Transcription
Hello guys, and welcome to Real Politics. Today, I'm going to talk about the different nations that you can play in this game. As you see, there's quite a host of options, and this is only one scenario. There is a grand campaign, some smaller campaigns inside that grand campaign, and there are multiple other campaigns other than the main one, which is The World is Not Enough. There is The Dawn of Tomorrow, going from 2020 to 2050, and then the New World Order, which has a longer loading screen in 2222. This one really breaks the map up into tiny little pieces. I'll talk a little bit about all of them, but the focus is going to be on The World is Not Enough, because this is the grand campaign of the game and where most of the attention went.
This game does have some stories kind of scripted into it. For example, America and China gearing up to go to war over the Pacific. There are ways to avoid it, but those are not necessarily desirable. There are also formable nations that we will talk about, but to get it out of the way first and foremost, no matter what nation you play as, every nation is functionally the same. What makes them different is their development levels, their amount of population, and then the specifics of what research SL projects you activate. India will not feel different because of the culture, or cultures I should say, that exist in IND India. There will be not a lot of difference between an African nation that starts doing really, really well and a European nation of similar size and wealth. They will act exactly the same.
When you're playing the grand campaign, then what nation you pick just depends on what region of the world you want to be in, what flavor you wish to have, and what story events you might wish to have. So, for example, America and China are encouraged to go to war; the Koreas are encouraged to fight; Pakistan and India are encouraged to fight; Russia is encouraged to take over Europe; there is an encouragement for the Middle East to kind of fight each other to unify; there is even a way to unify Africa as well. I'm going to boot up the game so I can show you more of what I mean via the endgame statistics. So if we sort by statistics, sort by GDP, this is one way. You can also look at Province total; these are multiple different ways, plus the Army, to get an idea of how strong or how powerful or worth playing any one nation is. Despite Russia having a very large army and the most amount of provinces, you see their GDP isn't even in the top eight. I have to actually scroll down to see them. GDP per capita is huge; it's not actually outlined; you have to look between like GDP size and population. But this is one major thing you want to look at when figuring out what is going to be easy to play in this game.
Score is what matters the most; the number one at the end of the game wins, and the number one also gets bonuses, as is the number two, three, four, and five from being so high up in the score ranking. It's also an indicator of how wealthy you are and how capable you are of taking part in the events that happen in the world, where you can settle ocean colonies, Antarctic colonies, and even—you could barely see it—get into space once that opens up. There is also the effect of civilization and culture. For example, the Chinese have the Sinik civilization; the Russians are part of the Orthodox civilization; and I, America that I picked, am part of the Western civilization generally as well. You could go to provinces and sort this B score and find whoever has a lot of high score locations, especially with natural resources but not a lot of population. This is if you're looking to make things easy. So, for example, this makes America one of the easiest, if not the easiest, nations to play in the entire game. Europe is not as easy as you would think because they're all so tiny in comparison; they don't have as many provinces; they don't have much score or as population or anything; natural resources. This makes them actually pretty underwhelming in this game, though they can help dominate in certain stats, for, for example, in nation GDP size. There are a couple of European nations in here; those are pretty decent options.
Additionally, if you're looking for formable nations, Poland can form the Intermarium, I believe it's called. France or Germany can form Europia. As one of the Nordic countries, you can form Scandinavia. You can also form Czechoslovakia if you play here. There is also the Koreas, which can form a unified Korea if you take over the other half. In the west half of the Balkans, you can even form Yugoslavia. There is a United China you can make if you conquer the other half. You can also make the United States of Central America if you play south of Mexico but north of Colombia. If you play in the Baltics, you can actually form the Baltic Union as a kind of counter to Russia. That's also partially what Scandinavia is for as well. There's a lot of events to help these smaller nations play on the same ballpark as the bigger ones as well. Angola can form an African Union that will help them take over all of Africa, unifying the continent. There is even a Central Asian Union you can make, but you have to specifically play as Kazakhstan, I believe. Iran and Saudi Arabia can make the nation of Arabia as well. Yeah, I think Turkey can make it as well, but you have to go through an event chain where you choose to stay Islamic and do not not westernize. The list goes on, and unfortunately, there's no clean list of what you can make, and this is just kind of by memory what I'm explaining to you. But generally speaking, when you are picking a nation, the bigger the better; the more GDP per population, the better; the more natural resources and score per province, the better. So, of course, that makes America very easy to play. China is actually harder to play because they have way too much population. Russia's very easy to play because they're very sparsely populated, but they have a ton of territory; unfortunately, their GDP is not very high. Japan is an easier one to play. Germany, France, UK are probably the easiest European ones to play, and then, you know, Poland, aside from being able to form the Intermarium, you also get to be further away from Russia, which is a problem because diplomacy in this game works via blocks. If I get someone in my block, then that person's army is effectively part of my own. Russia starts out with the only block in the game at the beginning, having Belarus, and they can easily add more, making them more powerful and making these smaller European nations kind of problematic; hence all the capabilities to unify them into bigger states.
