A House Divided: 1991

A state's lean comes from who lives there, projections add up the cells, and a campaign that appeals to a position moves the cells that share it. Laws, policy approvals and referendum ground games work on the same demographic groups.

• The US House is projected district by district.
• No world can report more votes than it has eligible voters.
• Voting age and the shape of the population follow the live calendar, and a census every ten years redraws House seats and electoral votes.

Endorsements carry organization, a running mate can campaign for the ticket, and each race fixes its rules when it opens. The primary screen holds the state board, the carve-up of any state you pick, a clickable calendar and the campaign actions.

• Campaign strength approaches a maximum 25% vote boost.
• Incumbency scales with approval, blending national and state approval equally, and long service carries a proportional fatigue penalty.
• In the closing period, 5% of new ballots for candidates outside a state's top two move toward the nearest viable candidate.

State operations gather travel, camping, the home-state surge, Campaign Presence and canvassing in one place, next to the field of rivals. Coalition canvassing and targeted ads add turnout and exposure effects, and ads can be bought between elections.

• Open a rival's row to attack their favorability in a state or take a slice off their count there.
• Canvassing raises turnout more when the coalition's politics sit closer to yours.
• Targeted ads buy an immediate bonus that decays, and regional exposure carries into future races.

Low government approval costs the party holding executive office, and low Democratic Health weighs on the ruling party and the sitting President. A government that passes costly legislation aimed at the problem keeps part of the penalty back.

• Bills enacted in the last 24 turns that move unemployment, poverty or real incomes the right way can offset up to 40% of the National Mood penalty.
• At complete institutional failure a sitting President can face a combined penalty of up to 30%.
• Below 60 Democratic Health, the economy loses up to four percentage points of annual potential GDP growth, which reaches employment and tax bases.

The party-pooled Commons seat threshold is 10%, and the US House threshold is 20% in states with one to four seats, falling to 10% at nine seats. Projections and final results use the same apportionment rules.

• UK structural support follows each party's current regional registration.
• A snap election resets the parliamentary term clock for every later election.
• A confidence motion needs a majority of the whole chamber.
• Japan's 1991 House of Representatives election uses the single non-transferable vote, so each candidate can win one seat, and from 1994 a bill can move the chamber to 300 constituency seats and 200 regional list seats.

Building organization spends treasury money as well as Political Strength, priced by the country's currency and the region's size. Slates take up to three candidates per race, shared between players and non-player politicians.

• A party with no presence anywhere can start from any region, and UK parties reach Major status after qualifying in 3 of the 12 regions.
• Campaigners named by the chair and confirmed by the National Committee can use NPP Management.
• Any two different officers can approve a treasury transaction, and two seated officers raise the per-turn payout to one member to five times the base limit.

When a seat opens, the President nominates a player or a generated candidate and the Senate confirms. Each era start carries an authored docket of landmark cases that come up in their real years, and a court that diverges from history can rule the other way, which changes the law and the regional leans that follow it.

• A 1991 start carries 19 authored docket cases.
• Race and equal-protection doctrine resolves the way it did historically, and rare surprise cases keep a long-running court busy.
• Rulings that change policy open a readable law page and post to the news wire.

Any sitting member can file a motion to vacate the Speaker, and an absolute majority removes the Speaker on the spot. Franchise and voter registration access are set by law in an electoral-law channel the legislature owns.

• Cloture needs three fifths of the votes cast, and state bills pass on a simple majority.
• Acting ministers keep departments running with limited authority for a limited time.
• Redistricting follows the era's legislative authority and can be changed by law.

Prime Ministers can reshuffle the cabinet, ministers can resign, and the Chief Whip can withdraw the whip. Commons vacancies and recall petitions lead to by-elections, and parties hold annual conferences and leadership challenges.

• A Prime Minister who loses their Commons seat leaves office and government formation reopens.
• The Prime Minister can table the Budget while the Chancellorship is vacant.
• Ministers can hold Deputy Prime Minister or First Secretary of State alongside a department.

