I'm not a big fan of a cold war period game.
Ok, but please take into account the fact, that other people around here are and their wish, in the form of a playable PDX game, has not yet been granted, as opposed to other time periods, which is why the proponents of a Cold War game are quite vocal here (myself included) and may respond adversely to suggestions that a PDX Cold War game would be "impossible," "not necesssary," "not fun," "too controversial," etc.
Each paradox game focus on one aspect of the period - dynasty management in ck2, pop in Victoria, warfare in HoI. What would a CW period game focus on? Most wars were local proxy war, so not warfare. Pdx is quite meh at economy games, and you'll really need to do two games rather then one, as both systems were incompatible and radically different. Espionage and Diplomacy? Doesn't feel as enough.
IMHO, it would basically be
Power Struggle, based upon management, balancing and projection of
soft and
hard power, both composed of various elements, such as the military, economy, intelligence, science, culture, etc. within a country's sphere of influence and beyond.
How would you handle a lot of complicated situations of this period? Like most independence wars in ex European colonies where different factions were usually backed by both USSR an US? Or stuff like United Fruits and private contractors waging civil wars and palace revolutions in most of Latin America?
That is for the game developers to determine, develop, test, finalize and fine-tune as needed. They just need to do what they always do:
1) Familarise themselves with the period in detail by reading relevant books and watching documentaries regarding the Cold War.
2) Name and define mechanisms evidenced by historical events and precedents.
3) Determine which said mechanisms were the most important during the Cold War era and would serve as the basis for proper game mechanics upon release and leave the others (which may be intriguing, but not the most important right not) as material for future development and implementation.
Please keep in mind, that each and every PDX game begins as a "skeleton" of basic game features, which, with patches and DLCs, becomes more "fleshed-out." It is unrealistic to expect that a PDX Cold War game would be upon its realease like one of previous PDX games, which has been available and developed for the past few years. One must be prepared that not everything will be in the 1.0 version of the game and that after a few years, a PDX Cold War game will differ in many ways from its release state.
Also which countries would be fun to play? We don't use the term of bipolar world for nothing. How fun would it be to play Soviet Poland, or Sandinist Nicaragua while these countries had no real political autonomy. Or to put it plainly - would there be any fun country to play besides us and ussr (And to some extent China)?
The trick to making these countries fun to play would be to provide them with means of influencing, cooperating with, competing with, struggling with or distancing themselves from the "blobs" / "superpowers" with methods derived from the aforementioned power struggle. Many PDX games provide such options without resorting to "eating the blob and taking its place" so I think it is doable. It just needs to be realistic in terms of the risk, resources and time needed to do so: economic growth, social changes, military build-up, etc. should not be something done overnight and should take even more time when doing 180 degrees turns in terms of one's starting/existing policies.
Some suggestions have already been made in the following threads:
If Paradox did a Cold War game, what features would you want?
Cold war grand strategy
How would you handle a Cold War Grand Strategy Game if you were Paradox ?
A new paradox game set in the modern day?
