1.15: Influence, leadership and corporate groups

Dev diary by the Lakeside Games team, 13 October 2026.

TL;DR

• •New: national influence fades when it is not maintained and settles at a level set by your roles; chamber leaders, the Leader of the Opposition and Supreme Court justices earn extra actions; office action pools refill every few turns instead of at midnight, and you can top them up with actions.
• •New: a Subsidiary Group hub, own-company supply across state lines, bank-managed stock funds, Westminster devolution stances, and custom flavour-only bills.
• •Fixed: bill proposals after the first 1.14 turn, mines and plants that kept earning for output nobody buys, cabinet funding stuck after a law change, and a batch of phone layout gaps.
• •Limited: own-company supply across states needs freight to be on in your world. GDP growth from measured output and the mine revenue phase-out each phase in over 24 turns.
• •Started: the plants revenue governor comes off in 24 even steps, from turn 176 to turn 200. The plan, and why it is gradual, is below.

The story

1.15 collects the work merged after the 1.14.0 tag. The headline is a rework of how actions and national influence are earned, which touches every office in the game. Alongside it, corporate groups get a proper home, mining and plant economics were tightened so companies stop being paid for goods that never sell, and the UK constitution gained devolution stances and steadier confidence rules.

Actions and national influence

National influence now has a level, not just a total. National influence decays 1% of its value every turn, then gains the turn's influence. Each role therefore settles at a steady level, 100 times what it earns per turn, and a reputation halves over about 69 turns after you leave office. A former president no longer keeps maximum national reach forever.

Your home state matters more, in both directions. State influence now feeds national influence on a steeper curve: no state influence costs 0.5 national influence a turn, 25 is neutral, 50 earns 0.5, 75 earns 1.25 and 100 earns 2.0.

Roles are tiered. Heads of government earn 2.5 a turn. Vice presidents, presiding officers, majority leaders and national party chairs earn 2.0. Cabinet members, governors, Supreme Court justices, the central bank chair and minority leaders earn 1.5. National legislators and ceremonial heads of state earn 1.0, acting cabinet members 0.75, and state legislators and state party chairs 0.5. Only your highest role counts. Leading an international organisation adds 1.0 on top of whatever you hold at home. CEOs of the largest listed companies in their country earn 0.3, and CEOs of other sizeable listed companies 0.15, once they have run the same company for 12 turns.

Holding power has a cost at home. Members of the party that holds the presidency or the premiership lose state influence faster: one and a half times the normal rate at 50% government approval, twice as fast at 0%, and the normal rate when the government is fully popular.

More actions for the people who run the floor. Presiding officers earn 3 extra actions a turn. Majority leaders, minority leaders and the Leader of the Opposition earn 2. The President pro tempore, whips and shadow cabinet members earn 1. Supreme Court justices earn 2 on top of any other office, and Write an Opinion now builds national influence rather than home-state influence. Office bonuses follow each country's own office table, so a ceremonial president no longer earns a head of government's actions.

Office pools refill through the day. Ministerial actions come back one every 6 turns, up to 4, and vice president and Supreme Court actions one every 12 turns, up to 2, instead of all at once at midnight Eastern time. If you run short, you can spend 10 actions to buy one more office action, once per pool per turn. Heads of international organisations get their own agenda actions for proposals in the organisation they lead, and campaign action banks are capped at 48 turns of the campaign's income.

If you run for office or a government

The guided bill composer works again after a 1.14 bug, and you can now write a custom flavour-only bill of up to 10,000 characters. Acting cabinet members can use their department's full powers for their 24 turns. Cabinet estates explain refused actions and show the actions they spend, cabinet funding no longer sticks after a program law changes hands, and one country's treasury problem no longer stalls every other country's. The Fed chair can table their own FOMC motion, and committee votes ignore vacant seats.

The presidential page has endorsements, race detail tabs, every party's primary, key dates and result notices back, and primary shares use the world's active delegate pool. A new party's founder keeps the chair through the party's first leadership cycle, chartered parties show on their founders' seats, and party chairs can set custom titles for party offices. Isolated regions such as Hawaii and MOL are within reach of every established party.

The UK. Westminster sets a separate constitutional stance for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and independence desire responds more strongly to approval. Independence and Irish reunification now carry economies, government records and services through the change, and new nations hand off cleanly into normal country processing. New UK governments start with full confidence, a prime minister cannot dissolve Parliament during the post-election confidence vote, and cabinet ministers keep their constituency, including when a government falls.

