Greetings, dear players of Flames in Modern Europe! I’m glad to announce that the largest update so far has just been released – version 0.3: The Nation Code!
The focus of this update was on adding new mechanics and improving gameplay. It brings much larger and more significant changes compared to previous updates and touches on every aspect of the game in one way or another.
This update drastically changes the game, adding many new gameplay elements, mechanics, graphical improvements, and—very importantly—optimizations. Here I will briefly outline the main changes, and below you can read the full changelog.
Mentality Mechanic
The game now has a brand-new feature – the mentality mechanic. You can find it in the state menu by pressing the “Our Mentality” button.
Mentality traits mainly affect different modifiers, in particular the growth of stability, corruption, tax efficiency, and ruling party support.
All countries already have certain mentality traits at the start of the game, but they are not always positive. Fortunately, you can not only research new ones but also remove your existing ones. However, this process takes quite some time, since people cannot be changed overnight...
Regional Population
Back in the demo version you could already see the population of your country, and it was quite dynamic thanks to stability. However, it was calculated as one total number for the whole country, which caused problems when playing as, say, Transnistria or Luxembourg, since conquering new territories didn’t increase population.
Now, a huge file with the population of all regions has been filled in, and you can finally see the population of each region in its respective menu. This makes the gameplay much more engaging.
Wars Between AI Countries
Previously, the game world was rather static: the player could attack other states, but nothing much happened globally. Now, AI-controlled countries will declare wars on each other depending on the aggression level set at the start of a new game. AI will also create armies from the very beginning, and in case of war, it will mobilize and later demobilize. Incredible changes in the world are already waiting for you!
Graphics Improvements
This is probably a regular part of each update, but this time the graphics have improved significantly.
First, the map has become much more volumetric thanks to updated shader normals. This makes it more beautiful and even “tastier.”
Second, borders have been reworked. This applies to both their color (previously state borders were light, now they are dark) and their logic—they are now much more precise, fixing a bug with displaying borders of some provinces.
Smooth borders have also been greatly improved—you can now choose the degree of smoothing in the menu!
Optimization and Modding
The game engine has been updated to Unity 6.1 to improve performance and speed. A large number of scripts have also been rewritten to enhance optimization.
And the most exciting part of this section—players can now write their own localization for mods and add custom sprites!
Below you can see the full list of changes:
Added new mentality mechanic
Population transferred to regions
Ability to cancel planned construction
Wars between AI countries
Reworked “status quo” peace treaty, sped up this event dozens of times
Peace treaties between AI countries
AI countries can now demobilize after war
Reworked brigade-related scripts for significant optimization and improved combat logic
Ability to destroy encircled armies
Army destruction without manpower
Map border quality settings replacing old smooth borders
Highlighting of selected province on the map
New events, especially related to new functions in the game
Rebalanced stability changes from administrative expenses
Ability to mod localization
Ability to mod icons
Game engine updated to Unity 6.1
Added Mac OS support
Border highlighting replaced with darkening for a better map look
Added normal map texture for the world map, greatly improving its quality
Other shader improvements
Fixed textures of various 3D objects, including armored vehicles
GPU optimization
FPS cap settings
Changed main cursor
UI improvements, added beautiful glow effects in various places
Reworked state menu
Fixed bug where AI sometimes didn’t create brigades
Manpower now updates in real time to prevent exploits
Reworked map shader to increase border detection accuracy
Brigade models now spawn at different angles
Added clock to in-game menu
Fixed settings menu during gameplay
Reduced game size
Now you must both own and control a region to create troops
Fixed volume settings bug
Other bug fixes
Automatic language detection on first launch
Massive optimization of state and army scripts, greatly improving performance and reducing CPU load
And much more!