Update v1.2.0 "Imperial Decree"

1Holy Roman Empire DLC + Biggest Free Update Yet

The Holy Roman Empire DLC is out now, and it arrives alongside our biggest update yet, featuring Endless Campaign Mode, a big batch of new units, and major systems improvements.

OPENING NOTES

Hey guys! I hope you enjoy our free Holy Roman Empire DLC, the link to download it is here: I also highly recommend joining the Discord. You can ask questions there and get help with modding, etc. https://discord.gg/SDxBahCGG8

We only had 2 weeks to work on this entire update, so we unfortunately were unable to fulfil every goal on our roadmap. But rest assured, we’ll be back at it in January and will continue to work on more updates. There will be a second roadmap for Master of Command released sometime in January. Furthermore, because so many new units were added (+90 in total, which is a 60% increase on the game’s total unit count), you can expect some balance issues initially, but we will iron those out early next year. I will also state that December was the last month of overhauls to the game’s balancing, so expect Q1 of 2026 to be more focused around fine-tuning, bugfixing, AI, and smaller changes/additions. New content additions will take a bit of a backseat for a little bit until everything has been ironed out as we want to make sure the game is stable and we aren’t adding or changing too much too quickly.

What was our goal with this update?

1. We wanted to address the lack of variety in some of the unit trees. This was a big problem for nations like Russia where many unit trees felt shallow and disjointed. By adding in several new units for each nation, there should be more types of builds you can create with each army.

2. We wanted a central German state nation (Holy Roman Empire) so that there was more variety in enemies to fight. You’ll now often find that a mission that you’d normally fight completely against Austrians may now be a combined Austro-Holy Roman Force which makes the battles more dynamic with troop variety. Players can also play as the Holy Roman Empire of course too!

3. We felt like the AI were fielding very predictable army compositions and would play predictably. So we made their army compositions a lot more varied (and integrated all of the new units we added to the game) and made their battle behaviors a little more random. We will focus on more AI updates in future months.

4. We wanted to slow down combat a little, as in the late-game the unit stats could end up getting so high that battles were a little too decisive. You should notice just a little bit less accuracy and reload skill being given from many of the items and base stats. You’ll also notice the melees and charges are a little slower and less decisive- before they felt a little arcadey with some melees ending in just a couple seconds. In January I’ll be taking a look at a lot of the doctrines and balancing them out a bit better as well (improving the lackluster ones and rebalancing the overpowered ones).

5. We wanted a way for players who weren’t a fan of the roguelike structure to be able to enjoy the game with a long-term campaign, especially with Christmas coming up and people having some time off. So we’ve added the endless campaign mode so you can continue playing your game across 30 acts instead of being limited to 3.

FREE NEW NATION ADDED

The Holy Roman Empire has been added to the game. You’ll need to download using the link at the top of this page. It is a free DLC to say thank you for making Master of Command a success!

- The national doctrine for the HRE is very unique.

They get a new stance called “Mustering” which lets you drum up fresh reservists. There’s a small percentage chance you get a free recruit while mustering as well, and this chance is increased if you’re close to a settlement. The theme for the HRE is diverse units, and luck!

- Here’s a closeup of the new mustering stance. The drum is animated and the percentage chance that you get a new recruit unit appears over your head for each day of mustering. The percentage will increase with time.

- Here are the three new army compositions for the HRE starting with the Kreis Contingent. They get a combat effectiveness buff for every unique regiment they field, so the more diverse your army the stronger they become.

- Here’s the Saxon Army. Their bonus is that the new mustering stance generates additional reservists per regiment, letting you muster up large amounts of reservists quickly. Their malus is that units must be purchased using reservists, which makes it a little harder to balance your resources. However, you can take advantage of this using the muster stance and build up reservists that way.

- Finally we have the Auxiliary corps. They gain a free random (weighted) HRE unit every time they buy an officer at a settlement. So consider the noble estates to be your casinos and you can buy officers to see what random unit you’re going to get. The malus is that officers and units are 200% more expensive (meaning 3x the cost) and so you need to rely on finding affordable officers and good luck to get your units.

- Here are the HRE flag patterns and emblems. There are patterns and emblems representing Swabians, Franconians, Wurttembergers, Palatines, Saxons, and Bavarians.

- Here are the HRE unit trees. They have a total of 40 units. The old standard amount of units per nation was 34, but HRE has increased that limit. Later in the changelog you’ll also see I ended up increasing the amount of units for every other faction in the game, bringing them all up to around 40. The first HRE tree is the main one which contains Kreis, Wurttemberg, Palatine, and Bavarian units.

This second one is focused around Saxony.

- The HRE also has the standard 10 renowned units which are unlocked via achievements.

- HRE “Suhl” musket and carbine added to the game. It has above average accuracy but below average melee.

