![[UNFINISHED] Clark's Basic All-Encompassing Guide to Superpower 2 for SuperPower 2 Steam Edition](https://steamsolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unfinished-clark-s-basic-all-encompassing-guide-to-superpower-2-superpower-2-steam-edition.jpg)
Overview
A basic guide covering all parts of Superpower 2 (politics, military, diplomacy, economy) and providing useful tips for all newcomers to better learn the game and understand its mechanics.TRANSLATION TO RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IS PLANNED EVENTUALLY.THE GUIDE HAS NOT BEEN FINISHED – IT HAS BEEN RELEASED IN ITS CURRENT FORM TO PROVIDE SOME KNOWLEDGE, I HAVE NOT PLAYED THE GAME IN A YEAR AND WILL SLOWLY GET BACK INTO IT. AS I DO SO, I WILL START IMPROVING THE GUIDE ONCE AGAIN. I HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME FOR AT LEAST MORE THAN 7 YEARS NOW, SO A SHORT BREAK WON’T HURT MY KNOWLEDGE.
Introduction
Welcome to Clark’s Basic All-Encompassing Guide to Superpower 2.
The guide is mainly meant for newcomers as it covers various basic aspects of the game and provides useful tips that would otherwise need to be learnt through experience and thus failure, helping newcomers to quickly get into the game with the basic minimum necessary for playing. It is possible that even experienced and skilled players may learn something from the guide, but that is not the intention – this guide, as noted, covers the basics, while I may create different guides to cover more advanced aspects of the game.
The guide is always open to feedback and constructive criticism, both of which will be taken into account for any future amendments to it. You may also feel free to contribute some basic tips you know yourself, to help the game’s newcomers get into it and enjoy it just as much as the rest of us do.
There are many tips (as well as multiplayer-specific tips) scattered around the guide alongside basic explanations of mechanics to help you better learn them and utilize to your benefit.
Politics – basics
A major aspect of country’s internal affairs is Politics. The Politics sector of the game directly influences the Economy as well, through demographics, laws, government type and treaties.
We will first talk about the Politics tab itself.
There are four important percentages you should watch within the tab – Approval, Pressure, Stability and Corruption.
Approval shows your people’s approval of the ruling regime – it is very important in Multi-party democracy system as it dictates whether you win the elections or not (the safe zone is likely over 55%).
TIP – SPDs in SP2 are bugged and have elections as well, so take care and always keep your approval high before elections or you will lose elections, which should not be happening.
Pressure is likely the least important part, but it still has its own importance. Whenever any country sponsors a treaty against another country, the target country suffers from Pressure, which lowers diplomatic relations between the sponsoring country(-ies) and the target country (so beware – sponsoring a lot of treaties against a lot of nations (and not withdrawing sponsorship immediately after failure of treaty) may considerably hurt your DR!)
Stability is very important when considering interaction with other countries, as low stability makes your country vulnerable to high-risk covert attacks (coup d’etat), as well as affecting various aspects of your country and being a risk factor for fall into anarchy.
The game’s help tooltip for Stability will better describe all there is to know about it.
Corruption is very simplified in Superpower 2 – the higher corruption percentage, the more money you lose in the budget. In order to combat corruption, you must increase your government budget spending, there is not much more to it than that.
It is not always too beneficial to focus all your efforts on fighting corruption, as often maximum government spending costs more than a few dozen percent of corruption. So, unless you have spare cash – you should take that into consideration.
For information on government types, it is suggested to read guide “Government Types” by Apocaliptica, who provides extensive explanation of all government types in the game.
Politics – government
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – information about the differences between various government types, their pros and cons, and their general effect on the country, diplomatic relations and other mechanics of the game. (general rule of thumb – multi-party democracy is economically superior (and thus the best government type), getting re-elected is easy)
Politics – laws
Now, let’s move on to Internal Laws.
It is important to note that laws not only affect the country’s internal situation, but also your international standing with the world. If you, for example, have freedom of demonstration and speech banned, then legalizing both of these freedoms will improve your DR with the world countries that have also legalized these laws.
Moving on, freedom of demonstration, freedom of speech and women suffrage are the three least important laws, as they have no real effect on your country other than approval ratings and stability.
