1.11: A world beginning in 1991
Start in January 1991 with a wider world, more grounded elections and clearer ways to follow your government, actions and political career.
A new 1991 world opens in January, with the Soviet Union still intact. As the decade moves on, countries can form and govern successor states, negotiate federation settlements and use election systems shaped around their own institutions. Japan's 1991 House election uses single non-transferable vote, so each candidate can win one seat. Updated economic reference values give Soviet and Nigerian GDP and opening central-bank policy rates a consistent historical basis.
The country pages make regional conditions, party strength and politics easier to scan. The Actions page previews likely results, keeps action feedback visible and groups related operations. The season recap follows a character's actual elections, offices, votes, actions and finances, then presents them as a story. Corporation and profile pages also use clearer tables and layouts.
Behind the screens, the release adds safer recovery for money flows, more complete cash records, stronger reset data preservation, and faster work across turns, markets and supply contracts. The modern Hungarian Assembly uses saved constituency and national-list ballots when available; older campaign records without separate ballots keep the established deterministic regional approximation until their next election. Rechartered banks start a new loan book while prior loans continue through estate recovery, and construction in progress follows the remaining build orders. An optional explicit plant-cost model is available for fresh worlds, but stays off by default pending paired-world simulation and cost-plus qualification. Unknown saved sector types no longer crash a turn while their remaining migration work is assessed. A reset stops before deleting the old season if complete recap capture fails, and validates application settings and the selected database before teardown.
Financed plant construction
Eligible plant orders can use charter-approved, same-currency bank loans, with borrower contributions and delivered funds reserved for the paid order. The pledged site stays secured through repayment or default recovery, and cancellation refunds, lender changes and interrupted transfers preserve their cash receipts across retries. NPP construction uses the same guarded funding path: approval alone adds no capacity, and active claims survive sales, restructuring and other ownership changes until the transition completes.
When primary subscriptions are enabled, investment and universal banks can buy unplaced sovereign bonds with their own same-currency vault cash above the cash floor. The issuing Treasury receives the payment, and only funded units become debt. Primary subscriptions remain off by default.
With its separate policy enabled, an investment or universal bank can also fund issuer-selected corporate IPO shares and bond placements in its currency. Fees apply only to funded proceeds, and interrupted fills retain their original terms and bank charter. This policy also remains off by default.
Missing regional-lean cache values are now rebuilt when a new world is seeded. January 1991 regional statistics, Soviet demographics and readiness checks use the full opening region roster while preserving national summaries. The regional audit found that the UK model has too little regional contrast; historical recalibration and observations under player load remain tracked separately.
Security and reliability updates improve sign-in handling, external media checks, shared game actions and data exports. File-pattern tooling uses corrected source to protect against malformed and excessively nested input. Regional market effects correctly follow companies operating abroad.
Reliability and loading speed
Share history remains readable when an older trade has no recorded anchor amount, and market charts support the current theme colors. Invalid search characters and unsupported country map links return a clear response. Party analytics, cabinet nominations, election pages, national metrics, crisis cards, expansion suggestions and the wiki make fewer repeated database requests. Routine page-navigation cancellations and account cleanup no longer create error reports, while unexpected failures remain monitored.
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Sandbox error reports can be identified separately, helping us diagnose issues without mixing them with production reports.
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Plant counts now follow the capacity you own as facilities grow, depreciate, move or change ownership. Capacity transfers conserve the full capital stock.
Banking and household demand
- •New private-bank loans quote a 1% origination fee before borrowing and withhold it from the cash received. Existing loans and legacy pending requests keep their existing terms, and retries cannot charge a fee twice.
- •Household borrowing responds to the lending spread over the policy rate. New bank charters start at the midpoint of their legal deposit and lending corridors.
- •Bank-held government coupon and maturity claims use funded treasury payments. Deposit insurance uses available government cash and pool-funded sovereign bonds; an unfunded failed estate stays unresolved.
- •Advertising inventory is a business input and no longer receives direct household spending. Other household basket weights adjust to preserve the spending budget, including entertainment services.
Manufacturing pricing
When explicit plant operating costs are enabled, manufacturing CEOs can quote cost-plus prices from recorded operating costs and a bounded markup. Fresh facilities need a producing turn first. The optional operating-cost model stays off by default, with activation tracked separately.
Recovered loan funding now retains its original fee, interest and loss reporting while preserving the completed cash transfer. Loan-fee controls and earnings explanations use translated copy.
The release also includes routine maintenance for manufacturing pricing controls.
Political advertising and plant shortages
An optional funded media market lets political advertising buy spare advertising capacity in the target state. Unfilled budget is refunded, and political effects follow paid delivery. It stays off by default pending activation.
Plant shortage hints now open the suggested retool's existing confirmation directly, so CEOs can review its cost before applying it.
Government confidence and accountability
Autonomous prime ministers face confidence after elections, with coalition support and explicit minority tolerance counted toward survival. Poor performance follows responsible governing parties and regional executives through nominee changes, while successful government keeps its performance treatment. One-party leaders can face legitimacy pressure, faction splits and real succession.
