A Geo-Political work of art... patched that is!
Now I own 2010 and this compaired to that game is more invloved where in 2010 u had regions such as the middle east, in 2020 you have the entire world to play in. The economics, domestics, military options are also more involved and deeper if you will. You can now add more specific orders such as attack here or go here and defend to your units, you can group them into infantry, or all tanks, etc. and you can set there attack parms such as only attack if attacked or attack everything that isn't on your team. And the building machanics are also more robust. When building units you can set loops which simply means that they will constantly be built so you won't have to worry about clicking the build button for them each time.
Research is in depth with many new projects added such as internet hacking (neat) and defence sats that will detroy missles from space or nukes. This is interesting since Im a child of the 80's and remember Ronald Regan talking about and favoring this strategy during the last days of the cold war. Though many of these techs take forever to research the strategy is to only research a few at a time, build as many research labs as u can and invest in research with as much money u can spend.
Now, the graphics have never been the strong point for SR series so forget anything next-gen or even last-gen. Paradox builds game play games, not graphic game art but could be consider art if u look at it in an game pay type of way. The sounds are few even during war. I thought 2010 had more imersive sound effects.
The stability of 2020 is now stable with the newest patch 5.62 or the last 5.8. Both of these patches make the game a dream to play so it never crashes. Be sure to save often and to remember that the game will take days if not weeks to play since the time to research, build up a offensive or defensive military takes years just like in real life. This is not Defcon where u play for 20 minutes and then nuke the world. This is a hardcore strategy game with a hint of tactics when you go to war. And I would say this is more similar to Hearts of Iron series than anything I know especially since the two games were made by the same company. The problem with Paradoxis that they are in such bad shape when they release thier games that they are almost unplayable in some cases such as with the new HOI 3 so I heard. Funny thing is I have never played HOI series until I played the new demo they released and didn't like the game play compaired to Supreme Ruler.
Supreme Ruler 2020 is more my style. WWII is over and done with but WWIII is still to be decided. In this game you are literly playing a what-if senario since the year nor events haven't taken place yet if at all... its a great game. Don't let these war-heads stear you away from this game. They are way too serious and picky for anyones tastes and need to get a life.