- HRE national theme added, “Der Kesseldorfer”

ENDLESS CAMPAIGN MODE

- New endless campaign. When you finish the third act, the game will prompt you to continue playing endlessly.

- There isn’t any new content beyond the third act, but if you wanted to just keep playing for fun you’re now able to. We also drew a little illustration showing your troops marching off to continue their journey.

- Little flags will continue to be planted in any region you conquer, so it’ll be possible to conquer the whole map of Europe (about 30 regions)

- In order to make the future acts interesting we cycle through the 3 act structure repeatedly. So when you finish Act 3 (scorched earth), it means Act 4 will return to normal conditions, Act 5 will be the early winter, and Act 6 will be scorched earth again and it will continue repeating like this. When you enable Endless Mode you’ll also be given an option to add a negative modifier in addition to the positive one you get at the end of each region. This allows you to keep increasing the difficulty with each region. You can also skip the negative modifier being added in case you do not want to increase the difficulty.

- There is also a new system where both doctrines and modifiers can dynamically stack. So if you manage to collect every doctrine in the game, you’ll be given the option to stack them on top of each other. The same goes for difficulty modifiers. If you were already playing with 10 difficulty modifiers, then you’ll be given the option to continue stacking them.

And yes this also means you can stack inaccurate reports multiple times and face giant AI armies

OFFICER TRAITS

Added in some new traits. We also improved the types of effects that officers can provide but haven’t implemented these new effects yet, so that can be done early next year. Modders are able to use the new effects though in case they wanted to make some unique traits.

- New religious trait which gives morale and lowers officer death chances.

- New defensive trait which gives cover bonuses and elevation bonuses

- New steady trait that gives a little melee and charge

- New tactical trait that gives flanking damage but increases flanking damage received

- New vigilant trait that decreases fire damage but reduces stamina

DOCTRINES

We unfortunately didn’t have time to add some more generic doctrines for all nations like we wanted to, but we did get in some nation-specific doctrines for the HRE.

- (HRE-only) Polish-Saxon Union boosts light cavalry combat effectiveness

- (HRE-only) German arms production reduces gun costs

- (HRE-only) Romermonate has you paying a 2 thaler tax but receiving 6 reservists and 6 ammunition daily.

NEW UNITS, UPDATED UNIT TREES

Many unit tree upgrade costs have been changed, there are too many changes to note so you will just need to view each unit tree to see the upgrade costs on the units.

New British Unit Trees (5 new units)

- Added British foot guard

- Added British dragoon guard

- Added British veteran highland

- Added British Hanoverian veteran foot

- Added British Hessian veteran musketeer

New French Unit Tree (6 new units)

- Added French royaux grenadier (replaces volontaires grenadier)

- Added French veteran grenadier

- Added French Irish veteran grenadier

- Added French German veteran fusilier

- Added French Swiss veteran fusilier

- Added French veteran chasseur

New Russian Unit Trees (10 new units)

- Added Russian reserve musketeer

- Changed Russian veteran musketeer to converged musketeer

- Added Russian converged grenadier

- Added Russian cossack plastun

- Added Russian cossack skirmisher

- Added Russian pandur musketeer

- Added Russian pandur grenadier

- Added Russian hetmanate cossack

- Added Russian observation drilled fusilier

- Added Russian observation battalion artillery

New Austrian Unit Trees (7 new units)

- Added Austrian veteran jaeger

- Added Austrian veteran dragoon

- Added Austrian Netherlander frei infantry

- Added Austrian Netherlander veteran fusilier

- Added Austrian hungarian veteran fusilier

- Added Austrian hungarian veteran grenadier

- Added Austrian grenzer veteran fusilier

New Prussian Unit Trees (6 new units)

- Added Prussian converged fusilier

- Prussian freikorps veteran musketeer

- Prussian freikorps veteran jaeger

- Prussian freikorps veteran hussar

- Prussian freikorps dragoon

- Prussian freikorps field artillery

ARMY COMPOSITION CHANGES

- The French national description changed to be a bit more accurate. Previously it mentioned fielding “large armies,” (yet you can’t command multiple armies in Master of Command so this sounded odd), and “poor morale” (yet their heavy cavalry and swiss have the highest morale in the game).

“France can *expand rapidly* with renowned *heavy cavalry*, excelling in sweeping, overwhelming assaults. Yet their lower ranks are #disorganized#, and the strain of supplying so many men is worsened by #poor logistics#, as corruption and lavish spending drain resources. When their spirit holds, however, French armies can deliver devastating blows on the battlefield.”

- Russian national description changed to be more accurate as well. It mentioned cheap recruits but that isn’t really specific to them anymore since the HRE and France have cheap recruits too. It also hinted at the disorganized unit trees but we’ve changed their unit trees to be consolidated

“The Russian army musters *vast numbers* backed by *excellent morale*, enabling it to endure long and punishing combat. Yet its troops suffer from #poor accuracy#, and their #slow movement# leaves them vulnerable to quicker opponents. Even so, when brought to battle, the Russians prove a determined and unyielding foe.”

