High values affect:
- Increase Number of Control Points
- Increase Difficulty of All Hostile Operations
- Research Output
- Number of Investment points
- worsens Climate Change
- it is easier to list the things not directly affect by it, directly or indirectly.

Increased by:
- High Population
- High Per Capita Income

Decreased by:
- High Unrest
- Climate Change
- Wars, even if you yourself are not a combatant
- Nuclear Detonations, even if not being hit yourself
- other countries GDP growing

Strategy:
Perhaps the most important stat of any nation, small or large.
As the owner, you want it as high as possible.

As a enemy of the owner, you want to tank it. This will make the nation much easier to attack and result in your enemy having less resource to attack you with in turn.

Even as a neutral party, you may not want this to go high, as any increase in other countries GDP is probably going to be bad for your GDP.

High Value Affects:
- lowers Investment Points from Economy by 10% for every 1 point above 2.
- lowers Research
- lowers defense against Hostile Actions
- may cause a Coup not aligned with any faction
- values >0 directly lower effectiveness of Military Investment
- 4 Represents Strife, 5 a Insurgency, 6 a Guerilla War, 8 a Insurrection, 9 a open Civil War

Increased by:
- Cohesion under 5, especially near 0

Decreased by:
- Investment into Military, Especially in Autocracies
- Cohesion above 5

Strategy:
A core stat to keeping or taking a nation.
- As a owner you ideally want this at 0-2. Everything beyond 2 will cost you Investment Points, making all your Priorities directly less effective. However, you only need to spend investment point lowering it if the Rest values is ~1. Otherwise this unrest might simply be a temporary phase.
- As a enemy you may want this high, as that makes it easier to take the nation with a Coup. Unfortunately, it also makes it easier to loose the nation just next Agent Phase*. Nevermind the Economic Damage from high Unrest. Pushing this has a high danger of burning the country down.

*I am reminded of this quote from Order of the Stick[www.giantitp.com]:
"I came here to the Western Continent, lured by tales of how easy it was to conquer a kingdom for your very own.
The tales neglected to mention how easy it was to lose such a kingdom, however. I didn't last a year."

With this value, both high and low values can be good - depending on what you want for the Nation!
However, the middle value is always bad.

High Values:
- working Democracies
- caused by Investment in Knowledge
- Better Economy Priority
- decreases Spoils target
- pushes cohesion towards 5, the stable rest point

Low Values:
- Autocracies
- caused by Investment into Unity
- increased by Spoils
- pushes cohesion towards 10, the maximum
- Better Unrest reduction from Military Investment
- imposes a strong "Censorship" penalty to Public Campaigns - unless the user has at least 1 control point

Strategy:
You want this value to be one of the extremes!
- Democracy is more useful for a Science Focused Nation, with a good Education and a Cohesion dragging towards 5.
- Autocracy gives inherent cohesion which makes unrest less likely, while also making you resistant to public campaigns. However, unless cohesion is near the top, the Spoils Target might be a issue
- the middle value of Anocracy drastically reduces cohesion*, making it mandatory to decide between both extremes - and avoid falling out of them
*This was flipped, prior to 0.3.22 Update

This is a hidden value, but one very critical to boot.

High Values
- increase the amount of Investment points that have to be funneled into Spoils
- Insufficcient investment into Spoils increases Vulnerability to Coups
- Investment into Spoils also increases Climate Change, decreases Equality, increases the spoils target and pushes the government towards Authoritarianism

Increased by:
- running the Spoils Priority

Decerased by:
- exceptionally high (Autocracy Level) cohesion
- Education and Democracy

Strategy:
As a general rule, High Spoils targets are the foe of everyone.
As the owner, ignoring it risks Coups. Actually investing makes the problem worse and causes more climate change, which affects everyones GDP - and costs you a large percentage of your investment points!
As the enemy of the owner, it still increases Climate change and thus affects your GDP.

It can be a tool to quickly get some money and/or push a nation towards autocracy, with the hopes high cohesion will solve it long term. It can be a tool to "salt the land", if the plan is to give up those control points anyway and limit the dangers of another Faction grabbing them. But if the new owner does not fight it, that just made Climate Change worse.

High Value affects:
- How much each priority selection point is worth

Increased by:
- GDP

Decreased by:
- everything lowering GDP
- Unrest is a major factor, potentially wiping out nearly the entire production
- having Armies
- deploying armies outside their home region
- having navies

Strategy:
As a general rule, you want this value high. The higher, the better - as that simply makes all your other priorities more powerful. However, increasing this value is done via the things that increase GDP - which all might have a trade-off.

Increases:
- the amount of money your Faction can get out of the Nations economy

Increased by:
- Funding Priority*
- holding more control points
- Spoils Priority

*This increase is permanent. Additionally, nations with more then 1 Control Point at start generally come with 1 Level of Funding per CP already pre-exeuted. This makes them highly sought after.

Decreased by:
- having Control Points under Crackdown
- the default values is 0, if nothing has been invested automatically or manually

Increased by:
- Spending in the Boost Priroty
- having alliances with a weaker nation
- organisations

Decreased by:
- being in alliances with bigger nation (what Kazahlstan suffers from) or lots of nations (what France suffers from)
- having resource shortages and 0 storage in space (which will be automatically offset using boosts)

Strategy:
Boost is probably the most important resource early game. If you could grab even one nation that has 0.1 boost or the right Organisation, that would allow you to rather quickly develop a space economy.
Once you do have said space economy, boost becomes nearly useless. Orbiting and Deorbiting Councilors are cheap. However, it can still be used to shore up any resource shortages, especially when building ships. Earth is a unique resource, that the early aliens lack entirely. They have to get 100% of their economy from space bases - they can not make up shortfalls, until they start conquering on earth.