The scale bug is caused by province neighbors

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Great! Thanks calmon.

Okay, now I understand what offset 0x41 in the land table is. It's whose dominion is in the province. I thought it was the owner of the province.

The 7th neighbor of 53 in your file is 47. It's under Oceania dominion.

Once your dominion spreads to either province 7 or province 1, then the scale bug should disappear. At least until it reappears for another reason . This also helps explain why the more neighbors you have over 6, the more likely you are to see the problem. Dom spread happens before scale adjustments, so with exactly 7 provinces you've got a decent chance to hit #1 or #7 before your scales get whacked. With 15 provinces (hello water nations) the chance of that happening is less.