Multiplayer
The main fix of this update. In the previous build a network match started with the interface hidden: full-screen map, your own country labelled — and no top bar, no dock, no rate lever, so there was physically no way to submit a turn. The turn button existed, with zero width.
- The cause: the mechanism that restores the in-game layout was written, wired up, and never called. The same trap had already been fixed for "Continue" and for loading a slot; the network path was missed then.
- Separately: network games ran on the old investment calibration while single-player used the new one. Capital-to-output diverged threefold.
- A refused join now names the reason instead of leaving you at "waiting for host" forever.
Only identical builds can play together. Peers with different engines are refused at the door — that is a safeguard, not a fault: otherwise the worlds would drift apart silently and the match would break around turn thirty.
The campaign is now a chain of terms
The seven chapters are one state across a century, not seven independent games.
- What passes on is the deviation from your successor's era benchmark, not a raw number: anchor credibility, debt, potential, inequality. A raw handover would have given Volcker-1973 a debt of 426% of GDP instead of the historical 35%.
- Anchor credibility carries by the conduct of your term, not by its final number: two chapters end exactly on the credibility floor, where no number can tell a good governor from a bad one.
- New Legacy screen: what you built over your term, what you inherited, and what passes on. It honestly shows what did not carry and why — the successor's era does not know of it yet, the value sat on a model boundary, or the benchmark itself is on one.
- The head start is finite: the era eats an inherited anchor in 18–38 quarters. A bad term costs your successor up to 2.7x the pain; a good one helps only a little — an inheritance hurts more than it helps.
Institution tree
Previously an instrument simply did not appear until its year of invention, so "not invented yet" and "not in this game at all" looked the same.
- A new screen covering all 20 institutions: founded · available now · waiting on another decision · opens in a given year · lost for good.
- "Lost for good" has two distinct causes and they are not conflated: the year of invention lies past the end of the chapter, or the term is already over.
- Every row says whether what you found will reach your successor. Four institutions can be founded but never handed on — the chain of terms ends with their chapter, and the row says so.
Shocks announce themselves — most of them
Previously every scenario adjustment landed whole in a single quarter. There was nothing to answer it with: the policy rate acts with a lag, so in the quarter of impact the player has no instrument at all. Measured: raising the response from 3 to 3.5 pp improved the worst output gap by 0.004 pp, while a four-quarter ramp improved it by 2.73 pp.
- 66 events across 27 chapters now arrive over several quarters, with the same total size.
- The forecast says what is coming, when, how large and for how long.
- 47 events stay sudden by design. Black October, Lehman and 15 August 1971 are not announced six months ahead.
Reading the model
- Hovering any indicator opens a card: definition, formula, a mini-chart and links to related concepts. 37 concepts had been written and translated into three languages — and were shown nowhere.
- Every panel chart now carries its equation, with clickable terms.
- Six formulas disagreed with the engine and have been corrected. Among them the central bank loss function (the weight was labelled "output" where it applies to inflation) and the debt law, which still stood in a form the engine had abandoned a year earlier.
Learning and countries
- Lessons and missions are now one chapter-ordered ladder instead of two separate sets.
- Countries have a structural profile — nine archetypes, not merely different first-turn numbers.
- The choice of diffusion doctrine is no longer inert in most chapters.
Interface
- Full-screen panel, wooden desk surface.
- Fixed the text colour on brass: the variable referred to itself, and twenty rules were painting the active tab in the inactive colour.
- "Back" from the setup screen returns to the previous screen, not to the main menu.
Saves from earlier builds keep playing by the rules they started under.