The game has an interesting premise. It is set in a not-so distant future where the first world nations are starting to crack apart. For some reason, the United States and Canada break into their component parts (states and provinces) where France and China divide into regional superstates. And the third world is mostly fine. So Vermont can compete for world domination with Egypt. The few scenarios set clear goals for you to meet, but they are generally short term missions. The campaigns have minor variations in the maps but are pretty much sandboxes, where you decide what you want to do. The microstates give you lots of room to work out your regional frustrations, whether that is Michigan nuking Ohio (cheap shot! – ed) or New Brunswick putting Nova Scotia in its place. As local wish fulfillment, you can’t do better than this.

But even a sandbox game needs to give you a cookie every now and then, and, unless you want to conquer the world, there isn’t a lot of motivation to do much of anything. You are told that certain nations have high casus belli against others, but it’s not clear why, for example, your Scotland should hate Brazil but like Kirghizstan. Why would you bother micromanaging your Israeli oil market when it’s easier to just plow through to Iraq?

The AI can use some serious work. It will think nothing of starting multiple wars and running out of supplies to keep the war machine moving. Nations will repeatedly approach you with diplomatic offers that ask you to give them tens of millions of dollars more than your treasury holds. And the pace of the game is deadly slow, even when the speed is set on “fastest”; you can play half an hour and still not finish a single year worth of game time.

If you love getting knee deep in budgets, you can embrace the minutiae here and find an experience unlike anything else in the gaming universe. Rescuing a basket case of a country and turning it into an economic powerhouse is a lot of work, but uniquely satisfying. And, since true happiness comes within, knowing that it was a goal you set for yourself means something.

The game needs better user feedback and a much more transparent UI. There are no pop ups when somebody declares war. There is no long term tracking of economic indicators – stuff that would come in handy as you learn the system. As it stands Supreme Ruler 2020 is mostly a system in search of a game, with no sense of mission or urgency to push you from day to day. Whatever rewards it has are doled out too sparingly for most gamers, even serious strategy nerds.

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