1.14: Presidential maps, contests and a steadier economy

Dev diary by the Lakeside Games team, 10 October 2026.

TL;DR

• •New: A full-screen presidential map with election night and race replay, primary night, field offices in every race, weekly contests with podium prizes, more Discord casino games, and itch.io play.
• •Fixed: Freight billed 24 times a day (with a one-time credit), bond rollovers that inflated debt, approval in Metrics v2 worlds, batch actions, and several Market and mobile gaps.
• •Economy health: plants ramp into deep shortages, AI-only rate committees decide every eight turns, and every sector carries a flat 8-point margin charge.
• •Limited: newsroom influence on opinion only acts in worlds that enable it; solo party founding is sandbox only.

The story

This release collects the work merged after the 1.13.0 tag. Most of it appeared in the extended 1.13 diary as it landed; this post is the tidier record of that interval, plus the fixes since. Screenshots are not included this time.

If you run for office

The presidential race. The race page is one full-screen map with county zoom, in-page state views, a road-to-270 strip, themes, resizable side panels and a phone layout. Election night plays the last hour of a US race as it happened: the board clears, states report in poll-closing order, and a call lands only when it cannot be reversed. Finished races can be replayed week by week, as electoral votes or as popular vote shaded by margin, when the campaign history was recorded. Spectators from other countries can see campaign presence.

Primaries and campaigns. Presidential primaries vary more by state, with momentum, county results and a primary night view, and the primary page has a single map. Field offices on a county lean map make campaigns matter in every race type. Operation income previews now use local budgets and separate current and next-upgrade effects.

Contingent elections. When no candidate wins, the House votes again every turn. Coalitions vote together, members can change their vote, chairs can whip, and the deadlock can seat an acting president, who is announced and labelled in the White House and does not count toward term limits. Election results now update every 30 minutes.

Parties and chambers. Party NPP capacity grows with membership and is capped at six per region in the country, with a minimum of 25; the top regional recruitment tier is six slots at 50 percent organization. Registration drives need local party presence. Independent candidates keep their race when they join a party. Supreme Court nominations gained Senate whips, and bill and nomination cards show chamber seals and portraits. The 1991 Soviet Congress of People's Deputies now holds elections, and the first bill achievement works for national legislature proposals outside the US.

Approval and cabinets. The national approval page shows how the headline is built from the state average. New heads of government get a honeymoon on public expectations, building to the full 5 point drag over their whole term. The empty cabinet penalty scales with the share of empty seats, 7.5 points at most. Approval conditions work again in Metrics v2 worlds. Cabinet and central bank achievements unlock each turn, and every v2 minister has two choices that cost no cash.

If you follow contests or play in Discord

The contests page runs weekly rounds for corporate growth, National Influence, government approval and referrals, plus Legislator of the Week, Personal Wealth Growth and Party Growth. Podium prizes split 50, 30 and 20 percent, except government approval, which is winner takes all. Entries show logos and portraits with links, results are posted by the National Wire Service, and rounds open on your first visit. Pages show when standings were last updated, and the approval board explains that governments formed mid-round join the next round.

The Discord bot added slots, roulette, crash, craps, high-low, animal races, a lottery and poker alongside blackjack. A stake can be up to 12.5 percent of the bank and a payout up to 25 percent; if the bank cannot cover a win, your stake comes back. Phone alerts now show the alert's own content and open the page they are about in AHDClient 2.4. The game can also load inside its itch.io page.

If you run a company

Supply and the Market. You can take and negotiate computer-run supply offers, which show the price per unit. Contracts between computer-run companies now run for 48 turns, and offers you take come with the same term. Premiums are sized on one turn of real buyer volume, and computer-run buyers keep a growth reserve. The wealth list and exchange selection are back on The Market, and the Trade shortcut sits on stock list rows. Share trades are cheaper: the equity pool half-spread fell from two percent to one.

Products, media and funds. Computer-run companies start product ventures funded from income, and media products now develop every turn. Newsroom slant slowly pulls state opinion toward the newsroom position, by at most half a point over three days, in worlds where the feature is enabled. Fund pages are simpler, CEOs can invest company cash in funds, and fund rebalancing is spread across the day. Spin-offs keep baseline technology, and groups beyond three subsidiaries trade at a discount. Parent CEOs see their subsidiaries' sector books, ownership insights are on the corporation page, closed companies leave a record of why, and the technology research paths are clearer.

Margins, shortages and freight. Every sector now carries a flat 8-point charge in its margin breakdown. Costs were set so a typical sector kept a 35 percent margin before bonuses, and the bonuses were mostly positive, so almost no company lost money. The charge is the same for every owner, so rankings do not move. A plant that sells out in a deep shortage now ramps toward the real unmet demand; before, that figure stopped at one and a half times supply, which is why the last shortage fix raised prices without raising supply. Computer-run companies can also expand in a critical shortage when their plants run below 85 percent of capacity. Home-turf and own-type margin bonuses are halved while service payroll rises. Half a plant's overhead is billed on built capacity rather than output. Shortages pay producers more, power plants need less machinery and become about 30 percent more productive over a game year, and new companies start faster where markets are short. Freight is billed once per day instead of once per turn, and companies that were overcharged receive a one-time credit in their own currency. Retooling plants keep earning, old profit peaks fade out of valuations, and the sector margin breakdown is one calculation.

If you run a country or follow the economy

Money and bonds. A rate committee with no player members now decides on the turn after it meets instead of waiting out a 24-turn window, so meetings follow the regular eight-turn cadence. The US committee had held its rate at 7 percent while prices fell. Governments raise their debt ceiling as debt approaches it, and roll over bonds they cannot repay without adding to debt. Large maturities pay out, and primary placement stops at maturity. State enterprises build new capacity when their market is short, and reforming planned economies sponsor privatization bills. Smaller supplier expansions and deficit-aware governments keep computer-run economies steadier. Opening corporations scale with each economy, and Russia's 1991 spending no longer counts its regional grants twice.

The clock and turn speed. Markets refresh every 15 minutes with the price countdown on its own, and the turn timer opens the live status page. Banks, treasuries and bond repayments settle in parallel, corporate income and tax settle in fewer steps, and the turn reads corporations without their payment history. Savings show the rate of the bank that holds them, and a line of credit draws on the lending pool of the bank you borrow from.

Everything else

Batch buttons say how many runs you can afford, and a batch that stops early reports a partial run with its total instead of an error. Plainer labels replace Political Strength, Organization and other short forms. You can choose your Bloc's color. The mobile sign-out button and version link in the new menus are fixed. Support tickets stop asking for a page you already gave and keep their platform confirmation. Sandbox testers can found a party alone; the live game still needs three founders.

Corrections

Still broken

Race replay needs stored campaign history, so older races may have none. Newsroom influence only acts in worlds that enable it. The economy changes in this release, including shortages, margins and supplier growth, change long-run balance in ways we have not yet seen play out in the live world; expect follow-up tuning. Turns take about two and a half minutes, up from under a minute and a half a few days ago. A live measurement narrowed most of the growth to one stretch of the corporation step, and this release adds the timing that names the exact step.

What is next

Persistent party organization, qualified sovereign financing and closer campaign, media and corporate links are possibilities. None has confirmed 1.15 scope or a release date.

Version 1.14.0. Published 10 October 2026. By the Lakeside Games team.

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