World update

With this development update, Konkwest is now almost ready for release. A release, which unfortunately won't be coming as soon as I hoped it would. I had a multiplayer playtest session yesterday and there are still a number of relevant bugs to be fixed. I have therefore moved the expected release time for the game to May 2024. When Konkwest comes out I want every player to have a great time building their empire!

World

• Corrected elevation data for Asia, Africa, Australia, and Oceania so these continents now appear with more correct elevation in the game.
• The more a place's industry is developed, the more of a city appears there visually.
• Arabia: Added one additional place each to Yemen and Oman.
• China: Split Hebei into Northern, Southern, and Western Hebei, so it won't be as easy to defeat China by surrounding Beijing.
• Pakistan: Split Pakistan's former two places into four new ones: Eastern Balochistan, Sindh, Western Punjab, and Northern Pakistan.
• Uzbekistan: Created Karakalpakstan as a new place in western Uzbekistan.
• Sudan: Created the place Northern Sudan by splitting it off from Port Sudan.
• Tibet: Split Tibet into the places Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas (East, Center, and West), and Kunlun.
• Xinjiang: Created, in addition to the places Dzungaria and Tarim Basin, a new place for the Tian Shan.

Map modes

• New: Power per Country: This map mode colors the countries based on how powerful they are.
• New: Players: Only countries played by players in multiplayer are highlighted.
• Updated colors for neutral countries and places without country in the diplomatic map mode.

Music

• Added a new piece to the soundtrack: "A Palace for Spies" by Leon Richter.

NPC AI

• There are now difficulty options for the AI: easy, hard, and mixed. With the mixed settings some countries will use the easy AI settings, and some will use the hard ones.
• NPCs use the mechanics to change the region of places and to unite regions to expand their main region.
• NPCs unite their regions sometimes.
• NPCs send and answer truce requests more reasonably.
• NPCs typically target smaller countries when deciding who to attack.
• NPCs use regional specializations.

Game Mechanics

• There is now a button to develop industry in a specific region.
• Improved automatic naming for new regions.
• There is now a victory screen when only one country remains in the world, with a celebratory popup and fireworks.
• Added a filter for inappropriate words when naming things.
• Regional specializations now default to appropriate ones.

Netcode

• You can now choose "Automatic" as your server region (which is also the new default option).
• Improved player list synchronization.
• Improved player ready status synchronization.
• Improved player country synchronization.
• If plan submission in multiplayer fails for over 10 seconds the plans of players who didn't submit (due to a network issue) will be ignored.
• De jure country IDs are now synchronized when new countries spawn.

Keyboard shortcuts

• You can use Esc to open or close the main menu.
• You can use Enter to accept popups.
• You can use Backspace to decline popups.
• You can use the keys shown in tooltips to access specific functions in the game, when the respective buttons are visible, such as space to ready up and c to conquer.

Localization

• Place names on the globe now support Arabic characters.
• Added more translation content.

Android

• Reduced the size of the adaptive app icon foreground element to better fit typical display formats.

Bugfixes

• You can not attack a country immediately after making peace anymore.
• The People's Republic of China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Democratic People's Republic of Korea now have correct abbreviations.
• The develop industry in country button can no longer target level 10 places.
• Two NPCs can no longer remain on the world peacefully forever.
• Players joining a multiplayer game will now correctly stop playing their singleplayer country.
• When there are n players in the game and n-1 players are ready, the game no longer advances unintentionally.
• After peace agreements with land exchange the affected countries now perform an integrity check and label adjustments.
• When making a white peace the larger country now always returns land to the smaller country before the reverse.
• Fixed an error occurring when an attacker, winning a war through a peace deal, receives no places.
• You can immediately start playing a newly created custom country again.
• If the game detects a desync you will no longer stay in spectate mode.

Known Issues

• The turn timer is broken. It first causes some strange glitch and then two turns happen at once if it expires.
• Creating custom countries causes the game to soft lock.