Sources and method
Where the game’s facts come from, who has checked them, and what has not been checked yet.
Review status
- 36 historical events in the game, with 186 sources. Every one has been checked against its sources, and every source is listed with the date it was checked.
- 10 events with sensitive tags (war casualties, terror, the Holocaust) have also had a sensitivity review. The build tools refuse to package a shareable build until it is recorded.
- No historian has reviewed the game yet. Historian review is planned for M4 and is not a release gate until then.
- Text drafted with AI is a draft. A person checks each factual claim in it against the sources, one by one, before the event is marked fact-checked.
The framing
The player leads the Yishuv and the State of Israel. Narration and terminology use Israeli framing, and each fact takes one value from Israeli official or mainstream sources: the Central Bureau of Statistics, the IDF, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Archives, and mainstream Israeli historiography. Wikipedia (English and Hebrew) is a primary cited source for many facts, which is why the game’s content is CC BY-SA 4.0.
Contested ranges and opposing-narrative panels are not shown. Arab and Palestinian actors are computer-run actors with their own goals. This is a design decision by the maintainer, and the game is not neutral.
What is fact and what is game
- Dates, names, offices and numbers are facts with a source.
- No words are attributed to a real person unless they are sourced verbatim. Event text describes; it does not put speech in anyone’s mouth.
- Ministers’ competence and loyalty values, the effects of each option and the cost of actions are game balance, not judgements of the people and not historical facts.
- Choices that harm civilians never pay. The Holocaust is an event the player reacts to, never one the player plays.
The sources the events cite
By site, with the number of events that cite each one. The full list for each event, with the check dates, is on the History page. History
| Source | Events |
|---|---|
| jta.org | 16 |
| en.wikipedia.org | 14 |
| fs.knesset.gov.il | 14 |
| jewishvirtuallibrary.org | 11 |
| history.state.gov | 10 |
| unispal.un.org | 9 |
| documents.un.org | 7 |
| un.org | 7 |
| avalon.law.yale.edu | 6 |
| knesset.gov.il | 5 |
| m.knesset.gov.il | 4 |
| bengurionarchive.bgu.ac.il | 3 |
| he.wikipedia.org | 3 |
| web.archive.org | 3 |
| archives.mod.gov.il | 2 |
| daat.ac.il | 2 |
| idf.il | 2 |
| in.bgu.ac.il | 2 |
| izkor.gov.il | 2 |
| nli.org.il | 2 |
| api.parliament.uk | 1 |
| benyehuda.org | 1 |
| cbs.gov.il | 1 |
| dacenter.tau.ac.il | 1 |
| en.idi.org.il | 1 |
| gov.il | 1 |
| idi.org.il | 1 |
| israelbondsintl.com | 1 |
| lib.cet.ac.il | 1 |
| palmach.org.il | 1 |
| pop.education.gov.il | 1 |
| sharett.org.il | 1 |
The map and the data
- Terrain: produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 (c) DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and (c) Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.
- Rainfall: CHELSA V2.1 bio12 (1981–2010), CC0, and the Israel Meteorological Service’s rain-gauge data (data.gov.il, dataset 481).
- The 1948 sub-districts, railways and roads: Survey of Palestine maps (1946–1947), public domain in Israel and the UK; only the facts are taken, redrawn by our own method.
- The 1949 armistice lines: the General Armistice Agreements and their annexed maps (United Nations documents).
- Places and population: Village Statistics, 1945 (Government of Palestine), as transcribed on Wikipedia, with coordinates from Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Photographs
The archival photographs on the event cards (29 in a shareable build) are real photographs, never AI images: from the Meitar Collection at the National Library of Israel under CC BY 4.0, the Nationaal Archief under CC0, and the US National Archives in the public domain. The only changes are a subtle tone grade, a crop and a resize. Each photograph’s credit is beside it on the History page. The ministers’ portraits are public-domain or CC0 photographs.
Found an error?
Open an issue with the Historical accuracy form. Name the file and the field, say what is wrong, and give at least one source the reader can check: a published book or article, an official record, or a reputable reference work. A social-media post is not a source. Facts are open to correction; the framing is not.