Video Game / Rulers of Nations

Rulers of Nations is an Indie Game nation simulator by French video game company Eversim that covers domestic policy, foreign policy, popularity, infrastructure, economy, trade and much more. Also known as Geo-Political-Simulator 2, it was released on is the second game in the "Commander In Chief" video game series, succeeding Commander In Chief and preceding Masters Of The World - however, it is much more popular than both Commander In Chief and the infamously glitchy Masters of the World. It is relatively complex for a video game, thus many "Let's Play" videos have been made about it, as shown here.

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Rulers of Tropes:

• Abusive Parents:
  • The father of the player character disapproves of the player character's popularity drops below 65%, and on top of that, he is voiced with a French Accent.
  • The player character's mother, however, openly praises the player when they achieve 75% or more popularity.
• America Takes Over the World: Possible but difficult. You can get points in competition mode by expanding your territory. May cause other problems that outweigh your triumph.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • "Sae Hyuk Kim" isn't a Singaporean name
  • "Ashgar Ali" is not a first name for Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, let alone a common one.
  • Though Korean and Chinese surnames are portrayed accurately, "Moo Won", and "Yunglong" are very unlikely, if not nonexistent, given names in Korea and China, respectively.
  • Arabic names are never shown with the "al-" prefix
  • In this game, Filipinos have Indonesian, Indian or Portuguese names.
  • Though "Baijie Ning" sounds like a Chinese name (the first name isn't a real name), this is the name the game gives to the Malaysian Prime Minister because they forgot to add Malay names for Malaysia.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Even 1-star quality Aircraft Carriers are surprisingly hard to sink, carry up to 20 fighters, provides a constant morale boost to your armed forces as long as they are not yet sunk and provides a mobile airbase from potentially anywhere on the 70 or so per cent of the Earth's surface that is water. However, they are the slowest naval unit, very expensive to own and run, cannot be purchased except from the black market (and even then only in tiny quantities), planes cannot use the carrier whilst it is in motion and most of all, it's cheaper and faster to establish an overseas air force base in an allied country than to buy an Aircraft Carrier from the black market and wait for it to arrive.
• Baby Factory: You can choose how far to take this trope by paying couples to have kids, or, if you wish to attract controversy, you could ban contraception outright.
• Balkanize Me: You can let one of your county's states/provinces/districts/conquered territories secede not that you would, though, because it invariably crashes the game's economic calculations.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Rare, but still occurring, as the game's default language is French, and some of the English translations are off, with even more inaccuracies if playing on other languages.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: Naturalists and the leader of "ecologist" parties are wealthy, highly educated and speak with a posh British accent.
• Bull Seeing Red: One of the consequences of being a bad leader is that you are killed by having an activist throw red paint on you while you are near a bull and then this causes said bull to gore you to death.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Many characters are obvious references and parodies of powerful figures in real life, albeit with changed names, (and a disclaimer claiming to not intend resemblances to living and dead figures) including:
  • Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI
  • American President Barack Obama
  • British Prime Minister David Cameron
  • French President Nicolas Sarkozy
  • Chinese President Hu Jintao
  • Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
  • South African President Jacob Zuma
  • Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
  • Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
  • Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
  • Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
  • Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan
  • Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (titled "President of State Council")
  • Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
  • German Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel
  • Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard
  • Afghan President Hamid Karzai
  • Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva
  • Peruvian President Alan Garcia
  • Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
  • Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
  • Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya Muammar Gadaffi (in mannerisms & speech only, not appearance, titled as "Guide")
  • Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva
  • Mexican President Felipe Calderon
  • Swiss Bundeskanzler Corina Casanova (titled "President of State Council")
  • Uzbek President Islam Karimov
  • Danish Statsminister Lars Løkke Rasmussen
  • Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon
  • First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama
  • US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
  • US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
  • Indian President Pratibha Pratil
  • Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
  • Leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg
  • German President Christian Wulff
  • First Secretary of the French Socialist Party Martine Aubry
  • French National Front leader Marine Le Pen
  • Prime Minister of France François Fillon

• Cool Boat: 4 types of naval vessels available. Compared to land and air units, they are generally able to soak up more damage, but travel slowly and dish out the same amount of damage as land units.
  • Cruisers are the cheapest and most common naval vessel. They attack via missile bombardment and can be used for Biological or Chemical weapons once you have approval. They are fairly resilient, able to take more up to 10 times the damage of a missile launcher with the equivalent star rating. They can also attack submarines at extremely short ranges.
