Bloc Alignment & Spheres of Influence

The Cold War layer tracks two related things: how drawn a nation is toward each pole () and which patron the nation actually belongs to right now (its sphere). Alignment is the cause; sphere membership is the effect that follows from it.

Alignment shares

Every nation carries a share (0-100) toward each pole in the current era, plus an uncommitted remainder. Shares across all poles and the remainder always sum to 100. The gap between a nation's top pole and its next-highest is its lead, and lead is what most thresholds are measured against:

85 lead (locked). A nation this committed is immovable by ordinary passive drift; only a deliberate influence play can shift it further.
20 lead or below (non-aligned band). A genuinely uncommitted nation resists drift at half the normal rate, so it does not get accidentally nudged into a .

Joining and leaving a bloc

Whether a nation can join, or is drifting toward leaving, an alignment-governed organization (a bloc, alliance, or similar channel) is measured on the nation's share in that org's pole specifically, not its overall lead:

Share at or above 60 means the nation may join.
Share at or below 40 means an existing member is heading for the door (flagged as wanting out).
Between 41 and 59 is a deadband. Nothing happens here. This stops a member flapping in and out of its bloc on a few points of ordinary drift.

A nation has to hold past one of these thresholds for a sustained run of turns (half a game year) before the world actually acts on it, joining, leaving, or feeding into bloc stress. A one- spike does not trigger anything.

The Non-Aligned Movement is a special case: it has no pole of its own, so its "share" is read off the uncommitted remainder against the same 60/40 gates.

Passive drift

Alignment shares move a little on their own every turn, but this background drift is deliberately small: a player's own influence play always outweighs it. A few things shape how it lands:

Opposing pulls on different poles cancel out before anything else is applied, so only the net direction matters.
Pulls toward the same pole simply add together.
Movement in a single turn is capped, and the cap is larger for a nation currently caught in an open crisis, so a live flashpoint can move faster than routine drift.
Standing membership in an alignment-linked organization exerts its own small constant pull toward that org's pole. This pull alone can carry a nation up to a ceiling well short of the locked threshold; getting a nation past that ceiling and toward being locked in takes a deliberate play, not just sitting in the organization.

Bloc stress

A bloc's own cohesion is modeled separately from any one member's alignment. An alliance that expands fast does not automatically defend everything it holds as well as a smaller, settled bloc would. Stress is a single 0-1 gauge built from three things about the bloc's own membership:

Contested members. Members a rival pole is actively pulling at cost attention; members nobody is contesting cost nothing.
Members heading for the door. The same sustained "wants out" signal used for leaving thresholds.
Recent accessions. Members who joined within roughly the last quarter game-year are still being digested. This cost decays over time, it is a transition cost, not a permanent tax on being large.

Raw member count is deliberately not an input: a large bloc of settled, uncontested members is not penalized just for its size.

Stress reduces how effectively the bloc's own plays land, up to a cap: a fully-stressed bloc is meaningfully impaired but never completely inert. It bucket into three player-facing labels: Settled, Strained, and Overextended. Stress is self-correcting; it falls back down as contested members settle and accessions finish digesting, with no action required from anyone.

What this means for you

Watch your bloc's stress label before pushing to add more members fast. A string of new accessions or a run of contested members will blunt your bloc's own plays for a while.
A member sitting in the 41-59 deadband on your pole is not actually at risk of leaving yet; do not waste effort trying to "save" it.
A member below 40 for a sustained stretch is a real defection risk and will start showing up in your bloc's stress.
Passive membership alone will not lock a nation into your sphere. If you want a nation genuinely committed (past the locked threshold), you need deliberate influence plays, not just organizational membership.
Crossing into a new alignment era re-maps every nation's shares onto the new era's poles once, automatically; a pole that has no successor in the new era returns its share to the uncommitted pool rather than vanishing.

Alignment shares

85 lead (locked). A nation this committed is immovable by ordinary passive drift; only a deliberate influence play can shift it further.

20 lead or below (non-aligned band). A genuinely uncommitted nation resists drift at half the normal rate, so it does not get accidentally nudged into a .

Joining and leaving a bloc

Share at or above 60 means the nation may join.

Share at or below 40 means an existing member is heading for the door (flagged as wanting out).

Between 41 and 59 is a deadband. Nothing happens here. This stops a member flapping in and out of its bloc on a few points of ordinary drift.

The Non-Aligned Movement is a special case: it has no pole of its own, so its "share" is read off the uncommitted remainder against the same 60/40 gates.

Passive drift

Alignment shares move a little on their own every turn, but this background drift is deliberately small: a player's own influence play always outweighs it. A few things shape how it lands:

Opposing pulls on different poles cancel out before anything else is applied, so only the net direction matters.

Pulls toward the same pole simply add together.

Movement in a single turn is capped, and the cap is larger for a nation currently caught in an open crisis, so a live flashpoint can move faster than routine drift.

Standing membership in an alignment-linked organization exerts its own small constant pull toward that org's pole. This pull alone can carry a nation up to a ceiling well short of the locked threshold; getting a nation past that ceiling and toward being locked in takes a deliberate play, not just sitting in the organization.

Bloc stress

Contested members. Members a rival pole is actively pulling at cost attention; members nobody is contesting cost nothing.

Members heading for the door. The same sustained "wants out" signal used for leaving thresholds.

Recent accessions. Members who joined within roughly the last quarter game-year are still being digested. This cost decays over time, it is a transition cost, not a permanent tax on being large.

Raw member count is deliberately not an input: a large bloc of settled, uncontested members is not penalized just for its size.

What this means for you

Watch your bloc's stress label before pushing to add more members fast. A string of new accessions or a run of contested members will blunt your bloc's own plays for a while.

A member sitting in the 41-59 deadband on your pole is not actually at risk of leaving yet; do not waste effort trying to "save" it.

A member below 40 for a sustained stretch is a real defection risk and will start showing up in your bloc's stress.

Passive membership alone will not lock a nation into your sphere. If you want a nation genuinely committed (past the locked threshold), you need deliberate influence plays, not just organizational membership.

Crossing into a new alignment era re-maps every nation's shares onto the new era's poles once, automatically; a pole that has no successor in the new era returns its share to the uncommitted pool rather than vanishing.