If I was an all-powerful psychopath, I would keep most of the world's people, group A, as illiterate and poor as possible, and extract their natural resources using their cheap labor.

To the extent other people, group B, would benefit from this or from technologies they created, I would gradually tax them to death and steal their savings with inflation, while I in parallel would use their schools to dumb them down as much as possible.

Keeping everyone dumb and docile would be necessary to avoid any counterplay against me.

And if my income from group B started falling because of a collapse in productivity or some destructive event, I would bankrupt them, flood their country with people from group A, and extract group B's natural resources using everyone's cheap labor.

While this went on, I would allow some of the people in group A to develop skills and increase their productivity, while I gradually taxed them to death and stole their savings with inflation.

I would rinse and repeat until the NPCs realized that I was playing with them, and developed strategies to fight back against me.

I would worry about this, because I would know that almost every strategy to fight against me would be a winning strategy for them.

In fact, it would probably be more than enough enough that a small group of NPCs turned into active players.

By f***ing around and trying they would soon find out what worked and not.

And that would be the end of it for me.