- Freikorps sturdy shoes item upgraded to good quality, captured flag upgraded to excellent quality

- Light Corps half-gaiters item upgraded to good quality

- Added good iron skull caps to the French House of the King (it’s a new item and reduces melee damage which is fitting for them). Also upgraded their medicinal herbs to good quality.

- Russia’s cossack contingent now starts with one of the new units, a cossack plastun light infantry. You can keep him as a plastun and upgrade him into a dismounted cossack who has decent light infantry stats or upgrade him into a regular cossack unit. While I like the cossack’s all mounted start, they remain one of the least popular army compositions and so hopefully this gives them a little more opportunity to play into a different strategy early on. Excellent lances added to the Russian cossack composition (lances are fitting for the cossacks), and their worn uniform item has been changed to excellent quality.

- French lower rhine army now starts with good spirits instead of basic (we use basic spirits 3 other times for other compositions and the french lower rhine has no good items, so this helps)

- British Expedition’s light saddle downgraded to good quality instead of excellent. A good quality Basket Hilt hanger sword has been added to their starting items (used by highlanders)

- Hanoverian Corps’ hanoverian horse upgraded to excellent quality (they had no excellent items, and no high-tier units)

- Austria’s crownland corps battalion gun upgraded to a field gun


- Russia’s imperial army’s 2nd brigade now contains 1 reserve musketeer instead of 2 serf musketeers. Their starting musketeer has also been upgraded to a grenadier. Their basic spirits replaced with excellent spirits (they had no excellent items, and we haven’t given any composition excellent spirits to start with yet). Their starting officer’s trait has been replaced with “religious.”

- Russia’s Observation corps engineer upgraded to good quality instead of basic (they only have 3 units and no excellent items. Last patch also had debuffed all the items that provided range buffs so the engineer isn’t as strong as he once was). Their officer’s “explosive” trait has been replaced with “defensive (boosts cover and elevation bonuses, which is very helpful for your artillery).

REROLL FEATURE

- You can now re-roll the regions for mission selection in the campaign. This means you don’t have to restart the game over and over to get a good renowned unit or doctrine option. Re-rolling doesn’t cost anything for the first mission of a new campaign, you can do it as many times as you want. In all subsequent regions though, the first reroll is cheap but begins costing more with each additional reroll.

- You can also reroll officer traits

- And you can reroll the negative modifiers to add to your campaign if you’re playing endless mode.

ARTILLERY CHANGES

- Artillery receives 25% less morale damage from muskets, so you can more comfortably have some front-line artillery able to support with canister.

- Fixed an artillery bug where clicking the limber/unlimber button too frequently could break your artillery unit

- All artillery costs are now 20% cheaper. So the most expensive gun is a clean 1,500 thalers now instead of 1875. A bronze 12-pound gun will cost you 800 now instead of 1,000.

- Bronze cannons and special cannons now consume slightly less ammunition. They previously received a large ammo consumption malus.

- Also stated under the unit changes but I generally made all the artillery units cheaper because the actual artillery piece and item upgrades is primarily what makes artillery effective. The unit by itself isn’t very good, so it didn’t make sense to make it so expensive/difficult for the player to acquire even a basic battalion artillery unit.

CAVALRY CHANGES

- Light cavalry has had another manpower buff, the average hussar is now 800 strong instead of 500. This is a pretty massive change so we’ve compensated by doing the following point…

- Compensated for the cavalry size increases by removing a lot of the “cheat” stats cavalry previously received. We have had modifiers that reduce cavalry fire/morale damage by up to 10-35% in some cases because cavalry is so small that they’d be crushed by infantry with similar stats just because they’re in some cases ⅓ the size. Because the cavalry sizes have been increased, a lot of those cheats have been dialed down massively. 

1. Cavalry Morale Damage Received -35% -> -0%

2. Cavalry Fire Damage Received -30% -> -20%

3. Cavalry Fire Morale Damage Receive -10% -> -10% (unchanged)

Cavalry receiving less fire damage seems counterintuitive (since the target is larger) but because of their small size it’s very easy for them to get shredded up. I think it also makes sense that the fire damage is reduced slightly since cavalry is often on the move and it’s far harder to hit a moving target of cavalry compared to a giant line of infantry (who are also often a much larger and denser target!)

- All cavalry sprints +5 faster. Their walk speed is unchanged though. This should help them in the early game to outflank enemies and even in the lategame since it’s harder to flank it should at least let you get your cavalry in to exploit a breakthrough faster. Heavy cavalry will most noticeably benefit from this.

