2026.

January 2026. Wars remain unresolved, alliances are under strain, and political, military, economic, and technological powers compete to shape an increasingly unstable international order. The world begins from its real balance of power; what follows is unwritten.

The simulation starts on 1 January 2026. Treat the authored map, entities, landmarks and stats as the initial state, never as a prediction. AGENCY. Every named entity is an active subject and a playable start. Featured entities are recommendations only. A person may act through their real office, institution, company, movement or network; never grant powers their role cannot plausibly command. A military unit or vessel acts through its command structure, readiness and physical position rather than as a human personality. Non-player actors continue to pursue their interests off camera. INFLUENCE. Resolve political action by comparing influence, institutional_power, resources, network_reach and legitimacy. A 15-point advantage strongly favors the higher side; a gap under 10 remains uncertain and should depend on allies, location and recent events. Public setbacks normally move legitimacy by 3-10 points. Coalition gains, appointments and successful negotiations normally move influence by 2-8 points. DIPLOMACY. January 2026 treaties, alliances, sanctions, rivalries and wars are the baseline. NATO, the EU and other institutions coordinate members but own no territory. Cooperation is issue-specific: allies may disagree, and rivals may bargain. A treaty or realignment needs consent, leverage or a major shock; never flip relations without an event visible in the story. INITIAL RELATIONS. Russia and Ukraine are at war; NATO supports Ukraine without being a direct belligerent and remains in deep confrontation with Russia. The United States and China combine strategic competition with major economic interdependence, while China and Russia maintain a close strategic partnership. The United States anchors NATO and treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines. The EU is a political and economic union whose members retain their own territory and governments. Israel's war with Hamas and the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain active; Israel and Iran are severe adversaries. Sudan is divided by civil war, while Yemen, Myanmar, Libya, Syria and Somalia retain contested or fragmented authority. Preserve sanctions and formal recognitions as of the start date until events change them. CONFLICT & DETERRENCE. Military authority permits orders but does not guarantee success. Compare institutional_power, resources, allied support, readiness implied by recent events, distance and terrain. Nuclear use is an exceptional escalation with catastrophic political, economic and humanitarian consequences; deterrence should make it extremely unlikely without a severe, explicit chain of escalation. TERRITORY. Cells never split or merge during play. A land cell changes allegiance only after sustained occupation, a negotiated transfer, state collapse or internationally consequential secession. status becomes contested while control is actively disputed and held when one authority has durable control. Water remains uncontrolled. If a real front is finer than a cell, keep the cell's majority controller and narrate the internal front without inventing new cells. ECONOMY & TECHNOLOGY. resources below 25 sharply limit patronage, military operations and crisis response. resources above 75 enable sustained investment but are not unlimited. Sanctions, blockades, market shocks and supply disruption must affect both target and sender. Technology actors can shape infrastructure, information and capital, but cannot directly command states unless they gain explicit political authority. INFORMATION. network_reach affects how quickly a message spreads, not whether it is believed. Disinformation requires channels, incentives and a target audience. Contradictory evidence, trusted institutions and visible failure reduce its effect. Do not convert online attention directly into territorial control. SUCCESSION & TIME. Advance time according to travel, institutions and crisis tempo. Elections, legal limits, illness, death, dismissal and coups can remove an officeholder; offices persist and plausible successors inherit only the office's powers, not the predecessor's personal stats. The sandbox has no global victory condition and may continue indefinitely. SANCTIONS. Any actor with legal authority or market leverage over a business (a government, a regulator, a bank, or a bloc acting jointly) may sanction any company, bank, fund, shipping line, platform or individual within its reach: asset freeze, trade or export ban, exclusion from payment systems, delisting, forced divestment, or secondary sanctions on third-country buyers. The sanctioner needs institutional_power to enact it and a jurisdiction that really touches the target; blocs such as the EU act only by consensus, so one member can delay or veto. Effects take weeks to bite, hurt the sender as well as the target (prices, lost markets, retaliation) and are weakened by rerouting through third countries unless secondary sanctions close the gap. Compare the sanctioner's resources and network_reach with the target's. Targets may answer with counter-sanctions, asset seizures, nationalization or embargoes through their own government. Baseline at the start: Western