I’m excited for you guys to use our new modding tools along with Steam workshop! I also did a lot of work to the game’s difficulty. I was finding a lot of players gravitated toward the easy modifiers. I want to make it less stressful to play on the vanilla difficulty and also give more of a reason for people to try out the harder difficulties. By making the vanilla experience a little bit easier, it means that the veteran players should be more comfortable on the higher difficulty settings rather than sticking to the normal difficulty. Major balance changes will continue being made for the next few months as I make adjustments based on player feedback, but starting in Spring 2026 the balance changes will be less extreme. If you're unhappy with any of these changes, just leave us feedback and we’ll be completely receptive to making further adjustments. Big sweeping balance changes shouldn't be a common occurrence next year.
- Your save games are going to be outdated. If you wish to continue an old save, right click on the game in your steam library and click on "properties." Then click on 1.0.4 to revert back to the old version. On this version you can continue your old save game without compatibility issues.
MODDING UPDATE
- Steam workshop support added!
- Documentation written on how to create mods:
- Users are able to modify, create, and remove nations, units, items, skill, and doctrines.
- All the in-game art for unit textures, models, officer portraits etc are editable
- JSON files are exposed to be edited, simple mods can be made that modify costs/effects of certain items/doctrines etc
- I’ve created a mod that makes the unit scale 1:1 for fun which is live now on the workshop. The AI does not work well with 1:1 scale, but it's still fun just to see what the armies look like at full size.
- Lead developer Thomas created a mod that increases the amount of encamped armies which is now live on the workshop.
- I also wanted to highlight three mods that are really interesting which a few community members made who had early access to the workshop. They include: Kruvasan's "Naked and Afraid" mod, which reduces your starting items/resources to 0 and you start with just 1 recruit. It's a great challenge mode if you are a masochist.
Second is Raspel's "Pugachyov's Rebellion" mod which is really incredible. In the week he had access to the modding tools he managed to make a bit of an overhaul mod which features a custom nation and unit roster based around a cossacks rebellion.
Third, is Windy's "Expanded Rosters" mod that adds a few new units. Seems like he's in the process of adding even more, so this will be a great mod to follow.
There are even more mods already in the workshop and I'm super excited to see what you guys make. We are 100% supportive of mods and will be supporting our modding tools with improvements in 2026. We'll also feature mods that we like and do our best to support a modding community.
- The difficulty of the game itself hasn’t undergone massive changes but the way difficulty is selected has. Now after selecting a nation you’re presented with a “Game Difficulty” screen. This is replacing the previous system where you had to click a gear icon and tinker with the modifiers before starting a campaign. This was necessary for me because a lot of new players did not want to jump into the settings gear when they were just starting out and it looked intimidating seeing a huge wall of modifiers. The other issue is that it was possible to play without selecting a difficulty at all which meant that new players were thrust into the deep end. With this new screen, the easy difficulty is selected by default for new players so that they can learn the ropes. Based on the overall balancing changes later in this change log, I think you’ll find the vanilla experience to be a little easier but many of the exploits like canister shot, cavalry carbines, or light infantry damage, have been addressed. This means the overall experience should feel more balanced.
- Difficulty preset names finalized. The progression works better here because previously “Lieutenant” was the easiest difficulty, but that officer rank is quite low (lieutenants command up to 50 soldiers). Replaced “General” as the highest difficulty with “Marshal” since that would be the highest rank (Field Marshal) and because “General” felt a bit generic (there are several kinds of generals). Another cool thing is that if you’re playing on Ironman Marshal difficulty, it’s easy now to refer to that as “Iron Marshal” difficulty short-handedly which sounds cool (also a reference to marshal Davout from the Napoleonic Wars).
- We’ve also added a campaign seed so you can save your favorite seeds or keep a seed saved that has good starting regions/doctrines to choose from. It’s also useful if you’re making a tutorial or guide and want a viewer to be able to follow along. It's also good in case you've been resetting your campaign over and over to look for a specific doctrine, now you can remember the seed. In a future update we plan on adding a "re-roll" feature so you don't need to reset your campaign to look for a specific doctrine.