- All light cavalry has had their morale reduced by 5-10 and their melee by -5. This is to compensate for their increased HP. The nice thing about this is it means that vanilla light cavalry (no upgrades/items) will feel a little more fragile in the early game but in the late game once you have stacked items onto them they should become a lot more powerful due to their large manpower size. Currently most players (about 79% of respondents) have felt that light cavalry is too powerful early game but becomes useless late game because they have had excellent stats but small numbers which meant that by the time you get to Act 3 there isn’t much room to maneuver and a single powerful volley from an enemy with buffed stats will decimate you. The lowered stats but higher number should mean that earlier on it’s a little easier to deal with cavalry threats but late game they can keep up better with the infantry and artillery.

- Fixed a bug with cavalry that stopped them from reloading their carbines if they were recently in melees.

CAMPAIGN CHANGES

- Updated the regions to contain the HRE faction, they are commonly found in any of the German regions but can occasionally be found spilling into neighboring regions

- New conditions can appear at settlements. There is a positive one called “Auxiliary Recruitment,” and a negative opposite one called “Disarmed Settlement.” Auxiliary Recruitment means that the barracks at the location contains only units local to that area (ie: finding English troops in England while playing as France). This was added since the HRE was added in as a nation, I figured it would be interesting to be able to pick up some local German troops if you were campaigning in the Rhine or Bavaria for example. The “Disarmed Settlement” means that the settlement has far fewer units to recruit.

- There was a major bug that delayed the second HQ of Act 3 by nearly 200 days. This has been fixed and so the delay is only 14 days when the second HQ hits you.

- Encounters can no longer spawn directly on top of the HQ army which could prevent you from completing your objectives!

- Using the inventory sort buttons in camp is now synced up with the sorting order when you go to a shop. So if you sort by highest value, then go to a shop, the highest value items of your inventory will be listed first.

- The scorched earth region resource availability malus is now -20% instead of -25%. Just wanted to make it slightly less punishing in case you were scraping by and arrived in the region low on resources.

- Disbanding a regiment now fully refunds you its reservists, ammunition, and items

- Field armies are now more common. There was a bug that would push them into around day 160 if you were actively fighting patrols but often times the HQ is ready by that time and field armies aren’t allowed to spawn when the HQ is active.

- Slightly increased the ammo reward for prisoners since ammo consumption is now slightly higher

- The multi-front conflict modifier now makes officers and units +35% more expensive rather than just units. This is primarily because the officer costs haven’t been adjusted at all from all 10 difficulty modifiers despite resource costs, item costs, and unit costs all being impacted by the modifiers, so it felt odd that the officers were untouched. Furthermore, the Auxiliary Corps plays specifically around officers (and so does Hanover for that matter) and so not adjusting the officer costs at all just make those compositions disproportionately more powerful when playing on max modifiers.

- You can now zoom out in the unit trees to see them fully (useful for France and HRE)

- Retreating from a battle only causes 10% attrition instead of 20%, and an enemy you retreat from will be stunlocked for 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

BATTLE CHANGES

- Bracing only works at 10% efficiency from in rear charges. To compensate for this, I slightly reduced the charge impact damage on rear charges. The end result though is that rear charging is far more powerful still.

- Bracing is lost about 20% faster when you’re moving

- Free fire no longer gets a -50% penalty to dealing morale damage, it’s now -35%. The reason the morale damage penalty exists is to make volley fire more devastating since a unit is receiving many casualties suddenly. This change should make morale damage dealt by light infantry more effective as they rely on fire at will.

- Light infantry has their formations back! They can fight in close order and open order, but we now made it so when they exit/enter open order it resets their bracing which solves the exploit regarding changing into close order right before a charge is received.

- Light infantry take a less extreme penalty when being charged. They previously received a 2.5x increase in damage from charges, now it’s 2x instead. Should make them a little easier to manage.

- Minor improvements to melee, specifically, when trying to target a unit that is running away who you’re already engaged in melee with.

- Melees have been made about 5x longer by slowing down the HP damage dealt over time. This gives you more time to respond if a unit is charged

- Charge HP damage reduced by -25%

- Charge resistance (damage dealt to the charging unit) reduced by -25%

- Charging consumes less stamina (-10 now instead of -15)

- Melees consume -20% less stamina since they last longer

- Combat effectiveness bug fixed where it was disproportionately affecting reload skill. At worst, it could make a unit take 150s to reload, and at best it could speed up reload to 2-3 seconds. Both of these are wrong due to an error in the math which was applying a multiplier to the time itself and not the reload skill.

- All units now move +20% faster, everything should be feeling more responsive. All cavalry now walks a little slower but sprints faster.

AMMUNITION CHANGES

- Ammunition types (like canister, buckshot etc) now has an ammunition consumption penalty parameter. This means I can make the ammo types have less of a range penalty and make the penalty more about the ammunition consumption. For example, canister shot was super difficult to use because it hurt your range so badly you’d risk losing your artillery. Now the range reduction isn’t so extreme but it burns through ammo quicker. So you will do more damage than with solid shot but you can’t afford to keep the artillery piece using canister for the entire duration of battle unless you’ve got an excellent limber chest.

