Last lesson ended on a small promise: that moving countries is a deliberate, two-part act, and that location always comes before citizenship. This lesson is that move, walked through slowly and with no rush at all. Please do not feel intimidated by it - it is genuinely just two steps, and the game holds your hand carefully through both of them. By the end you will know exactly what you will be clicking and, far more importantly, the one real cost to weigh up in your mind before you decide to do it.
Let us start with the headline rule, because everything else hangs from it: moving to a new country is always travel there FIRST, and THEN change your citizenship. You cannot skip straight to the second step, however much you might want to. There is simply no button anywhere that says "become a citizen of a faraway place" - you genuinely have to physically go there first, with your own two feet, so to speak. So let us take the two steps in their proper order, one after the other.
Step 1 - travel there
First you have to actually get to your destination. You pick the country you want to move to, and you travel to it. Travelling is not instantaneous and it is not free: it costs you time and energy based on distance, so a country across the world will naturally cost you more than a close neighbour. On top of that, travel uses travel tickets - the number you need depends on how far you are going, so a longer journey simply asks for more of them than a short hop does. None of this is a trap waiting to spring on you; it is just the honest price of distance, and the game shows you the cost clearly before you commit to setting off, so you are never moving blind.
Step 2 - become a citizen
Once you are physically standing in your target country, having arrived properly, you can change your citizenship over to it. The game asks for a few sensible things before it will let you go ahead, and each one is there for a good reason. You will need to enter your password - a small safety check, since this is a genuinely big change to your account. You must also tick to accept the terms. And you need at least a little energy to spare, because changing citizenship is not completely free of energy, so do not arrive on a totally empty tank and expect to switch. There are also two states you simply cannot be in when you do it: you cannot be working, and you cannot be mid-journey. Finish whatever you are doing, make absolutely sure you have actually arrived, and then make the switch with confidence.
- Pick your destination country and travel to it - this spends time, energy by distance, and travel tickets depending on how far the journey is.
- Wait until you have fully arrived; you cannot change citizenship while you are still mid-journey.
- Make sure you are not currently working, and that you have a little energy to spare for the change.
- Open the citizenship change, enter your password, accept the terms, and confirm - your new country is now officially home.
The one cost that really matters: your influence resets
Here is the part to read slowly and carefully, because it is the real reason not to country-hop casually from place to place. When you change citizenship, two things get wiped clean. First, your political endorsements are cleared away. Second - and this is the big, important one - unless the new country is privately owned, your political influence resets all the way down to zero. You start completely fresh in your new home and have to build that influence back up again from nothing. If you happen to move into a privately owned country, that particular reset does not apply to you, but for ordinary public countries it absolutely and always does. Keep that firmly in mind.
Hopping is not free in political terms
Because changing citizenship resets your political influence to zero in any public country, every move means starting that score over from scratch. So this is not a thing to do lightly or often. Pick a home you actually intend to stay in for a good while, and you get to keep all the influence you patiently build there.
It is genuinely worth dwelling on why that one cost matters so much. Political influence is something you grow slowly over time, just by being an active, present citizen of a country. If you hop every few days chasing something shinier, you keep knocking that influence back down to zero and never let it accumulate into anything meaningful, which leaves you with very little standing anywhere at all. The players who matter politically, the ones whose voices carry weight, are almost always the ones who settled down and stayed put. So please treat a move as a real, considered decision, not a casual click you make on a passing impulse.
One more reassurance, because new players so often hesitate nervously over this exact screen, worried they are about to break something. Nothing about the move is hidden or sudden or sprung on you. You see the travel cost clearly before you ever set off; the citizenship change asks you plainly for your password and to accept the terms; and the influence reset is simply a known, upfront consequence of switching public countries - not a sneaky penalty applied to you afterwards. As long as you have arrived, are not working, and have a little energy spare, the switch itself is a calm, deliberate confirmation. There is honestly nothing to fear in the mechanics; the only thing left to weigh is whether this is really the home you want.
Put it all together and the advice is gentle and clear. Travel deliberately, arrive fully, switch over with your password and a little energy in hand, and understand from the start that your influence begins fresh on the other side. Choose a country you have already scouted properly - remember that handy country selector from lesson two - and one you would be genuinely happy to call home for a good long while. With your home thoughtfully chosen, the next lessons turn to the shared pot of money that home actually runs on: the budget.