⚠️ Update and downtime is to expected tomorrow ~15h UTC+2

Alliance rework

The old bilateral "allies list" between two countries is gone. Alliances are now a real multi-country entity with their own members, leader, laws, development, chat and rankings.

• Creating an alliance: a country passes the Create alliance law (name 3–40 chars + color). The founding country is the first member and its president becomes the alliance leader. A country can only be in one alliance at a time.

• Joining / leaving: handled through alliance laws — the alliance votes Invite country, which opens an Accept invite vote in the target country. Countries leave via Leave alliance, get removed via Kick country.

• Alliance laws: Invite country, Kick country, Nominate leader, Rename alliance, Change color, Dissolve alliance. Each runs a 24h vote and passes at >50% of member presidents. Alliance laws themselves cost nothing for now.

• Rejoin cooldown: after leaving an alliance you cannot rejoin that same alliance for 14 days.

• Leave cooldown: after leaving or being kicked from an alliance, a country cannot create or join any alliance for 7 days.

• Alliance chat: every alliance has its own chat. Membership is derived from role (president / vice-president of a member country, or the alliance leader).

• Alliance battle bonus (replaces the old ally bonus): scaled by the alliance's share of total world development. The full +10% applies for any share up to 15% of world dev; above that the bonus drops 0.5% per percentage point of share over the plateau and is floored at 0% (e.g. share 15% → +10%, share 20% → +7.5%, share 30% → +2.5%, share 35% → 0%).

• Alliance maintenance (paper): each member pays a daily upkeep scaled by its own average development plus 50% of the alliance's total average development (min 1), out of its own country inventory. A member that can't pay is suspended — it loses the alliance damage bonus until it pays again (self-heals on the next daily run).

• Soft-disbanding: when an alliance loses its last member it isn't deleted — it becomes disbanded (name kept, marked with a disbanded date, dropped from rankings/map). A disbanded alliance is permanent: it can't be rejoined or revived.

• Alliance rankings: new ranking page for alliances (development, weekly/total damages, population, etc.).

Diplomacy: defensive pacts & sworn enemies

A new country diplomacy system, shown on a dedicated Diplomacy grid (alliance, active wars, sworn enemy, defensive pacts, and total daily upkeep).

Defensive pacts

• Mutual agreement between two countries. Proposed with Propose defensive pact (20 paper, 12h cooldown), accepted by the partner with Accept defensive pact (20 paper). Broken any time with Break defensive pact (free).

• A country can hold several pacts at once.

• Bonus: applies only when you fight to defend a pact partner's land (not your own land, not a non-pact ally). In a resistance battle it applies to the side reclaiming its homeland.

• The bonus ramps: starts at +1%, +1% per day, capped at +10% (max after 9 days). Cumulative bonus damage dealt is tracked per pact.

• Maintenance: floor(average development / 10) paper/day per active pact (min 1).

Sworn enemies

• One-way declaration via Define enemy country (10 paper). Only one sworn enemy at a time (a new declaration replaces the old).

• Bonus: applies both on attack and defense against your sworn enemy, ramping +1% → +10% (+1%/day). Cumulative bonus damage is tracked.

• Maintenance: 2 × floor(average development / 10) paper/day (min 2) — double a pact's upkeep.

Party ethics rework

Three of the four ethics axes have been redesigned: the old flat battle-damage bonuses are replaced by effects on costs, cooldowns, diplomacy and economy. The Industrialism ↔ Agrarianism axis is unchanged. Each party still spends 3 ethic points; the ruling party's ethics apply to the country.

• Militarism → renamed Pacifism ↔ Expansionism:
  

  • Militarist/Expansionist: +5% attack damage → region-upgrade cooldown 4h (instead of the default).

  • Fanatic: +15% attack damage, war priority 12h → upgrade cooldown 2h, pacification +2.5% defense per level, occupied regions hijack ×2 resistance.

  • Pacifist: +5% defense damage → core-region revolt-defense orders cost ½.

  • Fanatic: +15% defense damage, no development from conquered regions → revolt-defense orders free, revolts copy the region's bunker bonus, cannot have sworn enemies.

• Diplomacy ↔ Isolationism:
  

  • Diplomatic: +5% damage fighting for allies → defensive-pact upkeep ×0.8.

