The two countries I announced earlier are in. Both are fictional, both are free for everyone who owns the game, and each plays by its own rules. Your saves carry over — lives you have already started stay as they are, and the new countries appear on the country screen when you start a new life.

Two new countries

• The Kingdom of Westerholm — a parliamentary country. There is no presidential election. Win a seat, earn a place in government, then win your party's leadership to become Prime Minister. Elections come when the Prime Minister calls them, or when a government falls.
• The Southern Republic — a country of the plaza and the barracks. The president is elected directly, with a runoff if nobody wins the first round. The constitution allows a single term. Crowds in the plaza can lift an unknown to power or bring a government down, and the army is a political force of its own.
• In the Southern Republic, nothing about the army is hidden: a new tab shows the barracks' mood, what is pushing it, each unit's loyalty and commander, and how close the country is to a dangerous night.
• Each country has its own backgrounds, people, events, stories and endings — and taking office now reads differently in each one.

Every country gets its own pictures

• Each country now has its own map, action scenes, inauguration scenes, prologue pages and title screen — the new countries and the existing ones alike.
• Portraits for each country's fixed cast — rivals, power brokers and the people you will keep running into.

Four new minigames, one for each country's way of doing politics

• Dispatch Box (Westerholm): questions to the Prime Minister. Pick your answer and strike back at the right moment.
• Division Lobby (Westerholm): whipping a vote. Place your members, seal off the lobby, and count the doors.
• The Balcony (Southern Republic): speaking to the crowd in the plaza. Read the districts below and choose your lines.
• Money Road (Southern Republic): money moving through pipes and valves. Open the right valve before it reaches the wrong window.
• Like the other minigames, they don't open every time, and each one has its own help page.

A new opening

• Instead of the same three cards every life, a new life opens with one card about the world that year: who leads the country, which party governs, and the story of the moment.
• From your second life on, the opening and the background prologue can be skipped with a button or Esc.
• The new countries also have a prologue for starting as an ordinary citizen, with no background.

Fixes

• A party leader who had just stepped down or lost the leadership could win it back at a convention in the same week.
• Southern Republic: after the barracks took power, a government that survived a second attempt was wrongly forced into a transition election.
• Starting a new life in another country could open on the previous country's office.
• The name dice could produce names too long for the box.
• Some people's names and portraits did not match: a portrait of the wrong gender, or a name from another country (for example a rival in the Southern Republic with a name from elsewhere). Names now come from each country's own list, and portraits match them. Lives already in progress keep the names they have.
• Rain over the Southern Republic's sunset title screen, a doubled close button in the army tab, a hard-to-read chosen answer in the Dispatch Box, and country card titles starting in lowercase.
• Many smaller fixes and translation improvements in every language.

Balance

• Westerholm: a first seat now pays enough to live on.
• Money Road can be played once a week.

Text

• Characters that showed as empty boxes in Japanese and Chinese are fixed.

Minigame frequency setting

• The setting I mentioned earlier is in: Menu › Minigames — Off · Fewer · Normal · More.
• Normal is how the game has played so far. Fewer and More change how often actions open a minigame.
• Off: no minigames — results, including duties and events, are decided by your stats and luck alone. The one exception is collecting bill signatures yourself, since you chose that route.
• You can change it at any time, and it applies right away to the life you are playing.

Custom starts

• Also mentioned earlier, and now in: when you begin a new life, you can choose "Adjust…" after your background's prologue and set your starting conditions — skills, age, money, recognition, and an old entry in your ledger.
• Achievements are off for lives started this way, and the top bar shows [Custom], so the achievements you earn in a normal life keep their meaning.

Honestly, I test this game myself every day, and after this long it is so familiar that bugs slip past my eyes. The new countries are also brand new to everyone but me, so I have likely missed things. If something looks wrong, please tell me on the discussion board or in a review — I would be really grateful, and I'll fix it quickly.