v1.244 Patch Notes
The biggest update yet. Military command has been rebuilt from the ground up, character loyalty replaced with a proper compliance system, organised religions get bishops, and there are now victory conditions. Plus a mountain of diplomacy, economy, and UI work.
Of course since there are so many changes for this update there are bound to be some bugs - please let me know if you run into any and I'll fix them up ASAP. I also didn't get around to finishing the Qwen 3.5-based event models and modding tools, but those should be ready to go in a few days.
New Features
Compliance
Loyalty and opinion have been merged into a single Compliance score (-50 to +50) that governs how willing a character is to follow your orders. It pulls from their personal loyalty, what they think of you, patronage ties, whether your reputation leans toward honour or dread, power bloc happiness, and situational modifiers like being a new ruler or imprisoned. Characters range from Eager to Defiant, and defiant leaders will act on it - refusing orders, undermining you, or outright rebelling. The full breakdown shows up in the loyalty map mode tooltip.
Military Command Overhaul
You can now delegate command of armies to subordinate generals through a proper hierarchy. A dynamic cap on top-level commands means you can't micromanage everything yourself - you'll need to trust your generals.
Delegated commands follow one of four doctrines: Concentrate (stay close, reinforce battles), Screen (fan out toward threats), Garrison (hold nearby settlements), or Independent (pursue their own targets). Commanders' personality traits affect how well they follow orders - an ambitious general might ignore a recall, a timid one won't engage unless cornered. The map shows the hierarchy with new line visuals: striped lines for delegated commands, colour-coded by range.
Rank tooltips break down per-level buffs and effective radius. Armies and fleets are now named by culture and commander rank with a 3-tier naming system, and you can merge armies together. Level 2 and 3 commands have monthly gold upkeep.
Clergy & Bishops
Organised religions now have a clergy system. Whichever faction has the most followers of a faith becomes its leading faction and gets to appoint bishops across the map. A new Clergy tab on the Faction Overview screen lets you see all eligible lands, assign or dismiss bishops, check religion share, or auto-fill every vacant seat. Bishops feed into the event system too, so they'll show up in narrative events.
Victory Conditions
Three tiers of victory give the campaign actual goals:
Default - survive to year 1000
Extended - survive to year 1100 and hold all six core domains, directly or through subjects
Ultimate - hold all eight domains and convert your entire realm to your state religion
A victory sidebar tracks your progress with dynamic condition rows for each tier.
Diplomacy & Politics
Counter-Offers - you can now propose and receive counter-offers during war and peacetime negotiations instead of just accepting or rejecting
Seize Territory - forcibly take provinces from your subjects, at the risk of rebellion
Transfer Territory - move provinces between subjects
Vassal Subversion - destabilise enemy subjects to trigger civil wars from within
War Ransoms - pay and demand ransoms for prisoners during active wars
Dynamic Faction Names - factions now display context-aware names with their government type
10 new ambient diplomatic opinion modifiers make faction relationships more varied
Merchant Rights - new treaty type for luxury trade bonuses, replacing the old Trade Agreement (now called Supply Agreement)
Tax Rate Policy - controls vassal tribute with per-vassal adjustments
Marriage proposals are now restricted to factions within your diplomatic network
The hard AI war cap has been replaced with a time-based declaration cooldown
Characters
All character stats recentered around 0 with a -15 to +15 range, so positive and negative values actually mean something
Characters form opinions of each other based on traits, plus 10 new opinion modifiers covering age, reputation, power blocs, ruler culture, imprisonment, commander status, and patronage
New interactions gated by your ruler's honour or dread reputation
Cunning-gated intrigue interactions can be initiated through proxies
Patrons and clients now get passive bonuses, with new "ask patron" interactions
You can recruit fresh courtiers from the character selector, which now has faction, culture, and religion filters
You'll be notified when dynasty members die
Minor character notifications are muted by default to cut down on noise
Military
Raiding Overhaul - proper naval raiding with settlement-hopping and hostile territory engagement. AI factions actually raid now, sacking settlements and generating pillage notifications and refugee unrest
AI Military Overhaul - the AI military planner has been rebuilt to use autonomous commands, evaluate wars and peace properly, handle overseas transport, and manage levies
Battle Pacing - battles are significantly slower with a float-based morale system and reduced pursuit casualties, so morale actually matters before one side is wiped out
Manual Formation Control - you can now set formations, issue flanking orders, and use waypoint movement during battles
Overcrowding Attrition - too many friendly armies in the same area causes attrition
Military tooltips show current/max strength, army queue widgets show population cost, and navy tooltips show carry capacity
Economy
Auto-Sell - set resources to automatically sell when your stockpile exceeds a threshold
Resource Decay - all resources decay over time, so you can't just hoard forever
Trade Income - rebalanced to be comparable to taxation, making trade routes worth investing in
Corruption - now scales with distance-to-capital and compliance tier, with a detailed breakdown tooltip
Empire Build Queue - a new panel groups queued buildings across your realm
New settlement interaction system for governor, bishop, and general actions
12 settlement modifiers are now visible in the UI
UI & Quality of Life
Sortable table widget used across the economy screen, clergy panel, and diplomacy screen
Diplomacy screen split into internal and external faction rows
