Update v1.3.0 "War Council" NEW

Hey everyone! This is the final update as part of Season 1 content. We're a little late (this update was meant to drop in January) but we had taken some time away after the HRE DLC to take a break. We will return to monthly updates and next week I'll be sharing our Season 2 roadmap with you!

AI UPDATE

- New AI personality system. This is the first implementation, so there’s still some more work I want to do in the coming months. Essentially, each AI army now has a random personality associated with it which will influence its combat behaviors. Notice in the image below on this army there’s a shield. This means it will utilize a defensive stance in the battle. For now, AI armies can be “Defensive,” “Balanced,” or “Aggressive.” In the future, I’m considering changing this to instead be named after different military schools of thought, theorists, or commanders. For example, fighting an army whose tactics emulate “Folard,” or “Friedrich.” For now though, I want to test out this simple structure of three varying degrees of aggressiveness based on personality.

- AI bug has been fixed where they were unable to utilize their secondary ammunitions. You should notice more of them using buck & ball, canister, etc compared to before. This can be quite dangerous if the AI cavalry has buckshot!

- Made improvements to AI light infantry behaviors so they don’t overlap with the infantry as much. Instead, they will try to deploy right in front of the line infantry so they can be fired over.

- AI now has a preference to explicitly not fight in rivers. They should try avoiding sitting and committing to firefights where they are sitting in water.

- AI infantry now has explicit behaviors to flank you more often if they outnumber you.

- New “turtle” stance which is utilized by the defensive AI. This sees the AI pick a defensible spot on the map, and fan out to points of cover. In this turtling stance they can not be “aggro’d.” This means that moving up a unit and running away can’t trigger the AI to abandon its defensive positions and give chase to you. You might still be able to aggro a Balanced AI personality, but Defensive AI will stick to its positions more rigidly. I will admit that the defensive AI is probably the weakest right now and will need some refinements over the next few updates. The aggressive and balanced AI should be working pretty well though.

- Cavalry behaviors have seen many improvements. They are less willing to “death charge” your lines unless the battle is looking desperate for them. They will now commit more to defending the infantry on the frontlines in case the player charges too. Cavalry has also had some flanking improvements. And finally, if you rout a cavalry unit, it will actually sit behind its lines to regain its morale instead of recovering and immediately adopting the “death charge” behavior where it suicides back into your lines.

- The AI will now reposition themselves if there is a convenient location to use cover on the map instead of completely ignoring it. They will also treat hills this way too, but give priority to artillery to use.

Hall of Fame Feature

- New “Hall of Fame” feature which can be accessed on the main menu. Whenever you complete a campaign, you will have the opportunity to save your favorite units to the “hall of fame” which memorializes them permanently. Players can click on the scroll icon to save a unit to their hall of fame, but this can only be done in the completion of a campaign.

- Here you can see the full display of the Hall of Fame. Players can also hit the “X” button to remove units from the hall of fame. They will appear here exactly how you named and customized your units.

MAP CHANGES

- Fixed a map bug that made it extremely unlikely to play on a city or town map, so those maps are now back in rotation finally. They will only appear if you’re fighting directly over a settlement.

- Improvements made to terrain data in battles. Previously, two terrain types were not allowed to overlap- instead there was a hierarchy of which terrain got priority if two overlapped. So for example, if you had a road and a hedge next to each other, the hedge took priority and gave you cover but you didn’t receive the speed boost from the road. Now, cover is read separately from other terrain effects so it’s possible to receive hedge cover while getting a speed buff from roads for example.

- Added new hilly map with forests concentrated in the center

- Added new farm map that has hills dotted around the map with large farm plots

- Added a new map that has a central paved road going down the center with many villages connected to it.

Here’s a closer look at that paved road. I also implemented the paved road texture into the city map that was meant to appear when you fought over large settlements.

CAMPAIGN CHANGES

- Fixed a bug where if you used the mustering stance and then switched off of it, the percentage chance of getting a new unit would continue increasing despite having changed stances.

- New end-game stat display which is much larger than previously. Gives you more details on your units’ stats and now lists ALL units and officers in your army when you finished the game. Officers now display what traits they had and units display the exact stats they had.

- Fixed the stat display when recruiting units. It showed accuracy and then range, whereas in camp it showed range and then accuracy. So we’ve swapped these around on the recruitment screen to make it consistent with camp. You can see the incorrect version in the image below, the white arrows indicating that they needed to be flipped.

