Realpolitiks New Power

This can be a big pain. What you want is to come out the traps running. If the randomly selected tasks aren't good you can restart. But I just kept going. The first round of prizes I came 15th.
But if you hit pretty much all your targets, you can easily finish 3rd or 4th by your next wave.

I did this as, you guessed it, Germany, but after experimenting on different scenarios. You best bet is to choose the US or China if you want to do it during round one. They seem to get easier starting tasks.