In The Dawn of Tomorrow, the campaign is not quite as scripted; it's not quite as interesting in terms of events, but the big boys all get split up. Canada gets split up; America gets split up; China, Russia gets split up; all the strongest nations get split up; Iran gets a little bit bigger; the Intermarium starts out formed; Europia starts out formed; kind of a mixture of Germany and France; the UK actually has to be reformed, among other things. There is—oh, this is another thing you can make even in the grand campaign—The World is Not Enough is Portugalia. As you see, it's not a very big thing; you start out with access to space immediately, as well as the ocean colonies. For example, there's an Oceanic Federation. Some nations get out pretty scot-free, like Japan, who doesn't really have anything taken away from them. Korea starts out fully formed and unified as well. There is a starting score value definitely still favoring America, who does have some space things. The Confederacy is pretty strong; there is also California, but they're not as strong, even though they own more than just California and Mexico. Of course, the top dog is still going to be nearly the top dog even when split up into little itty bitty pieces, but this gives other nations definitely a better chance. If we sort by GDP size, we can see the Intermarium actually has the highest GDP; the population isn't too crazy as a result, but we can see here the Confederacy's GDP to population is actually much better than everybody else in the top eight here. Japan is also doing pretty well in that respect, but the Oceania Federation is looking especially good. So Confederacy, Oceania Federation, Japan, Republic of California—heck, even Italy. Italy is a pretty good one to play here because not only do they not get really nerfed, but they get to take over part of what would be Yugoslavia, which makes them good. So those are good choices, especially for this setting.
If we do go back to the main menu, the 2222 scenario is quite a bit different because everybody's split up into little itty bitty pieces, and the two best nations to play, if you ask me, are going to be the Roman Empire and Anime Land, because these are the only locations in the game that have—uh, I should pause actually. If we sort by provinces, you'll see the GDP is all pretty similar in this scenario; it's tried to be made like pretty balanced; the populations are all pretty similar as well. But Anime Land and the Roman Empire are in pretty good locations, and they have the max amount of provinces anybody starts with. For a lot of the other ones, they're just different bits of like Arabia and different bits of China spread out. Anime Land owns half of Japan and part of Korea, so they do get some good directions they can go to expand. The Chinese portions kind of have to deal with each other, and same thing if you look in Arabia; it's a bit of a hellscape, whereas the Roman Empire has a lot of good territory all around it. It is different because debt and provincial values are kind of different as well; it's not all the same, and there isn't even any variance to the score of any location. This one is really just a big free-for-all where everyone starts out with kind of equal values; it's just the Roman Empire and Anime Land have it easier than most. So that's who I would recommend playing in that scenario.
And that's basically all of the main grand campaigns and who to play as. Just note, you can play the smaller nations, but smaller nations have a lot more work to do if they want to win. You're much less likely to come in number one on the scoreboard if you play a smaller nation, but it could be easier to learn the game with. If you want a smaller nation that's good for learning the game and has potential, Europe is definitely a good place to go, Poland especially, because I believe Poland is where the tutorial takes place. Poland is an especially good small nation that you can learn the game with that has decent challenges to face itself with, so you won't get bored, and it can build up into being the Intermarium, a bigger formable nation. Definitely good starting nations over here in Europe. Africa is a little bit more challenging, cuz if you're not Angola, then you have to deal with Angola forming things. Asia is a hellscape where you're surrounded by what will be superpowers and nuclear powers tossing nukes left and right. South America is—well, there's also not many good options here, given what you're faced with, at least not in terms of making it as easy as possible for a new player. But those are my suggestions. If you have any questions, feel free to leave those in the comments below. If I can't help you, hopefully somebody else can. If you want to see any other guides on this game, feel free to leave those suggestions in the comments below as well. I have a playlist in the description below; we could find other guides that I've made on this game already. Be sure to check that to see if your idea has already been made. But for now, thank you guys very much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. [Music]