Greetings, dear players of Flames in Modern Europe! Winter has come, but I have a way to make it a little warmer!
I’m glad to announce that update 0.5 is finally out!
Unlike previous updates, its development took almost twice as long, and it was focused on filling existing mechanics with content. In particular, Germany, France and Spain received full storylines with unique courses!
The main star of the update is Germany. It has the largest number of courses in the game, running from the 2013 Bundestag elections through the COVID pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even to EU unification! This is directly tied to the record support the game has received from that country, for which I thank you very much!
France and Spain were developed by new members of the dev team. They worked hard, and those countries also have more than 100 courses, but honestly there are still a lot of bugs. They will be fixed in upcoming patches.
Now let’s move directly to the new features. The first thing you’ll notice on the updated map of Europe is cities. Yes, there are a lot of them now. Not just many... THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM! Almost 1,800 cities across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East! This greatly fills the map and improves its perception and readability. But if for some reason — for example due to a very weak CPU or GPU — you don’t like that, you can still disable them in the settings.
Also note the localization of regions. If before most of them displayed a simple index in the region menu like "11", "67", "480" and so on, now every region has its own real name! And if you want to write some cheat to transfer a region, you can still disable their localization in "Other".
Now let’s talk about mechanics — mentality, parliament and economy — since they also received important changes and much richer content:
Mentality: in update 0.5 this mechanic makes much more sense — it now affects not only stability and corruption, but also Political Will (one of the most important things in the game), population growth, the Human Development Index, and even revenues of various businesses in certain cases!
But there is a flip side — now researching or removing a mentality requires points called Traits. At game start you have only one available Trait. In some cases you can get more via courses, or you can always spend 500 Political Will to get one via a decision.
Parliament: well... you can see for yourself — there are a lot more laws now! 🤩
Want — ban LGBT!
Want — create a telethon!
Want — open all borders! 🥳
Also — now passing any law costs 50 Political Will.
Economy: it was significantly improved in 0.4, and 0.5 doesn’t introduce huge changes, but new buildings appeared. For example: universities, hospitals, and even dual-use factories!
What for? Currently those factories don’t do much beyond increasing treasury income, but that’s enough to gain an important status. Of course you can build offices endlessly, but each new office will yield gradually less income, and sooner or later you’ll have to construct other buildings. That’s where factories come in.
Also note a substantial rebalance of the economy, including stability growth.
Army: a regular item in every update. Now AI countries don’t just attack nonstop — they try to think strategically. It doesn’t always work well yet, but if they have fewer troops than you, they will attack where your forces are absent, try to hold a single defensive line, and even try to retreat from encirclements!
Another very important detail is the brigade rebalance. Now creating each brigade requires twice as much Political Will, but in return they have an incredible and significant advantage — each brigade can capture UP TO THREE provinces at once, if there are no enemy forces there!
Yes, you read that right! You no longer need a million brigades to conduct a wide offensive into an empty, undefended country!
This was done to bring the game closer to realism, and this change will continue to be developed in the future.
Loading: in addition to the previous point, now all countries have troops from the start of the game. Unfortunately this significantly slows loading, but removes the lags that used to occur in the first months of the game. Also, the map itself now loads when it is launched, not when a new campaign is started. I’d also like to draw your attention to the new and very nice loading screens!
Sound effects: the game’s sound effects were completely updated. Now the game has high-quality and atmospheric soundtracks, and much better UI sounds. Attentive players will also notice birdsong and sea waves.
Below you can see the full changelog of the update... except for the changes I forgot:
The game engine was updated to Unity 6.3
Diverse content for Germany
Diverse content for France
Diverse content for Spain
Added region names
Added cities and their prices
Rebalanced prices for buying and selling regions
Added new mentality modifiers
Researching mentalities now takes 1 year
Added mentality Traits and the corresponding decision
Added new commands, e.g. annex country, add buildings to regions, add party support to laws and others
Added new laws to the parliament mechanic
Passing a law in parliament now costs 50 Political Will
Replaced the game’s soundtracks
Replaced UI sound effects
Added ambient sounds to the map
Added HDI to the country menu
Now, at the start of the Russian aggression, Russia also gets Kerch and starts a war in Donbas
Fixed bug with saving and loading troops
Added support for Steam Cloud saves
Updated loading process
AI countries load troops based on their files
Improved localization of course and mentality effects
AI countries received more complex military AI
Added new hidden states, including Bavaria, Saxony, Catalonia and others
Added the Syrian Liberation Army
Rebalanced the economy
Added a button to recenter course view
Added ability to reload courses, events and decisions with ALT+TAB
Updated FSR
Fixed various bugs
Other minor changes