The game, at a glance.

Every country — democracy, one-party state, or military regime — runs on the same two numbers: how many people actually back a party, and how much power that party actually holds. What you get to do about it is a stack of real law choices, not a slider.

Parties, industrialists, unions, the army, churches, minority movements, separatists — every organized group that can push a country around runs on the same four numbers, and you can act on any of them directly, at home or abroad.

A national focus is the one big thing your country is committed to right now. Each country has several focus trees to choose from, and the 1946 campaign tells specific historical stories rather than opening every possible path on day one.

Every province you own grows or shrinks on its own terms every month. There's no national economy pool to manage — your country's total output is just the sum of what every one of your provinces is doing.

Every province's machinery and infrastructure quietly ages every year. Whether you keep up with it — or fall behind — is a policy choice with consequences that don't show up for a decade.

Your tax rate, military spending, research spending, and social spending are never sliders — they're the sum of whichever laws you've chosen, capped by how much your state can actually administer, and eaten into by unrest, war, and devastation before a dollar reaches the treasury.

Every province has real people living in it, and that population is what generates your output, fills your armies, and decides your political weight. It grows and shrinks every month based on how well that province is actually doing.

A planned second population system that would actually move people between provinces every month — chasing opportunity within a country, or crossing borders entirely. Designed, not yet built: the relevant laws exist today, but nothing acts on them yet.

Unlike a national focus, you can run several research projects at once — one for every research center you've built. Every center beyond your free one in the capital is a real, ongoing line in your budget.

Research covers everything from postwar infrastructure to the edge of what's possible by 2010, organized into trees by field. What any given project costs you, and how long it takes, depends on where your country actually stands — the same breakthrough is cheaper and faster for a country that's already positioned for it.

Wars aren't won by headcount. They're decided by how strong your military actually is — equipment, readiness, doctrine — and by how much of it you're actually willing to commit to the fight.

Your armies are made of brigades — real formations you move province to province, fight with, and keep supplied. They hold ground, suppress unrest where they're stationed, and occupy enemy territory in wartime.

A great power's reach is limited by its prestige and a handful of diplomatic moves it can make each month. Every relationship is one-directional and fully explained, and above it all sits a threat score that decides how nervous — and how armed — everyone around you gets.

NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the UN, and the World Bank aren't scripted alliances — they're standing institutions with real membership, benefits for belonging, and an agenda only their leader gets to steer. Joining an alliance organization makes every member an ally of every other member automatically.

A treaty would be a real, lasting agreement you negotiate clause by clause — non-aggression, mutual defense, free trade, a peace settlement, a ceded province — where every affected country actually has to come out ahead on the deal, or you make up the difference with money or arms.

There's no agent roster or mission timers here — espionage is a budget you split between defending your own country and targeting specific others, and every country you spy on builds its own separate score over time as you invest in it.