Suzerain (video game)

Suzerain follows the fictitious country of the Republic of Sordland, which emerged from a civil war and twenty years of authoritarianism under the Sollist regime, and Anton Rayne, who is elected as its new president in 1953, must decide how to lead the country in his first term and work to fix the various structural problems and crises that have affected the country for years, and navigate an increasingly tense geopolitical world to win a second term. The player must make various policy decisions at critical moments and during meetings and prevent the nation from collapsing or being threatened by powerful foreign nations on the continent of Merkopa.

Thirty years before his entry into the Presidency of Sordland, a republican uprising and popular revolution brought down the former absolute monarchy of the nation, with Artor S. Wisci, a prominent leader of the republican revolutionaries, becoming the first democratically elected President of Sordland and the founding father of the First Republic of Sordland, who then planned to implement various socialist economic reforms and transform Sordland into a parliamentary democracy.

Wisci's government was deposed in a far-right military coup led by General Eduard Luderin, who blamed Wisci for "bringing foreign ideologies and chaos into Sordland". Luderin’s regime then dismantled Sordland's democratic institutions violently. A civil war followed after Luderin ordered a mass execution of thousands of suspected communists and pro-democratic dissidents in an attempt to consolidate his regime, leading to an uprising led by General Iannick Rikard, who also sympathized with several left-wing organizations such as the Red Youth, and actively armed and trained them in his offensives against Luderin's regime, seizing control of several major cities and regions.

As the situation in Sordland gradually grew more and more unstable and civilian casualties mounted, Colonel Tarquin Soll, a key player in the civil war who refused to support the Luderin coup, defeated the forces of both Rikard and Luderin, ending the civil war after two years of devastating warfare. Soll re-established the republic with an illiberal democracy in Sordland, led by a dominant-party regime under the rule of the United Sordland Party. He also honored Artor Wisci with a state funeral and proclaimed the Second Republic of Sordland.

The government of Tarquin Soll introduced many reforms to the country, such as free healthcare, free education, infrastructural investments, removal of monarchist symbols, the nationalization of key industries such as energy, and heavy investment in the police force. Presiding over a decade of social reforms and an economic boom, Soll's regime grew more authoritarian as the years passed, particularly after a violent massacre of anti-government protesters in the village of Izzam, populated largely by an ethnic minority known as the Bludish people, who opposed an attempt by the government to establish a dam that would forcibly displace them, causing the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in tandem with growing popular discontent.

As a result of escalating tensions in Bergia, Soll enacted a Bergia Special Zone, which gave the governor of the province extensive authority to crack down on BFF Bludish separatist terrorism. In addition, Soll rolled back many progressive reforms of Artor Wisci, such as women's rights and rural agricultural institutes. In the 1940s, the economy stagnated due to governmental corruption, inefficiency, overburden of the welfare system, and chronic neglect of underdeveloped remote and rural regions. Most voters have also lost trust in the 1929 Constitution drafted by Soll's regime, which gave the presidency and the court broad powers and left many loopholes for government abuse of power.

By the 1940s, Tarquin Soll was defeated by Ewald Alphonso after the latter launched a leadership challenge against the government due to its inability to restore stability and public trust, and while Alphonso initially governed as a moderate political reformist and liberalizer, his rapid free-market reforms and program of mass privatization triggered a severe economic crisis and collapse, forcing his entire cabinet to resign and causing him to be replaced by a relatively unknown politician called Anton Rayne as the new leader of the USP, who is then elected as the new President of Sordland in 1953, with the outcome of his presidency being determined by the player.[4][5]

The player guides the country through an economic and political crisis and may choose to resolve the crisis by either continuing Soll's autarkic economic nationalist policy, pursuing a socialist planned economy that nationalizes large sections of Sordish industry, a mixed economy, or continuing the Alphonso-era policy of laissez-faire capitalism.

Other interactions include reforming and investing in national education, healthcare, and other social welfare services, removing political corruption and inefficiency from Sordland's governing institutions and law enforcement, and preparing the military for a possible conflict with Rumburg, an expansionist and militarist monarchist empire to Sordland's north. As a consequence of the player's potential failure, the country can suffer nationwide protests, economic depression, a military coup d'état, conquest by a major foreign power, or an outright world war, and the player must also deal with internal factionalism within the ruling United Sordland Party to push through their constitution. In-game, the player can choose to either reform the Constitution to strengthen democracy with better checks or balances or strengthen the player's power by enacting a dictator constitution. Alternatively, the player can also pander to the demands of the retired former president Tarquin Soll and his loyalist associates to declare a nationwide state of emergency in an attempt to preserve Soll's authoritarian ideology and policies by protecting the old constitution.

A new major 2.0 update, titled "Amendment", was released 31 July 2023. It added new content and lore in the form of a number of new scenes, several bills, and several hundred news events. The update was accompanied by information surrounding an upcoming DLC for the in-game country of Rizia.[6]