Devlog #4: Trade Routes, Spheres and the Price of Peace

Hello, world leaders!

Our fourth devlog is a preview of the next update — one of the biggest changes to how the world of Global Protocol works since launch. It rebuilds how the world trades , who leads it and what it costs to end a war .

Every screenshot comes from the current development build, taken from games we played forward a few months as the United States, Germany, Australia and Turkey. Details can still change before the update ships.

Trade hubs: where the world's goods pass

Trade now happens between real places, along real routes.

• 236 trade centres on real ports and cities — global hubs like New York, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Istanbul, Port Said and Singapore, regional centres, and a national centre for every playable country — linked by 145 lanes by sea and over land
• In the Economy map mode, centres grow with the trade that passes through them, and your own trade is drawn in gold
• Hubs pay their owners: a commerce edge that grows with how busy each centre is, plus handling fees on the freight that passes through. Conquer the province and they change hands

Deals you negotiate

• A new Trade page: Overview, Buy/Sell, Offers, Auto Trade and Log
• Other countries send you supply contracts — accept, reject or counter on quantity, price, a fixed or market-indexed price, and a length from 1 to 20 years
• Signed deals show what was promised, what arrived and how reliably your partner delivers
• Buy/Sell ranks suppliers by delivered cost: the goods plus the freight to your ports
• Private trade is now matched with real partner countries first — only what they can't cover goes to the world market — and its foreign account is now visible and pays the import bills: your reserves and how many months of imports they cover

When trade gets blocked

• 14 chokepoints sit on the lanes, and four crises can close a strait: Suez, Malacca and the Taiwan Strait, Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait
• A closed route turns red, and trade takes the long way round at a higher freight cost — in our German game, Gulf fuel cost $875 a tonne instead of $842 once Suez closed
• Wars stop trade between enemies, embargoes leave only a trickle, and a blockaded coast loses half of its sea trade

Spheres of influence

Spheres are rebuilt from scratch, and no country joins one unless it agrees to .

• Superpowers lead up to 10 members, Great Powers 6 and Regional Powers 3
• Choose a charter — Economic, Security or Political — that every member sees before it accepts
• Build influence from 0 to 100 through trade, relations, aid, debt, alliances and paid influence projects; invite at 35, or let smaller countries petition you
• A human player is never joined automatically, and rivals can win your members away with a defection offer

Spheres are the first layer of a bigger system of power: the groundwork we want to build overlords, vassals and proxies on in later updates.

The price of peace

• A new Peace view: click the occupied provinces you want on the map, and every demand is paid from a peace budget that grows with your war score
• The other side answers live — Will accept or Will refuse, with the reason — and the AI now judges your offer itself, so a losing player can no longer get a white peace on demand
• Regime change installs a government aligned with the winner

And much more

• Corruption you can fight: it now drifts with your laws and stability, and an anti-corruption campaign cuts it — for a price
• Missile salvos: aim once and fire as many missiles as you choose
• Multiplayer: resyncs reach every player at once, rejoining players stay in step with the host, and around 30 more fixes keep every player's world identical
• Modding: playing your own mod? Open the Mod Builder from the pause menu and apply your changes to the running game. Plus new editors for endings, goal graphs and day-one diplomacy, scenarios that start mid-war, and much more powerful events
• Over 2,600 new lines of text in all 13 languages — and your saves carry over

Read the full devlog

28 screenshots and every number behind them: read Devlog #4 on our website.

What's next

Our roadmap is public — see what we're working on.

Thank you for every review, bug report and long message. If you're enjoying the game, a Steam review helps a small team like ours more than you know.

Join us on Discord!

See you on the world stage.

— Ozan Kanık, founder, Dorlion Interactive

## CTA Options - Read Devlog #4 - Join us on Discord - Tell us which trade hub you'll fight for first