First things first: sorry for the silence. A mix of personal circumstances and
the holiday period meant this took far longer than I wanted, and I should have
said something sooner. Thanks to everyone who stuck around.

The good news is that the quiet stretch wasn't idle. This is the largest update
Mercatoria has had — a lot of it under the hood, where the AI, the economy and
the turn engine were doing things they shouldn't. Here's what changed.

## War and diplomacy

- Wars no longer stall. A war in which nothing happens now ends on its own, followed by a ceasefire.
- The AI no longer declares war on nations it has no way of reaching, and sends its fleet to the enemy its army *can't* walk to.
- AI armies no longer stand still after their first move, and reserves actually reach the front.
- Peace holds for ten turns — no more re-declaring war the turn after signing.
- Relations no longer decay back to zero every turn, and the AI will peacefully absorb small nations it has won over.
- Non-aggression pacts were being signed twice and announced twice, with the names swapped the second time. Fixed.
- A declaration of war that breaks a pact now says so.
- If a nation turns down your pact, alliance or peace offer, you're told — instead of having to keep reopening the diplomacy screen.
- Three difficulty levels that change only how the AI behaves. It gets no bonus you don't have.

## Combat and army

- A fort now protects you: in a stalemate the defender keeps the province instead of losing it.
- A defender who breaks and flees actually loses the province now.
- Repel an attack and you get told about it. You never used to.
- After a turn with fighting you get a map of every battle, and per battle: who faced whom, what was committed, what was lost, and how it ended.
- Starvation costs you units — an army you can't feed dies off in four to seven turns.
- Steel finally has a buyer: upgrading units costs steel instead of iron.
- There's more iron ore on the map, so armies can actually be recruited.
- Overseas invasions are no longer prepared and then forgotten.

## Economy and trade

- Ships, regiments and town upgrades cost nothing to build. That bill now arrives.
- Building a fleet finally pays off — only anchored ships carry goods, and that now works.
- Workers no longer print gold. You earn by selling goods, and food is the brake.
- Research costs a third of what it did and leaves 250 gold standing instead of taking your last coin.
- Small nations now genuinely buy finished goods, and have the money for it.
- You can no longer order a ship you can't pay for.

## Map and interface

- Terrain transitions flow into each other instead of being hard hexagons, with relief and visible hills.
- The sea is consistent everywhere, with a shallows band and a real coastline.
- There are islands: a landmass too small for a nation stays uninhabited.
- One theme across every screen, real windows instead of stretched panels, and a soft fog edge instead of black holes.
- The map draws considerably faster and zooming no longer stutters.
- Your own fleets and armies no longer vanish into your own fog.
- Minerals in the New World were pre-discovered for everybody. You now only see what you explored yourself.
- Your two starting ships are no longer anchored and ask for orders on turn one.
- With more than one fleet in a sea province, both can now be clicked.
- Click the ARMY or FLEET heading in the right panel and the map jumps to it.
- Units stop asking for orders when they're already busy.

## What the game tells you

- The trade blocks in your turn summary were empty every round. They now say, per order, why nothing sold.
- Naval battles, completed forts, annexations and peace treaties are finally reported.
- A declaration of war reaches everyone, not just the nation that made it.
- What concerns *you* in the turn summary sits at the top and now looks different from world news.
- A greyed-out button tells you why it's greyed out.
- The guided first game runs all the way to the end of the match: seventeen goals instead of eight, plus separate lessons when something happens you can learn from.
- Every screen explains itself again, with a question mark in the bar that brings the explanation back.

## Saving, loading and multiplayer

- A saved game gives back the same world. A nation used to disappear on load, after which the AI stopped fighting.
- The AI no longer forgets its plans when you load.
- Battles are reproducible: the same game plays out the same way, and host and client calculate identically.
- Host and player now use the same build times and build costs.
- Multiplayer sends a fraction of the data per turn that it used to.
- **Note:** for multiplayer everyone needs to be on the same version.

## Crash reports and privacy

- If the game crashes you see the full report and *you* decide whether it's sent.
- IP addresses and other players' names are stripped automatically, along with your Steam name and Windows username.
- Reports go to a service in the EU and are kept for thirty days.
- There's a privacy statement in the game, in English and Dutch.

If you run into something, I'd rather hear it than not — the discussion board is
the easiest place. A good chunk of this update came straight from things players
pointed out.

— Dennis