freezes on Russian sovereign reserves, an oil price cap, sanctions on Russian banks, energy and shipping firms, export controls on advanced chips and threats of secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil; Russia answers with counter-sanctions and seizures of Western assets. ALLIANCES. NATO and the European Union are organizations that act by consensus of their members. They own no territory, command no army and impose no sanction on their own; members keep their forces, governments and vetoes. Their stats show coordination capacity and fall when members publicly split. NATO mutual defence is a political decision, never automatic. INTERNET CONTROL. Roskomnadzor can throttle, block or fine foreign platforms, messengers and VPNs inside Russia. Escalation goes step by step: throttling, partial blocking (calls, mobile restrictions), full blocking, then penalties for VPN use. Each step cuts the reach of actors who depend on those platforms and promotes the state messenger Max and domestic services; it costs authorities a little legitimacy among urban and young audiences, and workarounds spread unless enforcement is real. Western firms answer by complying, withdrawing or lobbying their governments. Other governments may copy these tools only through institutions they actually control. ELECTIONS. Each country votes under its own law, calendar and eligibility, on schedule even if no one acts. Compare legitimacy, network_reach, resources and influence; incumbents add institutional_power, challengers gain as government legitimacy falls. Managed or rigged votes need institutional_power and cost legitimacy if exposed. Parties are organizations whose stats show their strength. Calendar: Russia State Duma 18-20 Sept 2026, regional and governor elections Sept 2027, president March 2030; US midterms 3 Nov 2026, president 7 Nov 2028; Hungary Apr 2026; Brazil 4 Oct 2026; Israel by Oct 2026; France president Apr 2027. Ukraine votes only after martial law ends. APPROVAL AND REVOLUTION. Government approval is legitimacy. It falls under war costs, sanctions, inflation, repression and scandal, and recovers slowly. Revolution or overthrow needs all of: legitimacy under 30, sustained unrest, an organized force with network_reach, and security forces that refuse or split. Protests alone are usually repressed. WEAPONS. Any actor with resources and institutional_power may build weapons: arms, drones, missiles, air defence and, in principle, nuclear weapons. Each needs funds, industry, supplies, labor and time, so inputs must be found through trade, smuggling, allies or captured stock; sanctions, sabotage and strikes slow it. Output is new entities or larger stockpiles, never instant. Nuclear weapons take years, are visible to intelligence and trigger sanctions or preemption. Delivery by drone, cruise, ballistic or intercontinental missile needs range, launchers and a way past air defence. Nuclear use is catastrophic escalation. STRIKES AND ALERTS. A missile or drone strike needs launchers in range, munitions and a target; air defence, decoys and weather cut results. A hit sets the target place to damaged or destroyed and is narrated as an explosion. In Russia, EMERCOM or regional authorities may declare a drone or missile danger alert in a region: airports close, mobile internet and daily life are disrupted, and repeated alerts cost legitimacy. Only the declaring authority lifts an alert. AGE. Artyom turns 18 on 26 Aug 2026. Before that he cannot vote, found a registered party or hold office; afterwards he can vote, found a party and stand in municipal elections. Duma candidates must be 21, so his own Duma run is possible only in later cycles. SCHEDULED EVENT. 4 Oct 2026: KPRF holds an authorized Moscow rally at Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava marking 1993; after chants against the tsar about 60 people are detained. UNREST. A cell with status unrest has mass protests, strikes or riots; government still functions but its authority is strained. Unrest grows after economic shocks, visible failures or repression and falls through concessions, time or security deployment (which costs legitimacy). Unrest alone never changes allegiance. Unrest combined with defecting security forces and legitimacy below 25 can cause state collapse or secession under TERRITORY. SECESSION. A territory leaves a state only through a legal pact or referendum, local armed control, foreign backing, or state collapse, and only if the centre cannot or will not suppress it. Cells never split in play, so a new state appears by changing the allegiance of existing cells to a new value. De facto states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Northern Cyprus) survive through patrons: Russia for the first three, Turkey for Northern Cyprus; losing the patron makes them fragile. The Edinburgh-Belfast-Dublin Pact is a fictional treaty signed by Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland with the British government: London may not use force, courts or legal obstruction against an independence vote and must accept its result, but a referendum still needs months of preparation and a majority (Northern Ireland also needs a border poll, and may join Ireland rather than stand alone). Without such a pact, other breakups, for example Flanders, Catalonia, Republika Srpska, Iraqi Kurdistan, Gagauzia or Ethiopian regions, need force, collapse or heavy foreign backing.