- A new togglable “Historical Enemies” has been added. If you turn it off, you’ll face all the other enemy factions. If you leave it on, you’ll only face enemies from the Seven Years’ War.
- If the player selects the “Custom” difficulty they have access to the old view that displayed all the modifiers.
- Positive modifiers are no longer incompatible with Ironman Mode! This should make achievement hunting a little easier for the ironman-specific achievements.
- The “Scouting Parties” difficulty modifier now boosts enemy army move speed by +25% instead of +30%.
- The “Scouting Parties” doctrine has been renamed to “Observation Forces” in order to differentiate it from the difficulty modifier which had the same name.
- Officer death chance from “Reckless Officers” increased from +30% to +35%. This is because the base amount was reduced by 10% (you can read about this change under “battle changes”).
- AI pathfinding improvements so they no longer criss-cross each other and expose themselves to the firing line. The AI should do a better job maintaining formation now. The 1st picture is the new AI, the 2nd picture is a comparison to the old AI behavior.
- AI behavior fixed so that their artillery no longer pushes ahead of the main force, getting itself killed.
- New AI item selection system. AI will be biased toward equipping certain items based on their unit class and which act the game is in. They will choose items more optimally between each act. For example, artillery has a bias toward equipping elevation screws, gunners implements, and canister shot now. But that bias is lower in act 1 and becomes greater in each act.
- Items that relate to experience, attrition, and casualties restored are now exempted from AI use. This prevents them from bringing items that have no effect for them in battle and are therefore sub-optimal.
- AI primary and secondary weapon upgrades are now weighted on a unit type basis as well. For example, there’s less of a chance that you find recruits running around with jaeger rifles in the early game. I also made it guaranteed that the artillery gets a weapon upgrade in the act 3 boss, this way you don’t load into the final battle and the enemy is using iron 3-pound guns because they failed the dice roll to get the weapon upgrade.
- Cooldown added to AI charges if they shatter/break your unit. Previously, if you tried to disengage from a melee the AI would instantly re-charge you repeatedly making it so you could never attempt any sort of disengage. Now there is a pause for a few seconds if you pull out of a charge which gives you some room to try and escape.
- If you run around an AI unit with cavalry in and out of their view cone it will no longer cause them to freeze and become unresponsive.
- I redid the map tags so that you get greater map variety. Previously, some maps were locked exclusively behind certain terrain features. For example, the map I added in the previous update would only spawn if you fought directly on top of a marsh in the campaign map, which is incredibly rare. Now, all maps have been added to the regular map pool when fighting in an open area in the campaign map. You'll still receive marsh maps when fighting on marshes or forest maps fighting in forests though.
- New field map added. Lots of cover/terrain to fight over in the middle.
- New forest map added, this one has a darker terrain texture and lots of forests to fight over with a central creek that goes through the map.
- New farmland map, this one is flatter with less trees and just has a ton of big wheat fields. The grass color is a bit lighter too overall giving it more of an autumnal theme.
- Removed hills that are in the corner of two maps to discourage corner camping.
- Act 1 headquarters delayed by +10 days. Act 2 headquarters delayed by +15 days. Act 3 headquarters delayed by +20 days. This should give you a little more time in the harder regions to get your bearings.
- Headquarters movement speed momentum reduced by -40%. The HQ will pick up speed over time but I found that it was picking up too much speed and could look comical as it flew across the map. It also didn’t give you very much time to get your last 1-2 encounters done before it hits you.
- The 2nd HQ that appears after the first one is defeated in Act 3 now has its own delay time, so you get about a month to recover and replenish your troops before facing a secondary headquarters battle.
- Fixed a bug where the HQ movement speed wasn’t being reset between the 1st and 2nd HQs of Act 3. The HQ gains speed over time so that it always catches the player. The issue is that the speed was being increased over time and when the second HQ would spawn it would continue at that higher speed and catch you very quickly.
- The first Act 1 patrol you come across now has its own unique army composition which is smaller than a regular patrol but bigger than the depot battle. This should offer a slightly easier experience for new players, especially those who accidentally skip over the depot battle and run into a patrol.
- Act 3 patrols now only field 3 brigades instead of 4. This should mean that your entry into the region is less overwhelming with difficult enemies.