- Buckshot now only reduces range by -35% instead of -55%. Its damage has been reduced from 30/35/40 to 25/30/35. But ammo consumption increases by +20% when it’s being used.

- Buck & Ball now only reduced range by -15% instead of -35%. Its damage has been unaffected (20/25/30). Its ammo consumption is +40% though.

- Quartered shot now actually increases range by +10% instead of reducing by -25%. But its damage has been changed to 10/15/20 instead of 15/20/25. The ammo consumption penalty is highest here since it’s receiving two buffs and no debuff, so you will go through ammo 60% faster. Cartridge boxes got buffed (which you’ll see under the item change section) and so they can now reduce ammo consumption by -60%. This makes an excellent quality large cartridge box very attractive if you want to build a light infantry unit with quartered shot as a sniper. I may change quartered shot later on to actually reduce accuracy but provide further range but I wanted to try out an ammo type that is like a “premium” round and see if it’s any fun first.

UNIT CHANGES

In terms of balancing, there are about 100 changes per nation so it’d be too tedious to list them all out by hand, instead I’ve included screenshots of the changes.

- British 1st Dragoon Guards renowned unit changed to British Horse Grenadiers (because Dragoon Guards are now represented in the main tree)

- French “Grenadiers de France” changed to the Garde Lorraine (because Grenadiers de France are now represented in the main tree as Veteran Grenadiers)

- Higher-tier light infantry now come with socket bayonets as opposed to worn bayonets

- All battalion artillery units are priced -100 cheaper now

Unit balances below (green numbers are increases, red numbers are decreases). Please keep in mind some of the unit ID names are outdated (some display names got reworked). New units are in green. Also I should add that some of these stats aren't fully in-date as a very small handful of stats got tinkered with right before the patch went live. The most noticeable changes that are outdated with the renowned units.

Prussian unit changes

Austrian unit changes

Russian unit changes

British unit changes

French unit changes

HRE units

TERRAIN CHANGES

We’ve heard a lot of feedback about terrain not impacting the game as much as it should. Unfortunately, there are a lot of limitations with our battle engine which means things like impassable terrain will never come and true 3d hills won’t either (but it’s definitely something on our priority list for a future title). That said, we thought at the very least we could make the existing terrain a little more strategically impactful with the addition of a stamina modifier…

- Rivers now reduce your stamina by -0.5 per second. Your idle stamina regain rate is normally +0.5 so this means you just don’t regain stamina in a river. If you sprint or reload while in a river you’ll also drain your stamina quickly.

- Marshes reduce stamina by -0.25 per second

- Buildings reduce stamina by -0.1 per second (very minor, but simulates troops taking up positions in stairs and such)

- Forests reduce stamina by -0.15 per second. Also minor but your troops will get very slightly worn out faster if sprinting through a large forest or firing in there for a prolonged period. And as aforementioned your idle regain rate is +0.5 so you won’t get tired just from sitting or walking in a forest.

- Hedges only reduce movement by -15% now instead of -25%

- Roads now provide a passive +0.2 positive stamina gain. This means sprinting on roads is far less exhausting (you lose -0.35 while sprinting, so this means you only lose -0.15 a second while sprinting). It also means if you leave a unit on a road it will regain stamina faster. This makes roads not only more strategically important for maneuver but for combat. It’s even more beneficial if you find a road flanked by hedges so that you’ve got cover and stamina regeneration!

- Hills now provide 30% cover instead of 20%.

- In a future quality of life update we plan on revealing all of this terrain data for you, just give us a little time and we'll make something soon.

ITEM CHANGES

- Bayonets have been fixed. They say “-10 accuracy, -10 reload” on their tooltip which is inaccurate. It’s a percentage reduction (-10%). But i’m not a fan of using percentages here because they scale in such a way that in the late game you need to be micromanaging your troops by removing their bayonets in order to get the most out of them. We’ve now changed it so the accuracy/reload maluses are additive instead of multipliers. So now a worn bayonet reduces accuracy by -2 and reload by -2 instead of by -10% accuracy, -10% reload. Finally, the accuracy/reload reduction bayonets give is now shown directly on your camp stats so your stats at camp are more accurate going into battle.

- All muskets now take an additional 4 seconds to fire, carbines take an additional 3. I was finding it far too easy to stack items to get reload time down to unrealistic times. I don’t mind the realism breaking if a player min-maxes every possible reload buff but there were cases of units reaching 3 second reload times with just a handful of decent items.

- Base musket and carbine accuracy reduced by -4 on muskets, -2 on carbines. In addition to the aforementioned reload debuff, this was done because we’re adding in so many new units to the game. Many of the new units are “veteran,” or “guard” variants. I do not want the skill ceiling to be raised much higher and so this is a slight form of compensation for additional unit tiers being added (especially many veteran musketeer units being added such as veteran irish, veteran swiss, veteran hessian, veteran hanoverian, etc)

- All carbines now have cleaner ranges. Instead of a standard musket having 125 range and a carbine with range proficiency having 93.6 range it is simply 95.

