Hi all,
2.06 is now ready to go and I've added quite a few more bugfixes and a couple of features vs the beta.
The main updates though are QOL changes - I've tried to see as many little places where the game is harder to understand or work with.
I've also added a few other things like new unique religious buildings (one per religion) and a 3D faction selection screen. This is going to be very important in a certain future expansion with a particularly large map...
As always, let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Joe
Faction selection
New games now start on a 3D tabletop with a paper map and banners at each capital.
Click a capital name in the sidebar (or on the map) to zoom the table onto that settlement.
Scenarios stay hidden until their content packs are actually loaded this session, so turning a pack on mid-session no longer offers a campaign you cannot play.
Military
You can split a player army or navy from the Units tab. Select the companies you want, and they form a new force at the same location with their share of supplies, morale and veterancy. The original commander stays with the original force.
Merging armies or navies now asks for confirmation first, and live supplies move with the merge instead of being left behind.
Player armies and navies can be renamed from the sidebar, the same way settlements can.
The military sidebar header now shows the force's identity, current order, supplies and commands as labelled rows instead of unmarked icons.
Forced march says why it is locked, including while garrisoned, and unlocks again once the army leaves the settlement.
Armies next to a friendly settlement refill immediately from its stockpile, including after a capture. Armies further out in the province still take field supply gradually.
Navies consume supplies each month, and army and navy food use scales with remaining strength.
Amphibious landings come ashore at the port's land connection instead of in the water.
AI factions gather enough strength and siege equipment before they sit down outside a walled settlement, and armies under a commander join that commander's siege instead of standing around nearby.
AI formations compose and cancel correctly.
Tooltips are now correctly shown on army glances.
Army glances show the icon of the faction.
Drag selected commands onto a higher-ranking command to assign them, including from a box selection on the map or the military chart.
If the Personal Guard is wiped out, you can re-establish it with the previous roster. Companies can be removed from the draft, forming and standing roster instead of only replaced.
Unused levy strength stays in the pool when a raid ends, and levies can still be called from depleted reserves.
Siege defence uses edible food stores, not the whole stockpile.
Battle war score is awarded once per war. Routed losers are not counted twice, pursuit skips armies that already routed, and commander capture is scored from the losing side's remaining force.
Religion
Each holy city now has a unique temple at the top of that faith's temple chain. If the owner no longer follows that faith, it becomes a ruin that can only be demolished.
You can Convert a courtier, prisoner or bishop of another faith, then convert the realm to it without needing 5% of the population to follow it already.
A few unique civic buildings are placed in their cities as well.
Campaign
Foreign factions declare war again. Hostile opinion makes war more likely, friendly opinion makes it less likely, and neighbours now count occupied and subject land on both sides.
Population growth follows food production, not just stored reserves. Matching what people eat stops growth; a real surplus is needed for it to climb; and growth tapers off as a settlement fills up.
Limitanei officers are now all men.
A luxuries map mode shows whether rulers and governors have the goods their rank requires. New games start courts with their starting stores instead of empty.
Faction food totals update when occupation changes.
Loot and returned goods come from the capital store.
Daily production and bankruptcy morale scale with the length of the month.
Temporary economy modifiers refresh income and derived effects instead of sitting stale.
Peace treaties after a war last one year rather than forever.
Replace Ruler in peace talks opens a character selector, and succession candidates are no longer capped at eight.
AI peace demands, occupation and concessions are corrected: levy AI demands migration instead of annexation, border pockets can be taken, and losing AI treats enemy subject land as the frontier.
Cheap annexation costs are no longer overwritten in peace offers.
Autonomy rebels no longer annex the parent realm.
The correct allies are called into offensive and defensive wars.
Eligible rebellion wars now conclude instead of lingering.
Aborting a migration no longer breaks subjects.
Population Conversion only applies to subjects.
Relocating foederati returns all of their old land.
Buildings, edicts and policies
Building effects match what they say. Arsenals and treasuries store goods instead of taxing like a forum; wineries, olive presses, bathhouses and veche halls no longer grow hidden food; felt works boost luxury goods; villas generate estate income; amphitheatres and colosseums unlock infantry; and construction-speed bonuses actually shorten build time.
Edicts, policies and council outcomes match their names. Tariffs, subsidies and port quarantines now expire; forced conversion and assimilation only unrest mismatched settlements; high taxes reduce production; public games cost a real monthly sum; frontier strategy fortifies settlements; imperial agents grow spy networks; tax exemption waives that region's tax; and a failed ecumenical council raises religious unrest instead of spreading the faith.