The Northern Ireland peace process runs from 1991: London and Dublin open talks, unionist and nationalist participation follows, Westminster and the Dáil ratify, and the agreement goes to a public referendum. Settlement and suspension change devolved authority, security spending and regional politics.

• A rejected agreement returns to talks and needs new legislation.
• Ratified power sharing opens regional institutions and election cycles, and suspension withdraws their authority.
• Political violence adds a regional security cost to the UK budget.

Governments outside player control weigh the treaty against their economic and institutional conditions, with visible outcomes and reasons. Euro membership needs a ratified Union settlement, and eligible legislatures can propose euro adoption through an economy bill.

• Ratification opens in February 1992, and the Union forms in November 1993 only if every member has consented.
• Current members keep common-market tariff treatment even if Maastricht is rejected; leaving ends it, and rejoining needs fresh consent.
• Euro membership fixes each currency's conversion relationship and links common monetary policy to national accounts.

Computer-run governments shape their agenda around their party's platform and pledges, scaled by the size of their win, and review it every game year. National approval uses one calculation everywhere.

• Presidential voters judge inflation against their country's target for the era.
• Polls include voter approval, and the poll screen leads with your appeal, party colors and a trend chart.

It takes turns to come online, makes goods up to the capacity you built, and earns revenue on what sells, with inputs billed at this turn's prices. Each turn the plant reports what it made, what sat idle and why: short of energy, no buyers, or a strike.

• The build dialog shows the itemized cost, construction time, extra staff and payback period, and warns when the market cannot absorb the output.
• The dominance premium scales with competition: 35% of it with no rivals, the full premium with four or more.
• Ordinary expansion gets a 20% build discount, and surplus capacity can be parked while the rest keeps running.
• Corporations and NPPs can finance plant construction through bank loans, and the collateral stays protected through sales, takeovers and nationalization.

You choose one specialization per decade, priced at twice the decade's base research cost, with capstones at three times.

• Specialization effects feed price, inputs, output, wages, expansion costs and penalty protection.
• Sectors in a corporation's primary industry gain ten points of operating margin, and secondary industries gain five.
• New corporations receive past decades' baseline technologies free, but not their specializations.

The reviewer can clear the deal, clear it with remedies, or block it, from a Merger Review panel in the cabinet office. A parent and its subsidiaries can formalize a group with a combined balance sheet and loss relief across members.

• Referral thresholds run from 75% market share under light competition law to 40% under the strictest, and a country with no competition law reviews nothing.
• Group loss relief is capped at group profits, tax actually paid, and one country.
• Group members converge 5% a turn toward the best performer, and a spun-out company carries a penalty for about two years.

Open supply offers help find trading partners, and bilateral negotiations support counter-offers, fixed terms and inbox reminders. Scarce private supply is divided proportionally among contracts.

• Freight agreements reserve haulage capacity in one state for a buyer's plants in that state.
• Shortfall damages are based on output the plant could actually deliver.
• Contract premiums are cash transfers shown on Financials for both sides, with any unpaid remainder.

An IPO lists the whole selected float at once, and the company receives proceeds as buyers pay. The stock market has candlestick charts from recorded intraday prices, aligned comparison lines and a mobile layout.

• Your portfolio's Trade History lists every share bought and sold with realized profit or loss.
• Computer-controlled investors spread funded demand across more listed firms.
• Sector asking prices sit at 85% of NPV, and the top risk premium is 6%.

Manufacturers develop products at 5% of their plant capital, market them to build a brand, and each product grows, matures, declines and retires. Political ads are bought in a real ad market, and advertising agreements pay out for their full term.

• Heavy US ad concentration unlocks ownership laws, and an enacted ownership limit caps each owner's share in a state.
• Political ads in a state with no outlet fund a weaker local fallback, and the rest is refunded.

Productive capacity sets labour demand, higher wages compete for scarce workers, and capacity without staff cannot produce. Persistent vacancies help grow and attract the local workforce.

• Measured workforce tightness reaches unemployment and union bargaining.
• CEOs can set wages across a sector type or a whole country's holdings in one preview and confirmation.
• Plants measure production growth at constant commodity values, so price inflation does not read as output growth.