- Act 3 encamped armies now field slightly less powerful units
- Field armies slowed down by -5%
- Drilling veterancy gain for units increased by +25%. Drilling veterancy gain for officers increased by +50%.
- Foraging movement debuff is now -15% instead of -20%
- Cost of ammunition dropped by -25%. This is a pretty big change but I was just finding that running out of ammunition is a common occurrence and would cost a considerable amount of upkeep to keep your troops restocked at all times. Paired with the change to drilling XP gain, it should also make drilling less of a waste of time since it’s easier to purchase more ammunition now.
- Raiding now has a 20% chance of notifying the HQ instead of 25% per day.
- Raiding loot gain at villages increased from 2 -> 3 and at cities from 4 -> 5.
- The price ceiling for officers has been reduced slightly. For example, a max rank officer could cost up to 700 thalers and now can cost up to 650 instead.
- There is now a wider array of officer ranks at shops in acts 2 and 3 instead of all being higher level.
- Plunder cash gain increased by about 10% because I reduced the cost of all items which means selling items is less profitable.
- Pathfinding weights adjusted. The weight for the army to stick to the road has been reduced by about -30%. This should make your army feel a little more responsive and it should also save you on time. In the picture below my army took the southern route in just 5 days with the new pathfinding weight, but with the old pathfinding weights it took the northern route which took 7 days.
- The “Occupy” objective type now requires you to siege 3 forts to get the renowned unit instead of only 2
- I’m actually not sure if this was impacting the regular game but we were finding on our Unity build and the beta build that the settlement conditions which affected item cost weren’t doing anything, so that’s been fixed.
ENCOUNTER CHANGES:
- The “defenders sortie” encounter no longer takes you back to the “walls surrounded” part of the siege, but instead now take you to the “walls breached.” This means a sortie doesn’t take you back to the beginning of a siege any longer.
- I’ve replaced the option to get coin at the initial supply depot with an option to free prisoners to receive reservists. I think that cash was too obvious of an option and now you can just choose between having some extra reservists, provisions, or ammunition.
- Encounter weights have been adjusted greatly. Many encounters were specific to either Act 1, Act 2, or Act 3. It was a good idea on paper to make each region feel like it had its own unique encounters but it ended up just making encounters feel repetitive in those respective regions. There is still a weight system so that certain encounters are more common in certain acts.
- Fort encounters have been altered so that sieges are slightly less common, and the other encounters like a prisoner exchange or command headquarters are more common.
- Glitch fixed where if you accidentally double clicked on an encounter choice it would execute the option twice.
Let me start off by stating that any of the changes to doctrines are not set in stone. If any of the changes are unpopular or need a buff/debuff, we will be open to feedback and continue making adjustments. We are also not going to do such sweeping changes next year, so you don’t have to worry about all of your favorite armies/doctrines being overhauled again next year.
- Russia’s “Extended Supply Lines” debuff reduced to +15% provision consumption instead of +20%
- Russia’s “Imperial Army” doctrine changed from a discount on recruit-tier units to instead be casualty restoration. This overlaps with Hanover’s doctrine which is why we changed that (later in the changelog). I think it’s more appropriate for the casualty restoration buff to be on Russia since they have large units with high morale that tend to fight and sustain heavy losses. In December, when I rework their unit tree, I plan on adding some unique “converged” units which will essentially be musketeer regiments with 1600-2000 men in them. I think this doctrine will work especially well with that change. I also changed Russian officer Chernyshev to have the “brave” trait that reduces morale damage taken but increases fire damage received. Finally, the Imperial Army starts with an additional serf recruit as well as blanket rolls.
- Russia’s “Cossack Host” bonus didn’t lean heavily enough into raiding. I took the old “plunderer” doctrine that any nation could get that increased raiding thalers and gave that to the cossacks instead, then took the old cossack bonus and made that one generic. As will be mentioned later in this changelog, the cossacks also now all start with hussar sabres.
- France’s brigade cost buff increased to be -50% and its debuff is now a +10% tax on resources (manpower/ammo/food) instead of a daily 1 thaler bleed from officers. I had done the math and France was actually losing more money than they were saving from the previous -25% brigade cost, -1 thaler per officer. This is because players are spending a long time campaigning in regions compared to several months ago, and so the daily bleed is more impactful than it was pre-release.
