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About Africa and to lesser degree South America - why do you want them to be stable at the start? Are they stable in our reality? They are poor, unstable with low overall education and democracy scores. I would say that the game simulate them good enough. Sure, SOME balance, might be in order, but overall picture will be more or less the same. You cannot expect Somali or Nigeria to get better space program, economy or science than EU in a couple of years, right? Then why do you ask for it to be so in the game?
Also, it is absolutely possible to be one of the first to get a hub on mars starting in Africa or SA. You need to know what you are doing and why, but it can be done. Depending on AI factions success you might not be the first, but in the first 3 - definitely. If you don't know how - that is not the game problem. And if you don't know why Africa might be important even late game - same, not a game problem. It is a big continent with great population grow bonuses and big population. After you fix initial problems it can surpass other superpowers like USA, EU or China.
As far as factions go. The Servants should play differently and you would think they would be much easier with the alien they get. I constantly target them to take their stuff but they manage to stay afloat due to all the help they get from the Aliens.
Also the idea of 'took over U.S by second year. Literally nothing else could be done to stop me.' is kind of silly. Nations can get taken over by others and lost. I can easily refer to a couple youtubers, PotatoMcWhiskey took the EU and unified the entire continent - a great megastate. And lost it to the servants and eventually the alien nation. Stealth17 was slowly losing China, and lost it in a Coup (picked a bad event choice but was still going downhill).
And in current game version 'By year one all of EU is controlled, russia soon after, then U.S then china.' is impossible due to control point constraints. So lots and lots of exaggeration here.
Unification of africa should be easier in some parts because realistically speaking in case of alien invasion they would know they are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if they stay divided, in developed countries that's not the same specially in europe.
I think it's way to easy to unify europe, it should take a lot longer...
Same for america, they are THE superpower of the world so taking control of america should be extremelly hard same for china
Sure, comparing to some minmaxed strategy that I guess should include both Earth and space together in some sort of balance you will have less. But unless you play on brutal (and maybe even there) you will be in a good position for a win.
That is the thing in this game - it is hard to really be behind except the case where aliens already control most of the Earth and space. In every other cases you have tools to catch up. Oh and remember that you can actually steal completed projects from other factions. As long as you get decent research and nobody yet close to the win - you are not that much behind.
Except there should be in-game tools easily available to fix all those issues. The biggest issues with those nations are foreign exploitation and interference, lack of centralized planning, and lack of interest by others to help them develop. Otherwise, they represent the largest raw resource areas on the planet as a whole, and should provide HUGE economic bounties if you manage to stabilize them. And you SHOULD be able to stabilize them, as you the player provide centralized leadership and planning, a defense against foreign interference/exploitation, and an interest in having more developed nations.
Especially, you should be able to send otherwise "proprietary technology" from your more developed nations to your less developed ones in order to help them out.
The other thing that is needed is either a technology or a separate councilor ability that lets you Execute Elites: in exchange for a huge opinion and unrest penalty (if you get caught) you should be able to forcefully lower Spoils demand and inequality. That would make stabilizing weaker nations much easier, while also letting you directly deal with any nation leaders who may be Enthralled. And yes, I get the implication, but if elites are the ones causing nation-wide issues, then they are the ones who should be most at-risk for taking bullets for when a faction decides a nation as a whole is being less than compliant.
And don't give me ♥♥♥♥ about the implications. Coup de'Tat already mostly kinda works the same, but the unrest it deals with is very temporary and it doesn't lower Spoils demand or inequality. In fact, I'd argue that Coup-ing is one of the worst agent actions available, because it is best used on your own high-support nations when Unrest reaches level 9 thanks to being unable to deal with Spoils-demand.
Speaking of Spoils, it should not cost less GDP/unrest/disharmony to go 100% spoils, than it should to ignore Spoils altogether and try to develop a nation. 100% Spoils should DESTROY a nations' GDP, completely driving it into the ground and leaving it a ruin; instead 100% spoils just causes a slow decline at best while a GDP INCREASE from time to time. Somehow, not investing taxes into anything at all is better than investing them in something, which while that is the libertarian wet dream, it is also totally unrealistic. Reasonable investment percentages while minimizing Spoil divestment should not be more viable for sending a nation's unrest into the stratosphere and GDP into the ground, than 100% total spoilage.
