Buy Supreme Ruler 2020 Gold

I will not write a complete review, there are enough of those here. I will not rant, either. I have played the game and I like it; the complexity, micro-managing and pace are fine by me (except you either get declared war on by everybody immediately or nothing happens at all).

HOWEVER, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game for a very simple reason: It's incomplete, and thus borders on a SCAM; at the very least, it reflects poorly on BattleGoat's business ethics.

This game (main game and addon) was supposed to receive additional attention after release, adding several more features (including a fallout/radioactivity and an environmental impact system). The game did indeed receive several content updates and additional features but, sadly, BattleGoat abandoned the game before the addition and/or revision of several critical features, leaving the game with a stupid AI, pretty damn buggy and, worst of all, content incomplete (which shows - there are buildings, designs, research that are completely pointless because the corresponding parts of the game were never implemented).

I therefore recommend that you avoid this game (and other games from BattleGoat) at all cost. This game is basically a polished Alpha and if the devs couldn't be bothered to finish this game, even after people already bought it, they are not worth your attention. Business practices like that should not be condoned or supported, so think twice before you buy from them - There may very well be a better, finished game out there.



EDIT: Since one of the devs commented on this 'review' (and my full response doesn't fit in a single comment), I will add his statement and my response to it to the 'review' itself.

chrisahl [developer] wrote:
"Many statements in this review are completely false. The game received multiple updates for approximately 18 months after release of the core game including the life cycle of the expansion pack. The game is no buggy, it is one of the most stable titles on the market. I'll hold it up to anything else out there. Features such as radioactive fallout where never promised and many never promised features were added. The content was also completed with multiple campaigns and scenarios. The tech tree is complete containing hundreds of technologies to research. Unit designs are all buildable and as usable as their specs warrant."



I don't know what game you're talking about, Chris, but it's not this game.

I played it a lot more than my record says, and there are few games that have crashed so often on me as this one (which is why I eventually stopped playing when you guys announced that you were moving on - it got to the point where it was simply not enjoyable because the game became more unstable [and lost a lot of performance] as the world progressed and units were built). And that happened pretty much in every session because, of course, you need an army to get stuff done. For what it sets out to do, the game is not nearly optimized enough - and that's not great but we can chalk that up to a lack of experience if we want to be nice about it.
That, however, does not apply to the crashes. Those are bugs (unless you want to call it a feature?) and gamebreaking bugs that are left in the game at the end of its lifecycle (which is technically not over since Steam allows you to still make some sales) are not exactly a sign of good business ethics.

As for fallout and environment: You can say they weren't "promised", great. And I realize that I implied that you didn't add anything to the game (which I have rectified), which is unfair. But it still doesn't reflect positively on the development team when they obviously intended to implement it, put in some elements (and adjusted tooltips to hint at this feature and tell the player what he'd need this building or that research for), then decided "Oooh, lets do this, this and this first" instead of delivering on what was already halfway done and, finally, announced that they were done with the game when there were still a lot of loose ends. The least you can do is go through it and remove the redundant content.
Yes, that would have been extra work for you guys when you were eager to create your Cold War version of this, but it would have been at least an attempt at making it look like you were sorry about it.

(As for the other things you mentioned [campaigns, tech tree, units]... Well, I don't really know why you did. I didn't put their existence into doubt and their being there doesn't change that some other features simply did not receive enough attention.)

Supreme Ruler 2020 Gold is the combined product of Supreme Ruler 2020 and Global Crisis.
Produced by Battlegoat Studios and published by Paradox Interactive. (R1)
It is the child of the former *Supreme Ruler 2010 and It has expanded on the original game. (R2)

Note, please go to the bottom for a TLDR summary.

1. Introduction

There are 3 game modes.

● Campaign
● Sandbox
● Scenario

Campaign and sandbox are more or less the same.
If you have decided to play a campaign, you are presented with 3 campaigns to pick from World 2020, Global Crisis and Shattered World. (You can mod in more if you wish.)
Once you have selected your campaign you can chose from 182, 184, and 248, respectively.

You can play as the Superpower of the United States or the weakest of minor powers Malawi.
in World 2020 and Global Crisis.
Or
You can play as a state in the former United States or a sec of former Russia in Shattered World.
There are a lot of nations to choose from, just depends on how you wish to play.


