Shadow President – Spoiler-Free Walkthrough

Shadow President. Rudimentary Playing Guide.
Version 1.0
Made: 2:38 PM 12-11--2009

Table of Contents.(You are here)
Intro.................int1
Actions Available.....act1
Things you need done..thd1
The War Room..........wro1
FAQ...................FAQ1
The Ending............thk1


------
Intro.
------

I wrote this guide just because Gamefaqs lacked a guide for this 
awesome Presidential Sim. As president, you now command Shadow 
President. Use it to access CIA intelligence from around the world, 
commit US Foreign Aid and Actions, shape the Budget and monitor 
the results of your decisions.

To see the name of a country and its region, the crosshair is placed 
within its borders and left click. The country will turn bright red. 
It is now the focus of Shadow President, for detailed information and 
action relating to that country.

There are seven advisors when tiy start the game (The faces along the 
bottom); Each has a unique way of helping you evaluate the world and 
Use the game. They are, your eyes and ears. To execute an action, first, 
select the target country. Then, move the crosshair to the leftmost 
point on screen. This activates the Aid and Action panel. There are 
five large buttons with icons on them - these are your Foreign Aid 
buttons. 

Note: If in doubt, just mosey the pointer to Hawaii.

Wheat is Humanitarian Aid. 
Dollar sign is Economic Aid.
A red magnifying glass and an eye is Political Aid.
A M14 with a dollar sign in the back is Militrary Aid.
And lastly, the atom sign is the Nuclear Aid.

Next to these large buttons is a smaller button, marked Soc, Eco, CIA, 
Mil and Nuc. These are the action buttons. These Soc are "social actions"
(such as peace envoys) , Eco is "economic actions" (trade envoys, 
sanctions), CIA is for covert ops (supplying arms to rebels, coup 'd 
etats.), Mil is for military actions (From negotiating a peace settlement, 
encouraging military spending in friendly countries, to entering the War 
Room). Lastly, the nuclear option gives options such as encouraging/
discouraging nuclear spending, and the ever-coveted nuclear strike command.

Before you take any action, it is highly recommended that you take 
the advice from your advisors. To view advice and chances of a certain 
action succeeding, select "advice" instead of Do It.

To give aid, select the country you want to give aid to, and press 
the up/down buttons near the large aid buttons to adjust how much aid 
is given (in millions of dollars). Giving aid is only a short term 
solution for hostilities and economic problems. However, a longer term 
solution must be played out by you.

Current popularity is shown to the highest point on your screen, 
indicated by a percentage. You are expected to keep this up top, and 
basically, this serves as how likely you will be re-elected at 
election day, which is given as a countdown on the top-right corner 
of the game screen. 

-----------------
Actions available, or Things you Can Do.
-----------------

Social Commands
---------------
-
1. Encouraging social reform
-
This is a Presidential statement that you can release, 
appealing for other nations to make social reforms;- this 
can be used to great effects in countries with significant 
ethnical problems such as riots and unrest.

The chance of this action succeeding depends on your ethics level, 
your leadership level and the target country's willingness for 
change. 
 
-
2. Promote Human Rights
-
A Presidential statement that you can release, appealing for 
other nations to bring Human Rights Reform.- this can be used to 
great effects in countries with significant ethnical problems such 
as endemic unrest and anti-government activity. The chance of this 
action succeeding also depends on your ethics level, your leadership 
level and the target country's willingness for change. 

-
3. Dispatch a peace envoy.
-
Presidential authorisation to send a peace envoy to the country 
of your choosing. Your envoy will act as an intermediary to 
negotiate for peace in any war zone.

The success/failure ratio of this action depends on your overall 
leadership skills and the target country's ideological differences.

Protip: America and Communism don't mix. America and Islam 
don't mix either.

-
4. Initiante a culture exchange
-
The better developed countries love this kind of thing. The higher 
developed countries have a higher chance of accepting the exchange. 
This will up your ethnics level very nicely.

The culture exchange's success depends on your leadership skills 
and the culture/ideology of the target country.

-
5. Improve Diplomatic Relations
-

This is a useful command that can open up further venues of 
co-operation with the target country. The success/failure ratio 
of this action depends on your overall leadership skills and the 
target country's ideological differences.

You should first go for this if you wish to befriend a country.

-
6. Strengthen Economic Ties
-
This action cements the economic relations between your countries 
and gives a higher percentage of success to all positive economic 
actions.

