Hello again, today I have another update for the beta. Other than the 2025, scenario this one is miscellaneous so there are no new major features, but there are alot of changes.
2025
I have more or less finished the 2025 scenario, but it may not be balanced properly so keep that in mind when playing. 2025 differs from 2092 in quite a few ways, the most important being the Polycrisis Situation that most countries have, as well as a much more polarized level of development/education across the world.
Polycrisis
"The Polycrisis" refers to the collection of problems that seem to be facing practically every major country right now. I decided to represent all of these problems as a single Situation for simplicity's sake, as having 4-5 simultaneous crisis situations demanding attention was kind of annoying to play with. For the most part, the Polycrisis makes expansion more difficult, but allows you to more easily reform your government, which should make the early game more focused around building yourself up for domination once everyone emerges from the problems of the current day.
East vs West
The world in 2025 is split primarily between three alliances, NATO, CSTO, and the Belt and Road. Almost half of the world's nations are involved in one of these alliances, making expansion difficult, since a single guarantee of independence could spark World War III.
Nuclear Armageddon
The US, China, and Russia all possess very large nuclear stockpiles, and are not afraid to use them if needed to achieve victory. You should be careful to avoid escalated warfare with any of these three powers until establishing point defense around your Empire to lessen the damage done by these weapons of mass destruction.
The AI loves intervening in conflicts and with how many organizations there are, you should prepare for nuclear war.
Notes on Balance
Some things about the 2025 scenario are not going to be 100% accurate to reality since Solar Nations 2 is not a hyper realistic game. There have been some alterations made to the scenario in order to make it more fun and balanced than realistic.
More Political Changes
Stability Rebalance
In order to maintain stability, you need to keep your factions happy, as the stability you gain from Culture Tech is now dependent on the approval of your factions.
Faction Privileges
Faction Privileges now have their own icons, which are color coded to the faction they belong to. In addition, Factions' desire for reforms have been slightly altered, making them more interested in reforms that they should like, and there is a larger penalty for going against your Factions' wishes.
There are also some new privileges that allow you to take advantage of a faction or reduce its power, but for a cost.
New Spending Items
There are a few new reforms which go over government spending. These are sort of WIP, especially for the balancing side of things. Not really sure how I want fiscal policy to work yet.
Regional Politics
Regional Faction control is now determined by many more factors, and no longer has seemingly random oscillations. It is now significantly harder to monopolize the politics of your entire country to a single faction, but it is also more rewarding to do so.
UI/UX
A number of miscellaneous improvements have been made to the UI, especially in regards to Terrain view, something which I didn't explain very well. It is now very easy to see what terrain any region has, as well as what that means for units there.
Current Character System definitely doesn't produce the most accurate results