1.16: NPP engine 6: smarter politicians, governments and companies

Dev diary by the Lakeside Games team, 14 October 2026.

TL;DR

• •New: NPP engine 6. Computer-run politicians (NPPs) make better decisions in elections, government and business, with no extra money or action points. It has its own changelog and roadmap: NPP engine changelog.
• •New: engine 6 runs in worlds set to the new autonomy level V6. New singleplayer and simulation worlds start on V6. The live multiplayer world keeps its current setting for now.
• •New: corporation autopilot. You stay CEO, and autopilot runs the routine levers each turn while you keep every manual action.
• •Changed: company revenue keeps moving onto real market prices in even steps, finishing on turn 200.
• •Changed: very large share sales and new share issues now fill over several turns instead of all at once. Prices are unchanged.
• •Changed: commodity prices stop climbing forever on shortages that building more could never close. The correction switches on in stages over the turns after release, and prices move at most 6% per turn.
• •Fixed: own supply across states no longer blocks surplus sales, healthcare production no longer swings between high and low, and corporation budget increases are judged against your real daily revenue.

The story

Most of this release is about the politicians you do not control. NPPs fill the seats, run the governments and own the companies that players do not, so how well they decide shapes every world. Until now their behaviour shipped as part of whatever game release it landed in, with no record of its own. From 1.16 the NPP engine has its own version number and its own changelog, so every change to how they think is listed in one place.

Engine 6 is built on one rule: NPPs get smarter, not stronger. No change gives them more money, more action points or extra weight in elections. They use what they already had more carefully.

NPP engine 6

Everything in this section applies in worlds set to autonomy V6. New singleplayer and simulation worlds start on V6. Existing worlds keep their level, and the live multiplayer world stays where it is until we decide to move it.

Running for office

• •Parties run their strongest NPPs for their most senior races. Where a party is weak across a region, it puts its best people in the local races it can still win instead of lost causes.
• •Ambitious incumbents with real standing step up to an open, more senior office in their home region instead of holding the same seat forever.
• •NPP candidates hold rallies in their own race, at the same cost and with the same effect as a player rally, and at most once every four turns.
• •In countries without players, presidential primaries can draw a challenger from the party's strongest NPPs.
• •Late in an NPP-only primary, a candidate who is clearly behind withdraws rather than splitting the vote. It does not endorse anyone. Primaries with a player in them are never touched.

Governing

• •Before filing a bill, an NPP counts the likely votes and does not file one that would fail.
• •An NPP government whips its own members on the bills that serve its long-term goals. Each member still weighs its own views, and the whip never applies in a party led by a player.
• •The opposition only votes as a bloc against a government it could actually defeat. Against a large majority, opposition members vote on each bill's merits.
• •Heads of government judge ministers on the goals in their brief, keeping one who is turning things around and replacing one whose goal failed on their watch.

Money and business

• •Central banks run by an NPP respond when their currency falls or rises sharply, adjusting interest rates and, after a big fall, defending the currency with a trading band backed by their own reserves.
• •NPPs buy shares and bonds where the value is: the better the deal, the more likely they buy, and shares priced far above their worth are more likely to be sold. Overall trading volume stays about the same.
• •NPPs who run or own companies lean towards bills that help those companies, such as a subsidy or tariff for their industry, and against bills that hurt them. You can see this on an NPP's profile, and voters mark them down a little when their holdings decided the vote. A sector bill can now win over the NPPs invested in that sector.
• •NPP-run companies pick their CEOs from NPPs with a good record running companies in the same industry. A CEO who dies is now replaced instead of staying in charge.

The full list, with every version number, is on the NPP engine changelog, along with the roadmap. Still to come: measuring how much stronger V6 makes NPPs in long simulated worlds, then trimming the income they get without acting so their overall strength stays level.

Corporation autopilot

Your company's Overview has an Autopilot switch. You stay CEO and can still do anything by hand.

• •Each turn autopilot sets marketing, logistics and R&D budgets and the dividend, grows plants that sell, pauses plants stuck in a glut, and opens new plants when there is spare cash. Budgets and dividends you set by hand are reset the next turn while it is on.
• •It never borrows, picks research, retools, sells or closes plants, or buys rivals. When one of those is worth doing it lists it on the Overview, and urgent ones also arrive in your inbox.
• •A company on autopilot is not penalised for an inactive CEO. The CEO's national influence is capped at the standard rate; the higher rate for the largest listed companies needs you running it yourself.
• •Appointing an NPP caretaker switches autopilot off.

Company revenue moves onto real market prices

The support that kept some businesses earning close to an old revenue formula is coming off in 24 even steps, from turn 177 to turn 200. Each turn every affected business closes the same share of the gap to what it would earn at real market prices. From turn 200 every business earns real market prices.

Businesses you built yourself already earned market prices and barely change. Businesses that started with the world, that you bought, or that the computer founded move the most. Businesses selling into a shortage may earn more; plants with unused capacity or in a crowded market earn less.

If you are losing out, check each sector's page for what is holding you back, mothball idle plants, adjust your pricing, secure your inputs with supply agreements or your own plants, and build where buyers are short. Through turn 179, company revenue and income kept rising, and the share of companies making a loss moved from about 8% to 9%.

Commodity prices stop running away

Most commodities have been short for the whole life of the world, and their prices have climbed a little every turn no matter how much capacity was built. The cause was in how demand was measured: household and government buying was set as a multiple of what was produced the turn before, so new plants raised next turn's demand almost as fast as they raised supply, and the price system read the gap that could never close as a shortage getting worse.

What changes:

• •A shortage that is not getting worse no longer pushes its price up each turn. Prices still rise when a shortage deepens and fall when it eases.
• •Household and government demand are capped closer to what the world actually produces, so new capacity narrows the gap instead of chasing it.
• •Retail demand still grows with the economy, at a gentler rate.
• •A plant at a high production setting that sells into a deep shortage of its own product can produce a little more, using a little more input.
• •Timber's surplus stockpile is drawn down instead of sitting on the price for years.

The team switches these on one stage at a time over the turns after release, watching company income and the share of loss-making companies before each step. Prices move at most 6% per turn toward their new level, so there is no sudden jump in anyone's revenue or costs. Expect commodity prices to drift down over the following weeks rather than drop at once.

Shares and markets

• •Selling shares to the market: the market buys up to 5% of a company's value each turn, counting every seller together. Sales under ₳25M per company per turn are never limited. A bigger market sell is refused with the amount you can sell now, and a sell order above the limit fills a slice each turn at the market price.
• •Issuing new shares: the market places up to 10% of a company's shares, or ₳50M worth, whichever is larger, in one turn, and the rest over the following turns.
• •Prices are unchanged. Nobody receives less for their shares, only later when a block is very large.

Smaller changes and fixes

• •Companies can ship their own surplus to their out-of-state plants before local buyers, with freight costs shown separately. Partial or blocked hauls now use another of your mines, and leftover surplus still reaches ordinary buyers.
• •Healthcare production follows local supply, so hospitals no longer alternate between high and low output.
• •Budget increases are judged against your company's actual daily revenue, the same figure as the CEO statement.
• •Bank owners can see named depositors and their balances, largest first.
• •Group leaders can keep an NPP subsidiary's new investment within its main industry, and NPP CEOs keep a sector while construction is unfinished. Group pages use the active supply controls.
• •Market listings show whether a company is run by a player or an NPP, and the factory-built construction method has its own name.
• •Slate cards load their details when opened, US House projections load faster, interrupted corporation pages offer a retry, and banner ads explain that they wait for approval.