Scenario, as its name implies, has a goal to complete within a given deadline.

Now you're given 3 main categories.

● Supreme Ruler 2020
● Global Crisis
● Custom Scenario

Each one has certain scenarios from their own time frame. Of course, Custom Scenario has only custom scenarios.

2. Gameplay

The gameplay is quite unique. I have yet to find a game that does a real-time strategy like this, it's nice.
Let's just say we are playing as South Carolina in the campaign Shattered World.

2.1 Interface

2.1.1 Top

At the top center of the screen we have the following; Treasury amount, nation played as, game menu, GPD/c, pause/play, game speed, time and date.

All of the above are just information except the time and game menu buttons.

2.1.2 Bottom

On the left corner/center of the screen, you have a sidebar with tabs of various areas.

● Land
● Production
● Research
● Finance
● State
● Operations
● Defense
● Unit Command

Once you have selected one of these the left center/corner will show you the tab and the information related to it.
Here you will have the option to change various sliders related to the tab you have selected. Or change the highlighted parts of the map.

On the right center/corner of the screen, you have your minimap and your email (notifications).

You will receive an email if there is anything of importance happening that the game thinks is important to you. You can change the settings for what you find important or not in the options menu.

2.2 Economy

As South Carolina we have to get a production of coal and metal ore. If we don't we will go into a huge deficit as we are import loads of resources to supply our factories. So we have to build some Metal ore/Coal mines till the demand is met.
But, if we are not careful at how many we build we will have to start importing industrial goods, which cost us more money.

That is just one aspect of the economy. Before we go to war, we have to make sure that we have the proper supply coverage is provided, the military goods produced to feed our solders, and the unit of solders themselves are trained.

It's rather detailed and I have only covered the most basic idea behind the economics behind the game.
I don't know the deepest secrets it offers as I have only played around 20 hours of the game.


2.3 Research/Technology

To be able to build a clean energy building or improve your coal power plants must be researched. Even the equipment your solders use and missiles your planes fire must first be researched as well. (Unless the nation you're playing as starts with the technology.)
Researching a technology is simple, it depends on the number of Research Centers you have and if you can afford to pay the employees.

Here is a small list of the main technologies you can research.

● Warfare
● Transportation
● Science
● Technology
● Medical
● Society

Each one is linked to the others in some way. Some are more beneficial than others. It's your job to find out which ones are better for your situation and goals than someone else.


There is also another type of research, Unit Design.

● Army (Ground)
● Naval (Sea bound)
● Air Force (flying units)
● Missiles (ammunition for missile for various land, air, and sea units)

All the categories above have multiple sub tabs in them for example the Army tab has,

● Infantry
● Recon
● Tanks
● Anti-Tank
● Artillery
● Air Defense
● Transport

With all these options you can tailor the Army/Navy/Air Force however you wish.

2.4 Warfare.

Warfare is very limited to how long your economy can support it. And how fast you will win/lose the war depends on the technology you have researched. It requires strong supply lines, some planning, and a bit of luck.

After you go to the State tab you can conduct negotiations with other nations, or just declare war.
Although, just being aggressive will make you get kicked out of the UN and other nations a valid casus belli.

Once you have a valid reason to go to war or you just declared it. You may now order your units to attack and cross the enemy’s borders and slowly moving your nation’s borders over the claimed territory. The map is made of small hexes so it is rather detailed on the terrain you can claim.

Each unit has a condition bar which shows you the state they are in and how much manpower they have. If the bar is red you are likely out of supplies. If it is almost empty the unit will soon be destroyed because of the lack of men in the unit.

Warfare is like Economics, it has some great details to it. I just cannot do justice explaining all of it.

3. Conclusion.

I enjoy the game very much. But, the only thing that I find to be a large drag is the fact time moves so slowly even on the highest speed setting. The highlight of the game is the complexity and details they made for us to conquer the world with.
This is a wonderful game I enjoy that is made by Battlegoat. It’s a great buy, especially for any real-time grand strategy game fans.

4. My Game Scores and Reasons behind them. TLDR; Look here.

Gameplay 7/10
The game play is amazingly depth. Before you can even think about going to war you must first stablise your economy, have a surplus income, and research and produce the units to attack. I believe that this game delivers the "Conquer the world or die trying" idea really well.

