Cities on the map
Built-up areas are redrawn from scratch in true isometry and along national schools of urbanism.
- The unit is a parcel, not a cell: microdistricts of slabs and courtyards in the Eastern bloc, perimeter blocks with a courtyard well in Europe, a podium with a corner tower in East Asia, a medina in the Middle East, a Spanish grid with a plaza and a church in Latin America, malls on the outskirts of North America.
- A building reads by its mass: roof form (gabled, hipped tile, flat with a parapet, ledge), domes and landmark silhouettes - pagoda, minaret, shikhara, church tower. Small things are gone on purpose: windows, chimneys, antennas and tanks were dirt at close range.
- Flat roofs now sit inside the walls instead of overhanging as a wider slab. The tower stands on its podium instead of piercing it. Roads are one tone, cranes have volume.
- Cities no longer "build up and sink": three different defects behind one symptom were found frame by frame and fixed. Young China at long range is no longer black diamonds.
A cold war in the campaign chapters
All seven chapters switch on spheres, ties, the world financial cycle and cross-border capital by themselves.
- From 1947 to 1991 the world is split by the curtain - the map hatches the blocs and draws the curtain line, the journal says when it falls and lifts. Trade across the curtain costs like a tariff; unions form only inside your bloc.
- Financial contagion travels by bloc: a bust on the other side of the curtain reaches you four times weaker, and swap lines do not cross it. A global crisis stays global.
- Capital as a flow: every country holds a stock of inward foreign investment that comes from large economies to where returns are higher and risk lower - on its own side of the curtain and toward friends, never through sanctions. Switching sides or sanctions mean capital flight.
- Decisions about sides: the Marshall Plan (1947), a client asks for help (1961, 1982), détente (1972), the East opens (1990). Bot hegemons decide the same by rule: the USSR runs its own Molotov Plan, bloc clients in trouble get grants, a slump pushes a hegemon toward détente.
A world on the calendar
- Choosing a real country and year (Our World in Data) within 1925–2024 now moves the world too: eras advance by year, the horizon runs to 2025, country sizes are those of the year, and the world events of the century arrive - Kreditanstalt, the oil shocks, the ICT waves, Lehman, the pandemic. Sweden-1930 gets Kreditanstalt on turn seven.
- American policy of the century (NIRA, Wagner, price controls) does not travel into someone else's game.
Learning and game setup
- The sandbox is a card screen of scenarios with their curves by group, then a scenario screen with templates and fine-tuning tabs; the classic screen remains in full.
- The task ladder: "Next" follows the textbook, missions grew out of scenarios, tasks carry curve pictures, the mission coach highlights the levers. The ZLB mission starts at the rate floor.
- The "Demand shock" mission judges what it promises: inflation at target, not a GDP threshold. Before, the player brought inflation to target and read "not passed".
- Tooltip cards open on the levers in the bottom tabs too, not only on the indicators at the top, and wait for the cursor to pause instead of popping on touch.
- UI scale 80–150%, country choice beats the roulette, a post-mortem at the end of a run, practice in five lessons, emoji removed from the interface.
Saves from earlier builds keep playing by the rules they started under.