Patch v1.0.3 New Marsh Map and Campaign Updates!

MAP CHANGES

- Another new map added! Since the game is released and my workload is drastically reduced, I’m now able to start adding new content here and there. I know a common complaint was that the maps were repetitive, so I will be sprinkling in new maps between patches over time. After this week though, we won’t be patching almost daily like we have been. It will slow down to once per week, and then eventually to bi-weekly.

CAMPAIGN CHANGES

- Prussian cantonist composition now starts with a dragoon. Any composition which starts with just 1 brigade should have a greater focus on quality. Furthermore, most new players are going to be trying out Prussia as their first playthrough, and it’s not particularly fun when your cavalry is useless and is routed by most enemy units, it leaves a bad first impression. By starting the player out with 2 professional units and 2 unprofessional units, they have a more solid foundation to build off of. Prussian starting manpower is now 350 instead of 100 so that the starting depot battle doesn’t set you back.

- Prussia’s national buff “Junker Aristocracy” now doubles the officer veterancy gain rate instead of increasing by +50%. This should help you level up your officers into legendary commanders faster and gain access to powerful buffs like “fire by rank” quickly.
- British expeditionary force now starts with a light dragoon for the aforementioned reasons. Makes Britain look a lot more professional and because they only have 3 starting units, we really want the player to feel like they have a super reliable and high-quality force. British starting manpower is now 350 instead of 100 in order to replace depot battle losses. Britain’s starting carbine item replaced with excellent-quality light saddles (because the light dragoon already starts with a carbine).- A few little encounter fixes made for “gambler’s den” and “food needed”, you could press some choices without meeting the proper conditions, like this one where you could gamble despite not having the money for it:

- Russian cadet corps doctrine now reduces officer death chance instead of increasing experience gain
- British “Subsidy Jaegers” now start with a Potzdam musket instead of a rustic one.
- Fixed multiple colors being mis-aligned in the French color palettes between the flags that would generate and the colors available to the player
- The rate of losing your army while starving has been drastically reduced, starvation rate reduced by 60%. This means your army won’t be dead in 2-3 days without food anymore, you now have a little more time to crawl to a settlement and grab provisions.

BATTLE CHANGES

- Cover can feel really weak and sometimes you don’t even notice if it’s doing anything. So I bumped up its base effectiveness from reducing -25% of incoming damage (when a unit is at 100% cover) to reducing -35% of incoming damage at 100% cover.
- Deployables now take 15 seconds before they are placed down instead of 10 seconds. Deployables are visually removed after 2 seconds of the charge impact instead of 5 seconds (which caused them to look buggy when the units engaged in melee) - Cavalry reload speed reduced by -5, British cavalry reload speed reduced by -10
- Slightly reduced carbine reload speed

ARTILLERY CHANGES

- No more major changes for now! I wanted to include this category just to say that I’m happier where artillery is at now and wanted to reassure players we wouldn’t be further nerfing them so frequently. We will keep an eye on the balance and make adjustments next week if needed, but for now I’m happy with them.
- Improved the formation drawing, the Dutch artillery can now be drawn out as a full line

- Problems we’re aware of: I do know there are some problems with how the AI uses artillery (namely pushing units ahead of their main line) so that’s something we’re looking into next. I also still see the occasional glitch where artillery is becoming unresponsive, so we will continue looking into that. Finally, we will address canister shot being used to fire through multiple enemy units in next week’s patch. Once these updates have had a chance to settle in, we may also adjust artillery pricing to be more in-line with their new effectiveness.

VISUAL CHANGES

- If you visit a barracks that has no units to recruit left we now have a little message that displays that.

- Improved the padding on the UI for the speed control settings at the bottom of the screen in battle
- The light white box that takes up a portion of the background on the victory screen has been fixed (you can see what it looks like in the screenshot)

AI CHANGES

- AI is less willing to death charge your front line when you have no cavalry. There’s an ultra-aggression state that gets enabled when they don’t detect cavalry but we’ve added more nuance to this. The next thing to work on is getting the cavalry to flank more often in a future update.
- AI cavalry will no longer try and protect shattered units (like hanging back to protect a shattered artillery unit)

LOCALIZATION

- Italian localization added to the game!