Read all about this change on the forum, here: http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6951-6102015-approval-rating/

A new statistic, called Approval Rating, has been added to nations. It tells you how favorably your people look upon you as a leader. A variety of actions can change this rating directly. It will also change slightly with every turn. To read more about the mechanics of how your Approval Rating is affected, either visit the forum link (above) or the Wiki page.

Your nation's approval rating currently has no effect on your nation. It does not change your income, and having a 0% approval rating won't do anything. In the future, it will have an effect on how much control you have over your nation's legislation.

Read the full forum post with all of the details, here: http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6936-692015-prohibition-of-automated-trading/

The use of scripts, bots, macros, or other programs for automated trading is now strictly against the rules and punishable by banishment.

You may also come across a small point-and-click captcha that will ask you to verify your identity as a human and not a bot to continue trading. I apologize for this inconvenience, but it's the only way to enforce this change.

For the full update, please see the forum post here: http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6909-682015-alliance-anthems/

-Alliances can now have anthems on their pages

-Alliance anthems cost 4 credits (a one time purchase for unlimited anthem changes, forever)

-Officers, Heirs, and Leaders can request anthem changes

-You can purchase the Alliance Anthem feature on the Donate page

-Alliance Anthems must be manually approved by me before they go live

-Autoplay feature and setting extends to Alliance Anthems the same way as National Anthems

I'd like to announce a change, as well as clarify how the existing system works. First, and most importantly, credits will now be cashed in directly on the Donate page for $1,000,000 instead of the previous $750,000 each. You can still redeem up to 6 credits per month, at a total of $6,000,000.

You will still be able to sell credits on the market, but as a reminder, each credit you sell on the market counts against your redeemable limit for the month. That means you can sell 1 credit and redeem 5, or sell 5 and redeem 1, but the combined total cannot reach above 6 for the month. Credits that you use to apply a nation bonus to another nation count against their limit, but not yours. You cannot use your credits to give a nation bonus to a nation that has already reached its limit.

You can spend an unlimited amount of credits on cosmetic bonuses, like flags, name changes, location changes, and VIP subscriptions. To clarify how the VIP subscription process works, you can redeem credits directly for the VIP package on the Donate page, and this will automatically give your nation 30 days of VIP status. You can redeem as many credits for VIP as you want, and it will simply extend your VIP subscription time. VIP privileges, like a national anthem and a portrait, as well as the forum privileges, are removed once your VIP time expires (until you again purchase another 30+ days of VIP).

Hello, everyone! I've been pestered a lot about this, but I think it's a good idea and time that we kicked it into practice.

As we all know, there are occasional bugs in the game, from a few typos here and there to sometimes even very serious flaws in the code that are abuseable. With this program, I'd like to work together with the community to patch any such holes in the framework of the game, and create a better experience for everyone. Until this point all the bugs that have been reported have been out of the goodness of your hearts, and I truly appreciate that. Even just fixing the typos in the game makes things more clean cut and professional for everyone that uses the site.

I want to provide more of an incentive to come forth about bugs, even the little typos. I'm introducing a program where you can be awarded a bounty for finding bugs, and based on what "tier" level the bug is, will determine your payout. There will be 4 tiers:

Tier 1 - Typos/Very Small Bugs - $50,000

Tier 2 - Miscellaneous/Non-Major Bugs - $150,000

Tier 3 - Significant, but Non-Abuseable Bugs - $500,000

Tier 4 - Major, Abuseable Bugs - $5,000,000 + Immunity

Hopefully everyone is aware that it's against the game rules to abuse any bug/exploit that's found. The penalty for this abuse of a flaw in the code is a permanent ban from the game, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to risk that. These types of bugs always get found out, eventually, and then the abusers find themselves banned and all of the time they spent playing the game, suddenly lost. I'm here now to offer some incentive to admitting to such a bug as well, along with immunity from being banned.

The proper course of action for reporting any bug is to post about it in the Tech Support forum. To prevent people from trying to get free money by copying other reports, rewards will be handed out in a first-come, first-serve manner. You do not need to post in the Tech Support forum, sometimes these types of things can be a little more sensitive, and so you're welcome to shoot me a PM either in-game or on the forums as well. The first come, first serve rule still applies, however.

That's what's in store for today, enjoy the game, and happy bug hunting!