- Fixed a visual glitch with the battle aftermath screen. If you had 2 rows of loot, it would cover up the deployed/lost/remaining/kills/captured figures of your enemy. Notice in the image below we couldn’t see the enemy’s stats but only our own (shows just 1 flag).

Customization Changes

- Added new officer heads that can appear in recruitment and you can change your officers’ heads to one of these as well. Could be cool for roleplay if an officers’ unit takes a beating, you change his head over to the one that contains a scar. Could be cool in a future project if things like scars were dynamic based on actual injuries.

In the next update I’d like to get some more officer hats in addition to these new heads.

- New flag emblems added for all nations! I also labeled underneath each emblem where you’ll see these flags being used in flag generation.

Battle Changes

- Hills now provide +15% accuracy instead of +10% making them more strategically valuable

- Fixed a bug report related to artillery reload times. In the example, the player’s artillery displayed 18 second reloads but the cannon took 49 seconds to reload. In some cases there was a desynchronization between the artillery reload stat and its actual reload speed

Doctrine Changes

- 6 New doctrines have been added to the game. Human wave attacks boosts charge skill but decreases replenishment speed. Pincer movements improves flanking damage and movement speed. Melee discipline boosts melee skill. Steady ranks reduces morale damage received. Fresh water supplies gives a stamina buff. And well-kept arms buffs range and accuracy.

- The “loading drills” doctrine boosts reload by +10% instead of +15%.

- The close combat exercises doctrine reduces melee damage received instead of boosting melee and reducing accuracy.

- Carthaginian spirit now increase forced march speed and visibility instead of ignoring mountain attrition.

- Gunsmiths now generate 5 ammunition per day instead of generating 8 per day while losing 1 thaler per day.

- Cadenced marching now boosts infantry move speed by 5% and stamina by 5% instead of infantry move speed by 10%.

- Inspired Populace now reduces resource costs by -20% instead of -15%.

- Local Guides no longer reveals just reveals all settlements, it also reveals where all the encamped armies are. Good for players hunting doctrines by taking out encamped armies.

- Sanitary Conditions now adds +5% casualty recovery at the end of battles in addition to the attrition reduction. Good to synergize with the Russian Mir at War composition which also gives casualty replenishment.

- Enlistment officers now reduce unit recruitment by -10% and officer recruitment by -10% instead of just regular recruitment by -20%. This should be helpful for any composition playing into officers now (like the Armed Principalities for HRE) since we had no generic doctrines that reduced officer hiring.

- Officer Corps training now reduces officer costs by -20% in addition to giving them a free promotion on hire.

- Baggage trains reduces ammo only by -25% now instead of -35%.

- Scraping the barrel reduces reservist cost by -35% instead of -40%. However, its malus of -10% army veterancy is now only -5%.

- Blitz now increases move speed in battles by +5% and charge skill by +5% instead of boosting your forced march speed. This is because we moved the forced march speed buff over to be the Carthaginian Spirit’s new effect. We also realized there weren’t many doctrines that boosted move speed or charge skill.

- Night marches now only reduce your stamina by -5% instead of -10%. The buff of +15% campaign movement speed is the same.

- Salary Reductions now discount recruitment by -30% instead of -35%. The morale malus of -5% has remained the same.

- Offensive Spirit now only gives +10% melee skill instead of +25% which was way too high. The malus of -10% accuracy has been reduced to -5%.

- Tribute collection now only raises item cost by +5% instead of +10% as its malus. The bonus of collecting 100 thalers when visiting settlements for the first time has remained the same.

- Extended training no longer consumes an extra +10% ammunition in drilling stance. It now just provides the buff of +50% veterancy while drilling.

- Austria’s professional artillerists doctrine now provides +15% accuracy instead of +10% for artillery.

- Austria’s frontier skirmishes doctrine now only reduces infantry melee by -10% instead of by -15%.

- Austria’s unique doctrine “Austrian War Council” now boosts officer veterancy gain by +5% instead of reducing it by -10%. The other buff has remained the same (50% officer discount). So now it contains both an officer discount plus veterancy gain for officers.

