Patch v1.0.1 Artillery Rebalance!

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for all the support, we really appreciate it. Our team has done nothing but read through the feedback and reviews to make sure we get your biggest problems corrected as soon as possible. Here is the first hotfix we’ve got ready for you:

ARTILLERY CHANGES/FIXES

- I have been finding the Act 2 and 3 artillery fielded by the AI to be too oppressive. For that reason I swapped out one of the batteries they bring with a veteran musketeer unit just so they aren’t massing so many guns. This should ease the amount of casualties you’re suffering in the end game.

- I’ve reduced the Shuvalov gun’s damage marginally (from 65 -> 60) since it’s usually responsible for the bulk of losses in Act 3

- I’ve reduced the weight of higher-tier cannons slightly so that the AI isn’t massing guns like shuvalov’s in the end game.

- I’ve reduced the chance of AI units getting weapon upgrades in the Act 3 final battle. It was previously set that 90% of units get a big weapon upgrade (artillery, sabers, muskets). Now it’s 80%. This should mean you’re seeing less of a spam of excellent jaeger rifles, shuvalov guns, etc.

- Dutch artillery movement speed moved from 5 to 10. This was done especially because the moment you give a Dutch artillery unit something like a limber chest, it was going down to 0 or even negative

- Fixed a bug where artillery was getting stuck sometimes after limbering, not responding to any movement orders.

- Weight of higher-tier artillery (especially the unique cannons like brummers, shuvalovs, etc) in shops, ai armies, and loot has been slightly reduced.

- This is minor but the high-tier guns (bronze and special guns like brummers/lichtenstein etc) have had their chance of hitting reduced by about -4%. The low-quality guns have not been affected though.

- Canister shot and grapeshot damage increased by about 20%.

- Unicorn gun renamed to “Licorne” which is the more common French term for this type of gun. While “unicorn” is a historically accurate term, there are complaints and criticisms that the term is made up and so I’ve renamed them to avoid having to give an explanation.

I won’t go any further with these changes as I don’t want to throw off the balance too badly, but I really do not want Act 3 to feel like WW1-esque combat where your best hope is digging in with earthworks to stop being annihilated by artillery.

AI CHANGES

- The AI “defensive stance” was being enabled too frequently which meant that many battles boiled down to the AI camping a spot on the map and forcing you to rush them or just artillery duel. We’ve reduced the threshold for their defensive stance so you should notice a little more aggression even if your enemy is fielding artillery. Before, they were encouraged to play defensively if they had equal artillery to the player or an advantage of 1-2 batteries. Now if they have the exact same amount of batteries they are no longer encouraged to play defensively and will more likely take the stance if they have an advantage of 1-3 batteries (random range).

CAMPAIGN CHANGES/FIXES

- HQ notification chance from raiding increased from a 15% chance to 25% per day of raiding

- All compositions now start with +50 extra thalers. It’s not very much, but may be just a little bit extra to help newer players afford that first unit or upgrade a little sooner. The biggest problem we’re having is newer players getting adjusted to taking on patrol armies and struggling to beat their first one and get the cash together to start filling out their brigades.

- Patrols in Act 1 much more commonly field infantry and cavalry now, and have a lower chance of bringing artillery.

- Mid-tier unit experience gain increased by 15% (from 1.75x -> 2x)

- High-tier unit experience gain increased by 30% (from 0.75x -> 1x)

- The campaign now unpauses when you select raiding stance

- Removed act 1 patrol armies from being able to field 3 cavalry or 3 artillery units in one army. They should now be more balanced. The only exception is a rare chance that a patrol consists of only cavalry which I left in just for fun.

- HQ maximum movement speed has been lowered so they should be a little easier to run from just for a little longer

- Austrian Crownland Corps now starts with a Bronze 6-lb gun instead of an Iron 6-lb gun

BATTLE CHANGES

- The brace gain rate has been slowed down by 20% as units could instantly brace (by standing still for just a few seconds) and fend off cavalry very easily.

- Improved grenadiers by making it so you only need 90% of your troops formed up to throw a grenade and not 100% of every model

- Open order accuracy reduced by just a small -5%

RISE OF FREDERICK CHANGES

- In the final battle the enemy has 1 less regiment of infantry, and their artillery batteries are smaller

MISC CHANGES

- Smoke in battle made slightly more grey and transparent so when it stacks over each other it doesn’t create a blinding bright white effect that looks unrealistic

- Difficulty settings renamed to be more thematic and in-line with the difficulty naming convention of the army compositions, “captain, lieutenant, colonel, general.” I also made it so that both the Captain and Lieutenant settings contain easy modifiers. I would like newer players to use a few of the easy modifiers while they get the hang of things, and then move up to harder modifiers once they become better. If you aren’t a fan of those changes, we made sure not to have any difficulty setting on by default so if you don’t touch the settings you will still have no modifiers at all being applied like how it is currently.

GENERAL BUG FIXES

- Rounding issues fixed on a lot of tooltips, seeing “+34%” and “+24%” should be less common which would’ve been a flat “+35%” or “+25%”

- Fixed a bug where sometimes light infantry weren’t holding weapons

- Fixed a bug where if you dragged a bust from one slot to the next it wouldn’t refresh the selected stats panel (like if you dragged a unit to a new officer who gave different buffs, it wasn’t refreshing)

- Fixed a bug where skipping the final rise of Frederick scene kept the subtitles stuck on the screen

- If a save is out of date, it no longer appears on the “continue” button

- Fixed a visual bug that showed your hover-over stats differently from your real stats in camp

- Fixed this reported bug “When a unit takes losses after the battle if you put it in your reserves then back in your main force it replenishes all of its losses.”

- Fixed a visual bug where if you had an officer who had the fierce trait that provides -5% accuracy it was showing on the unit stats that it was giving +5% accuracy

- Some misc. achievements wording corrections

- Improvement with map selection for battle, you shouldn’t be getting city maps spawning in mountains now

- Fixed some encounters that used the wrong doctrine ID for the special options. For example here, even if you had “Light Infantry Tactics” It wasn’t letting the player take the choice, and instead was requiring “Preserved Rations.” We’ve double checked many encounters and fixed the 2 instances we’ve spotted where this was happening.