Plant Your Flag

A server patch on top of v0.971. Two things for players: you now choose your HQ region by planting the headquarters in each city in turn, and your holdings pay at your own cargo prices — the talents and research you hold on the cargoes an industry or a town handles now multiply its dividends. And more for the Rail Baron: every platform of its stations is reachable both ways, a crowd of Barons spreads across the map instead of racing for one pair, and a poor one gets going instead of sitting idle.

Plant your flag: the region you choose

Your HQ's reach used to bloom onto the nearest towns and nothing else. Now the towns your headquarters has stood in this session take the reach slots first, most recent first, and the nearest towns fill whatever is left. Move the HQ from city to city and each one you leave joins the chain; when the chain is full, the oldest link drops off. Never move it and nothing changes.

• A plant is recorded the moment it happens. The HQ costs a few thousand to move, so a full eight-town region is a few minutes of touring; the region itself, the markers and the signs catch up at the next monthly pass, about a real minute later. Updated 3 September 2026, after publication: the first cut counted a town only when a monthly pass saw the HQ there, which made an eight-town region eight months of touring.
• Watch it on the Your Holdings page. A new section, YOUR HEADQUARTERS' REACH, lists the seat, every town you have planted the HQ in (newest first, with the reach slot each one holds or DORMANT when it lies beyond your reach) and the nearest towns filling the rest. It repaints within seconds of a move, so you can experiment with the chain and see exactly what each plant did. Added 3 September 2026, after publication.
• The chain remembers up to 8 towns whatever your reach is, so a plant that lands before your build arrives is never lost; links beyond your reach wait until it grows.
• Everything follows. The map markers number your planted towns first, the career page stars them, and the Monopoly Charter's one-time reach sweep takes the region as it stands when the charter is established.
• Moving back into a chained town makes it the seat again and simply lifts it out of the chain.

Holdings pay at your own prices

A stake in an industry or a town now earns through your own cargo talents and research: for each cargo the holding handles, one plus your bonus on it, averaged over those cargoes, multiplies your dividend. Hold +100% on wood and nothing on goods and a sawmill stake pays 1.5x — wood and goods averaged. Every holder is priced through their own build, so two companies holding the same stake are paid differently.

• An industry counts every cargo it handles — what it makes and what it takes in. A farm averages grain and livestock; a power station is priced on the coal it burns.
• A town counts what it demands at its size and climate: passengers, then mail, food (and water in the desert), goods, and the bank's cargo once it is big enough for a bank.
• The scarcity premium still applies on top, priced through your Exchange Seats and cargo floors as before — but it no longer scales with your talents, because your talents now count in their own right, once. Both multipliers cap at 4x.

Before this, a talent only scaled the market's premium over 1.00 — so in a flat market a big wood build earned a sawmill stake nothing extra. Now it does, whatever the market is doing.

Every platform, both ways

A screenshot from a player: a beautiful double-track terminus whose trains could only ever use the first platform. The arriving lane joined the approach on the diagonal, and the ladder's first piece off the throat ran the other way — the one turn a train cannot make. Every piece of that ladder had been built and counted; nothing had asked whether a train could turn into it.