- France’s “Vive le Roi” doctrine was broken and has been fixed. It was accidentally set as a morale damage reduction bonus instead of what it should’ve been, which was "Cavalry melee damage received” bonus. Your French cavalry runs with this army should be less bloody!

- HRE’s “Armed Principalities” no longer makes officers and units +150% more expensive, but now just +100%. So it’s much easier to play into hiring cheap officers for free units. Because we also changed two generic doctrines to include officer discounts, you can also hunt for these to make officers even cheaper and lean into the free units harder. These officer discounts can be found in the doctrines “Officer Corps Training” (-20% officer discount) and “Enlistment Officers” (-10% officer discount).

- HRE’s Romermonate doctrine now grants you 2 ammunition, reservists, and provisions daily instead of 4 provisions and ammunition at the cost of 1 thaler.

- Doctrines can no longer stack before “endless mode” is activated. Previously, you could find duplicates of doctrines can stack them but this was unintentional until the player reaches the endless mode (going beyond act 3).

- The German Arms Production doctrine for the HRE would break if it was stacked multiple times, this has been fixed.

- The Sanitary Conditions doctrine was increasing attrition instead of decreasing! Has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing players to take composition-exclusive doctrines in their regular doctrine selection. Also fixed a bug that let you stack doctrines which isn’t allowed unless the player is in the “endless” mode.

Officer Skill Changes

- Changed “Meticulous” to reduce charge by -5% instead of reload by -5%. So now the effect is +10% infantry accuracy, but -5% charge damage. It didn’t feel as intuitive when it reduced reload speed because if you’re firing more accurately but slower, you may end up doing a similar amount of damage if you didn’t have the skill at all since you’d be firing quicker.

- Changed stubborn to now boost charge by +10% and reduce cover efficiency by -5% as the malus. It previously only boosted your charge by +5% and reduced your cover efficiency by -10%. It was not a very good trait before.

- Changed stalwart’s malus to reduce charge by -5% instead of reducing charge by -15%. Its effect is now a cover effectiveness boost of +15%, with just -5% charge.

- Cunning’s malus only reduces melee damage received by +5% instead of +10%. Its effect is now flanking fire damage +15%, and melee damage received +5%.

New Encounters

Added some new encounters to the game. I increased the weight of these appearing a little higher than they should be just so you get a higher chance of seeing them since they’re new. Sometime next month, I’ll reduce their weights to normal.

- Added new “Old Monastery” encounter where you can get food, a chaplain, or religious items.

- Added a military theorist encounter where you can purchase or sell treatises.

- Added livestock traders encounter where you can sell or purchase cattle or provide an escort to the traders.

- Added a nested encounter where you can try and stop a mutiny.

Depending on the results of the Mutiny encounter, you’ll get a followup encounter of either success or failure

Item Changes

- Gunners implements’ prices up by +10

- Iron Ramrods prices up by +5

- Cylindrical ramrod price down by -10

- Cylindrical ramrods more commonly found

- Entrenching tools reduce stamina by -2 instead of -4

- Tompion price increased by +10

- Gunpicks price increased by +10

- Gunpicks stamina gain increased from +2 to +4

- Tow Worms’ price increased by +5

- Farrier price increased by +5

- Commissar price decreased by -5

- Quartermaster reduces morale by -2 instead of -4

- Quartermaster price reduced by -10

- Surgeon price reduced by -20

- Chaplain price increased by +5

- Chaplain now increments its morale bonuses by +2 instead of +4 (meaning the excellent tier chaplain provides +10 morale instead of +12)

- Foreign musician price increased by +10

- Limber chest price increased by +10

- Large limber chest stamina -4 instead of -6

- Haversacks now provide 2/4/6 stamina instead of 4/6/8

- Canteens now provide +2 move speed instead of just stamina

- Light saddles now provide +2 more move speed per tier

- Light saddle price increased by +10

- Heavy saddles now provide +2 more move speed per tier

- Heavy saddle price increased by +10

- Cavalry boot prices increased by +5

- Cross pendants now give +4 charge instead of +2

- Cross pendant price increased by +10

- Medicinal herbs reduced in price by -10

- Cheese’s dominant effect is now a stamina buff instead of a morale buff (we have plenty of morale items already). This means it receives 4/6/8 stamina per item tier, and 4/4/4 morale instead of 4/6/8 morale and 4/4/4 stamina.