- France’s “Lower Rhine Army” doctrine is a little too versatile. I changed the “Melee +1% per regiment fielded” to “Infantry melee +1.5% per regiment fielded.” So this is now specifically an infantry-oriented composition, this helps distinguish itself from the King’s Household composition which is meant to be cavalry-focused. To compensate for the debuff, they start with 100 ammunition instead of 50 and they also now start with a light bayonet as well as a diamond pendant.
- France’s “Light Corps” feels a little weak to play with and so I’ve given them an additional unit, a Volontaires Provincial Cavalry. I also reduced their malus to be -20% replenishment instead of -25%. Finally, I replaced their wooden stakes with canteens since they’re meant to be more mobile & light.
- France’s “King’s Household” bonus didn’t feel that interesting since French cavalry morale is already decent. And considering a weak-point of the French is supposed to be morale, it feels odd to give them that as a bonus if that’s their national weakness. So instead we’ve changed their bonus to -25% melee damage received for cavalry. We wanted their composition to feel like armored knights, so the playstyle for them is to equip damage reduction items and minimize losses in hand-to-hand combat. The new drawback is that all non-cavalry units cost +10% more.
- Austrian “Multinational Army” doctrine has had its debuff of -20% veterancy gain for recruits reduced to only be -15%
- Austrian Crownland Corps has had their medicine swapped out for gunner’s implements for their artillery!
- Austria’s “Hungarian Vanguard” is overshadowed pretty heavily by the other two Austrian compositions. I buffed the Light Cavalry charge damage from +20% to +25%. And I reduced the infantry accuracy malus from -15% accuracy to -10% accuracy. Paired with the the light cavalry buffs (mentioned later in this changelog) it should make this composition pretty attractive. They also now start off with an extra item, stiffened jackets.
- Austria’s “Mounted Marauders” doctrine that they can get as a region reward has had a bonus effect added which boosts light cavalry movement speed
- Austria’s “Tyrolean Mountaineers” doctrine now doubles the combat bonus from elevation instead of increasing it by +50%
- Austria’s “War Council” doctrine only now discounts officers by -75% instead of by -50%
- British “Coffers Over Corpses” doctrine was getting the player too many thalers by the end of the campaign, even accounting for the brigade cost penalty. I’ve reduced it only very slightly to +8 per day instead of +10. The player should still earn a free +$3,038 on average, even accounting for the higher brigade costs.
- British default comp wasn’t changed much, they have their starting gold reduced by just -50. However, their drilling generally has been buffed and ammunition is cheaper so playing into their double drill effectiveness bonus should be FAR easier!
- Britain’s “Hanoverian Corps” has been completely changed since casualty restoration has gone over to Russia instead. I used this as an opportunity to make something totally unique. Their troops will gain a +10% combat effectiveness buff when in command radius of an officer (does not stack w/multiple officers). And their malus is that they lose -10% morale when outside of the officer’s range. So this will lean very heavily into command and control. Perhaps a nice historical connection is that Britain/Hanover lost the battle of Hastenbeck partially due to miscommunications with officers as a retreat was called prematurely in the battle. So this doctrine helps reflect that as long as you have competent officers and are in range of your troops, then you’ll be able to fight very well. And historically, after Hanover rejoined the war and got new commanders (replacing the Duke of Cumberland) they performed much better. I also replaced the officer skill of von Sporcken with “Loud” which boosts the command radius to help you play into this more.
