As a new player, I have been unable to find a good resource for player strategy and tips. I don’t mean I want to learn how to “win” the game, but I would love to hear about what people have learned playing it. What has worked, what hasn’t worked any why? My first game I couldn’t get my popularity over 10%. Any general tips would be greatly appreciated. Is there a sticky on this?
People like it when you spend and hate it when you tax so spend all you want and if there’s a deficit make it up with income tax and that will increase equality and make the socialists happy as a result, keep the budget balanced or your debt will go up and the debt interest will make things even worse. Some policies affect membership and these are very handy. If you know beforehand that you will never be able to please the liberals or the religious then set the creationism policy to either extreme and that will eliminate said group quicker. Focus on boosting GDP first or rasing spending on the national health service to maximum and then boosting GDP. When GDP goes up your revenues go up without you having to raise taxes.
There are a few good rules of thumb:
- Don’t change stuff too fast. Making sweeping changes overnight will upset people. Slow and steady wins the race.
- Everyone hates crime and loves a strong economy. Fix these things first, in that order.
- Education, and to a lesser extent healthcare, are the backbone of the economy. Improve education and the economy will improve.
- There are policies that increase and decrease the size of groups. If a group is giving you trouble, find the policies that influence their size.
I hope that’s useful.
I’ve actually found that rapid change is best. If there’s a policy I like I put it to the max. My popularity rarely declines and ends to keep going up.
Both strategies have pros and cons. Try switching in two turns from a state-run health system to a private one. 
thank you!
no matter what I try i can’t seem to get reelected lol. My thoughts are, lets aim for high popularity, and then make changes overtime. I really don’t understand the party graphs and the polling graphs.
It also seems super weird that right after staring the game, which is after winning an election, my popularity starts at almost zero. What gives?