This update is a deep balance and "living world" pass — the simulation now reacts to your decisions across every connected system. Every action has a realistic consequence.

AI THAT REMEMBERS
• Rival nations now hold real grudges. Past wars, broken treaties, and betrayals lastingly stiffen a nation toward you — and a vengeful leader acts on that grudge far harder than a forgiving one.
• Grudges cool friendship and harden coercion, so how you treat a country echoes for years.

POPULATION THAT MOBILIZES
• Angry voter blocs and a large, unequal underclass now actually mobilize — feeding protest, eroding approval, and stoking unrest instead of just sitting in a menu.
• A calm, broadly content society stays stable; a fractured one pays for it in the streets.

WAR THAT FIGHTS BACK
• Enemies now choose a real strategy — counter-attacking when strong, grinding you down when dug in, or entrenching when beaten — instead of passively defending.
• Their supply, morale, and readiness degrade over a long losing war (or harden when they're winning).
• Casualties now scale with the size of the army in the field: great powers bleed heavily, small states no longer take impossible losses.

CRISES THAT CASCADE
• Economic and political crises now ripple across the whole system. A debt crisis also slides the currency and chokes growth; hyperinflation also fractures society; mass unemployment also feeds unrest.
• A heavy-handed crackdown on protesters can now ignite a larger generational uprising.

ECONOMY
• Funding healthcare and welfare now properly costs money — cranking services widens the deficit instead of being free.
• Tightened a few growth bonuses that were double-counting, so investment still pays without runaway numbers.

Thanks as always to the community for the detailed feedback driving these fixes. Stability validated across a 50-year soak test on multiple nations.