- Britain’s “Subsidy Troops” (“Blue Shield” doctrine) have had a major change. I’ve disliked how similar they were to the White Horse where essentially both compositions reduce damage taken. In the case of the White Horse (now the Russian Imperial Army) it restores casualties, and for the Blue Shield it reduces damage received. Furthermore, reducing damage outright isn’t really a playstyle, it’s more of a cheat. At least with the Observation Corps (which also reduces fire damage), you need to utilize cover. So in order to give the Subsidy Troops a bit more of a playstyle we’ve made a unique modifier for them which is a cost reduction to opening up the item slots. It doesn’t sound powerful, but it’s now incredibly cheap to open up all the item slots on a unit which saves you hundreds if not thousands of thalers by the end of the game (assuming you’re playing “tall”), and this pairs nicely with the cost reduction to items generally. I also reduced the malus from +75% reservist cost down to +50% reservist cost. And finally, I renamed “The Blue Shield” to now be “The Blue Coat.” It was called blue shield previously since it provided protection from fire damage. But the blue coat works better since their flag has a blue coat of arms and they wear blue coat uniforms, so it’s a better play on words. They have also had their starting reservists reduced by -250. However, they now come with 8 items which is the only army composition to have that! You can immediately open up a bunch of item slots and deck out a unit.
- Prussia’s “Freikorps Volunteers” has been changed to make their malus less extreme. Instead of +75% prisoner rewards (which was slightly too high in the late-game, it was possible to conscript more prisoners than were actually even present in the battle) it’s been marginally reduced to +60%. The bigger change however is instead of bleeding -5 reservists per regiment per day, it’s now -3 reservists deserting per regiment daily. We also upgraded the starting “Freikorps Recruit” to a Freikorps Musketeer to make them a little sturdier in the early-game. Based on the data we found most people avoided this composition due to how punishing the malus instantly felt when starting a new campaign. It’s also the case that Freikorps troops aren’t that powerful and their unit tree is shallow, but this will be remedied in December when we improve the Freikorps roster by adding new units.
- Prussia’s “Old Corps” has been reduced from getting +20% combat effectiveness to +15%. The +15% is still extremely strong, but 20% was simply too high because combat effectiveness buffs reload skill, accuracy, melee skill, and charge skill. They’ve also lost their starting beer to give them more of the feeling of a professional force.
- If you’re interested in why a lot of these changes were made, here’s some data we’ve been collecting based on the favorite/least favorite armies to play. We have some additional polls as to why people felt the way they did about the disliked compositions which is what influenced many of these changes. You can see below that the Freikorps were highly disliked (due to punishing malus and poor unit tree which is being reworked in December), the Imperial Army is disliked (boring bonus and really punishing food consumption for their national doctrine. Also the Russian unit trees are poorly made and will be redone in December), the Cossack host is disliked (light cavalry are currently very weak, we’re working improving that with this update and another fix later in January), and the Light Corps is disliked (primarily due to few starting units and not a very powerful doctrine).
- The Prussians are highly disliked purely because of how negatively the Freikorps has been received. Hoping to remedy that by the end of December with their new unit tree along with November’s update of their doctrine and starting units. Russia is also highly disliked due to how punishing the food consumption malus is and how bad light cavalry is for the cossacks composition.
- Frontline Focus doctrine reduces fire damage by -10% now instead of -15%. But the malus has been more majorly reduced from +30% flanking damage received to only +20% flanking damage received.
- All items in the game reduced in cost by -20 (doesn’t include weapons/cannons, and horses were only reduced by -10 instead of -20). I want players to feel more motivated to go shopping at settlements whereas right now it feels like the items are often too expensive to justify purchasing them and you’d rather rely on loot instead. This does have the side-effect of making selling loot off a little less profitable though. That’s the reason I increased plunder slightly to compensate.
- All of the hussar/dragoon/cuirassier swords have come down in price by -20 for all qualities. The specialty swords like heavy/pallash/basket-hilt have stayed the same though.
- All powderhouse items reduced in cost by a further -10 (meaning -30 total)
- Elevation screws now provide 5%, 10%, 15% range buff for each level of quality instead of 10%, 15%, 20%.
- The Holliday artillery treatise now improves reload by 6, 8, 10 instead of 8, 10, 12. It also no longer increases max range at all but instead reduces ammunition consumption by -5%, -10%, -15%.
- Medicinal herbs reduce casualties by 15%, 20%, 25% instead of 20%, 25%, 30%
- Grenade range increased by +10 distance per grenade. I was finding it that you had to get so close to an enemy to throw your grenade that by the time you did, you were taking 1-2 volleys which made it not worth it.
- Grenades no longer gain throw distance based on quality, only damage.