Number of children by family, Contraception, Abortion, Polygamy and Same Sex Marriage are important population control laws, they directly affect the country’s population growth.
TIP – it is important to state that, in Superpower 2, more population equals more benefit, because it increases your maximum resource production, it increases your budget expenditures (thus allowing you to, for example, have a higher research budget – which means faster research, or higher foreign aid budget – which means higher DR with poorer countries), as well as allowing higher PIT, trade & tourism income potential. There are no downsides to high population in Superpower 2.
For maximum population growth, the law settings should be as in the picture below, showing the increased population growth of Latvia (from 0.8% with the previous settings (included unlimited children by family) to 2.7%, do note that the population growth increase depends on various factors).
Number of children by family at the Unlimited setting ensures optimal population growth.
Contraception and Abortion not permitted ensure optimal population growth (decreases growth when legalized).
Polygamy permitted ensures optimal population growth.
Same Sex Marriage not permitted ensures optimal population growth (decreases growth when legalized).
TIP – population growth is highly dependent on human development level. The less developed a country is – the higher population growth potential it has. Thus, sometimes, it may be optimal to purposely hold your country’s development back to maximize population growth.
MULTIPLAYER TIP – if you are playing on a Roleplay server, toying around with these laws should be done with care. It is not realistic for an European country to legalize polygamy, for one, so always remember to provide proper roleplay and background to your law changes.
Child Labor is a very simple law – legalization of it increases overall resource production growth by 10%. Nothing more to it.
MULTIPLAYER TIP – do note that, while playing on a Roleplay server with a Western democracy, child labor is a huge no-no for most part.
Politics – treaties
A major part of the diplomacy (and even economic) game is the treaties mechanic.
TIP – the AI will always refuse many treaties with the reason “Treaty upkeep too high” if its economic balance is in a deficit (earning less money than spending), this does not apply to Economic Partnership, Alliance, Military Trespassing Rights, Free Region, Request military presence removal, Human Development Collaboration and Request War treaties.
The guide will not cover several treaty types as they are self-explanatory and all the information is already provided within game’s informative tooltips (unless there is a hint to provide in regards to it).
Cultural Exchange is a very simple treaty – it helps to improve your DR with other countries in the treaty. It has very little impact.
MULTIPLAYER TIP – these treaties are very good for roleplay, as you can make any in-character agreements between countries and confirm them through the making of such a treaty (ex. Treaty of Promised Friendship between China and Japan, Japan’s Recognition of WWII war crimes against China) just for flavor.
Noble Cause works in a similar way – it improves the DR with the countries in the treaty, but it also decreases your DR with the countries not within the treaty. For this reason, the AI is often reluctant to approve such treaties, although it has little effect (more than Cultural Exchange, though).
Economic Partnership is a more useful basic treaty – it improves resources production, with the bigger bonus being given to more productive countries. While the effect is negligible, it is beneficial to make these treaties in large quantities to give you a slight boost.
Research Partnership is very useful, as it gives a bonus to a country’s research based on the countries (& their research capability) in the treaty, it can allow powerful nations to research even faster, while also giving the weaker and smaller ones a chance to get closer to the major powers.
Human Development Collaboration allows countries part of the treaty to increase their Human Development Level at a faster rate, as long as the treaty has a country/countries with higher human development level (several treaties with several leading countries in human development level can help).
Alliance is what it is – it considers all countries within a treaty as allies, allowing allies to see the positioning of the troops of their other allies.
TIP – AI will accept an alliance only if its relation with the asking country(-ies) is at least 60.
Request War Declaration allows you to ask another country/other countries, whether you being part of the treaty or sponsoring it, to declare war on other country(-ies).
ADVANCED TIP – you can often get your way in Singleplayer by constantly sponsoring war declaration treaties between countries, destroying their international DR and getting even more countries to attack them or further ruin their DR.
Example of this strategy employed in use against AI USA (do not use in MP, this will get you banned in most servers – and it’s possible to see treaty sponsorship in server console!)
Common Market is probably the single most useful treaty for an underdeveloped country. This treaty is hands down most dominant in Uberfox Mod, as any country with small resources balance will quickly be able to get to full self-sufficiency and beyond if it obtains a CM treaty with a country with higher resources balance (preferably nations like USA that have very high balance).