-
7. issue Statement of Condemnation.
-
A Presidential statement of condemnation - and the weakest 
negative act that you can engage against a country whose 
policies that make you uncomfortable. This only depends on 
your leadership skills. Beware - the target country will 
often spam you back with this.

It works by lowering the leadership levels of the target 
country by about 0.7%; but if it backfires, reduces the 
accuser's leadership by about 0.6%


Economic Actions
----------------

-
1. Encourage investment
-
This is the second step to opening economic opportunities 
between the target country and yours after "Strengthening 
Economic Ties". You economy must be in good shape and your 
leadership must be strong for the target country to begin 
investment. 

If the target country's economy is stronger than yours, you will 
almost always fail in this action. 

Note: All other Economic Actions have a 100% chance of success.

-
2. Give Most-Favored-Nation Status
-
Your government will promote trade and investment in target 
country for your consumers and businesses. It'll give a welcome 
boost to both economies; but watch it when handing out those 
dinky passes. Conferring MFN status to "traditional enemies" 
will cause your overall popularity to drop.

Give it to friendly countries with good economies for excellent 
results. (Your GDP/Popularity looks better)
 
-
3. Regulate Trade. 
-
The only neutral action in the Economic Actions list. 
Downgrading a country's trade status from MFN will still be 
regarded as a negative action.

Plonk this on a MFN country who is misbehaving to gve them a 
polite warning.

-
4. Restrict Trade
-
A tougher economic statement that serves as "basic sanctions"; 
The way I see it, this restricts "anything that could potentially 
be used in a military application" - thus severely damages the 
target economy.

Oh, and did I mention the target country will now be wary and 
hostile to you for a long time?

-
5. Block Trade
-
Terminates all US trade relations with target country. A weaker 
economy will take a longer, harder hit. A country with a stronger 
economy will take a sharp, short-lasting damage.

And even if the blockade is removed, it takes LOTS of time for 
the anger to go away.


CIA Actions. 
------------

-
1. Supply Arms to Rebels
-
CONTRA. CONTRA. CONTRAGAATE. Attempts to engineer some chaos in 
the target country. Be sure to up the intelligence on the target 
country or else you'll be looking at dismal rates of success.

Oh, and it so happens to become public knowledge, expect some 
mad rage coming from them.

-
2. Commit Espionage.
-
Upon pressing this button, you get a little budget rearrangement 
box that tells the game how much (in millions of dollar) you want 
to allocate to espionage.

This action has a 50% chance of success. I know you may point at 
the Plausible Success % displayed in game, but there's a tiny 
factor that ruins things in this little extra; the press. 

If the press discovers the budget increase of intel - all your 
covert operations will suffer for it. If your Commit Espionage 
action is discovered by the press, scuttle the effort by setting 
the budget to 0 for a week or so, and then try again.

I think this one is only influenced by dumb luck.

-
3. Sabotage Economic Assets
-
The "prank" command. When you need to cut up a rogue state's 
production a bit, you can't go wrong with this little gem. You're 
in luck if it cuts down on military spending; but this alone won't 
win a war. This relies on the "espionage" budget and leadership 
skills. If this backfires and is found out, expect to get spammed 
with "Statement of Condemnation"s. 

-
4. Coup 'd Etat.
-
Not a prank. When you're sick and tired of some tinpot spamming 
you with Statements of Condemnation, you can try this. Basically, 
it cripples the government of the target country. There is no 
guarantee what sort of government takes over. This relies on the 
"espionage" budget and leadership skills. Try not to get this to 
backfire on you - it'll put a dirty dent in your ethic level if 
it does.

-
5. Assassinate Leader
-
"I want Castro dead, you hear me?! DEAD!"
"But sir!. You are died!"
The most unreliable option available in-game; with a dismal base 
likelihood of 0%-5% chance of success, boosted to about 25%-30%; 
is a last-resort operation intended to stop lengthy conflicts and 
take revenge if you've been beaten in some sort of conflict. This 
action relies on your leadership levels and your intelligence 
budget levels.


Military Actions.
-----------------

-
1. Negotiate Peace Settlement
-
For all those military "I accidentally X" and for those "HELP!. 
I'm getting my head handed to me!" situations, we have the Negotiate 
Peace Settlement. As a special bonus, it even works as a US-based 
intervention during wars between countries. Works well if your ethics 
level is high - but be warned; sometimes, conflicts go to the point 
one side wants the other wasted - in these cases, a peace negotiation 
is as useless as a dagger in a gunfight. Uses ethics and leadership 
as a base for success.