- Tobacco ration prices increased by +10

- Coffee rations prices decreased by -10

- Ukrainian horse cost -10

- Friesian horse price increased by +10

- I’ve replaced pistols’ secondary effect with a charge damage buff (+2) instead of a reload buff. I think the pistols giving accuracy + charge instead of accuracy + reload helps better represent them as close-range weapons discharged right before a charge. It also makes them a bit more competitive when selecting between it and lances.

- I’ve changed lances back to reducing your accuracy by -6/-6/-6 to make it more of a specialized tool you give to your non-carbine cavalry since it would be awkward for a cavalryman to hold a lance, sword, and carbine all at once.

- Infantry hanger price reduced by -10

- Hoc’s infantry treatise price reduced by -10 since it’s very niche (gives charge but massively reduces accuracy)

- Pelt prices increased by +10 (makes them more valuable to sell)

- Captured regimental flag price increased by +10 (more valuable to sell)

- Gold Brooch priced increased by +5 (more valuable to sell)

- Made gold brooches and diamond pendant loot slightly more common to find

- Wooden stake price reduced by -30

- Chevaux de frise price reduced by -30

- Worn sabres (default sword) is now melee 4, charge 4, instead of 4/6.

- Hussar sabres are now more specialized toward charging. They give +12 charge instead of +10, but only +4 melee instead of +6.

- Cuirassier swords’ charge damage reduced from +6 to +4 so they are now an inversion of the hussar sabre (12 melee/4 charge)

- Hussar sabre price increased by +20

- Light socket bayonet is now +2 melee / 10 charge instead of +4 melee / 8 charge

- Heavy bayonet is now +10 melee / 2 charge instead of 8 melee / 6 charge

- Heavy socket bayonet price reduced by -20

- Carbines no longer improve melee and charge damage so much. For example, a basic quality Jonkoping carbine is now +6 melee, +6 charge (which is still very high) and was previously +9 melee, +9 charge. 

- Muskets’ contribution to melee/charge damage has been reduced very slightly. A basic tula for example now provides +10 melee, +8 charge, instead of +15 melee, +9 charge

Quality of Life Changes

*I wish I had more here for this update but we were really focused on the AI. In the next few updates I do want to add more quality of life features like the ability to save your battle formation, or move your army as a group. I also want to add in some more languages, but that takes longer.

- Units now display their replenishment speed and unit type on the unit trees!

Modding Changes

- Group-selected props in the map editor are now rotated as a group instead of as several individual rotations to each object

- Some unit portrait fixes in the unit editor

- More modding support added to adjust AI behaviors

- We’ve finally exposed the “AI preferred line width.” This means if you want to fix the mod for 1:1 unit scale, it’s now possible. You can define the AI line width to be tighter if they have so many troops instead of spreading extremely thin across the whole map.

- The renowned regiments screen now has support for more than 10 units per nation, so it’s possible someone could mod in a huge expansion to the renowned units for both vanilla nations and modded nations.

- The Rise of Frederick battles can now be modded to use different units/maps/etc

- You can now ensure vanilla regions don’t show up in  the region selection, so if you’re doing an overhaul mod you can remove the old European regions that aren’t in use.

- Adding languages is fixed. You may have already noticed some language mods come up in the workshop in the last month. This is because we rolled out this fix onto a “modding branch” where users could opt in to use the patch early. It’ll be rolled out onto the default branch in this update. Users can localize the base game or other people’s mods into any language.

Bugfixes

- Many changes made to reduce the number of crashes. We will continue monitoring stability in the week following this update and make any more necessary changes to make sure the game is running well.

Achievement Changes

- Achievement fix to having 8 cossacks not triggering the relevant achievement

Localization Changes

- Changed the description for the pistol items since they have a new effect

- Changed the description of the cross pendants since it was outdated and described its old bonus

- Updated description for the lance items since they have a new effect

DLC Announcement

- In April we plan on releasing our first paid DLC which will bring Sweden into the game! They will get a unique mechanic similar to how the HRE received its own stance. In the case of Sweden, we will be giving them something a little bit more comprehensive than a new stance. More news on that in March! There will also be a few surprises that will come with this DLC which I will likely drop on the day of release.

Season 2 Greenlit

- I will be dropping a roadmap on March 6th which will reveal many new things coming to Master of Command during the Spring season!