Economic Aid does what it does – helps the target country meet its resource needs.
TIP – the AI will only accept this treaty if it has more total GDP than the country asking for the aid.
Assume country debt allows one country to assume the full debt of another country.
TIP – the AI will only accept this treaty if it has a positive balance (surplus), good DR with the asking country and more total GDP than the asking country.
Military – basics
The most important aspect of the game for spreading your influence directly, expanding your country and ensuring global dominance is Military.
Rank in three last sectors of Military (Land, Air, Naval) is determined by a combination of quantity (unit amount) and quality (technology of the units), it does not always show true strength due to various factors being at play to success on the battlefield. The first sector (Soldier) is solely based on the amount of infantry.
TIP – technology is a very important factor in determining the efficiency of combat units and their performance in combat. It is always recommended to focus on higher technology level units, but be cautious – high-tech units cost more to build and to maintain, especially when set to “Ready” or “Fortify” stance. It is possible to put yourself in economic ruins by building units that are expensive to maintain.
TIP – it is always a must to train your units to Elite level without any exceptions – it makes your army considerably stronger and will prevent you failure against those that have trained their armies (especially in Multiplayer, where most servers use Uberfox AI Train, which starts all AI with level 3 units, and where most players train their units anyway due to the enormous benefits). Training units increases their upkeep.
Infantry is one of the (if not the one) game’s most useless combat units. You should have infantry for your troops and for infantry vehicles to have a purpose, but relying on your infantry being an important factor in battles won’t get you far.
Land units are one of the two unit types that fight on land (alongside Air) and are split into Infantry Vehicles, Air Defense, Mobile Launchers, Tanks and Artillery Guns.
It is always recommended to build all unit types, but the most important ones for actual combat are usually Air Defense (to combat enemy air), Tanks (to combat enemy land) and Artillery Guns (to provide long-range firepower support). I personally build artillery guns, mobile launchers and infantry vehicles in higher quantities for multiple reasons – they are cheaper, take less time to build, are weaker and thus I attempt to make more use of them through numbers.
Air units are one of the two unit types that fight on land (alongside Land) and are split into Attack Helicopters, Transport Helicopters, Fighter Aircraft, Attack Aircraft and Bombers. Air units cannot engage in naval battles unless a bug occurs, which is a rarity.
It is always recommended to build all unit types, but the most important ones for actual combat are usually Fighter Aircraft (to combat enemy air) and Attack Aircraft (to combat enemy land), while Attack Helicopters are also useful. Transport Helicopters assist infantry and have low combat value, but can be built as well. Bombers are powerful units, but very expensive to maintain, so be wary of building them in large quantities (even with low technology – very high upkeep, compared to most other units).
Naval units are the only ones that fight on water and are split into ASW helicopters, Patrol Craft, Frigates, Corvettes, Destroyers, Attack Submarines, Ballistic Missile Submarines and Aircraft Carriers.
The most important naval units by far are destroyers and aircraft carriers, while building attack submarines could be helpful, but not too recommended. A weaker nation would be better off building all types of ships (due to expenses involved with the more powerful ships), but any powerful nation with a numerically and technologically powerful destroyer-carrier fleet would annihilate a combined ship fleet. ASW helicopters are very cheap to build, but are likely the weakest naval unit in the game, could be used for meat shield, but will likely be destroyed very quickly against a destroyer-carrier fleet.
TIP – when playing nations that start off with ballistic missile submarines, it is always recommended to disband them. These submarines are vulnerable, very expensive to maintain and to build, it is always better to focus on regular nuclear missiles. Reliance on ballistic submarines will yield disappointment, failure and plenty of wasted cash.
There are several unit stances – park, ready and fortify.
TIP – changing stance from Fortify to Ready takes less time than changing from Park to Ready (so fortified troops have higher mobility than parked troops). While it also takes more time to switch from Park to Fortify than from Park to Ready.
Military – covert ops, nuclear warfare
Sometimes neglected, the two sub-categories of military – Covert Operations and Nuclear Warfare, have a major impact on the game.
The in-game tooltip provides enough information to grasp the basics of all the available covert operations. The complexity level of a covert mission is one of the most important factors in determining success rate – the lowest complexity level has highest success rate, the highest complexity level – lowest success rate.