- Iron grenades lose 5% damage but increase 5% throw range
- All muskets and carbines have been increased by +1 in reload time (slower to reload). That said, “Good” and “Excellent” quality muskets and carbines now reduce the reload time (they previously did not affect reload time at all). So basic muskets are marginally worse in reload, but good and excellent muskets are now slightly better than they currently are.
- We’ve recalibrated the accuracy bar for muskets/carbines. Now if it says “35” the bar is pretty high up, whereas previously 35 accuracy would be very low for a gun even though the guns only go up to around 45 accuracy (excellent jaeger rifle).
- Grapeshot never spawning at powder houses has been fixed
- Any item that reduces attrition now reduces 10% more attrition than they did previously, making them more useful.
- The player’s supply wagon was being shattered by enemy fire randomly leading to a lot of frustration. We found it was a bug and so your supply wagon shouldn’t be getting randomly destroyed.
- Increased charge damage multiplier on flanking charges from 1.6 to 2.4. It’s most noticeable if charging into the flank of an unbraced unit, but against braced units the increase isn’t as potent. The morale impact hasn’t been modified, but actual kills have. This value sounds extreme but in testing I notice a +6% kill damage increase on rear-charging a braced unit. The amount is higher if the unit is unbraced.
- Officer death chance threshold reduced. It used to start rolling a dice to kill the officer with any damage taken if your unit had less than 50% HP. Now the diceroll only begins at 40% HP.
- Fixed a major bug where units would get stuck on the models of shattered/retreating units. This resulted in the player having to repeatedly right-click to get their unit (typically cavalry) out of a melee with shattered unit models. Now, if a unit is retreating/shattered, your troops will prioritize the given order instead of attempting to continuously engage the running troops. You can also now give a charge order even if your unit models are touching the models of shattered units. Previously you’d need to just right-click through the charge destination in order to get your guys to engage.
- Major glitch fixed with reload stats. As seen in the image below the unit in the camp screen has a reload skill of 105 (5.7s) but in battle has a reload skill of 92 (8.0s). This stat disparity glitch has been fixed.
- Your units will no longer auto-target shattered units.
I finally got around to doing a proper balance pass on artillery. When the game first launched they were too powerful and I had to quickly weaken the power of artillery but I ended up making solid shot feel a little weak. The result was that most players stuck to (and abused) canister shot which had several exploits that could allow you to rack up thousands of kills. My goal was to make the specialty ammunition less overpowered and make solid shot more useful.
- Fixed a bug that let you target enemy units who were blocked using canister shot. This allowed players to fire through multiple enemy units in order to hit a reserve unit like artillery. Now, if the fire is blocked the damage is applied on the front unit and not the target behind them.
- Artillery can no longer fire canister shot or grapeshot through light infantry
- Hidden artillery stats are now all fully revealed which includes the “blast radius” and “canister damage” each gun has. Some guns are better at firing with canister than others, and some guns might have a larger blast radius (making them better for targeting larger groups) vs others which are more precise but have a poorer radius.
- Artillery now receives -50% less fire damage from muskets and canister shot making them a lot less fragile in combat. It should be possible now to deploy artillery closer to the frontline (to serve a battalion artillery role) without risking losing it. It’s also now harder to exploit the use of canister shot to lob it into enemy artillery and destroy it instantly.
- High-caliber (heaviest cannons of each type) artillery have had their accuracy increased by +5%
- Effective range of field guns (non-howitzers) have been increased about +15%
- Reload time of field guns (non-howitzers) reduced by 5s (making them faster)
- Bronze guns no longer get a 5s reload buff compared to their iron counterparts since they already have a buff in accuracy by +10 higher compared to the iron guns and have greater range
- All artillery solid shot morale damage increased by +5%
- Artillery counter-battery fire deals 10% more hp damage (can kill off other artillery faster, and higher HP damage will result in greater morale loss)
- All artillery pieces have been made cheaper
- Canister shot has a new parameter where it has range dropoff, it previously did not have any. Now it will lose 50% of its total damage if it’s firing close to max range. This penalty is dynamically reduced the closer you’re firing. This means that if you equip canister shot with a bunch of range buffs you won’t be able to use it as a sniper anymore.
