by British and French so badly, that they will need centuries to develop something worthwhile in ,,game of powers", you can work on Chacka Zulus state or Boers (racist african Dutchmen, still Europe), but it's little. China are lowest of low, and Latin America are in turbulent state-creating revolutions. USA, Canada and Australia are busy being racist, protestant murderhobos, too busy with stealing land from indigenous people to be activly influencing other parts of the world.

So, unless you elaborate on short-lived egyptian reforms or embrace grorius Nippon steel, you are left with Europe (but remeber- Rooskies murder their way as far as China and create some interesting stuff on way there as well).

Nah, in Polish it's called Mediolan, we didn't even notice (viva Garibaldi tho), so I wrote it without thinking about it.

Trying to get a degree in history does not help, true.

And yes, it is Constantinopole and always will be (sheds a single tear of manlines).

I have little against the Turks, and they have built many fine buildings in Istanbul, but I'll always be a wee bit salty about the Hagia Sophia having Mosque bits grafted on
Maybe we could arrange a trade, the Christians will give back the Cordoba Cathedral, the Turks give back the Hagia Sophia

America was mostly isolationist, but they debuted a couple times on the world stage with stuff like the Monroe Doctrine (cementing their position as a major regional power in the Americas) and the Spanish American War (demonstrating that the ancient power of Spain ain't got shit any more, it was a shock to the rest of Europe). These events set America up to enter the world stage post WWI.

Yea, but SAM and Philippines are very late into the epoch. On the other hand-not much less so is colonial involvment of Germany or it being unified at all. Yet, they are simply devouring their part of cake slowly and don't have major involvment.

Nah, too much Greek sympathy (Navarrino best day before my life) and you know, I'm a Pole, battle of Vienna is what makes us being able at late 17th century without throwing things at people. I really like to pitch for one side in wars, as we do watching sports. It has no effect on my juggment, you know, just sports thing. If there are opressed good guys to really like and have compassion for, well even better.

I would say 1920s-1930s. You have countries with completely different ideologies, empires are still around but so is modernish tech

You're talking a bit late for the period, but it should be noted that America waged a few wars on the Barbary states in North Africa for some reason or other

It's more my love of the Byzantines, no matter how shitty they actually were

Honestly I don't know much about Polish history. I know you guys went catholic, then you rekt the Teutonic Order, then you were a Commonwealth with Lithuania and rekt the Turks too, then got carved up cause Russia, Austria and Prussia wanted your shit

>It's more my love of the Byzantines, no matter how shitty they actually were
God, do I know those feels.

OP, you could even run it as late as 1900-preWWI era for maximum national shenanigans. Complicated Bismarkian interlocking alliances amongst nations that are beginning to degrade, a rising German state with an astonishingly mediocre ruler, the contest of democracy and socialism vs the old world order on the rise, exciting new war technologies that no one knows how to use, and cripplingly expensive naval arms races: there's a lot you could do with that.

Although I may be a bit biased just because I know more about that than clusterfucks surrounding pre-unified German states, pic related.

That could actually be interesting yanno
You have a "Germany" who's stronger than everyone else but has no allies
Everyone else starts out in complex alliance webs, with the penalty for trying to get out of them (to ally Germany) strong enough to discourage it for all but the most desperate powers
Set it up so that the alliance breaking penalty counts less for powers that are losing/ look like they're gonna lose and you're set

The reformation and Enlightenment
You have:
Civil war of religion and its states
Evil external faith(ottomans) taking advantage to advance its power and possessions

Enlightenment:Long hidden texts revealing a mystic and esoteric magic long lost

Polymaths using said knowledge to create incredible machines

Also:New world bonus
Ancient religions and their bizarre gods and blood sacrificing indigenous cultist.

Since your using analogues and not actual historical nations, you could just create an alternate history that is politically open for exploitation and negotiation

The first civilisation to really exploit the power of diplomacy was the Hittites. While it's usual to think of the ancient world as primitive and violent, Hittite diplomacy ushered in a period of unprecedented peace between the great powers of the day, and left us one of the largest archives of information about the past in the form of the clay tablets all Hittite bureaucrats archived that stored the details of past agreements. I for one think a campaign set in the ancient world but focusing on politics rather than monster hunting would make an interesting twist.