Governor loyalty from policies applies as advertised, and the Ecumenical Council unrest cut survives a policy refresh.
Grand Festival also reduces recruitment unrest.
Edict and policy tooltips now explain the actual results.
Characters and events
Newborns keep their father's family name instead of overwriting it with a generated surname.
Double-click a character portrait to jump to their faction capital. Single-click still opens the character. Commanders in the field still zoom to the army.
Local event models only load when you have chosen one, so they no longer crash 16 GB machines at campaign start.
Event options now do what they say: imprison, exile, strip office, create foederati, open granaries, cut taxes, lower unrest, and so on, instead of only moving gold.
Event unrest uses the same 0-1 scale as the rest of the game.
Characters who died before year 0 keep their age at death instead of ageing in the grave.
Self-study opinion applies to courtiers.
Mod campaigns can show their own effect icons on event options.
First Blood and The Walls Hold unlock when you actually earn them.
Map and movement
Armies and navies no longer get stuck at water boundaries. Landing approaches use the navy's connected sea, and a failed path ends the order instead of retrying forever. Tutorial fleets use the same fix.
Clicking province territory at close zoom opens the settlement. Clicking the city itself still selects the settlement mesh.
Overlapping armies pick the one whose marker is closest to the cursor, not whichever is furthest back in camera depth.
Forests spawn on the campaign, tutorial and Sicily maps again.
Ground-cover grass takes map decals like the rest of the terrain.
Paper-map water draws with the rest of the map, and hides once you are looking at the 3D landscape.
Army strength numbers and capital stars on map glances are larger.
Province labels sit above the water instead of clipping into it.
Fog of war turns off on GPUs that cannot run it, instead of crashing.
Hostile world glances glow, army type shows on the roundel, and glance text uses the same relation colours as the faction sidebar.
Settlement siege progress is readable on world glances.
Faction roundels use diplomatic frames, and clicking one opens the faction sidebar.
Holding Alt on a province tooltip is more compact and aligned.
UI
Buttons, tabs, list rows and map glances now fire on mouse release, so you can abort a click by dragging off the control. Drag handles, sliders, scrollbars and camera orbit still start on press.
Clicks pass through the empty parts of round HUD chrome onto the map.
Building-sidebar scrollbar thumbs keep dragging after the cursor leaves the thumb.
War notifications use the right have/has for tribal names, and flavour quotes sit on their own line.
Player action results stay on the HUD until you dismiss them.
HUD tooltips dismiss from the cursor position.
Nested tooltips on army glances and compliance factors stay usable, and the next tooltip in a hover chain shows immediately.
Hover a character stat or compliance cell for the same breakdown as the character tooltip.
Victory conditions collapse into expandable tier lists with n/n progress.
Assign Heir is a draggable floating panel.
Interaction tooltip headers show the adjusted success chance.
Army and navy glance tooltips show on the HUD, and glance toggles line up with the map-mode tray.
Build queue rows show unit portraits and who queued the job, and no longer clip titles and status.
Settlement sidebar tabs, diplomacy office titles, top-bar season icons and shortcut glyphs fit instead of collapsing or overflowing.
Character lists use the faction name without extra wrapping, and character-sidebar compliance matches the faction row.
Loading-screen tips follow the current language.
War titles use Join, not Joins, for plural factions.
Encyclopaedia unit portraits resolve, and their tooltips no longer overlap.
Modding
World Editor campaign rasters now use PNG.
Content-pack event effects can carry their own icons.
If the game crashes with community mods loaded, the next launch skips them and tells you, so you can turn the broken pack off.
The mods screen and load-game window can open the mods folder and the save-games folder.
Workshop installs show under Installed without restarting.
Disabled Angelscript caching - not much of performance improvement and made modding harder.
Performance and stability
Loading a save no longer advances extra startup days, so the campaign date stays where you left it.
Saved battles restore their formations properly, and destroyed formations are cleaned up without leaving stale attacks behind.
Upgraded buildings count as their earlier buildings for prerequisite checks, including for the AI.
Texture streaming uses the VRAM you actually have, instead of a pool that was too small for the campaign map.
Campaigns hitch less while the AI is reviewing its armies, and character/calendar lookups are cheaper.
Starting or loading a campaign no longer opens a second UI view behind the loading screen.
Campaign load progress stays on screen after the map package loads.
16 GB machines no longer crash at campaign start from auto-loaded event models.
Personal Guard refresh and battle load no longer crash.
If the HUD crashes, it remounts instead of leaving a blank overlay.