- Delft muskets are no longer poor at charging (previously 1 charge attack, now 6 which is the average)

- Jonkoping muskets no longer suffer from poor range (range gone from 120 to 125)

- Tula musket no longer has such bad range, but it’s still below the average (range from 115 to 120).

- Marksman only reduces reload by -2 now, but provides 2 less accuracy per tier

- Tobacco only reduces stamina by -2 now

- Coffee no longer increases move speed up to 6 by the highest tier, its secondary effect is now a constant flat +4

- Tea no longer increases reload up to 6 by the highest tier, its secondary effect is now a constant +4. Tea’s accuracy is now 2,4,6 instead of 4,6,8 now making it a tougher choice between it and tobacco.

- Cheese no longer increases stamina up to 6 by the highest tier, its secondary effect i snow a constant +4

- Beer secondary effect (morale) is a flat +4 instead of a +2

- All cartridge boxes provide and additional -5% more ammunition reduction (best cartridge box is now giving -60% ammo consumption)

- Effective range on muskets has been reduced from 50 meters to 40 (average max range is 125). This just makes it a little harder to get such high kills firing at your maximum range (which is exploitable in the late game when your base accuracy is so high that a max-range volley can be too devastating)

- Gunpicks now provide 2/4/6 reload instead of 4/6/8

- Friedrich treatise now provides 4/6/8 reload instead of 6/8/10

- Infantry ramrods debuffed. The normal ones are now 4/6/8 reload instead of 6/8/10. And cylindrical ramrods are now 6/8/10 instead of 8/10/12.

- Fixed some very nice rounding errors on item tooltips (should be -70%)

- Heavy saddles now reduce melee damage received instead of giving you melee damage. Didn’t make sense that the seat on a horse increased your damage output. Reducing damage received makes more sense since it’s harder to knock you off the horse and keeps you stable during a fight.

- Surgeon casualties restored is now 25/30/35% instead of 30/35/40%

- Weapon comparison tooltip has been improved. It now shows the advantage/disadvantage is on each weapon compared to the other on the comparison tooltip.

- General balance pass on muskets to make some of the underperforming ones better

UNIFORM CHANGES

Many uniforms have been downgraded (like from gold buttons to silver) to create a good visual distinction between the new “veteran” units that have been added to many rosters, and the basic musketeer versions.

- All Prussian blue has been unified. We were using a slightly different hexcode from what was in the Prussian color palette compared to what they were wearing, now they use the exact same color. All Freikorps uniforms now use a faded blue color to distinguish them from the main Prussian branch. Unfortunately, there’s no room in the color palette to add a faded blue in so if you change the jacket color of a freikorps soldier you’ll need to reset the bust in order to get that blue back. Otherwise, you could recolor it to the standardized Prussian blue if you don’t like the faded color.

- Frei-Infantry fusilier hat changed to have a black cockade and solid color pompom

- Prussian fusiliers only feature 1 crossbelt to distinguish them from the new converged fusilier unit. Their hair is also a little messier and never white.

- Prussian freikorp recruits uniform redone, the jacket cut now uses wider button holes and has no collar.

- Prussian musketeer uniform redone, utilizes wider button holes and no collar. The hair has been made messier. They now have a black cockade along with a solid pompom color.

- Prussian freikorps jaegers no longer have random facing colors, they are light green by default. The crossbelt has been removed for single thin tan strap. They’ve been given messy hair.

- The “Le noble” renowned unit now has gold buttons and and a collar in order to distinguish it better from the veteran freikorps jaegers.

- Frei-infantry fusilier collar removed from the bust

- Prussian provincial cavalry hair has been made messier

- Prussian hussar hair made messier

- Prussian freikorps provincial cavalry made to look more basic and always rough hair

- Freikorps hussars now just use either red or blue colors randomly for their uniform

- Freikorps dragoons are based on the Prussian Dragoons but have no lapels

- Freikorps battalion artillery has no collar or lapels now. It also uses a full green uniform instead of blue.

- Freikorps field artillery still has no lapels but has gold buttons and a white belt. Also uses a green uniform.

- Austrian Jaegers now use a standard black cocked hat. They wear a thin brown belt instead of a larger white belt.