If you run a company

Corporate groups. Formalized parent and subsidiary groups have a hub with overview metrics, financial comparisons, direction controls and supply insights. Group CEOs can set supply discounts and contract privately within the group. Parent CEOs can now read a private subsidiary's books, history, credit, technology and valuation.

Supply and plants. CEOs can give their own plants first claim on available goods, including wholly owned subsidiaries, and in worlds with freight on that supply now crosses state lines at normal freight cost. Plants that keep making more than their market buys retire the unused capacity over time, cost-plus prices cover every running cost, and new sectors sell at the market price from their first turn without ever losing revenue to it. Sector pages show the real shortage floor, the actual bottleneck and each product's own sale price.

Mining. Computer-run miners respond to high prices, open mines only where the ore is, and move off deposits they cannot work. Mines on empty deposits stop earning for output nobody buys, phasing in over 24 turns, and state companies shut them. Rare earth mines need fewer inputs, and several gas and timber deposits are larger.

Finance and media. Investment and universal banks can run stock funds of named companies, sponsored index funds pick from their published scope, and petition money reaches the Treasury. Splits keep market cap level, tech nodes always cost some cash, and compensation payments show in your transactions. Media companies sell advertising without choosing a model, ownership limits are measured against the audience, and the advertising picker explains who qualifies.

The market governor, and how it comes off

What it is. When plants switched on, every sector's revenue changed from the old formula to whatever its plants actually sell at market prices. To stop that switch from shocking every company at once, a governor holds each sector's revenue close to what the old formula paid and lets it move toward the market result slowly, over 240 turns from the day that sector started. Sectors that players built after plants switched on skip the governor and earn the market price from their first turn.

Why it has to go. 240 turns is about five game years. At turn 168, about 2,550 of the 3,390 company sectors outside state companies are still governed, and many computer-run sectors founded during play are less than a tenth of the way through. While the governor holds them, prices do not do their job: a sector that overbuilds or sells into a glut is still paid close to the old amount, and a sector in a shortage cannot earn the full shortage price. It also hides problems. A sector that only looks healthy because of the governor will not stay healthy without it.

What turn 134 showed us. On turn 134 a change tied every sector to the world's clock instead of its own. Sectors founded during play jumped most of the way out of the governor in a single turn. Corporate revenue fell about 10% and net income about 36% in that one turn, almost all of it at player companies. We reverted the change before turn 135 and repaid the player companies that lost income on turn 134, which is why turn 135 is higher than the trend.

Taking the governor off in one step would do that to every governed sector at once. Turn 134 also showed which problems real prices expose, and those have to be fixed first.

The plan.

1. •Fix what real prices expose. These are all in 1.15: plants retire capacity the market keeps refusing to buy, the media ownership cap is measured against the audience rather than against rivals' deliveries, cost-plus prices cover the full input bill and running costs, and mines stop earning for output nobody buys (phased in over 24 turns).
2. •Check it in the world simulator. An early run of the 1991 world with and without the phase-out showed company income holding up overall, with more companies slipping into losses. That is what step 4 watches for.
3. •Glide out over 24 turns. Each turn, every governed sector closes the same share of the gap between its current revenue and the market result, so every business moves a little every turn instead of most waiting until the end. Sectors that are already further along keep their place and are never pushed back. After 24 turns the governor is off for every sector.
4. •Watch every step. We track revenue by sector type each turn. The target is no sector type's revenue moving more than 5% between turns because of the glide. The start of the glide is a world setting, so we can pause it, fix the cause and resume.

The glide is under way. Turn 176 is step zero and changes nothing. The first step is turn 177, and from turn 200 the governor is off for every sector. If a step hurts companies more than planned, we pause the glide, fix the cause and resume.

Everything else

Headline GDP growth now follows real output, phasing in over 24 turns, and crisis growth shocks fade after the crisis ends. The phone widgets can show market cap and national influence, the desktop client can show inbox alerts, and Discord sign-in in the Android app returns you to the app. Phones no longer hide the bottom of the page under the status bar, the election night header fits, and the Android header gap is gone. Corporation banners show at their full shape, bank actions stay visible, and the referral count says it is all time.