  • Conventional submarines are the second most common naval vessel. Only able to attack at extremely short ranges, they are useful for destroying troop transports and conquering enemy naval bases. They can travel in stealth so long as a satellite or communications base is not in range.
  • Nuclear submarines are the rarest naval vessel capable of doing everything a conventional submarine can do as well as launch conventional, Biological/Chemical and nuclear missiles.
  • Aircraft carriers are the most expensive, slow and damage-resistant vessel, carrying up to 20 aircraft and while mobile and powerful, are generally not worth the trouble.
• Cool Plane: 2 types of aircraft available
  • Fighters fire missiles and if you have the approval to do so, NBC weapons as well (assuming you have these weapons). They are the fastest in-game unit and are highly effective against land troops and helicopters out in the open as well as military bases. However, they cannot conquer anything.
  • Helicopters can conquer cities and military bases, require no layover while going from land to sea or vice versa, and are the second fastest unit (at around half the fighter's speed) but utterly suck against massed tanks and/or infantry.
• Deadly Gas: Chemical/biological weapons are available to all countries in unlimited quantities, and are 100% effective against foot soldiers. They can be launched by anything that launches conventional missiles (cruisers, missile launchers, fighters, nuclear subs) and are as effective as a conventional missile against other military units and ground targets. They can easily allow weak nations to decimate the militaries of more powerful nations. The catch is that you have to convince your military chief to allow their use, which in most countries is only granted in the most desperate situations.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The entire game is this due to the infinite choices of possible political, economic and military actions, and some options will rarely be used, but skilful gaming is rewarded by power, economic growth, military conquest and popularity.
• Dirty Coward: Your character's mother will ask for your permission to flee overseas whenever there is unrest in your country. Don't accept her proposal because your popularity will suffer and you cannot contact her ever again.
• Expy: Oh so, so many of them...
  • Total Jihad is a Al-Qaeda/Taliban hybrid with cells worldwide.
  • The Russian Mafia is a criminal/terrorist hybrid group based in Russia with operatives in most rich countries. The game also features the Chinese Mafia and the Italian Mafia.
  • There are powerful Northern Ireland-based terrorist groups operating in the United Kingdom.
  • India is shown controlling all of Kashmir, however this makes India-Pakistan relations utterly suck and Kashmir is home to many powerful separatist terrorist groups.
  • The most likely in-game conflicts to start are North Korea vs South Korea, Russia vs Ukraine, Israel vs Palestine (or less commonly Jordan or Syria), Iran vs Iraq, USA vs Cuba, Congo-Kinshasa vs Rwanda and China vs Japan.
  • Then there are expies of unsavory groups on the far right in Europe, Israel, The USA and Russia
• Going Critical: Nuclear power stations can do the full Chernobyl by either military attack or by random chance (odds are increased for nuclear power plants in poor countries). After such a disaster occurs, refugees will leave the area, there will forever be a disaster zone where the power station once stood and cities that are close enough are automatically evacuated, creating even more refugees.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: If you are being attacked, you can call on your allies for aid and they will definitely come. Some non-allies may also respond to your plea as long as their relations with you are better than that with your enemies.
• Greater Need Than Mine:
  • A poor country can opt to give foreign aid to other poor countries (even those slightly richer than it). Unless your economy is big, like China or India, this can bankrupt you easily.
  • Any country can donate to pay for another country's disaster relief. If a disaster happens in a rich country, even poor countries have the option of donating disaster relief funds. This will easily and quickly improve your country's relations with country suffering a disaster.
• Hot Sub-on-Sub Action: You can do this, but it quickly relieves you and your opponent of submarines very quickly, and if you really want your subs to destroy an enemy's subs, you can just use your nuclear submarines to bombard enemy submarines with missiles from up to 400 km away.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Too cheap/poor/impatient/infrastructure-challenged to research new technology? Just increase your spy agency's numbers and send them to steal the technologies of countries which already have those technologies. You might even gain yourself nuclear weapon or space exploration technologies.
• Intoxication Ensues: You can offer champagne to people you scheduled meetings with. Results can vary:
  • I Need a Freaking Drink is invoked to imply a character is in a stressful situation (e.g. the leaders of your spy agencies).
