It's the first of the month, and of course that means an announcement. Here's what's in store for February:

It's Stimulus February! It's the shortest month of the year, and P&W will be running a bit of a fundraiser. For this month only, Credits can be redeemed directly for $10,000,000 each. That's a cap of $100,000,000/nation for this month. As soon as February ends, this will change, and the amount of money redeemed per Credit will be significantly reduced.

For new nations, the first 5 cities can be built without waiting on the 10 day timer. This does not apply to National Projects. If you build a national project, you will have to wait 10 days to build your next city, whether you have less than 5 cities or not.

It now costs 1 Credit to create an alliance. This change is less amount money or sustaining the game, but applying a bit of game theory to alliances. This change will encourage new players to seek out established alliances and learn the ropes, instead of creating their own alliances, getting raided, and quitting shortly thereafter. It will also discourage (though I am not so foolish to believe completely root out) alliance bank gimmicks where multiple alliances are created to protect money and resources from attackers. This change will make alliances more serious, more permanent, and new alliances more successful.

You can read more about these changes on the forums, here: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18385-212017-stimulus-february/

A slight change to referrals has been made. First, you can now see which players you've referred on the Referrals page.

Next, the requirements and payouts have been increased for referred players. For each new player that you recruit to Politics & War that reaches 200 Score and plays for 30 days, your nation will receive $25,000,000 and 200 Steel, Aluminum, Munitions, and Gasoline.

These increased payouts should help encourage you to find new players for P&W that will stick around. Remember, more players in the game makes it more enjoyable for everyone!

* Assassinate Spies operation has reduced number of enemy spies killed by 30%

* Sabotaging Enemy Units operations now have kill restrictions of between 1-5% of the enemy's units

* Nations on the color gray no longer contribute to Alliance Taxes

Read more about these changes here: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18306-1242017-spy-changes-no-alliance-tax-on-gray-nations/

I'm working on making information more accessible in-game. When hovering over various icons and things, you should now see Tooltips that expand on the icon with more information. Not everything has a tooltip, and there may be a few bugs that need to be worked out yet.

Hey all, quick update on Donations. I've changed the price scheme slightly for Credits. It's now a little more expensive to buy smaller amounts of Credits, and less expensive to buy larger amounts of Credits. This shift is intended to incentivize buying a lot of Credits at once, vs. buying one or two Credits several times, which just gives PayPal more money, and P&W less due to flat fees on purchases.

With that said, your Donation limits have been reset for the month of January! You can spend up to 10 Credits on your nation for bonuses like $2,500,000 / Credit, 50 Infrastructure / Credit, 500 of a manufactured resource / Credit, and Resetting your City/Project 10 Day Timer for 4 Credits.

As always, you can spend as many Credits as you want on Player Advertisements, Flags, Alliance Pips, VIP Subscriptions, and other cosmetic bonuses.