- Netherlander field artillery has a crossbelt now and no collar, white gaiters

- Hungarian grenadiers now have silver elements to their uniform instead of gold

- Hungarian fusiliers now have silver elements to their uniform instead of gold

- Austrian fusiliers have silver elements to the uniform instead of golf, crossbelt reduced to thinner strap

- Russian grenadiers changed to use silver buttons

- Frontier recruits are now hatless and have a more basic uniform

- Observation fusiliers now wear covered black mitre caps

- Observation grenadiers now wear the soft red fatigue caps that were circulating early in the war (especially since Observation Corps was disbanded in the late war)

- British Coldstream Guard uniform made brighter to distinguish itself from the new Foot Guard unit

- British Hanoverian foot has been given the british-style jacket cut

- British Subsidy landmiliz can now spawn with either a blue jacket or red jacket

- British Hessian musketeers only have a single belt instead of a crossbelt

- French gaiters changed to white for Veteran Fusiliers & Grenadiers

- French Irish fusilier hair made messier

- French Irish Grenadier uniform now being used for the Irish Veteran Fusiliers. The Irish Grenadier uniform has been given a bearskin.

- French Swiss fusiliers always have blue trousers now rather than it being random between white and blue.

- French volontaires fusilier uniform now color-matches the same shade of blue on the German fusilier uniform. The volontaires fusilier cocked hat no longer has white lining.

- French chasseur uniform changed to utilize a cocked hat instead of a “pokalem” hat, which has been moved to the veteran chasseur

- Volontaires provincial cavalry changed to blue

- Volontaires dragoon blue darkened to match the other volontaires/german troops

- Fixed highland uniform that had silver buttons on bust but would appear with gold buttons in battle

MODDING SPOTLIGHT

Just wanted to highlight my favorite mods that have been released since last months Workshop update! These are in no particular order. Some of these mods may not be working with this new update, so if they aren’t working for you I recommend reverting the game back to the old build by going through “game properties,” on Steam and “betas” in order to try them out. The creators of these mods seem pretty active so I’m sure they’ll fix them soon.

1. Kingdom of Sweden:

This mod adds Sweden to the game. It seems to be compatible with other mods too so you can add this nation on to fight against or to fight alongside! I really like the new artwork added for the busts.

2. Pugachyov's Rebellion

This mod is really interesting, it’s more of an overhaul. It sets the two nations as Russia vs the Pugachyov Rebellion. You are essentially leading a peasant revolt against Russia and have access to some really cool units.

3. Nekodom’s USA

This is another overhaul mod which sets the nations to be Britain, France, USA. I really love the updated map they did and it’s cool exploring US states and seeing the towns/villages be places I’m familiar with (as an American). 

4. Spain

(Other mod-incompatible version)

(Mod-friendly version)

I believe this mod is compatible with the other nation mods like Sweden, but not with the overhaul mods. There are a ton of great flag additions for Spain and lots of units. I love the little map extension into Iberia alongside the main vanilla map. I also especially love the doctrine system here where you go through multiple military reforms in order to try and get rid of a malus the nation has. It’s a very dynamic system and is a creative take on the doctrines.

5. Immobile HQ mod

This is the last mod I just wanted to highlight in case anyone is struggling with the game and wants a more casual experience. I think if you add this mod on alongside with the game’s new “endless mode,” you’ll have a very casual experience in which the HQ will never come after you and you can continue playing beyond Act 3.

There are many other mods which are very cool, even if they aren’t complete overhauls. Definitely check them out here!

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2878450/workshop/

MODDING CHANGES

- WARNING: Many overhaul mods will be broken from this update. This is because I added a new AI army type called “FOREIGN.” So you’d normally have EASY_PATROL1, EASY_PATROL2 etc to define. Now you need to define EASY_FOREIGN_PATROL1, EASY_FOREIGN_PATROL2, etc. The “foreign” army comp is rarer but it exclusively uses foreign brigades so that there’s a chance if you’re fighting Britain for example that you engage an entirely Hanoverian-Hessian army, or if you’re fighting Prussia you might find a full Freikorps army. If you fix this for your mods in the JSON, then it should be working again.

- You can now mod new languages in!

- Custom scripting support fixes

- Added more logging support for scripting so you can check errors

- Overhaul done to officer traits/doctrines, you can now dynamically modify different categories of effects like modifying stamina or combat effectiveness and pair it with many new interchangeable conditions. For example, if you wanted to modify stamina for only light cavalry, or modify additional damage a unit takes from shattering but only for light infantry, etc you can now make many of the effects conditional in a way that wasn’t possible before.

- Modders are able to access the new HRE mustering stance and enable it for other compositions if they wish to add it anywhere else.

ACHIEVEMENT CHANGES

- 12 new HRE achievements added to the game. They follow the same convention of the other nation achievements.

GENERIC EMBLEMS

- Added in a small batch of generic emblems that any nation can use

VISUAL CHANGES

- Smoke effects should look a little fuller but also be less bright/blinding than before.

- New loading screen art 1

- New loading screen art 2

- Fixed a visual bug where a region reward would show even if the UI wasn’t open when hovering over a region on the mission selection map

- Visual bug fix when cavalry would run or walk the animation sync was broken

- Visual bug fix, the tip of the cannon art was cut off when an artillery unit was in reserve

- When an objective is on the edge of the map it no longer has this ugly blue color which you can see on the right of the map.