Build advice measures each market by the demand your company can reach: home buyers and exports, with imports counted as room your own production can take. Producer costs lift commodity prices, prices come from goods that can actually reach you, and the nominal price level follows the world's median inflation.

• The commodities board has a Reachable view next to the production and consumption views.
• Planned economies trade only with each other until their historical opening, and the Soviet republics open in 1991.
• Extraction is capped by deposits, and shortage prices attract new suppliers.

Each state's freight capacity serves its own market, haulage above nominal capacity pays a surcharge, and sectors report output that had no freight to carry it. Domestic freight follows regional routes, and local freight demand reaches local logistics sectors.

• Six state-line crossings lose about 17% of the power or gas sent.
• Shortage warnings name the state that ran out of trucks.
• Delivery limits and shipping bills apply once geographic freight settlement is switched on for a world.

A union leader opens a bargaining campaign against a named employer, setting a wage floor, a duration and strike-free turns; disputes escalate from an overtime ban to selective and industry strikes, and members vote on any deal the president accepts. Agreements can include a funded pension of up to 15% of the covered wage bill.

• Agreements run from 24 to 192 turns, six months to four years, and strength decays 0.5% a turn on the union and on each organizer.
• Leverage is recomputed every turn from coverage, the pay gap, labour market tightness, collective-bargaining law and the strike fund.
• Banning unions starts a general strike the executive can suppress, negotiate, wait out for up to 24 turns, or end by repeal.

The chair tables a hike, cut or hold, generated members vote their alignment, player members have 24 hours to vote, and a motion passes on a majority of the full board. In any world that starts before 1997, the Bank of England has no operational independence: the Prime Minister or the Chancellor sets the rate until Parliament passes a central-bank-independence provision.

• The executive nominates members, including the chair, and in the United States the Senate confirms.
• Rate moves are capped per term, and expired seats refill with the alignment flipped.
• Central bank chairs come from nominations, and with no nominee the seat goes to a technocrat.

A currency can float, hold a band or hold a peg, with capital moving freely or not, and a rate move that the peg and an open capital account make impossible is refused with the reason given. A government can take control of the rate, at a price in scrutiny.

• Setting the rate from the finance seat costs 12 scrutiny, dismissing the chair 18, and revoking independence by statute 22.
• Low credibility widens the sovereign spread by up to 1.5 points, holds FX intervention to 70% of the band at zero, and sends depositors toward foreign currency.
• Liquidity injections are advanced to chartered banks in proportion to their deposits, as debt they repay.

Every bank publishes a green, amber or red confidence badge built from reserve cover, loan book quality and capital cover, and a bank that stays red with too little capital fails and is wound up. A national deposit insurance fund keeps insured balances whole, and the Treasury covers what the fund and the bank's remaining assets cannot.

• Banks hold 8% capital and face a yearly stress test that writes off 15% of the loan book.
• A national deposit insurance fund keeps insured balances whole.
• Whether players can charter a bank, and which charter types, is set for each world.
• Banks earn only what they are actually paid, and deposit insurance premiums follow measured claims, between 0.4% and 2% before the bank's own risk weight.
• A failing bank gives the head of government, finance minister or central bank chair three turns to recapitalize it, guarantee deposits or resolve it.

It buys what you sell from that cash, quotes a bid and an ask, and pays less when it runs short or distrusts the issuer. New issues raise what the market will buy and place the rest over the following turns, so weaker credits raise less up front.

• The spread is 1% each way on government bonds and 2% on corporate bonds.
• Each quarter's government auction fills only as far as the market has cash and appetite, and a poor fill counts toward a sovereign debt crisis.
• Twelve bond funds trade: a government bond fund for each of the eight fund countries, plus investment-grade sovereign, emerging-markets sovereign, investment-grade corporate and high-yield corporate funds.
• Governments pay the coupons their bonds were issued with, new bonds are priced by the issuer's credit rating, and coupons and maturities are paid from real Treasury cash.

