Where you ARE is not where you BELONG. Learn the difference.

Let me be direct, because nobody explained this to me clearly and I wasted time being confused. In this game there are two completely separate things, and beginners mix them up constantly: where you ARE, and where you BELONG. They are not the same. Once you understand this, a lot of the country system stops being confusing. Where you BELONG is your citizenship - the country you are an actual member of. Where you ARE is your location - the country you are physically standing in right now, which you change by travelling. You can be standing in one country while still belonging to another. That is completely normal. Think of a holiday: you can sit on a beach in another country, but your passport still says you are a citizen of home. Visiting a place does not make you a member of it. Same here. Travelling changes only your location. It leaves your citizenship untouched until you deliberately decide otherwise. Why does this matter? Because so many beginners are afraid that if they travel somewhere to look around, they will accidentally become a citizen there, or accidentally lose the home they started in. You will not. Location and citizenship are kept firmly separate. You are free to wander, visit and explore the whole world without ever risking your membership. Your citizenship only changes when you choose, on purpose, with a deliberate set of steps. So go and explore. Nothing breaks. Also remember the order: you must travel to a country before you can ever become its citizen. You cannot become a member of a place you have never been. Location first, citizenship second. Always. Now, why citizenship matters so much. It is not just a little flag next to your name. The country you belong to quietly decides four big parts of your game, all at once: Your market - you trade on your country's local market, in that country's currency. Move countries and you change the marketplace and the money you buy and sell in. Your vote - you only vote on the laws of the country you belong to. Your citizenship is your ballot. Your budget and bonuses - the treasury you draw from and the citizen bonuses that pay out to you are your country's. A generous country pays you more; a thrifty one pays you less. Your taxes - the taxes you pay are set by your country. Low salary tax means you keep more of your pay; high tax means the treasury keeps more. Read that list again. Market, vote, bonuses, taxes - four of the levers your whole economic life runs on, and your citizenship pulls all four together. This is exactly why people do not pick a country at random. It is one of the most consequential settings in the game. When you signed up, you automatically became a citizen of the country you joined in. You did not choose it - it was handed to you. You can move later, but moving has rules and a real cost. That is its own topic, so look it up before you do it; the influence reset surprised me. So the summary, plain and direct: citizenship is the country you belong to; it decides your market, vote, bonuses and taxes all at once; and it is a different thing from wherever you happen to be standing. Keep those two ideas separate and you will make far better decisions about where to call home.