v28: MIRV Escalating Cost + Christmas Theme

Major New Mechanics

MIRV dynamic pricing: MIRV starts at 25M and increases by 15M per global launch. This completely solves the “both sides spamming MIRVs into MAD” dead-end game.
Retaliate button: When you’re attacked, a Retaliate button appears in the event panel for one-click counterattack.
SAM interception preview: When targeting a nuke, the trajectory shows which SAMs it passes and the actual intercept range, color-coded red/yellow.
Missile Silo placement preview: Placing a silo simultaneously shows the SAM coverage map — no more blind silo placement.
MaxTroops display: Player info cards and the leaderboard now show your current troop cap, making attack planning more intuitive.
Lobby team preview: Private lobbies show the full team breakdown before the game starts, including clan auto-grouping.

Item	Old	New	Impact
MIRV cost	25M (fixed)	25M + 15M × launches	MIRV exchange cost rises exponentially
Train ally payout	50k	35k	Rail income further reduced, balancing the v26 expansion buff
Nation balance	Mostly stat-based	Shifted to AI behavior differences	Difficulty levels better reflect strategic styles
Nation alliance logic	Simple eval	Threat assessment + troop strength	AI no longer accepts alliances with the weak easily
Alert border colors	All red	Land attack orange, betrayal red	Higher visual information density

Falling snow on the home page, holiday color palette, Santa hat on the announcement.
Santas spawn randomly on maps, nuke explosions are replaced with gift / shooting star effects.
Nuke afterglow: melting snowmen, cheerful elf animations.
New emojis: 🎁🌟🎅🎄⛄.

Four Islands: A perfectly balanced square map with 25% land coverage.
Svalmel: Christmas-themed map with 5 nations.
New York City: Historical NYC map with English/Dutch colonies and Indigenous tribes.
Lisbon / Gulf of St. Lawrence / Manicouagan: 3 new geographically real maps.

Save MIRVs for the endgame: The first one is still 25M, but every global launch raises the price — the later you fire, the worse the deal. Don’t probe with MIRVs early.
Train income keeps trending down: Ally payout 50k → 35k is no longer “free money” — rail networks are better as defensive corridors than pure gold sources.
Check SAM coverage before nuking: Targeting now shows intercept range, so picking the SAM blind spots for MIRVs / single nukes becomes routine.