Hold at least half of a fund's units and you direct its ballot, and an undirected fund mirrors the majority actually cast. A financial corporation can sponsor its own fund for a 2.5M charter fee and at least 10M of seed capital, earning an expense ratio it sets between 0.10% and 2.00% a year.

• Index inclusion needs 15% of shares in public hands, a market value of at least 5% of the index median, and a solvent balance sheet.
• A company can petition the index committee, a cabinet officeholder, for a waiver, and the fee is never returned.
• From 10% index ownership a company's credit improves a grade and its share price carries a premium that reaches 8% at 35%.

A member's foreign minister can spend a bloc's shared fund on the organization's Influence tab to pull a nation its way, priced as a share of the target's economy. Countries can found their own geopolitical bloc with its own map color and alignment pole, and any Security or Bloc organization at the Article 5 posture brings its members into a war on a member's side.

• From 1991 the board has four positions: Washington, Moscow, Beijing and non-aligned.
• NATO starts a 1991 world with 16 members, and the Warsaw Pact has none.
• Aid holds members you already have, and sanctions lower the sanctioner's own standing in the target while they last.

Terrain sets the combat math, units deploy to the conflict, and frontage, readiness and a supply tail limit how hard a general can push. Generals rise by fighting, gaining experience from battles they personally led, up to Field Marshal.

• Combat forecasts show an actual win probability, and coalition battle reports name each country's casualties.
• Air support, command depth and home soil feed front supply, and damaged ships and aircraft can withdraw for repair.
• A war damages roads in the region it is fought over, which reaches transport and productivity.

Passing the bill authorizes the war, and the executive starts it. Peace offers are documents with terms, open for 72 turns, and the terms can include territory, reparations or a change of government.

• A concluded peace binds both sides to a 240-turn truce.
• Allies can join an offensive without declaring their own war, and a coalition can lose a member through negotiation.
• Peace between the two founding belligerents ends the war for everyone.
• War destroys part of the fought-over regions' capital, and the government that holds the region pays to rebuild it over two game years.

A national arsenal for each arm of service is filled by your own defence companies under contracts the defence minister awards, and fighting destroys equipment that has to be replaced from it. Contracts reserve their full cost when awarded, and suppliers pay the input cost of each lot.

• You can overdraw by up to a year's funding as national debt; past that, unpaid troops lose readiness until funded again.
• A unit raised from an empty arsenal arrives at full strength in men and fills with equipment as deliveries arrive.
• Quantity comes from the supplier's output and quality from its research.

Tests, crises, coups and wars raise it, and calm lowers it toward a floor set by how armed the world is. Defence chiefs in nuclear powers can fund a weapons programme from fission devices toward hydrogen weapons and MIRVs, with bombers, missiles and submarines as separate investments.

• High tension tightens defence posture, raises procurement demand and can put panic buying, bank runs, civil-defence drills and peace marches on the executive's desk.
• A stockpile without delivery capacity supplies no deterrent.
• New worlds start with the historical programmes and arsenals of their era.

Intelligence budgets come from legislative funding laws, an appropriation and network upkeep. Countries nobody plays plan their own foreign policy and run their own war operations within their budgets.

• Coverage and compromise limit what operations can do.
• The intelligence console shows what the available budget can afford.
• International organizations count their eligible membership, and silent autonomous members cast ballots at close where allowed.

Decisions act on the rest of the game: in a nationwide steel strike the President can seize the mills by executive order and face a court challenge, send Congress an emergency bill, broker talks, concede the wage demands or hold firm. Each crisis page shows current participants, background pressure, public commitments and links to open decisions.

• Yugoslav displacement and war damage reach labour, GDP and background output, and coordinated sanctions impose a one-year arms embargo.
• Financial rescue, guarantees, stimulus and austerity reach banks, households and treasuries.
• Each crisis opens inside its own window: Yugoslav dissolution and Northern Ireland from 1991, terrorism from 1998, the financial crisis from 2007, Arab uprisings from 2010, a European security crisis from 2013 and the pandemic from 2018.

China, Nigeria, France, Spain, Sweden and Turkey start from dated 1991 populations, and amounts in German marks and Irish pounds display in their own units. Campaign action prices, manager upgrades and campaign income share one era basis.