  • Alcohol Hic can follow every sentence the person says afterwards.
  • When politicians get drunk, you can get them to expose their party's weaknesses while drunkenly blabbering.
  • Foreign dignitaries, when drunk, offer you better prices and sometimes more military concessions.
• Joke Character: The poorest countries can be considered as such, particularly if they are also sparsely populated, resource poor, politically unstable and/or military pushover.
• Landslide Election: One of the many ways you can lose the game is by being voted out of office
• Misplaced Accent:
  • Generic male and female characters (including world leaders) have 1 generic male and 1 generic female voice respectively.
  • Your advisor is always a male with a single dedicated "male advisor" voice, regardless of citizenship
  • All trade unionists, regardless of citizenship, speak in a Cowpoke (stereotypical Wild West) accent.
  • All naturalists and leaders of "ecologist" political parties speak in a posh British accent, possibly because they are well off and highly educated.
  • All military leaders, regardless of citizenship, speak in a stereotypical British general's voice.
  • This all becomes quite unnerving when playing as a country with its own famous accent, like Russia, the USA, China, France, Japan, Australia, India, South Africa or Germany.
• Monumental Damage: Some countries have landmarks (e.g. India has the Taj Mahal). You can garrison troops in landmarks, have pitched infantry battles there, or simply wipe it off the face of the Earth via bombardment with missile launchers/planes/ships. The country that gets its landmark destroyed will enter an epic, nationwide outpouring of shock and despair.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Extreme Right wing parties are this with hints of Democracy Is Bad, Right-Wing Militia Fanatic, Bury Your Gays, Stay in the Kitchen and Absolute Xenophobe (campaigning for all immigrants, even refugees, to be treated as invaders and thus to be evicted on pain of death).
• New Tech Is Not Cheap:
  • Military equipment comes in 1, 2, and 3 star quality as do soldiers. The price (and soldier salary) also drastically increases with each level up.
  • A secret nuclear weapons program costs around $5 billion US dollars in game and takes up to 3 years.
  • Stealing technologies that other countries have developed is much faster and cheaper than developing it yourself, however, expect to get a lot of your spies arrested while trying - persistence is the key here.
• Mirroring Factions: Totalitarian Extreme Left parties are freedom and democracy hating, hate their neighbours and advocate absurd military spending, puts gays in prison or in a grave and utterly hates ethnic minorities, immigrants and certain religions.
• Oppressive States of America: It's possible, though very difficult in most circumstances, you can turn America or any other country into a totalitarian regime.
  • This becomes an Invoked Trope in an unlockable, but extremely difficult, scenario in the "World Simulation" category, where you choose a First World democracy (choices are the USA, France, Germany, Spain, The UK, Italy, Japan, Australia, Sweden and Canada) and you are scored on how quickly you can turn it into [[a dictatorship with no press or political freedom and a leader's term is for life). This scenario is actually called "Dictatorship".
• Pyrrhic Victory: Military action can be easy, but it will be hard to manage the aftermath.
  • What will you do with refugees escaping from the cities you pummeled? Your popularity decreases for every day they have nowhere to go to.
  • Can you afford to pay for rebuilding efforts?
  • Is your military still strong enough to fight off anyone else wanting the territory you just conquered?
  • Did the war/annexation of territory put a massive hole in your budget?
  • Did you lose a lot of your working age population in battle?
  • Are your foreign relations damaged or do you now have sanctions?
  • Is your per capita GDP decreased because of annexing a poor country?
  • Are the allies of the country you invaded out to avenge the country you invaded?
  • Do you have to contend with the lasting effects of war, such as nuclear bombing radiation, epidemics caused by biological warfare, or flattened cities?
• A Real Man Is a Killer:
  • Public figures listed as "servicemen" are all men, regardless of country you play as.
  • Conscription is for all men reaching age 18.
  • If you enact a full mobilisation, all male citizens 18 and above will be forced into service. You could also lose millions of men in battle when doing this, and it will show on your demographics and it will shrink your economy.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Oh so delightfully easy...
  • You can make any country that suffers a calamity into an ally by paying for a disaster relief. This can lead to funny situations like a North Korea - United States alliance.
  • You can subsidize religions and NGOs for instant approval, regardless of your other actions.
  • Of course, in more corrupt countries, you can bribe figures into doing whatever you want
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If you have been at war continuously for over 1 month (it needn't be with the same country), your ministers will randomly leave the country and disappear overseas, even if you are obviously winning that war.