Settlement sidebar reorganised with tabs
Camera tilt with PageUp/PageDown
Separate brightness and gamma settings
Observer mode to watch the map without playing
Province tooltips consolidated into rich text with live religion/culture conversion rates and pressure sources
Religion and culture pie chart tooltips show conversion rate and where the pressure is coming from
Relationship tooltips show mechanical details with glossary links
Building effects show inline icons and glossary links
Disease map mode shows starvation as striped overlays
Opinion modifier rows have dual positive/negative bars, sorted by value
Greyed-out interactions now tell you why they're unavailable
Inline concept icons scale to match surrounding font size
Option to continue playing after the tutorial ends
Debug short IDs and SetDate cheat for testing
Content
15 new encyclopedia pages covering provinces, foederati, governors, court, espionage, sieges, and more
Religious buildings with dedicated icons
Kyrnian culture for the Kyrnos province
Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, and Romanian language support
New event artwork and a "meeting" loading screen
Power blocs are now first-class entities in the event system
Histria tutorial factions have named court characters that show up in events
Tutorial expanded with command hierarchy, bishoprics, Kyrnos leader capture, unrest management, and rebellion delay
Modding
Cultures and religions no longer need Blueprint classes - AngelScript-only definitions make them much easier to mod
Balance Changes
Compliance recentered around 0 with doubled loyalty/opinion weights for more meaningful character dynamics
Character stats rescaled to -15 to +15 - you can tell at a glance whether someone is competent
Corruption reduction from buildings cut by 3x
Distance-to-capital has a stronger effect on unrest
Peasant rebellions happen less often (per-faction cooldown) and only field tier 1-2 units
Barbarian factions get direct gold income and tribal economy modifiers so they're more competitive
Battles are much slower - morale actually matters before armies get wiped
Trade income brought up to par with taxation
Resource decay prevents infinite stockpile accumulation in long campaigns
AI factions now have internal power blocs
Rephsian AI expansion restricted to historically appropriate domains
New rulers start with a -15 compliance malus that fades over 5 years, making succession a real danger
Imprisoned rulers impose -20 compliance on all subjects
Removed automatic heir designation - succession is contested
Bug Fixes
Military
AI raiding levies no longer consumed by garrison assignments
AI re-calls levies after armies are wiped out mid-war
AI makes peace after fully occupying an enemy faction
AI armies actually advance toward enemies during wartime instead of idling
AI peace deals no longer create border gore
AI naval transport and overseas war planning fixed
Navy pathfinding no longer cuts through land on stitch segments
Armies garrisoned in the capital no longer join rebellions
Army movement speed no longer reduced when zoomed out
Army/fleet names fixed for levies, foederati, event-spawned forces, and missing regions
Navy naming no longer produces redundant or broken names
Command radius plane matches actual buff radius
Doctrines cascade correctly through the full command hierarchy
Hierarchy lines refresh immediately when doctrines change
Command hierarchy no longer assigns children outside buff radius
Enemy army radii no longer visible when zoomed in
Embarkation landing sites check ocean connectivity
Diplomacy & Politics
Peace negotiation strength bar uses full faction strength
Treaty option tooltips show correct values and formatting
You can grant and request passage rights in the same treaty
Annex faction goal shows actual war score cost
New vassals join their liege's existing wars
Vassals released when their liege faction is destroyed
Subject leaders properly recognised for compliance
Settlement selection for seize/transfer respects faction ownership and rebellion state
UI
Settlement sidebar no longer redraws every day tick
Sidebars no longer get stuck closed after animation race conditions
Event widgets no longer overlap
Province tooltip flicker eliminated
Rich text double-buffered to prevent flicker on updates
Building browser zoom fits all buildings; shift-click shows multiple categories
Building browser gold check uses the player faction
Economy screen resource amounts use darker, more readable colours
Settlement finder unrest sort no longer freezes
Foederati and templates populate correctly in military overview
Character stat tooltips explain unknown stats and how to reveal them
Glossary links navigate to the correct encyclopedia entry
Court appointee portrait opens the character sidebar
Confirmation dialogs no longer show raw localisation keys
Province tooltip hidden over water
Map mode buttons no longer deselect unexpectedly
Bishopric map mode labels update on religion switch with better colour differentiation
Performance
Daily and monthly tick performance optimised
Multiple hot paths identified and fixed via CSV profiling
Military overview command hierarchy built synchronously to avoid hitches
Peace negotiation refresh hitch reduced
GetAllActorsOfClass replaced with cached registries throughout
Character sidebar opening hitch eliminated
Fog of war updates faster and works while paused
Other
Default anti-aliasing changed to FXAA to avoid TAA ghosting
Saved anti-aliasing and graphics settings apply correctly on startup
Camera Z tracking smoothed at all zoom levels to eliminate mountain jitter
Temporary traits now expire correctly
Settlements no longer produce wrong resources
Fog of war respects the disabled flag
Building upgrades that were actually downgrades from their predecessors fixed
Dead characters removed from patron/client lists
Religious persecution opinion restricted to characters within the realm
Master of Diplomacy court bonus and court combat bonuses now actually do something
Various crash fixes from player reports
Instant build cheat skips all costs correctly
Building max level enforced in encyclopedia placement mode
Screens are per-faction when switching in observer mode