- All light cavalry has been bumped up to 500 manpower. I just found that generally light cavalry would drop off in Act 3 because of the lethality of combat. This should also make the provincial cavalry a little more resilient.
- Cavalry shooting damage reduced by -20%.
- Cavalry can no longer fire their carbines through other cavalry units.
- Fixed a bug where when assigning a carbine to a cavalry unit they wouldn’t get the melee/charge stat benefits. This rendered about half the carbines useless because some carbines specialize in melee and have a poorer accuracy stat.
- Cossack cavalry now have sabres by default instead of worn swords.
- Some cavalry units had the wrong walk speed and have been buffed. Generally, light cavalry should gain +30 from their walk speed, and heavy cavalry gains +20 from their walk speed. Hungarian hussar (buff), Russian hussar (buff), Russian cuirassier (buff), French royal cavalry (debuff)
- French chevauxleger accuracy increased by +5
- British provincial, light dragoon, and dragoon cavalry accuracy reduced by -5
- Russian and Austrian horse grenadier melee reduced by -5 which makes them less outright superior to the cuirassier option
- Open order damage reduction is now only -50% instead of -60%
- As aforementioned, artillery can no longer fire canister shot or grapeshot through light infantry
- Light infantry units can no longer leave open order. I would like to try this change because there are a lot of exploits you can do like switching to line formation right before a charge hits you in order to completely avoid the melee penalty from open order. There’s also an exploit where if you line up several open order units you can toggle them into line and have them all fire over each other which is too powerful. Maybe we can change this later if we have time to create a better solution.
- All light infantry units have had their reload stat reduced by -5
- Didn’t do too much work here since in December we’re expanding on the unit trees and it’s going to throw a lot of my balancing off anyways. There are some more unit changes listed under a few other sections, like the cavalry changes below.
- Swiss units have had their morale reduced by -5
- Irish units have had their melee buffed by +5
- British unit accuracy no longer increments by +10 per upgrade and is now only +5 per upgrade. It’s still higher than other nations, but no longer receives a disproportionate upgrade amount per level.
- All supply wagons gain +5 morale
- All ammo types are now additive and not multipliers. This means they benefit lower-tier troops more than they did previously but they don’t scale as well with higher-tier troops. The issue is that the excellent buckshot rounds improved accuracy by +70%. If your base accuracy was 20 then that meant you went up to 34 accuracy which is a +14 increase which isn’t very impressive. However, if you stacked the right items and had around 80 accuracy, then the 70% increase brought you to 136. This meant you were getting +56 accuracy, and it’s even worse when stacked onto light infantry who already get a firepower buff. Below are the changed values of the ammo types. In the same examples used, the 20 base accuracy unit would now get increased up to 55 (+35) which is higher. And the high tier unit with 80 base accuracy would go up to 115 (+35) which is lower.
I wanted to also do an update to the game's doctrines but ran out of time, I'll save that for December and probably will add a few new ones too if we're able.
- The “calculated” trait which provides +15% artillery range and -5% artillery reload has had its reload penalty increased to -10%. I was finding it too common for people to stack range increase trait/items on their artillery without much of a drawback at all.
- The “burly” trait which increased grenade throw range by +40% and melee damage by +5% now only increases grenade throw range by +25%. This is because the base throw range for grenades was increased and burly was then able to allow you to throw grenades about 1.5x the distance you could fire a musket which seems very wrong.
- Fixed the spartan description which mentions stamina regain when in reality it just affects stamina
- Fixed the skill description for “efficient” which mentions stamina regain when in reality it just affects stamina as a skill.
- Fixed a bug where officer traits that provided veterancy weren’t working properly
- Changed zealous to only get a +5% fire damage received penalty instead of +10%
- The “inspiring” trait now provides officer radius morale +15% instead of morale +15% and has been made an “uncommon” trait instead of rare. Officer radius morale modifies the base amount of morale an officer provides. So if you have an officer that provides 10% morale to those in his proximity, then the 15% from the inspiring trait will be added to it. It essentially makes the brigade officer much more powerful to those in his command radius. It is synergized well with any trait or doctrine that boosts the size of that command radius.
- The new “confident” trait now provides morale +15% instead of morale +10%.
