Again taking some *influence* from Anno 1800, "influence" is a big factor in your ability to build in my game. Currently, the only way to get influence is to buy it from the influence menu, or earn it through completing objectives. At some point, it may be good for the player to be able to generate it without having to pay cash for it.

The idea is that if a company is growing at a rapid rate in real life, there is a considerable amount of red tape that needs to be cut through. Greasing the wheels by paying off some politicians seems to work just fine in real life, so why not in this game?
Influence can only be bought, and never sold. Which does create a bit of a challenge to the player. You don't want to overspend on influence, as without money to go along side it, influence is useless.

The influence menu was actually the first thing I created for the game, which is probably why it feels the most out of place. It consists of a mini-game where you have to be fast enough to snag the cheapest politician's influence. If you don't want to play, or don't feel like you can be fast enough, there is the politician in the top left who always sells her influence at the same price.

There is also a slider which will determine the threshold at which a politician will highlight.
For example, if you set it to 50,000, any politician offering their influence at or below that will highlight. Unless you are speedrunning, I recommend just keeping this at 5k or 10k, an offer will turn up eventually.

When building, influence will cost you:

1 + number_of_buildings_in_the_country + (10 x number_of_countries_expanded_to)

So every time you expand to another country, your influence costs around the world increase by 10, making it very costly to expand too quickly.

Upcoming:

DD7: Market

DD8: Library

DD9: Research

DD10: Managers

DD11: ??