We have done a lot! Not all is mentioned below, but a big portion of it.
We have a new trailer published now as well (with subtitles for a few languages):
UI
- Population Breakdown screen updated to show how the stats are used in equation calculations (previously in a simple table).
- Layout of Food production breakdown screen updated.
- New Improvement and New Unit screens updated to part of the main HUD, as well as adapt to both regular screens and wider screen resolutions.
- Positioning and scaling of many tutorials adjusted to work better with both smaller and wide-screen resolutions.
- Moar tooltips added for icons.
- Removed big pause symbol in middle of screen, adjusted how Play/pause button is displayed depending on pause state.
- Number of Free labor in the Settlement now displayed in the New Improvement screen, as that is essential to balance food production vs. too many improvements demanding all your citizens.
- Food production now recalculates immediately when changing food production, so you can see the estimated net production change even when paused. The same prognosis for Happiness trend also updates immediately.
- Entire Settlement button in HUD now blinks red if the settlement is under attack or dying from starvation (No rations).
- New Hot-keys added to: Open Taxation Breakdown (T), Open Settlement Overview UI (E), Open the Log Viewer (L)
- Settling progress now displayed in % when a unit is selected.
- Improved UX when boarding units onto ships, including trying to board parts of armies.
- Year is now displayed in BC/AD.
Gameplay
- In-game Encyclopedia added, accessible from the Main menu and in-game HUD.
- Fixed issues and inconsistencies when queueing new movements mid-movement.
- AI now gathers knowledge of land-masses and bodies of water, and can ship units across waters for sieges/invasions. Separate scouting strategy established for water tiles.
- Water walk movement now disallowed for all land units. Updated pathfinding algorithms, and new events added when units stumble upon Water when exploring the map.
- Military units now automatically capture civilian units, such as Peasants, Traders and Prospectors.
- Building Docks now requires a Woodcutter, and thus access to Woods.
- Collateral losses in Settlement combat/sieges now vary with Difficulty.
- Fixed issue of Armies not fortifying.
- Game speed range updated from 1-5, to 1-7. The new 7 corresponds to the old 5 (very fast).
- Settling units now takes 2 in-game days, previously completed at 'Next day' (0-1 days).
- A diagonal of 2 land tiles, with 2 water tiles on either side is now considered a 'strait', and are slow to traverse, wider than Rivers, but still traversable.
Multiplayer
- Can now set Max players and Friends-only visibility in the Lobby.
- Can now set per-player Difficulty settings in the Lobby.
- Can now build fortifications with Armies in Multiplayer.
- Pause and Game speed settings now persist between saves. Track max Saves if that is not set to unlimited.
- Fixed issue where faction assignment on start was not working as intended.
- Fixed issues when conquering other Settlements.
- Fixed issues of separating units from Armies.
Graphics
- Iterated how Rivers are generated, and adjusted how Rivers deform the world mesh (sink it down).
- Fixed some rendering issues with some Shadow resolution settings.
- Several Unit animations introduced, such as Idle, Walking, Attacking, Dying, Trading.
- New Particle effects for Smoke added, spawns during Riots, and can be placed in the editor as well.
- Smoothened fog of war fading for ocean shader.
- Softened Autumn transition yellow-out, reduced leaf density and fixed issues with infinite leaves.
- Settlement borders now darken in Fog of War.
- Scaffolding now displayed initially when building Bridges, Supplies Posts and Fortifications.
- Units/Armies now pitch a small tent when Idle on a tile.
Input
- Can now mute tutorials with a single click of Left mouse button.
Editor
- New Editor mode added to paint Visual Props onto the map (F9 hotkey)
- Scriptable Events now have a Repeatable checkbox, if it in its entirety should be repeatable. Should only be used in conjuction with certain triggers, such as on certain events being displayed in the log.
- New Scriptable event Triggers added: Days after event, Build Supplies Post, Difficulty, Build Fortification,
- New Scriptable actions added for: Toggle Cinematic mode (hides UI, locks game speed, disables most interactions except Pause menu), Take Control of Settlement, Set Follow Camera (to follow a unit, preferably in Cinematic mode), Set Patrol Path (units will move between 2 points, engage enemies 1 tile away if odds are favorable), Add to Population (Free inhabitants or Slaves), Invoke Slave Uprising,
- Icons added to most Triggers and Action types to ease selection.
- Fixed so Action Despawn Unit works as intended, for both units and armies.
- Fixed Set Attack Target action, now also works for Armies.
- Fixed issues with Build Improvement action.
- Set Victory Objective with empty text now resets the displayed victory objective to the default scenario objectives.
- New Localization editor added to easily work with translation of texts in scenarios.
- Fixed issue where working with several rivers would lag a lot.
- Can now set Unit behavior for single units, such as 'Static', which will make units stand in place and not be moved around by their corresponding AI, to ease scripting desired behavior.
- Can now see previews of Strings in the editor via tooltips, if they exist in the localization file.
- Display error if failing to write a map file, and save immediately when hitting Enter, don't require hitting the Confirm button.
Bug fixes
- Fixed issue where initial Camera position would be way to the left instead of centered on the player initial settlement.
- Fixed several gameplay and interaction issues with Fortifications, including their discovery and battles to take them, and save/load.
Audio
- Unit voices now defer to their Faction language, such as Latin for Romans and Gaulish for Gauls.
Localization
- Localization increased to support 15 languages. Initial translations are machine-translated and may contain errors. Please report any faults you notice to us on Discord! We have dedicated language channels. Initial support for: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Welsh.
Technical
- Mac build updated, including fixing shadow rendering issues and some size scaling issues for UI/text.
- World mesh cached into map files, which increases file size but increases load speed when entering/loading maps.
- Only load 1 localization at a time, speeding up initial load time.
- OpenAL dependency updated to use a packed dll instead of relying on old OpenAL install, hopefully fixing missing audio issue for some players.
- Support for Blend Shape animations added, enabling animation of units.
- Fixed issues with instanced rendering.
- Integer inputs now by default traverse the Caret with Left and Right arrows (used to increment/decrement)
- Partial support for inputing Unicode text into Text inputs added, including Backspace deleting multi-byte characters.
- Fixed a write out-of-bounds issue which was causing crashes and other erratic behavior.
- Slight optimizations added to text and storage classes.
- Support for vertical 3Slice in UI added.
- Sorting buttons by Name and last edit Date added to File Browser (Save/Load map in Editor)
Tutorials
- New tutorial added to explain selection of units in an Army/unit group.
Thanks to all the testers who stopped by at Närcon Summer 2025 in Linköping last week! We feel we validated that we are going in the right direction with increased playtester satisfaction, but also managed to get a lot of feedback for future improvements. :)