- The precise trait now gives +10% accuracy and reduces melee skill by -5% instead of +15% accuracy and -10% melee
- I gave this its own section just so I can explain the rationale. I’m going to do a deeper, more case-by-case balance pass in December or January but for now I just wanted to lay some groundwork. I’ve noticed that buying recruits is generally not worth it unless you’re buying your first 1-2 units of the game. When you factor in that the Fusilier (or just non-recruit units in general) come with pre-equipped weapons and bayonets, then it makes even less sense to buy a recruit. In the following case it appears that there’s a $300 price difference between the recruit and fusilier but when you factor in equipment it’s only a $185 difference. That amount is so negligible that you’re almost always better off taking the higher-tier unit. So with this balance pass I’ve made recruits a little cheaper and higher-tier units a little more expensive.
- All recruit-tier (and provincial cavalry) units are now -25 cheaper
- All non-recruit tier units are now +50 more expensive (except battalion artillery, whose price is unchanged)
- Because ironman can now be used alongside positive modifiers, it means you can now unlock any achievement that requires ironman + difficulty modifiers while also enabling some positive modifiers. So if you’ve been stuck trying to get an achievement that requires 3 or even 10 negative modifiers w/ironman, you can now stick on some positive modifiers to make it less frustrating.
- Russian “Don’t Steppe on Me” achievement changed to only require 8 cossacks instead of 12.
- British Gott Schutze den Konig achievement changed to only require 10 non-British regiments instead of 12.
- Reworded “Have 8 cavalry regiments equipped with a horse item at one time as The Habsburgs” (used to say “horse upgrades”)
- Reworded “Friedrich” to “Frederick” in the English localization for the RoF campaign achievements
- Reworded “Destroy 6 encamped armies during one playthrough as Prussia,” (used to say “elite armies)
- Reworded “with 3 difficulty modifiers” and “with 1 difficulty modifier” to now specify it must be a negative modifier
- All achievements that required ironman with difficulty modifiers now require either 3 negative modifiers or 5 instead of 1, 3, 5. This is because we now allow players to turn on positive modifiers when going for these challenges. So it is possible to complete all achievements in the game using positive modifiers if you need them!
- Hotkey added that was missing for you to change the button that toggles the “lock to melee” function on a unit
- New ability to sort your items by highest value or by item type. You can also use the other filters to stack with this new sorting option, like only display swords and sort them by value.
- Hovering over volley fire displayed the wrong tooltip, that’s been fixed in battle.
- Fixed supply trains bending in awkward ways like in the following screenshot
- Minor edit to the Schaumburg-Lippe artillery bust made to be more accurate.
- I was not a fan of the “+++” “---” system on the item descriptions for weapons. It often wasn’t even accurate when the weapons would go up to good/excellent quality since their stats were altered so much the deficiencies weren’t entirely accurate. Now, weapons will just tell you basic information about what’s good about them and what’s bad.
- Weapons no longer show their accuracy as a percentage, as this was not correct. The accuracy stat of a weapon is additive, not a percentage modifier.
- Artillery can be spread out a little bit further, specifically because the 5th Royal Artillery for France was unable to form a full line since it has 9 guns.
- Minor fixes to officer names. “Rebentisc” renamed to “Rebentisch” as a possible German name for an officer. And “Charles Gustavus” fixed as a potential British name, it contained two spaces accidentally.
- Rise of Frederick view in widescreen fixed
- Fixed the text “+x% morale in command radius” on officers. They aren’t providing a percentage morale buff, they are providing a flat amount. In this case it’s +8, not +8%.
- Hovering over an item it will tell you the sale price now “Worth: 275”
- Updated the supporter edition to include new HD wallpapers!
- Updated the supporter edition artbook to include this loading screen
- Added a few missing songs to the soundtrack for supporter edition (“dance of armies,” and the battle marching music).
- Added trading cards, emotes, and profile backgrounds
That's everything guys! Thanks for all the support, we apologize the update came last-minute in November. The December update will be out before Christmas and then we will take our first break since the release of the game. Below is the roadmap, and I've crossed out everything we've achieved so far. In January we will be renewing support for Master of Command for another 3 months, so you can look forward to continued development in Spring 2026!