Hello Victorians, wake up, grab a brush and put on a little make-up - were talking about Bulk Nationalization today! Also, I will be bringing you more details on the next step in the evolution of the Companies feature: Ownership of building levels. Lets get started, shall we?

Bulk Nationalization

Since the release of the 1.7 update and the Nationalization feature, the biggest wish from the community (and ourselves) in regards to it was to have a tool that allows you to nationalize more buildings at once and to let you choose more concretely which levels you want to nationalize. So thats what we did! In order to access this new tool, you will have to go into the Building Registry, which you can find on the bottom of the Buildings panel. Big button. Big window. Big nice.
In here you will see a new button which says Nationalize Filtered Buildings. The Bulk Nationalization waits behind this new button in the Building Registry
As you may be able to tell from its name already, for assembling the list of buildings to be nationalized with the tool, we take into account all the filters you have set up inside the Building Registry. So if for example youve filtered your list down to a list of buildings that are owned by other countries or pops in other countries, well then these are the only buildings that are considered when opening the Bulk Nationalization window. Alternatively you could have filtered the list for buildings that are located in West Bengal, that have a goods shortage and that are currently not hiring. The more you filter, the more control you have over which buildings to nationalize. Now lets see what happens when you press that button. Example: List of all British Pop-owned Ranches, Furniture Manufacturies and Steel Mills that I have filtered for in the Building Registry and that I can nationalize in one go
You can see a list of all affected buildings on top and the main sliders underneath to determine how many levels youd like to nationalize as you know it from the existing tool. If other owner groups were present, thered be a separate slider for them. Additionally, to the left of it, weve added a shortcut to filter by a specific ownership type in order to allow you to only select Manor House owned properties for example (because who needs these Landowners, really). Quick filter for specific ownership type
On the right side of the window, you see the summed up consequences, costs and the option to disable payment (if your laws allow it). All thats left to do is press the button and take control. This Bulk Nationalization feature should prove a powerful tool in everybodys toolbox when it comes to claiming national ownership and we cant wait to see you use it.

Companies Building Ownership

As we wrote in the past when we talked about Companies, we have always had a bunch of ideas on how to expand the feature to integrate it more in the simulation. One of these ideas was giving established Companies actual ownership over building levels in the country which they would positively affect, rather than applying it to all buildings in your country. So now that we have shipped the 1.7 update which contained the Building Ownership Rework that actually allows other buildings to take control of levels, it felt only natural to take this next step for Companies too. The way we do this is by giving each established Company a Headquarter (HQ) building. This building will act much like a Financial District or Manor House. They are going to have Pops working in them, have an ownership portfolio overview etc. So you still decide which Companies to establish in order to specialize your country, but how that plays out will be different. The establishment of a Company HQ may require you to give away some of your own building levels or provide the necessary funds. Details on this still need to be evaluated and implemented as we are approaching 1.8, but the conditions will likely be dependent on your economic laws. When you decide to establish a Company, we determine in which state its HQ will spawn based on where in your country the relevant industries are the most prominent. So if you establish Friedrich Krupp for example, a company that cares about Steel, Guns and Artillery, it looks through your country and finds the state with the highest number of building levels of these types and will settle there. Friedrich Krupp being established in Westphalia, the major steel producing state in Prussia
Once established, Companies can invest into new building levels like Financial Districts or Manor Houses. They make use of the Investment Pool for this. Depending on how much they or the Pops in them have contributed to it, there will be more or less investments from Companies into new levels. Like the other ownership buildings, the Company HQ level will increase with each level they build or buy. A goal that we have with their investment logic is that Companies should start investing much more locally, e.g. in their own state, before expanding to your country. But of course if you have foreign investment rights in place, Companies will also be able to make use of that and start building new Steel Mills on the other side of the world! But keep in mind that Companies will only ever invest in buildings of their assigned types, so Friedrich Krupp will never build a Ranch for example. A look inside Friedrich Krupp and their Property Portfolio
Another major change that were doing with this update is of course to change the throughput and construction bonuses. Companies will only affect the buildings that are actually belonging to them, rather than every single building of fitting type in your country. To compensate for this, we increase the bonus that Companies are providing. The same is true for the construction bonus, which is applied only to buildings that are funded by the Company. In the interface, we will represent Company ownership with their icon wherever a level is owned by them. We are also thinking about adding a new color to distinguish their ownership type further, but will need to investigate this more. What we also do to visualize company ownership is take it into the third dimension. We will show on the world map that a building has an association to a company in the form of billboards. If theres at least one level being owned by a Company, we place an according billboard showing the Companys logo on the building. Our Art team has come up with multiple designs for billboards, very pretty (but still WIP)

For the future, we can see potential to expand this kind of visualization to other areas, e.g. ships and trucks, but thats out of scope for 1.8 at least. While this ownership change is a major step forward for Companies, its not the end of our plans for them. We cannot provide you a timeline for further improvements yet, but we do see potential to expand on them with features like political impact (e.g. influencing IGs or enactment of certain laws) and company leading characters among other things. But thats for another time. The next Dev Diary is coming to you in two weeks on the 19. of September, where Martin will walk you through the changes we are making to Political Movements. With that, Im leaving you for today and wish you a happy Thursday! ;)