First we'll start with politics. If you click the "more" button next to constitutional form on the politics window, you'll see your current government type, capital, next election, and the option to declare martial law.

Government types include Multi-party Democracy, Single-party Democracy, Communist state, Military Dictatorship, Monarchy, and Theocracy.

A Multi-party Democracy is best over all besides the fact you can be unelected if you have low approval or high corruption. It has a very good economy and is very hard to coup. If you don't want to take the risk of being unelected (which will get you a gameover), a Single-party Democracy is the next best thing. It is similar to a Multi-party, but slightly weaker. However, you'll always win the election. A Communist State government will help nations with state-controlled economies (more on this later). Theocracies and Monarchies aren't as good compared to the two Democracies. Military Dictatorships have the worst economies of all and are very easy to coup, but they get good military bonuses. Their units perform actions quicker and military upkeep cost is reduced. Recommended if you fight a lot of wars and if you know your economy can handle it.

If you click on the name of your capital, you will see a list of all of the cities in your country. You can move your capital to any of these, but with the cost of a very, very low stability drop (so low that you shouldn't even notice the difference, so you should be fine).

If you declare martial law, stability will increase and all elections will stop. This makes your citizens unhappy over time, so I only recommend doing this if your stability is around 15 - 20% or lower, or if you're in or about to get into a nuclear war.

You should also see the date of your next election (if you're one of the two Democracy types). If you are a Multi-party, make sure your approval is high on the date shown. However, high corruption can make you lose the election even with good approval, so be careful. If you click the "override" button, your nation will become a military dictatorship.

Now let's take a look at internal laws.
You should see languages, religions, laws, and human migration.

For every language and religion, you can set each to official, legal, or illegal. If you set one to illegal, the percentage of it will slowly go down. Language and religion mostly affect undeveloped nations. These nations may have lower stability if they do not have a majority language/religion.

Laws will affect your nation's birthrate and relations with other nations.
Freedom of speech, freedom of demonstration, woman sufferage, child labor, and same-sex marriage will affect relations. Nations with similar laws will have better relations. For example, if North Korea sets freedom of speech to "permitted", it will have better relations with the United States which also has it set to permitted. However, it will have lower relations with Iran which has it set to "not permitted". Child labor will provide a boost to resource production as well as affect relations. Number of children by family, contraception, abortion, and polygamy will affect your nation's birthrate. Limiting children per family and allowing abortion will lower the birthrate, while if the other laws mentioned are permitted, it will increase it.

Politcal parties are, well, obviously the parties in your nation. You will see one party here at 100% in power unless you are a Multi-party Democracy. If you are a multi-party, you can outlaw parties that become too popular and threaten your chances of winning the election, but this will lower your approval.

Human migration will affect your population as well. Immigration is people entering the nation, while emigration is people leaving. You can permit or not permit either to help raise or lower your population.

Treaties are agreements, organizations, etc with other nations. The easiest way to make a treaty with another nation is to right click the desired nation and click "Quick Treaty". Pick the type of treaty you want and you should see a new window. You can choose whether or not the treaty is open to new members, the requirements to be in the treaty, and add new members. To ask more nations to join, click the modify button. Also remember that you must have certain relations with a nation for them to accept the treaty. For example, your relations must be 60 or above to make an alliance, 40 or above to recieve economic aid, 80 or above to get your debt assumed, etc. (Tip: To view your relations, right click on the ocean. Under thematic maps, click diplomatic relations.) I'm not going to go over the types of treaties and what they do because it is stated in-game under the type of treaty.

Now look at the economics window. If you click "more" next to "Economic health" you will see your tax and interest rates, as well as unemployment, below the poverty line, and inflation.

Raising personal income tax will obviously get you more income and make your population less happy. Having higher taxes can affect your maxiumum stability and approval. I recommend having your taxes no higher than 80 - 85%, and it should only be that high if you are spending a lot to please your population. Do not raise your taxes too high at once, your approval will drop very low if you do. I also recommend that you should make personal income tax your main source of income, rather than resource taxes.

Interest rate lowers inflation the higher it is, but lowers economic heath. I always have this set to 0, because the inflation will never go above 9.9% except if you begin with a nation that has inflation higher than that, but even then it will quickly go back down. Poverty and unemployment should go down if you have high economic health.

If you click "more" next to "Budget", you will see the budget window. There are sliders for each thing your government is spending on. Right means more spending, left means less. Now let's go over each thing and what it does:

Infrastructure: I recommend spending as much on this as possible. It makes your military units move and deploy faster, increases economic health, and pleases your population.

Propaganda: I recommend never spending anything on this unless you desperately need to increase approval. Spending on this increases approval if it is very low and hurts your relations with other nations.

Environment: I recommend spending a lot on this. It should help increase production of food resources and increase approval.

Health care: I recommend spending a lot on this only when your economy can handle it. It decreases your nation's death rate and raises approval.

Education: I recommend spending as much as you can on this. It should increase your services resource production, which is important to the economies of developed nations, such as the United States. It also raises approval.

Telecom: I recommend spending as much as possible on this. It raises your economic health, helps you see foreign armies more accurately, and increases approval.

Government: I recommend spending as much as possible on this, especially if you are a multi-party democracy and/or have high personal income taxes. It increases stability and lowers corruption, and should raise approval.

Foreign aid: I recommend spending on this if you need good relations with other nations. Otherwise don't spend on it. It increases relations with other nations.

Research: I recommend spending on this as much as your economy can handle, and I especially recommend spending on it if you like wars. It increases your research on military units.

Tourism: I recommend always spending as much as possible on this. It increases income from tourism, which slowly increases over time.

The other things you see on the budget window have to do with income or spending on other things, such as military upkeep for example, which will increase the larger your military is. One thing I must warn you about is debt expenses. The more debt you have, the more money that is added to how much you spend on this. In other words, the higher the debt is, the harder you have to work to get yourself out of a deficit. Don't let your debt get too high or you could be in a lot of trouble. If the spending on debt is higher than your income, you get a gameover for "economic failure".

If you click the "more" button next to "Resources", you will see the resources window.
If you click one of the + symbols you can see more resources.

Production shows how much of a resource you are producing, consumption shows how much of that resource your population needs, trade shows how much of that resource you are importing or exporting (Importing costs money, exporting makes money. A negative sign next to the number means you are importing.), and balance shows how much of the need of your population is unmet (if it is negative and red) or how much of it you have extra (if it is green).

If a resource is set to private, companies will manage the resource for you. You can tax them, which can hurt production but make you money. I recommend taxing as little as possible. If it is set to government, you can control whether or not to meet the needs of your people. "Meet domestic consumption" can be costly but will make sure the people have what they need of that resource. Setting it to export will export the resource and make you money, regardless if you are meeting the needs of the people. If you want to increase the production of a resource, click "increase production", but keep in mind this can be costly.

Finally, we have trade. To open the trade window, click the trade button. Here you can trade money, land, and technology with other nations. (Tip: To see which region is which, hover your mouse over a region on the world map and hold tab on your keyboard.) There is not much to say here, except that the AI will only accept reasonable trades. If you want, you can give stuff to other nations for free, which will increase relations with said nation if you give them something valuable enough.



And that concludes my politcal and economic guide. If you have questions, feel free to ask.