The benefit of high complexity level is that the effects are larger, but sometimes it may be more beneficial to run a large amount of low complexity missions instead, as it is very unlikely to succeed a high complexity mission against a country with proper covert defense, and will likely lead to capture of most of your covert cells.
TIP – it is always recommended to have only Elite covert cells (training all your existing ones to the maximum level and making new ones with Elite level). This ensures maximum efficiency. The upkeep for covert cells is very low, although the most economically weak nations could have trouble managing a large covert cell network, but a few Elite cells would suffice to get maximum protection anyway.
TIP – maximum protection that domestic covert cells can provide is 94.9%, there is no foolproof way to entirely protect your nation against covert attacks.
TIP – it is possible to frame a country for a covert attack in another country, which will decrease DR between the two countries on success, but decrease the attacking country’s relations with the target & planned framed nation on failure.
Coup d’etat is a special mission type – it can only be launched with High complexity (meaning lower success rate) and it has a very low success rate, depending on the target country’s Stability. Upon success, the country that launched the coup d’etat will get a considerable DR boost with the target country.
Nuclear warfare is an important part of the game as possession of nuclear weapons ensures deterrence (mostly in multiplayer) against other nations. The use of nuclear weapons is self-explanatory and done through the “Military” tab. It is recommended that, when launching a nuclear strike, you use the game-recommended number of nuclear missiles, unless you believe that your enemy might/does have AMDS, in which case additional missiles might be needed in order to ensure that the targets are hit even if most missiles end up intercepted.
TIP – researching either nuclear missiles or AMDS considerably lowers a country’s DR with the world.
MULTIPLAYER TIP – the loss of DR with the world due to research is is also a way that allows you to see whether a country has recently researched nuclear or missile defense technology (so if the country has not gone to war in a long time or at all and it has red DR with the world – it is likely as a result of AMDS or nuclear research).
TIP – nuclear attacks against military targets attack all deployed units of the target country, while civilian targeting aims at enemy cities with the intent to kill the population, which can be devastating and completely annihilate a nation (a single Russian nuclear launch against China before it gets an AMDS with the suggested nuclear missile count will destroy about 90% of China’s population).
TIP – it is important to note that nuclear attacks can harm nearby countries and kill their population as well.
TIP – launching nuclear attacks considerably reduces your DR with the world, just like declarations of war. The effect is barely noticeable if the target country has very poor relations with the world (thus making retaliatory attacks safer).
Missile Defense is a system intended to shoot down nuclear missiles targeted at the nation in possession of an AMDS. The system is not entirely effective in protecting a country, since the success rate for short-range launches is 50%, for long-range attacks – 60% (default game values).
Military – research, designs
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – information on how research works, how it interacts with the military and the importance of research on the game’s military aspect (as well as suggestions on balance between quality and quantity).
Economy – economic health (GDP, PIT, inflation)
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – information for all mechanics under the “More” button near Economic Health – personal income tax, total GDP & per capita, inflation and interest rates, and the meaning of economic health.
Economy – the Budget
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – information about the various budget sliders, recommendations on optimal money allocation and the effects of each budget sector, as well as explanation on the effects of debt and corruption on the country’s finances.
Economy – resources
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – information on the workings of a country’s market, optimal strategies to promote market growth and maximize gain for the country’s economy, differences between state controlled and private market, and explanation of the different sectors (some sectors are more important than others).
Miscellaneous – country information
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – explanation of various information in the country information screen, especially the birth & death rates (and strategies to handle them), human development level (and its correlation to birth & death rates), infrastructure & telecommunications and the general importance of population in Superpower 2 (already touched in one of the previous sections, but has to be covered in this section as well).
Miscellaneous – map modes
This Section is a placeholder – no content is available currently, will be completed eventually.
Planned content – basic explanations of what each map mode covers (including some information that might not be plain obvious by just looking at the map mode), tips on how to best utilize these map modes during multiplayer games and other information.
Advanced – eye candy, results
This Section of the Guide is dedicated entirely to showcasing results of advanced strategies, exploits or game mechanics being utilized to fulfill some task, or simply interesting results or activities of a singleplayer or multiplayer game. These screenshots may be the basis of a future “Advanced” guide, or simply kept here for eye candy.
