Governments steer mining permits

Governments now have a hand on the mining economy. From the Permits tab of a government you control, you can tune the weekly extraction-permit auctions in your regions:

• Hold the next auction — skip a region's float entirely for the week.
• Set how many permits to issue — override the usual random batch (up to 20).
• Set the base reserve price — raise or lower the opening bid.

A national government controls every mineral-bearing region in its country; a municipal government controls the region its city sits in (the auctions are region-wide, so the whole region is affected). Squeeze supply to push permit prices up, or flood the market to make extraction cheap — the choice shapes who can mine, and at what cost.