-
2. Discourage military spending.
-
For when you want friendly countries to quit their saber-rattling. 
Some countries are traditional enemies to other countries, and this 
will affect the chances of your demilitarization drive. A successful 
demilitarisation will hurt the target's economy and military standing 
somewhat, but later on, you'll notice that their economy improves. 
You are expected to provide economic aid in exchange for the 
demilitarization.

-
3. Encourage military spending.
-
Give military aid to bolster the chances of this function to work 
right. This function provides a US-approved arms program to a nation; 
very useful when you are unable to defend the target nation, due to 
lack of troops, funding or otherwise. Slap a few military aid packages 
on after this works for best results.

-
4. Perform Surgical Strike
-
Something that can really hurt a target's nuclear capablity without 
the use of nukes. Once you have established a military presence, you 
can carry out Surgical Strikes with impunity with a 95% chance of 
success;- each hit increasing your leadership by 1%. Especially lethal 
versus small nuclear programmes; this bites away at enemy leadership, 
too. This is one tool you'll be spamming during war. The only 
disadvantage is that it eats into your Ethics rating.

-
5. Enter the War Room.
-
You are shown into a dimly lit command centre, with the Secretary of 
Defense presiding. On the lower left of the screen, you are given a 
troop assesment, and the large panel on the lower right gives 
real-time indormation about troop movements, as well as other events 
taking place. While in the war room, you have a 60% defense from 
assassinations. I will explain the War Room in the special section 
that it deserves.  

Nuclear Actions
---------------

When all else fails, or after you save the game and want to know 
how badly you could possibly screw up; this lot is for you.

-
1. Discourage Nuclear Spending
-
Much like discouraging military spending, this will attempt to 
stop a friendly country from poking too much into those toys that 
go BOOOMMMM. It MAY hurt the economy of the target country on the 
short term, but will help them in the long run. This will only 
have a chance to succeed if the target country is on good terms 
with you.

-
2. Encourage military spending.
-
When you want a friendly country to have something with a wee 
bit more oomph than conventional weaponry, this is the way to go. 
Paired with nuclear aid and a good standing with the country in 
question, this is a great way to arm a proxy country for some 
nuclear back-and-forth. 

-
3. Execute Nuclear Strike.
-
Press Butan. Get World War III.

Yeah, it's that bad. This one is just for those days when you 
want an crazy challenge, or have saved the game prior to doing 
the digital equivalent to taking a loaded PKM machine gun to 
school with deadly intent to go out in a blaze.

I have just one piece of advice if you DO press the "butan". 
NEVER launch missiles all at once. Instead of 5000 missiles 
all at once, it's better to throw it in bit by bit - 100 
missiles, 500 missiles, 100 missiles again... and so on. That 
way, more damage to the target(s) can be done while conserving 
your missiles. Oh, and since you've gone and used those nukes, 
don't think the rest of the world will play fair either!. For 
some reason, countries with 0 population can STILL strike 
back with nuclear force. 

I wonder if it's a programming bug or something...?

Oh, and this action is always successful. No one stands in 
your way.

------

--------------------
Things you need done.
--------------------

Now you know what you can do, now let's see what you SHOULD be 
doing.

Economy.
--------

After you are done drooling at the world map and the CIA 
Factbook, you will have some important things to do. First 
things first, your economy needs fixing. Looking at your 
output (stuck at a disturbing -234 billion $); it is quite 
clear your predecessor just accidentally the economy.

Your priority should not be to turn the losses into 
positive numbers, but to increase your GDP. You start off 
with about 2.9 with a projected 3.0. Not good at all, eh?. 
It's your job to correct the mistakes of that retard who 
just left the office.

Start off by reducing the Personal Tax Rate to 15.0c. This 
is the optimal level for economic growth in this game. Once 
you are done, reduce the Corporate Tax rate to 49.0c. Once 
you're done, get rid of sales tax entirely. If you don't 
mind losing a small bit of popularity, go ahead and reduce 
the Tariff by a few cent.

So far so good. We have a .7% GDP improvement. It's not 
enough, however, and now it's time to mess around with 
spending.  

Avoid messing with the defense budget, and set the Social 
Budget to 764(b)$. This strikes a balance between lost 
popularity and economic growth. If you're feeling 
particularly gutsy, you can set the Social Spending to 
751$. You'll have to make do for the lost popularity by 
reducing the Foreign Aid budget to about 5 billion, 
though.