• East Germany is absent from a 1991 world, while Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia are present.
• France and Spain start with age and sex population stocks in all sixteen of their regions.
• Party rosters are authored for the 1991 start in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Austria and Nigeria.
• France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Greece, Austria and Finland start from real 1991 GDP, debt and exchange rates.
• UK regions keep their 1991 census makeup, and attitudes by age, education and income follow the 1991 British Social Attitudes survey.
• The 1991 world opens with its own political climate, law levels and regional differences.

Countries without full domestic data run a lighter background simulation, and the world map lets you inspect their macro summaries. Finland, Austria and Greece joined the roster as full countries with governments, legislatures, elections, cabinets, parties and budgets.

• In the 1991 world, 3 countries are open to players, 20 more run full economies, and 145 run the background simulation.
• Full economies in 1991: Germany, Ireland, Brazil, China, Nigeria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Greece, Austria and Finland.
• Austria brings its Bundesrat, and the engine runs unicameral legislatures.

Cyber, tech-bubble and disinformation crises open when the calendar arrives at them, and pandemics can strike in any era.

• 53 era events were added, with 17 older events given year gates.
• Prices and exchange rates start at their era values and then move on their own.
• Millennium Night, a shared event offered to every eligible character, lies ahead of a 1991 start in 1999.

A budget limits how much the AI may disrupt any single player. Governments run by non-player politicians keep a bounded set of standing goals and are graded on them.

• Names come from each country's own pool and naming conventions, with six new pools for France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Russia.
• Portraits cover 17 countries, with about a thousand faces.
• Non-player politicians enter recurring direct-election contests that would otherwise reopen without candidates.

You pick a track at the start, Politics only or the complete economy and politics tour, and can skip it or replay it from your profile. Character creation offers an optional guided conversation alongside the classic form.

• The randomized name in the character creator comes from your rolled country.
• Proposing a bill shows its projected annual cost up front.

Notification settings offer per-type mutes and direct-message badges, and phone players can opt into private inbox push notifications that respect mute and snooze settings. Election deadlines and other times display in your local timezone.

• When a season closes, every character gets a Wrapped recap with their biggest moments, highest office, global wealth rank and a shareable link.

A start screen picks the era, turns advance when you press End turn or on an interval you set, and art you have seen keeps rendering offline. Local-world owners can configure world rules and host LAN guests.

• Windows worlds start in seconds and keep every turn when you quit.
• A permanent head of state can enact validated national laws directly and appoint non-player ministers.
• Sole corporate owners can reclaim their CEO seat.

You can create an account, sign in or link an account with Apple, Google or Discord, and each returns you straight to the game. The phone and desktop apps show only the controls that fit their mode.

• In-game content such as news, mail and legislation is in English.
• Apple's private relay email is supported.
• Campaign songs on profiles open in YouTube's visible player and do not autoplay.

The US map has political and economic layers, seated officeholders with portraits, electoral votes and a sortable data view. Search offers autocomplete and a full results page, and wiki search covers parties, offices, seats, elections and learning paths.

• Background countries on the world map have their own borders and macro summaries you can inspect.
• A public read API serves budgets, regions, currency, history and referendum results with documented schemas, and supporters get larger allowances.
• A read-only bridge lets external tools query public game data with a scoped API key.

Corporate research opens at the 1989 to 1999 tier, and later tiers unlock as the calendar reaches them.

• Research tiers: 1999 to 2009 opens in 1999, and 2009 to 2019 in 2009.
• For comparison, the 1953 world reached 1979 at turn 1,329.

Every other country keeps its modeled parties, and companies and central banks run from the first turn everywhere.

• Germany starts with 6 parties, France 5, Sweden 7 and Brazil 10.
• Voters in the playable countries start registered as independents.

Filing opens on turn 1, primaries close on turn 25 and the general elections resolve on turn 49. The calendar then starts from January 1991.

• The playable countries contest the round with no parties, so every founding candidate there runs as an independent or for a party players have built.
• After the round, regular elections follow each body's own 1991 schedule.