Brazil's presidency renews on recurring era-specific cycles, including modern runoff ballots. Mature custom parties with regional presence can supply autonomous challengers without adding default parties to an empty starting roster.
Media editorial stance
An optional media CEO control publishes an economic and social editorial stance on the outlet's public pages. Audience mismatch reduces available advertising supply, and delivered local audience share can give aligned candidates a favorability nudge capped at 0.5 per turn. Neutral outlets keep their existing behavior. This independent feature stays off by default pending activation.
Media concentration and press controls
Federal ownership legislation becomes available after one corporation exceeds 65% of measured prior US advertising delivery. Enacted state caps scale outlet availability from prior delivered shares and, when active, bound each private owner's final delivered state advertising share across commercial and political sales. Excluded demand remains unserved or refundable. State press freedom and media control bound private outlet reach. The Fairness Doctrine affects US media from 1953 through 1986 only. The independent regulation flag stays off by default.
Manufacturing product projects
Manufacturing corporations can develop a product project across their eligible plants. Development costs 5% of the allocated plant capital and takes at least 12 turns; only paid R&D advances the project. Product stages redirect a bounded share of existing recipe value into the modeled commodity output while preserving total output value. The feature stays off by default pending activation.
New manufacturing R&D budgets use the allocated monetary plant capital, with era replacement cost as a fallback when no paid basis exists. The 5% rate and minimum 12-turn funded schedule remain. Physical output still follows plant units, and existing projects keep their recorded cost basis.
Paid media product slates
Media corporations can develop named titles through paid research and completed commercial advertising. Launched titles improve quality and brand loyalty within existing output, without adding production or demand. The slate feature stays off by default and requires clearing, media operating models, brand loyalty, loyalty clearing and quality pricing.
Bank treasury bills and forex fees
An optional bank treasury lets CEOs buy and sell short sovereign bills in the bank's currency. Purchases use cash above required reserves, withdrawal buffers and due interest; sales require funded market cash. An optional automatic sweep uses actual available bills. Holdings contribute to bank equity but do not replace cash reserves. The feature stays off by default pending activation and market-depth review.
Investment-bank forex trades quote a size and liquidity fee before trading when enabled, showing the full purchase cost or net sale proceeds. Guarded settlement charges the quoted fee once, while currency and leverage limits continue to use the position's value. Fresh 1991 worlds enable player investment charters, forex trading and these fees; existing banking feature settings are preserved by seed top-ups.
US banks keep retail and investment activities separate until the live world reaches 1999, unless the legislature changes the law. The existing CEO charter conversion action refunds retail deposits from available bank cash. Prop trading and solvency checks use the same bank equity calculation, including funded loans, cash-backed deposits and outstanding borrowing.
An optional bank-failure mechanic records political consequences after a funded resolution completes. Deposit exposure can lower confidence, while taxpayer-funded insurance can lower government approval. Both effects are bounded relative to national GDP and fade over one game year. The mechanic stays off by default.
Plant investment comparison
Capacity forecasts show when expected cash earnings recover the charged build cost after operating costs, tax, overhead and replacement reserves. A current short sovereign bond yield in the corporation's currency provides a comparison, with missing quotes and quote limits stated explicitly.
Media and entertainment operating models
An optional operating-model selection covers newspapers, radio, broadcast and cable television, film, music, publishing and streaming. Models use the existing technology unlocks and paid retool flow, preserve nominal output value and existing input baskets, and count political audience reach only from completed paid seller allocations. Streaming remains unavailable in 1991. Selection stays off by default, while saved active models continue to resolve.
Treasury cash and election result labels
An optional Treasury ledger separates spendable cash backed by funded sovereign bond-pool proceeds from the signed fiscal position used for history. When enabled, funded claims, reserve transfers and rescue payments use that cash stock; modeled macro revenue does not create spendable cash. The ledger stays off by default, including in a fresh 1991 world.
Popular-vote presidential result cards now omit electoral-weight badges that do not apply to their count.
Market charts remain interactive when two touches overlap panning and time-axis scaling. Approval pages recover automatically once when their response is interrupted, with a retry option if the interruption continues. Discord role synchronization makes fewer repeated government lookups. Country and sector sentiment pulses now reach the intended corporations.
Founding elections and an empty party roster
The 1991 no-parties start opens with the same founding-election phase as 1953. The opening date stays frozen through the founding primary and general election, while players create their own parties from scratch. No historical parties or party organization are supplied in player countries. Character creation skips party selection while a country has no parties.
Presidential inflation and monetary committee votes
Presidential election inflation penalties use the country's historical target when available, while keeping the existing neutral-band width, penalty slope and cap. A settled monetary committee motion resolves on the next turn once no uncast ballot can change its result; the opening turn stays visible, and pivotal ballots retain the full voting window.
World setup now restores required market indexes after reset so an earlier migration cannot leave the new world without them.
A failed fresh-world build can be recovered after teardown without retiring characters again or losing the previous season’s recaps. Reset cleanup also clears old unowned markets before preparing the new vehicle and media sectors.