Nationalization & National Corporations

Nationalization is the state-ownership lifecycle: a government can take a private corporation (or one of its sectors) into public hands, run it as a state-owned enterprise, and later sell it back to the market. Every country has a single central National Corporation that absorbs what the state takes over, plus optional split-offs for individual sector types.

The two directions are inverses of one another. Nationalizing folds a target's sectors, assets, and bonds into the country's National Corporation and dissolves the original shell. Privatizing carves a new, independently named corporation back out and floats it to investors.

When the State Can Take a Corporation

Unowned and NPC assets can be nationalized freely. A player-owned corporation is protected: the state may only reach it when one of four conditions unlocks the target.

The notice window is counterplay. When a strategic, monopoly, or supermajority taking is filed, the target owner sees a pending notice and has those turns to respond — sell down a monopoly share, fill a vacant CEO seat, restructure, or rally political opposition — before the taking completes. Only genuinely abandoned firms (distress) are taken immediately.

Each country starts with a set of default strategic sectors flavored to its economy (for example, defense and technology for the United States, financial and energy for the United Kingdom). A head of government can designate further sectors strategic through executive action or legislation.

Authority: Who Pulls the Trigger

There are two authority paths, and the path determines how much the state must pay.

Executive — fast and unilateral, available to the head of government for emergencies, but limited in reach and politically expensive when used as a seizure. Executive takings can apply discounted or token compensation.

Legislative — slow and durable. A taking enacted through a bill carries full statutory weight and is expected to pay a fair buyout. The supermajority path is a special legislative route that unlocks any target with a two-thirds vote.

Compensation Tiers

Shareholders are paid against the target's valuation, scaled by the tier the authority used.

Valuation discounts future sector cash flows at the same rate corporations use for their own net-present-value math, so the buyout price tracks the going concern rather than a sticker number.

Investor Confidence

Every country carries an investor-confidence index from 0 to 100, healing toward a baseline of 70 a little each turn. Takings push it down — a fairly-paid buyout barely moves it, while an uncompensated seizure takes a large bite. A statist government pays less confidence for a taking; a market-liberal one pays more. Popular takings (rescuing a distressed firm, breaking up a monopoly) can even nudge public trust upward.

Confidence is not cosmetic. As it falls below baseline it feeds three real pressures:

1. Expropriation risk drags private corporate margins (state-owned enterprises are exempt).
2. Sovereign risk premium raises the interest rate the government pays on new debt.
3. Founding surcharge raises the cost to incorporate a new company in that country — up to +25% at rock-bottom confidence.

Privatizing sends the opposite, pro-market signal and restores some confidence.

Operating a State-Owned Enterprise

Once absorbed, sectors run under the National Corporation rather than as a sprawl of separate firms. SOE behavior is distinct from a private corp:

• Dynamic efficiency. Instead of a flat penalty, an SOE's margin drag scales with governance. A well-run, transparent, low-corruption state runs its enterprises close to private efficiency; a corrupt one bleeds margin.
• Public-service mandates. A National Corporation's sectors can be put under mandates that nudge state metrics — employment, infrastructure reliability, cost of living — at a small but compounding per-turn rate.
• Price controls. A price-controlled mandate trades extra margin drag for a stronger public-service contribution.
• Treasury backing. SOE operating profit is remitted into the national budget as public-enterprise revenue.

The finance minister (Secretary of the Treasury, Chancellor, and equivalents) manages the country's National Corporations: appointing CEOs, splitting a sector type off into its own named enterprise, and merging one back in.

Privatization

Privatization is the inverse operation: the state carves a fraction of a sector out of the National Corporation into a brand-new corporation with its own name, then floats it by IPO or auction.

• Carve size per spin-out is capped between 10% and 30% of a sector — fully divesting a sector means creating several separate companies, an anti-monopoly guard.
• Golden share. The state may retain up to 40% of a spun-out corporation to keep a strategic foothold.
• Auctions run for a bid window of 48 turns.
• Cooldowns. A privatized corp cannot be re-nationalized for 168 turns, and a freshly absorbed sector cannot be privatized for 168 turns — preventing churn in either direction.

Political Weight

Nationalization is never free. Beyond investor confidence, a taking can cost regime legitimacy and government approval, scaled by how unpopular it is and by the government's ideological lean. Statist governments find takings cheaper and privatizations costlier; market-liberal governments find the reverse. Plan the politics before you plan the takeover.