You'll probably have 4.5% GDP now. A marked increase 
from the 2.9 GDP. Now, you must find trading partners to 
further boost your economy. To do so, look around for 
countries with good economies and grant Most Favored 
Status to them. Your advisors will tell you how much 
your economies will be affected. 

Japan, France and Sweden are good trading partners. By 
the time you are done, your projected GDP will have hit 
6.0, practically doubling the old projected GDP. Proceed 
to find more viable trading partners, if you want to boost 
the GDP even further.

If you think you can pull off a peaceful reconcilliation 
with the Soviet Union, then by all means; go ahead and 
grant the Most Favored Nation status to the Soviet Union. 
Both your economies will get a fairly good boost, but 
watch out for steady depletion of your popularity.


Operation Desert Shield.
------------------------

Oh yeah. You are appointed to power just at the turn 
when Saddam Hussein got his hands on a GBA-SP and 
decided to chase after a Shiny Pidgey. It's your job 
to defend Kuwait/neutralize Iraq's military capability. 
Heck, you could wait until Kuwait gets taken over, 
stock up at least a million troops in Saudi Arabia, and 
when they're thinking "Yay!. Shiney Pidgey!", start 
attacking. 

By the way, you'll notice that Iraq has a small nuclear 
weapons program going. You'll want to waste that with 
3-4 surgical strikes before they decided to throw some 
your way. Be sure to keep doing surgical strikes until 
their nuclear program is no more. 

Sure, you COULD keep spamming surgical strikes, for it 
gives a pretty good bonus in terms of leadership; but 
for some reason, it eats into your ethics level pretty 
fast. Keep at it if you don't plan to stop with Iraq, 
but watch out for the rest of the world. They'll do 
whatever it takes to stop the Imperialist Approach. 

After the Gulf War Crisis
-------------------------

I found that it's completely random for every playthrough. 
On one round, the Soviets might start WWIII by RANDOMLY 
provoking you to attack with nukes. Another time, India 
could threaten surgical strikes against Malaysia, and 
after being deterred by nuclear force, start bothering 
YOU with a Russian-made nuke and spamming coup attempts. 
It'll be your job to keep a cool head and find good 
military/diplomatic or even the M.A.D solutions, if 
that's your thing.

That's the fun part of it all, I think. You'll never 
know what's gonna happen on this playthrough.   

---

------------
The War Room
------------

The war room serves as your hugbox where you go and 
hide after starting WWIII/Flipping the bird at India/
Chargin' Malaysia/etc... It protects you from 
assassinations (some say by almost 95%), however, you're 
still vulnerable to coup de-etats and impeachments. 

It also serves as the command and control for your 
conventional ground forces. The strategy is rather 
simple. Surround your target counrty with troops, and 
then, once all deployments are complete, attack them 
on three different fronts. Be careful not to set your 
troops on each other; this often happens when invading 
on several fronts. Don't let that happen.

Oh, and be sure to use Surgical Strikes to eliminate 
any target country's nuclear capablities/programs. 
Otherwise you might be all screwed up when the 
invaded decides to pie you in your eye!. 


----
FAQ
----

Q. Cool game!. Where can I get this?. 
A. It's freeware, now. I picked my copy from Abandonia.

Q. Can you nuke every country all at once?. 
A. "YOU WANT US TO BOMB OURSELVES?!" - General Rogard... 
After the US, yes - it's possible; but you have to have 
a LOT of free time on your hands.

Q. When will you end college classes?
A. Somewhere in April 2010. 

Q. I hate you! 
A. .................Wat.



----------
The ending.
----------

This is my first FAQ/Playing guide for Gamefaqs. I will 
be adding a new "Survival in Apocylapse for dummies" 
section as soon as my college classes are finished. 
Wish me luck!. 

If you find any stupid errors in this file(I wrote it 
with Notepad - no spell check) or want to add more 
stuff, you're welcome to submit corrections. You will 
be credited, of course.  

This Rudimentary Playing Guide can only be hosted on 
gamefaqs. if you see it elsewhere, please inform me; 
and I will sue them for...

*pinky finger in mouth*

ONE MILLION DOLLARS. 


Much love, hate and soda.
hoohooros86.


------------------end of file--------------------







After the end.
-------------
9:18 PM 18-11--2009
I got this game off abandonia.