• The second lane now ends on the first lane's own approach, two tiles shared at each station, so both lanes meet the throat with the same heading and every platform has a way in and a way out at both ends — including the far end, where two of three platforms used to trap a train whenever no loop could be laid.
• The AI walks its own track before buying a train, the way a train would, from each arriving lane into every platform and from every platform back out, and writes down which platforms are reachable. The first live outing read all three, both ways.
• No more right-angle turns. The pathfinder never checked the first step out of a leg seam against the leg before it, so a long double track could hook back on itself in one place no train can take. Every seam now forbids that one tile, and a lane that still turns 90 degrees anywhere is refused before it is laid. A three-platform ladder is also only promised where its ground can carry the turn: on an incline the AI builds one platform each end instead of two dead ones. Added 3 September 2026, after publication, from a report on world 1.
• Tidier corners, shorter routes. When a loop or a second lane failed and was taken back, its own curve stayed on the tile where it had joined the line, a spike of track off the corner; the rollback now lifts only that piece and leaves the line alone. And a route leaves its station along the platform for ten tiles before it may turn toward the destination, not sixteen, so a destination off to the side no longer costs an L of track. Added 3 September 2026, after publication, from two more reports on world 1.
• Achievements you had earned but never got. Class wins, fleet sizes, cargo moved and company value were credited from the match recap, and on most matches the recap was written before the award that names the crew, so nothing landed. Cargo was also read from one month, not the whole match, and the climate crowns only counted the first four worlds. All four are fixed and every stored recap has been replayed: 26 careers gained achievements and talent points tonight. Added 3 September 2026, after publication.
• The Monopoly Charter is a button now. It used to fire by itself the moment your class locked, on whichever town your HQ happened to stand in - and a monopoly is forever, so there was no time to set your headquarters up first. The Your Holdings page now carries ACTIVATE MONOPOLY beside your HQ chain once your class has locked. Plant and re-plant as you like, then press it: the town your HQ stands in at that moment is yours for good, the button reads MONOPOLY ACTIVATED, and it never fires again. A town where a rival already has a station refuses the press at no cost. Each world takes this at its next reset; until then the old automatic rule still applies there. Added 4 September 2026, after publication.
• Industries develop three times faster for everyone. An industry you serve rolls once a month for a point of development, and the odds used to be pinned exactly where an ordinary station rating sits: a well-run industry gained a point every three to six months and finished a twenty-year session near 140-180% - never enough to scale a route around. The base odds are now three times higher before any talent, class or HQ bonus: about 2.4 points a month at a 100 rating, roughly 1 at a 70 rating, still nothing at 50 or below. The same industry now ends a session at 210-330% development, which multiplies its cargo by that much, and Industrialist talents multiply the new pace rather than the old one. Holdings dividends and stakes follow the development they are paid on, so both rise with it. Each world takes this at its next reset. Added 4 September 2026, after publication; first shipped at four times and cut to three the same day after a look at a live world.
• The AI's rail stations get a real throat. A Rail Baron's double-track terminus used to funnel both main lines into one junction tile through a shared two-tile approach, with the platform curves sitting on the running line itself - which is where the hairpin entries and the platform no train could reach came from. Every platform now leaves through one plain straight tile, which carries a path signal facing the platform, so each platform is its own block and trains enter and leave independently; the junction row sits a tile further out and the two main lines meet it at opposite ends - arrivals through one door, departures through the other - with every platform connected to both. Each world adopts this at its next reset; stations already standing are not rebuilt. Added 4 September 2026, after publication.

Barons spread out

Six identical Rail Barons on one world all chose the same 172-tile pair, one built it and four surveyed it for nothing. Identical scripts rank identically. Now a pair where a rival already has a station at either end costs its full score, each company adds its own stable jitter of up to 25% so a crowd spreads across its top few pairs, and a survey abandons the moment a rival takes one of its station sites. Three Barons started together built three routes each on six different pairs.

A poor Baron gets going

• The dry-spell door opens the medium band outright. After eight empty rounds in the short band, a Baron shops 100-300 tile routes even when its spendable is short of one max loan — it still pays only for what it can afford, and only single track until it can afford two lanes.
• A station a train cannot leave is not a site. The flat-apron preference was favouring sites whose throat ran straight into the industry; both are now refused before a survey is spent on them. On one world 70 of 122 surveys had died that way in a morning.
• Output feeders look at the nearest town, not the biggest sixteen, so a food plant beside a small desert town can truck its food in.

Fixed

• Platforms 1 and 2 at a double-track destination had no exit when no balloon loop could be laid; they do now, through the shared approach.
• The Rail Baron's medium band was gated on a whole max loan even after the patience door had opened it, so a fresh company sat idle for ever.
• A held round while a mainline's fleet was still being bought no longer counts as idle, so the payback gate does not loosen during the wait.
• The output feeder's town search skipped towns that were not among the sixteen biggest on the map.