Recent reviews by spiders

I'm biased because I love space stuff but I find Stellaris very fun and even fascinating

Impactful storytelling by Dingaling. My favourite indie game and second-favourite RPG

works very well, very fun

The NGOs are a very good layer to the game, I like them a lot.

However, I dislike how one of the People's Democratic Front goals is reduce HDI to <45. This doesn't make sense, as this is best achieved by removing school programs, while a communist would actually likely support school programs. You can also click events where you spend HDI, but these aren't always available. The goal is also presented as "everyone is equal", though reducing HDI doesn't have much to do with equality. Universal education would actually increase equality.

So, I've played 7.4 hours. Not an extremely long time, but probably long enough to get some base thoughts. Overall I enjoy playing the game. EDIT: 20 hours now.

I like the conflict aspect of the game, and I enjoy watching things happen throughout the world (like new alliances forming), but unfortunately at this stage, I can think of more things I wish were improved than things I actively love:

1. This game needs more, well, politics! In its current state, it's hard to know who to ideologically ally with, because there are only three relevant "ideologies" in the game, democracy, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, determined by a mixture of your economics, militarism, and personal control. These ideologies act like a switch; once you pass certain thresholds, you switch to that ideology. The one-dimensional ideological system is dull and limiting, in my opinion. I think a 2D gradient "political compass" would work better. The economics could range from communist to hyper-capitalist, and the amount of authoritarianism could lie on the other axis. This would be more immersive and engaging, and would create more complex blocs/alliances, and as a player, I would really have a better idea of who my allies are. Perhaps, as in real life, relations to a country could be more greatly affected by economic views, but the other axis still counts.

2. You should be able to join a bloc. I have removed my previous comments about how blocs were too hard to maintain because I experimented a little more, and it's not SO bad. The country that I formed by being rebels loves me.

2.5: There should be a "blocs screen", where you can view blocs of the world, their members, and manage your bloc, perhaps even name it. You could remove or invite members from this screen.

3. There should be more permanent relationship changes in the game. For example, when I send aid to a country, it doesn't really make sense that they love me for like 1500 days, and then they are abruptly cold to me again. Perhaps it should permanently increase relations by a small amount (which could still be overshadowed by other factors), OR the relations should decay slowly, not be extremely high and then suddenly back to low. I also think that relationships should be more greatly affected by ideology.

4. There needs to be options for changing your country. When I was playing as DR Congo, I managed to actually do quite well and build it into a decent country for a while, but then the African Union Front formed. I would have loved to join them, however there is no option for this in the game, and they kicked my ass, ending my playthrough. If I could have become the African Union Front instead, that would have been better.

4.5. It would also be fun l to be able to play as rebels/rebel countries. (As DR Congo, AUF annexed my best province (North), and so I lost a huge amount of resources. I needed to get land, but the AUF was too strong! So I declared war on Sudan. I annexed South Sudan, and also a riot started in Heglig. Sudan had no army left after the war, so I supported the riot and annihilated them. Heglig became an independent country, and since I was the rebels, I should have been able to play as Heglig.)

4.75. Or, possibly, when choosing your country, you can pick a province, and be the rebels in that province in some country.

5. I know this is probably a late-stage thing and difficult to implement, but mod support would be excellent! Especially if mods were inherently cross-compatible, as I'm on Linux. Thanks for making this game available on Linux, by the way!