Hotfix 1.2.3 Out Now + Progress Update

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Patch notes 1.2.3

Checksum: 6a4a

Date: May 15th, 2026

Previous Patch: 1.2.2

Diplomacy

• The Enforce Landfriede diplo action has now proper AI weighting and can now be declined. If declines, the Emperor joins against you in the war
  

Military

• Made a follow-up fix for the new Varangian units, as they don't show up at start, but in the proper ages they're unlocked.

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Patch 1.2.2 Addendum

In addition to the notes above, we also have an addendum to patch 1.2.2 (Released May 13th 2026) Due to some technical errors on our end, The following points did not make into our notes for 1.2.2.
To be clear, these are changes that have been on live since version 1.2.2, here they are:

Events

• The Event " Exiles" (court_flavor_events.36) can no longer fire if the exiles origin country has under 18k population and if they only own locations with less than 12k population. This should prevent very aggressive depopulation of some locations where many small countries exist
• Adjusted the "A Powerful Despot" event chain (flavor_byz_ser.1-flavor_byz_ser.6), so Strumica will be immediately annexed if Serbia wins it.
• Removed Strumica from the setup and adjusted it to be a releasable country bound to the "A Powerful Despot" event chain (flavor_byz_ser.1-flavor_byz_ser.6).
  

Government

• Nerfed the Ritualistic Court bureaucracy by reducing annexation speed and cultural influence in the Positive Modifier
• Nerfed the Kephalai bureaucracy by increasing the estate enrichment and non-rural prosperity penalties in the Negative Modifier
• Nerfed the Imperial Senate bureaucracy by reducing parliament duration in the Constant Modifier and parliament base support in the Positive Modifier
• Buffed the Thémata bureaucracy by raising manpower and levy size and adding monthly army tradition to the Constant Modifier
• Buffed the Books of the Basiliká bureaucracy by adding a small monthly legitimacy bonus to the Constant Modifier
• Buffed the Romanitas bureaucracy: stronger integration speed and added monthly legitimacy in the Positive Modifier, added cultural influence to the Constant Modifier, and removed antagonism received from the Negative Modifier
  

Society

• Latin culture starts kindred opinion of Greek and vice versa
  

Achievements

• Fixed the achievements "Belisar's Legacy" and "There Can Be Only One" being locked only for Byzantium; now they will also be available if the player started as Byzantium, but later formed another country (such as Rome).
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed city_illustration_trigger causing error spam on some mods
• In the Grant Latin Merchant Privileges message it now properly shows Italian instead of $italian_language$
• Fixed Romanian -escu patronymic suffixes to be suffixes instead of prefixes
• Fixed some cabinet actions not updating properly when assigning characters to them
  

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What's next on the priority list?

We've been reading your feedback closely since 1.2 launched, and early next week we're shipping 1.2.4 to address some of the issues you've flagged most often.

AI and Warfare

A few persistent problems with AI army behaviour are fixed in this patch. The AI now targets fewer, larger stacks rather than spreading thin across the map. We've also resolved an issue where large countries couldn't properly buy mercenaries, and fixed the AI failing to account for already-hired mercs when evaluating war strength, which was causing some badly-timed decisions. Navies getting stuck in friendly transport objectives are also resolved.

War & Diplomacy

Scripted cores gained or lost through events now persist for 100 years before expiring, rather than disappearing immediately. We've also differentiated the no-CB war cost between same-religion and cross-religion wars, and capped 100% peace deal truces at 15 years. Note to Johan, 5 as base and 15 as range does not give results between 5 and 15, it gives 5 to20!

Fate of the Phoenix

Several more bugs related to the DLC and Byzantium will be fixed. The Hellenic action “Grant a Triumph” will be more rewarding, and its tooltip will be made clearer. 

We’re also making a couple of additional fixes and tweaks to the “Roman Borders” CB. Cataphract units and advances will now also be tied to the whole Roman culture group, making it clearer when they can be recruited, which will also increase their recruitment pool, due to not being restricted just to the Greek culture. x

And last but not least, a couple more follow-up fixes for the Varangians will be coming in; the more relevant one is that the DLC lock for the new Age-2-to-Age-6 Varangian units will be removed, as their creation was intended as a fix to the base game Age 1 Varangian unit not working properly as per their original design intention, and not as a Fate of the Phoenix DLC content addition.  

Interface

The religion panel now shows your actual omen cap rather than the total number of omens defined across a religion's gods. Mousing over a religion in the UI highlights its locations and Holy Sites on the map. Several tooltip fixes are included: mercenary contract length in months, capital move development values, and a few broken strings.

Other issues

We are also looking into tuning population growth up a bit, and have been tweaking the reform society disaster to be more achievable. The total number of rows in the 1.2.4 patchnotes are currently at around 50.

We hear you on performance. It remains our number one priority and is the central focus of 1.3, and we'll have more to say on that soon. If you are having performance issues you can help speed this process along by giving info this performance megathread:

https://pdxint.at/4u7aMGx

Thanks for sticking with us and keeping the feedback coming.

- The Tinto Team

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As usual, here is a list of handy EU5 links:

And remember...
Be Ambitious!