Patch Notes

City Improvements

• Completed the authored road networks for Danzig, Hamburg, and Lübeck using Rostock’s terrain-conforming paved-road system.
• Pedestrians in Danzig, Hamburg, and Lübeck now spawn on their roads and follow the city splines.
• Standardized the water surfaces in Danzig, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Stettin using Rostock’s water rendering, collision, depth, and transform setup.
• Added dedicated inactive starting cameras for every city. CameraArrow now reads directly from the corresponding CameraCityName object, allowing authored camera positions to carry into gameplay automatically.
• Rostock, Stettin, Danzig, Hamburg, and Lübeck are now marked as completed hometowns and no longer display development-status information icons.

Ships and Voyages

• Ships leaving a CityScene now begin their world-map journey from the correct departure harbor instead of appearing near their destination.
• Loading screens no longer advance voyage time or the in-game calendar.
• Improved voyage completion safeguards so ships cannot remain permanently stranded at sea.
• Editing an active Auto Trade route now redirects the ship toward its newly selected destination.
• Expanded and redistributed the AI merchant fleet to create more frequent encounters across the world map.
• AI merchants now select more appropriate nearby destinations, receive new routes after deliveries, and recover automatically from invalid voyages.
• AI departures are staggered by harbor and route, preventing ships from leaving simultaneously or travelling as overlapping twins.
• Improved AI ship movement and visual catch-up at accelerated game speeds, including x10.
• Added more precise sea-route and coastline validation so ship markers no longer travel or appear over land.
• Player ships now reveal nearby AI vessels within an approximately three-centimeter sight radius.
• God Mode now removes world-map ship fog and reveals every AI vessel.
• AI ship cargo quantities and cannon counts are now concealed while their maximum capacities remain visible.

Loading and Camera

• Added a responsive loading curtain that remains visible while CityScene setup is completed across multiple frames.
• Cities are now revealed only after their authored starting camera has been positioned correctly.
• Replaced the plain black loading screen with cinematic Hanseatic marketplace artwork featuring a medieval merchant and a shimmering Hansa Forever title.
• Stabilized the loading artwork and title so they no longer resize or change fonts during the first loading screen.

Lighting and Visuals

• Balanced ambient and terrain lighting across the cities for a softer and more consistent appearance.
• Restored the brightness of the surrounding 360-degree environment after the city-lighting adjustments.
• The Lighting option now affects only city and terrain illumination without changing the sky, reflections, or authored light sources.

World Map Interface

• Added a large circular wooden Hansa Forever plaque with stable shimmering gold lettering to the world map.
• Added a gold-trimmed toggle that smoothly slides the plaque off the left edge and restores it when needed.
• The plaque animation continues to work while the game is paused.