Take a peek at the core functions

AI-driven cities and companies

NationStates gives you a living world, where Cities and companies acts without your intervention. Businesses expand or retract their businesses based upon demand. You can created more demand with trade agreements, infrastructure investments, and other incentives. The same goes for the cities.
Together this created a dynamic and unpredictable simulation where your decisions as PM will have "real" consequeses. 

Interact and build your country in a world that breathe and develops on its own.

Your government
and its importance

Once elected, your task is to form a government. Choose your ministers wisley, all the ministers have different pros and cons for their respective area.
Once you have a Government, you must assign tasks to the ministers, what will they focus on the coming 3/6/12 months.

All tasks are dependent on the overall budget, so you task after forming a Government will be to create a budget. Budget decisions are made for period July-December, to be approved by the Parliament on the 15th of June and for the period January to June is decided in around December 15th.

The Importance of Energy production

A stable energy distribution newtwork is the backbone for your country. Build poweplants, power hubs, transmission lines and control them in the extensive Enrgy production Environment.

You dont need to poke into daily production, its controlled if set to automatic. However you might need agreement with your neighbour(s) to level out ups and downs in your production.

Once you have a stable power production, Businesses can develop, people can build houses and connect them to the Grid, and buy themselves refridgerators. 

Low power = low GDP development!