Not only is that a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game balance, not even developing nations IRL have more than 50% GDP owned by a few controlling interests (unless those interests happen to be FOREIGN interests, which the game can't take into account currently). In fact, the ONLY nation with that level of inequality and looting is the USA, with only 8 people owning more wealth than the bottom 70% of the nation, and even we still have the vast majority of GDP invested into other programs and not directly going into the pockets of elites (although how little government money actually hits the people doing actual jobs is soberingly small).
Finally, human factions target each other FAR too much, and gain hostility against each other FAR too easily. Racism is a big deal, and would play an enormous factor in how factions deal with each other. At the start it wouldn't be a big problem, since the factions are jockeying for early influence, but once it becomes clear the aliens are hostile? IRL, every single social media platform would become a mimicry of the Stellaris subreddit, with every other post being a "FOR THE EMPEROR" "BURN THE HERETICS" "SUFFER NOT THE XENOS" or "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" memes. And the factions should reflect this:
The Servants should trade early and heavy human aggression for alien assistance, winning so long as they control enough living humans when the aliens win. The Protectorate should have major bonuses to diplomacy and espionage in exchange for everyone else having ichy trigger fingers the moment the Protectorate looks a little too funny, with their goal being to convince the Aliens to leave earth/humanity in charge of them instead of wiping out mankind. The Resistance should get the most overall bonuses to early support, with things getting harder and harder the more the aliens take of earth as people lose faith. The Academy, in exchange for being the one and only faction that can make peace with everyone, also should have the hardest endgame goal of beating everyone else into submission, aliens and Humanity First included. Only Project Exodus should use the current human faction A.I., as their goal is get the hell out of dodge before the aliens start blasting for realsies, and don't give a damn about earth (on that note, having high welfare priority for a control point should increase national support for that nation over time, since that faction is actually trying to take care of the people; factions that put high spoils in their control points should LOSE national support over time, even if it does slow unrest gain).
You'll notice I did not mention a faction above: The Initiative. And that is because I do not believe they should be a faction at all. They should be a problem, one that is more or less a problem depending on how elite-friendly one is. They should NOT be a unified faction, as they represent the very worst of Earth's capitalists, who would turn on their own (and each others') mothers if it meant they got a leg up in the new coming order, whatever that would look like. They should represent humanity's infighting, one that drains mankind of resources as a whole and makes it easier for the aliens to invade/take over. They should subvert and weaken the factions who most ignore Spoilage and/or support equality, while also giving "deal with the devil" events like giving your faction a temporary boost in exchange for weakening the planet's defenses against exploitation, either theirs or even the aliens or another faction who is after a greater goal than the welfare of Earth (like Servants or Project Exodus). But an independent faction? They make no sense, and there is zero room for them. My current run, they got China, and have done nothing with it except maximize spoils and declare war on Project Exodus.
Edit:
I missed Humanity First, who should have major opinion bonuses, especially in exploited nations who are most at-risk for alien attack, who should be exclusively messing with/attacking aliens/Servants and the Protectorate...unless they get a hold of a major nation, in which case they become Civ-level Ghandi and start nuking anyone they in conflict with. Not only that, but they should get bonuses to nuclear weapons production, purge/crackdown/coup missions, and have fewer opinion losses from committing atrocities so that you too can (and are encouraged to do so) play a fist-focused game.
Racism don't applied to xenos. They're come here first and using @#$% mind control on us. Hating them for that isn't a racism.
The amount of work you have to do to make literally 60% of the globe viable is dumb.
If you have to mod/savefile edit, that proves my point about the problem with the base game.
So does your racism argument, btw. There is a reason why ♥♥♥♥ Sapiens wiped out all the other hominids and megafauna long before we developed civilization, and it is because racism is a part of our natural psychology. At its core, racism is simply meant to denote one side as "inhuman" so an actual alien species auto-triggers it full-throttle, even if they were to come in peace. That they don't come in peace means that you'd suspect anyone who wasn't gung-ho about alien murder might be potentially enthralled themselves. And, well, wouldn't that make them a traitor?
Edit:
Did it really sensor the "H0M0" part of "♥♥♥♥-sapiens?" it is literally the scientifically-correct term...