To lower dissent, what you really have to do is make the people happy. What you were doing, lowering minimum wage, tends to not make people happy. (sorry I didn't answer this earlier)
Well, for SKNES II, 75% of what I did was take the modern day world map from the map thread, fill in countries with the proper colors, and erase the borders. This is what I did in Africa and the USSR, for example. For other borders (such as Iraq), I worked off the map in Darkest Hour or off real life country subdivision borders.
I'm actually a terrible mapmaker and probably can't give you good advice in this regard, you're better off asking in the map thread or in #nes or in one of those places.
Either way, I'm interested in what you're planning