Music/Sounds 4/10
Sounds are nice, they go well with it. They just get repetitive after a while of playing. Just like most other games of this category. Music as well, but that can be fixed with anything you want it to be thanks audio players!

Creativity 8/10
A nice and original idea to the real-time grand strategy games are. The creative depth and research that was put into the game was amazing.

Graphics 5/10
Okay graphics for a game made in 2008. I suppose if they were much better than they are most computers at that time couldn't handle all the calculations the computer has to make.

Replay Value 6/10
The replay value of this game is really dependent on the player, for me it's a good bit. But it's still dependent on my ability to set a goal. So it will be yours as well, as I cannot set goals for you.

Enjoyment 8/10
I enjoy this game and I can see myself coming back to it at least for a hour or 2 each week. Who knows, might even play it for a few hundred hours.

Overall 6/10
This game has a lot of potential that is only limited to the players' want to conquer the world and how you want to do it. Diplomacy, War, and Economic Supremacy, but at the end of the day, it's still a war game.

!!Funny, I hit the charactor limit.!!

References.
R1 = http://www.paradoxplaza.com/press/2009/9/supreme-ruler-2020-gold-marches-out-to-retail
R2 = http://www.battlegoat.com/supreme_2020_GOLD.php

I remember buying this on sale for $2.50.
900 hours later... Best $2.50 spent ever.

It's an awesome strategy. Easy to understand, with lots of possibities! For those, who want to rewrite the future's history, it's a must-have game. Slow paced for the thinkers, fast paced for the agressor types. Highly recommended for strategy fans.

I have over 1100 hours in this game. Says it all really. Still the best one of the series.

Honestly, this is a great game for people who really love strategy games. It goes so insanely deep with you having control over every little thing, and it's just astonishing how much you can really do. Scenarios, diplomacy, products your empire carries, imports/exports, and what's great is that most of that you don't even have to keep doing yourself, because your advisors can take care of most of it (With some guidance, of course. Don't make that economic advisor bond your nation to debt now...) And with how much you can do in the military! It's great being able to micromanage everything. Plus, it's real-time, and all the wars happen at once. There's no turns like in the other games like Civ, and you can really do a lot at once. And, if you really love global RTS, you get all the nations, plus some scenarios to make the world even more varied than before, like a "Shattered world" map. If you don't want to take the time to learn it, then of course you'll hate it. But once you get it, it's a load of fun every time you play it.

I love this game! it is only one of the few games that contains my favorite country *obviouse what it is*, but also if you are patriotic then be your favorite country! Wanna be Germany? Go ahead, heck, wanna be Andorra? sure thing! and if you wanna crush the Ruskies? good luck, but you can! Wanna murder the Capitalist Americans? Your won't survive, but you still can! epic game.

An impressive game with it's scale, it's rather difficult at first, the learning curve is steep if your coming from a Sid Meir game, but once you get the hang of it, your better prepared for trying your hand at Victoria 2. Unlike Victoria 2, the ultimate goal of this game is world conquest, that is your goal, but don't just invade countries willy nilly now, that's rather stupid. You have to take it slow and plan far ahead, that's what I like about this game, not to mention the research and trade systems. Seriously, have you ever sent the United States 1,100,000 barrels of oil in exchange for top notch military designs? Seriously oil is worth more then money in this game, the game is somewhat predictable, if your Russia and playing the Global Crisis scenario, China will usually invade you, but things can happen differently, depending on factors such as your military production, because a nation can become rather hostile to you out of fear of your military, it's a very indepth, somewhat complex, but yet surprisingly easy to learn, rousing goodtime of a Grand Strategt RTS.

