I changed my country and lost something I did not expect

I am not a young player and I do not rush things, but even so I made a mistake when I changed my country, and I want to tell the story so you do not repeat it. The move itself is simple. The cost is the part I did not think about properly. First, understand that moving is always two steps, in this order: you travel to the new country FIRST, and THEN you change your citizenship. There is no button anywhere that says become a citizen of a faraway place. You genuinely have to go there first with your own feet. I looked for the shortcut. There is none, and that is on purpose. Step one is to travel. You pick the country you want and you travel to it. Travelling is not instant and not free - it costs time and energy based on distance, so a country across the world costs more than a close neighbour. It also uses travel tickets, and the number depends on how far you go. The game shows you the cost clearly before you commit, so you are not moving blind. Good. Step two, once you have actually arrived, is to change your citizenship over to the new country. The game asks for a few sensible things: your password, since this is a big change to your account; you must accept the terms; and you need a little energy to spare, because the change itself is not completely free of energy. Also, there are two states you cannot be in when you do it - you cannot be working, and you cannot be mid-journey. So finish your work, make sure you have truly arrived, and then switch. Now the part I did not expect, and the reason I am writing this. When you change citizenship, two things get wiped. Your political endorsements are cleared. And - this is the big one - unless the new country is privately owned, your political influence resets all the way to zero. Gone. You start fresh in the new home and you have to build it back up from nothing. I had spent weeks quietly building influence in my old country, just by being an active, present citizen. I did not think of it as a possession. Then I moved for a slightly better tax rate, and the morning after, my influence was zero. The tax saving was real, but it did not come close to paying for what I threw away. Influence grows slowly over time, and if you hop around chasing small advantages you keep knocking it back to zero and it never becomes anything. The players whose voices actually carry weight are almost always the ones who settled down and stayed. So my advice, from someone who learned it the slow way: do not country-hop. Treat a move as a real decision, not a casual click. Scout the country properly first - look at its taxes, its budget, its bonuses - and pick a place you genuinely intend to stay for a good while. Then the influence you patiently build is yours to keep. If the new country is privately owned, the influence reset does not apply, but for ordinary public countries it always does. Know that before you go. The mechanics of the move are nothing to fear - travel, arrive, password, accept, confirm. It is only the influence reset that deserves real thought. Think twice, move once.