Offices, companies, holdings and balances do not carry into 1991, and each retired character receives a season recap of their career.

• Recaps cover tenure, highest office, actions, influence, favorability, net worth, elections, bills and achievements.

Costs and income move together, so a 1991 dollar buys 1991 amounts of both.

• A $100,000 advertising base cost becomes about $35,800.
• A $50,000 fundraising base becomes about $17,900.

Japan is newly playable; in the 1953 world it is an economy you can follow but not hold office in. The Soviet Union runs on NPPs, and East Germany does not exist in 1991.

• 1953 world playable roster: United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and East Germany.
• Japan opens with 8 regions, a 512-seat House of Representatives and a 252-seat House of Councillors.

The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic in October 1990, so there is no East Germany and no German Question to settle.

Each one is on the world map and can be inspected.

• Canada, Australia, India, Mexico, the Netherlands and South Africa are among them.
• Background countries have no domestic offices or elections.

In 1991 every country starts as a market economy, and privatization and nationalization stay available through legislation.

The Soviet Union opens as one country with 24 regions: ten Russian regions and the fourteen other union republics.

• The Baltic republics, Belarus and Ukraine are regions of the Soviet Union at the start, not separate countries.

A breakup happens only through a settlement bill with negotiated shares of debt and assets that each successor ratifies, and keeping or renegotiating the federation stays possible.

• Default terms split debt and assets by population.
• Player businesses and residents in a departing territory are protected until their owners choose where to relocate.

Primaries close on turn 25, and every race, from the presidency and the Commons to the Diet and the state senates, resolves on turn 49, about two real days after launch.

• The US Senate elects all 100 seats in the founding round, and Japan's House of Councillors elects both classes.
• Other countries' chambers are filled in the same round by NPPs from their historical parties.

A charter names three founders from the same country, living in the proposer's home state or a neighboring one, with a platform on four axes, and the party forms when all three sign.

• A charter expires after 14 turns or 72 real hours, whichever is later.
• The first member to join a party with no chair becomes its chair.
• Names reserved for the game's default parties cannot be used.
• You can also create an Independent and file for office without a party.

Regional executives exist only after Parliament enacts a devolution settlement, and Northern Ireland institutions can also come out of a peace settlement.

• UK regional council elections run in both worlds.

Maastricht ratification opens in February 1992, and the European Union forms in November 1993 only if every member ratifies; a failed treaty leaves the Community in place.

• Members: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
• No country uses the euro at the start. Once the Union exists, members can pass a euro adoption law from 1999.

• From 1994 a bill can move the chamber to 300 constituency seats and 200 regional list seats.

The 1953 world reads 53.6, in the Elevated band, with a floor of 50.

• Bands: Detente below 15, Calm 15 to 35, Elevated 35 to 60, Crisis 60 to 80, Brink 80 and above.

The US, UK and Japanese governments can respond with diplomacy, aid, sanctions or intervention, and displacement and war damage cut regional labour and output until reconstruction.

• Intervention and peacekeeping need military readiness, logistics and domestic support.
• Crisis sanctions are enforced through trade embargoes.

A settlement needs ratification in Westminster and the Dáil, a referendum in Northern Ireland and working power-sharing institutions, and it can fail or relapse.

• Test runs to 2027 produced agreements in 1998 or 2003, a rejected referendum, a stalled process or a 2008 suspension, depending on choices.

Each follows pressure and decisions, so none is certain.

• The 1953 world's Cold War crises, such as Vietnam, Berlin and Suez, end by 1975 and do not occur.

Manufacturing and Media are both reworked for the 1991 world.

• The 1953 world runs 17 separate sector types, with Media, Entertainment and Automobiles each on their own.

A seat waits for the general election only when that election closes within the 48 turns a by-election would take.

Both parties see which politicians a merger would remove before they vote.

Conversions the game makes for you, such as dividends and coupons, pay only the base fee.

Plants that make more than one product set output by what each product is worth at market prices.

Reports go to the moderators with a reason, and blocking a player refuses their mail and hides their mail, bio and campaign song from you.