So...this game is really good actually...here is what happened on my most recent playthrough I started:

Started the game off as Germany in 2020 Sandbox.
Got a few reserves ready scattered a little around Berlin and Munich and a little around the Western borders.
Deployed 3 Tornado jets ready with missiles in Kiel.
Played for 9 days in-game (Like 15 mins), it is now the 9th of January 2020, and I have made an alliance with Poland, France, UK and USA.
But as soon as the 9th of January actually came along, I that Belarussian forces were entering Poland with T-72s and Grad Rockets.
So, a week later (10 mins), I sent 5 Eurofighter Typhoons escorting 3 Tornado attack jets fitted with missiles ready to launch to Warsaw.
2 of my Eurofighters were shot down before they destroyed a coloum of 4 T-72s, which was a distraction as my other Eurofighters escorted my 3 Tornados to the southern border with Poland, where they blew up a town killing 10,000 civilians before returning to the allied airbase in Warsaw.
By now, it's the 16th of January, and I have around 20 units of A1 Leopard tanks fighting a few kilometres East of Warsaw, as I see Ukrainian T-72s and numerous BTRs enter the Belarus southern border.
As 4 villages are instantly lost to the advancing Ukrainians, I send in 2 units of Artillery to bombard a town nearby the Ukrainian forces.
A day after, I enter into an alliance with Ukraine, sending 30 units of several types of BTRs to reinforce the Ukrainian advance which is now sieging the enemy capital.
But the attack is repelled as 3 nukes hit ares around Kiev!
As soon as the nukes land, I see numerous tanks and other war vechicles from the small Russian area just North of Poland advancing south heading straight to Warsaw!
So now, I get really annoyed, and send 20 carpet bombers all the way from Berlin to bomb 3 towns in that Russian area with several missiles, killing 80,000 innocent Russian people.
As the war rages on, I end up sending another 50 units of A1 Leopards into Belarus, taking their capital, and fighting the Russian frontline as UK enters the war on my side, attacking Leningrad with paratroopers.

So far so good, and guess what...it's only the 1st of February! I love this game!

960/376 would nuke Moscow again

I know it says I've played 250+ hours of this game, and I've certainly played quite a few, but probably half of that is letting the game run on its own while I was asleep, or having fallen asleep playing it.

The concept behind the game is really great, and I wish it had been implemented in a way that made it fun to play, but it wasn't.

I did play the original (SR2010) and it is certainly an improvement over that version - less buggy, better controls. But the core problems with the franchise remain.

Basic gameplay is excruciatingly slow; the fastest speed is a tenth of where it should be. Virtually every game mechanic is completely opaque, and zero effort is made to explain any of it. The economic model is absurd and way too easily exploited - even playing as Malawi (the poorest, most technologically backwards country in the world) I can turn it into an economic powerhouse in just a few game years.

Since no effort is made to balance the various countries, conflicts are rather pointless. The AI is terrible no matter how difficult you make the settings. You have to make your own game objectives because the game itself has none.

Then there's the "engineers" problem - if you lack the tech to build a really good infantry unit, engineers are a very strong infantry unit that can be built with no tech. Although very oddly you can't actually research the unit, you need to trade for the design - but anyone will trade it to you for some cash. The engineer has massive advantages - it's cheap, it can cross rivers, it can bridge terrain for other units, it can accelerate production and repair of buildings, and it can beat the tar out of far more advanced units without breaking a sweat. Why a zero-tech engineer can pound the hell out of many types of advanced infantry units is beyond me.

The economy and force distributions aren't the only wildly imbalanced aspects to the game. Research is ridiculous - if you have the cash you can buy and use techs way way way beyond your tech level. Diplomacy is virtually pointless, as is any other form of non-warfare interaction with other countries.

The UN mechanic is also dubious, there are no substantial benefits to being a part of the UN, and a significant economic penalty is attached to being good by them, when it should be the other way around. It's to your advantage to purposely get kicked out, so that you don't have to pay their escalating membership fees - for which you get nothing in return. An example of how trying to stay good by the UN hurts you: it's apparently perfectly acceptable for a neighboring country with whom you are not at war to allow passage of enemy units to attack your territory, but if you attack that neighbor for that act of war the UN will despise you for it.

Your advisors are just as bad as the AI elsewhere; if you trust them to do anything they will mess it up badly. There's a system of implementing priorities for them, but if this has any actually effect on their behavior I haven't been able to detect it.

The only thing this game does well, gameplay-wise, is tactical unit management on the hex map. If you can slog through all the opaque mechanics and the gruelingly long setup time before a typical country can start invading others, that part is reasonably satisfying.

Other mechanics, like the loyalty mechanic, are just stupid and appear to directly contradict the "realism" goal of the game. Either eliminate that mechanic, or do it properly!

Like its predecessor, SR2020 is a great idea that doesn't really work well as implemented.