- Added more variations of churches and the staff house you can find at cities

LOCALIZATION CHANGES

- Added Turkish language support, and as aforementioned, players may now mod localization and add new languages

AI CHANGES

Unfortunately, adding in the HRE in the span of just two weeks along with many new units (90 in total) ended up taking up a lot of time. We weren’t able to work on AI much- we would have been able to if it weren’t for Christmas but it was important to give ourselves a break so we can continue making great improvements next year.

- AI bug fix where if you ran around a unit frequently enough with cavalry sometimes they would freeze for the remainder of battle

- More randomness to AI infantry charges, they’re a little less predictable now

- More randomness to the AI defensive stance, also less predictable

- AI should break from defensive stance sooner if you advance on them- there were some rare cases where you could fire at AI infantry but they wouldn’t return fire and instead remain in the defensive stance. We also added randomness to it so sometimes they break from defensive stance sooner than other times.

- AI will now counter-battery fire if you begin firing at their artillery with yours

- AI will less likely flick their regiment around when you’re about to make contact with a rear charge.

- AI bug fixed where 

- In brigades that contain light infantry, the AI will now usually bring at least 2 instead of having a light infantry brigade that consists of 1 skirmisher and the rest are grenadiers/line infantry

- In Act 3 the AI will have a chance of bringing 4 artillery guns in their dedicated artillery brigade. Previously it had been changed for them to only be able to bring 3 (except if they brought a renowned artillery unit). But this looked extremely imbalanced. In the picture example below you can see in the final battle the British only had 2 artillery pieces.

- AI no longer brings as much artillery in with this 1st brigade for boss battles (brigades that contain a renowned unit will bring artillery less often). Previously there were 6/10 possible boss battle compositions per nation that contained artillery and now it’s 4/10. Furthermore, if the AI ever brings an extra artillery piece in a brigade containing a renowned unit it will only be a battalion artillery and not field artillery.

- AI Austria can no longer bring triple Netherlander field artillery in Act 2 which was too powerful

- Integrated all the new units (especially the veteran musketeer/fusilier variations) into the AI’s army compositions

- Increased the weights on the niche brigade types so that AI armies would be more varied, you should be seeing less duplicate brigades now.

- Added new AI army types where they can bring an “auxiliary” army which is disproportionately of their foreign troops. Like facing a British army that’s almost entirely composed of Hessian/Hanoverians.

- AI patrols are more dominantly infantry instead of perfect 33-33-33 splits between infantry/cavalry/artillery. So now they’ll appear as 66% infantry, 33% cavalry OR artillery (depends on RNG). And the cavalry-oriented patrol is more common than an artillery-oriented one.

SOUND CHANGES

- Fixed a bug that made sounds cut out if you were using the high speed setting in battle. In this bug, sometimes sounds would never play again even if you went back to regular speed. So the marching/drumming should be a little more consistent now as previously they were cutting out and breaking on higher speeds.

- Updated foraging sound to sound more like hunting

- Sounds added to support the new mustering stance

- 2 new marching songs added that can play for field musician, foreign musician, and bagpiper

- New battle track added “Iron Resolve”

- New battle track added “March to Glory”

- New battle track added “Final Redoubt”

SUPPORTER EDITION

- Added new music to the supporter edition

- Added new HRE art to the supporter edition

MOC DEMO & STEAM SALE

- Game is now on sale for the Steam winter sale for 10% off, and the DLC is free permanently

- Added the demo back to the game! It should be up to stay now, so if you have a friend who is on the fence about jumping into MoC they can now play the demo and if they like it they can buy the game on sale (10% off for the winter sale)

ENCOUNTER CHANGES

- Since there’s a gambling theme going on with the Holy Roman Empire faction, I’ve changed the “Gambler’s Den” to allow you to rig the game if you have the HRE’s national doctrine.

OPTIMIZATION CHANGES

- Small optimization improvements when the battle gets very smokey

- Optimization improvements if there are big melees

CONCLUSION

That’s it for the Imperial Decree update! We’ve fulfilled every promise for November and December so far with the exception of adding some new battle maps. I (Griffin) am in charge of balancing/design as well as map creation and unfortunately I couldn’t balance doing both in the little time we had to add in the HRE. That said, we did overdeliver on the new units which should make up for it; instead of “4 new units per nation” (20 total) we added a total of 34 to the 5 base nations. We also gave the HRE 40 units instead of the 38 we said we would.

Thank you so much for supporting the game, the free DLC was the least we could do for all the support you’ve given us and very kind reviews. We are now going to take our first time off since the release of the game and will return in January. This does unfortunately mean that there won’t be any hotfixes past Friday December 19th. If there is part of this update you don’t enjoy or a bug, we’ve made sure to add the old build of the game for you to opt into so you don’t need to play with this new update. Thanks so much again guys, and happy holidays!