  • Fanatic: +15% damage for allies, cannot have enemies → pact upkeep ×0.5, pact-support orders ×0.5, but sworn-enemy upkeep ×2.

  • Isolationist: +5% damage vs sworn enemies → sworn-enemy bonus ramps from +2%, +2%/day (vs the normal +1%/+1%).

  • Fanatic: +15% damage vs enemies, cannot have allies → enemy bonus from +5%, +5%/day, anti-enemy orders ×0.5, all treaty upkeep ×1.5.

• Imperialism ↔ Republicanism:
  

  • Imperialist: +10% tax income (unchanged).

  • Fanatic: +30% tax & no ministers (kept), but ×2 law cost → region-upgrade maintenance ×1.5.

  • Republican: development income +10% → +50%.

  • Fanatic: development income +30% → +150%; min 10 congress seats + auto-accept citizenship → development counts from core regions only.

• Industrialism ↔ Agrarianism: bonuses unchanged (+10%/+30% specialization vs +10%/+30% deposits), but wood and paper are now specializable products for industrialist countries.

• New "Unethical" ethic (mercenary / damage-farmer): a standalone choice that uses all 3 points and can't be combined with the axes.
  

  • National battle orders deal double the priority damage bonus but cost double paper.

  • The country cannot hold any treaty (no sworn enemy, defensive pact or alliance).

  • If its capital is occupied, the order bonus drops back to normal and a full-resistance revolt is auto-started on the capital.

• Adopting a restrictive ethic auto-breaks treaties: switching to Unethical immediately breaks all treaties (alliance, sworn enemy, defensive pacts); switching to Fanatic Pacifist drops your sworn enemy. Laws that would create a forbidden treaty can no longer pass.

• Changing a party's ethics has a 2-week cooldown (temporarily lifted during the beta-testing window).

Wood & Paper

• Two new items: Wood (raw deposit, found in moderate / tropical / polar climates) and Paper (product, crafted from 1 wood → 1 paper).

• New resource specialization group: raw = limestone / iron / wood, products = concrete / steel / paper.

• Paper is the political fuel of this update - it pays for alliance & diplomacy maintenance and for laws, battle orders and party motions.

Paper economy: political actions now cost paper

Money is no longer the currency of politics - laws, battle orders and party motions are all now paid in paper, and their cost scales with development instead of being a flat amount.

• Laws: enactment fees moved from money to paper, scaled by the country's development - max(base cost, round(base cost × average development / 10)), so a country at 10 average development pays the base cost and larger nations pay proportionally more.

• Battle orders: setting/upgrading an order is now paid in paper (was money).
  

  • Country orders: max(1, floor(average development / 5)) × priority (priority multiplier: Low ×1, Medium, High).

  • MU orders: max(1, floor(members / 5)) × priority.

• Party motions: now paid in paper from the party inventory (was money), core development × 10.

• Sending money between countries (the Send money to country law) now carries a transfer tax paid in paper on top of the amount sent - 50% for countries in your alliance, 100% for everyone else. The recipient still receives the full amount.

• New UI across these forms explaining how each cost is computed.

Development terminology & cost scaling

• Country/alliance development is now split into core, current and average development (average = midpoint of core and current).

• Cost calculations that previously used core development now use average development (battle orders, alliance/diplomacy maintenance, region-upgrade maintenance), so costs track a country's current footprint, not just its home territory.

Government announcements

• The President, Vice-President and Minister of Defense can now post a country-wide announcement to all citizens.

• Announcements expire after 24h, can be cancelled early, and track how many citizens have seen them. Each citizen can dismiss it.

• Displayed in a new government scroll that also shows the current President, Vice-President and ministers with their avatars.

• Announcement text supports the same rich content as chat (@mentions, #channels, :emotes:).

• Max 2 announcement per hour

Balancing

• Region upgrade bonuses for allies halved: the military base attack bonus and the bunker defense bonus now give citizens the full bonus and allied countries only half.

Other

• Mark all as read in conversations.

• Bounties can no longer be acted on depending on battle state (battle-state checks added to bounty actions).

• New skins pack: Anti-Terrorist & Gsg9.