• Shout-Out:
  • Having a person assassinated may successfully take place in a shower and the witness interviewed will say "it's just like that film except I can't remember which one".
  • You can congratulate your nation's movie stars by telling them "you played so well in the role of a cretin".
• Spy Satellite: Military satellites exist in this game, they can be bought by anyone without sanctions and their purpose is to allow viewing of submerged submarines and numbers of military personnel/equipment that other countries have. There is only one way they can function as a Kill Sat, which is that when they encounter another nation's satellite, they can be ordered to destroy that satellite, otherwise, satellites can't damage anything else.
• Take Over the World: One can set this as their goal, which is quite a reasonable given the game's nature, and also an attainable goal, assuming you can avoid crashing the game.
• Tank Goodness: 1 Tank can kill 100 soldiers of the same star rating or 5 missile launchers of the same star rating. They are very useful for conquering cities, landmarks, power stations and military bases. However, they travel at the same speed as soldiers and are vulnerable when entering a seaborne troop transport.
• The Coup: 2 ways to get a coup and thus your character's death and a Game Over:
  • Firstly, the military could get annoyed of your cuts to military spending. Your advisor will then call you saying that tanks are headed to your residence, followed by your death the following day, using the ShotAtDawn method. However, the newspaper will state that your character chose not to wear a blindfold at the firing squad . Unfortunately, this can happen even if you are popular among the masses (and possibly other parties and NGOs).
  • The other way to get a coup is for you to screw up your economy and bankrupt the country, in which case the military will overthrow you, assuming your party or parliament doesn't beat them to it. Not only are you taken to a public square to be shot, but your military leader will personally shoot you in the face
• This Is a Work of Fiction: This disclaimer appears because any resemblance to people living or dead, or events past or present is purely coincidental.
• Too Dumb to Live: You have the option of enacting unrestricted firearms sales to all adults. This means that you have less than a month to live because somebody will inevitably use the gun they bought to fatally shoot you, regardless of your popularity. And the biggest problem with doing this is that reversing your decision through more restrictive gun laws will cause your popularity to drop and possibly cause some groups to riot in the streets.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • You can make your country rich, stamp out corruption, invest in public services, improve your human rights record and build refugee camps for any wandering groups of refugees.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Use of Nuclear Weapons and/or Biological or Chemical Weapons against military units or even cities, refugees or refugee camps.
  • The game allows you to establish a dictatorship, make your country into a hellole and abuse every human right in the book.
  • Invade other countries because why not?
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Partaking in any of the above usually destroys your popularity. The only exceptions are using nuclear weapons on other nations with nuclear weapons; using biological/chemical weapons if you were nuked first; and invading another country to help the other side.
  • Invading another country with no provocation automatically reduces your popularity somewhat, and if that wasn't enough The UN Security Council may authorize a military intervention against you to take back what territory you have conquered/occupied in which case many countries will help out the country you attacked.
• You Lose at Zero Trust: If your popularity slips below 5% and you do not increase it somehow, your game will end within 1 in-game week and the newspaper will report your death as either "(insert your name here) killed when motorbike crashed into a hedgehog while attempting to escape the country" or "(insert your name here)'s motorcade caught in demonstration and crushed by concrete block dropped from crane". This could also happen if your policies alienate your own party, in which case they will simply kick you out and replace you with the next highest ranking member of your party, whilst calling for a snap election.
• You Monster!: If you attack refugee convoys, use biological or chemical weapons, or attack a non-nuclear-weapons-state with nuclear weapons, your ministers will resign en masse, destroying your popularity and their notification of their resignation will invoke this trope.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: You can use your international spy rings to fund and arm terrorist groups in other countries on your own whim. However, regardless of which country you play as (except if you are appointed for life), you can be caught doing this and impeached.
  • Also, some undemocratic countries play this straight with "terrorists" that claim to strive for freedom, democracy or both. If you help them so as to bring democracy and freedom to the country they operate in, you will still get impeached for "supporting terrrorists". Then again, such groups may or may not be striving solely to overthrow the current regime and take over.
• Zerg Rush: Some poor authoritarian regimes like North Korea have large armies which are poor quality (1 star rating) but quickly replenish losses due to conscription. Most countries with conscription have 1 star military rating with a few exceptions.

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