Patch 1.242 - Performance & Tutorial Improvements

This update focuses heavily on eliminating stutters and freezes, especially in longer campaigns, and also doubles the size of the tutorial campaign to explain more.

Stutter Removal

• Monthly income no longer causes a frame spike -- the game previously processes every faction's maintenance, income, and upkeep in a single frame at the start of each month. This work is now spread across multiple frames so there is no visible hitch on the monthly tick

• Opening a battle for the first time no longer freezes the game -- the battle screen and all its widgets used to be created on demand when the first battle starts, causing a noticeable pause. The screen is now pre-built during the loading screen and reused for every subsequent battle

• Navy route calculations no longer freeze the game -- plotting a sea route previously runs a pathfinding query on the main thread that can stall for over 300ms (roughly 5 lost frames at 60fps). This now runs asynchronously in the background while the game continues

• Opening any screen for the first time is now instant -- all major UI screens (diplomacy, military overview, character finder, etc.) are pre-constructed and warmed up during the loading screen, so the first time you open them there is no stutter

• AI military decisions no longer cause late-game hitches -- the AI's pathfinding, tactical assignment, garrisoning, and naval landing queries are optimised and spread across frames so that large empires with many armies do not cause periodic freezes

• Military path updates are now spread across frames -- armies previously recalculate all their paths in a single burst, causing brief freezes in campaigns with many active armies. Paths now update incrementally each frame

• First-tick stutter after loading removed -- several startup tasks (court validation, daily maintenance) that previously run on the very first in-game tick now run during the loading screen instead

• Sea navigation precomputed -- the connections between sea navigation points are previously calculated at runtime every time a ship needs to move. These are now baked at editor time, making every naval pathfinding query faster from the start

Battle Performance

• Large battles no longer drop frames -- the battle tick system is overhauled with cached combat values, faster dead-unit removal, and short-circuited effectiveness checks. Battles involving hundreds of units are now significantly smoother

• Formation change cascades eliminated -- when multiple formations update at once (e.g. at the start of a battle), each change triggers a full UI rebuild. These broadcasts are now batched and flushed once, preventing the stacking frame drops

• Battle collision and targeting optimised -- collision cache invalidation is now deferred rather than immediate, and ineffective attack checks bail out early instead of running full calculations

UI & Interaction Performance

• Mouse hover and UI hit-testing optimised -- the per-frame cost of moving the mouse over the map and UI elements is reduced, which adds up to meaningful savings across an entire play session

• Character Finder opens faster -- the character list no longer rebuilds from scratch when the default view is already populated

• Military Overview no longer causes a hitch when opened -- stale data handling and the rebuild process are optimised

Memory & Stability

• Memory watchdog improved -- the system that monitors memory usage now uses a dynamic threshold and tracks growth rate, catching memory leaks earlier before they cause a crash rather than only reacting when a fixed limit is hit

• Memory watchdog crash diagnostics added

New Features

Encyclopedia

• In-game encyclopedia -- a searchable knowledge base accessible from the HUD that covers game mechanics, combat, economy, diplomacy, and more. Articles are rendered from Markdown with a sidebar, search, and clickable cross-references between entries

• Link tooltips and navigation -- clicking links within encyclopedia articles navigates directly to the relevant entry, and hovering shows a preview

• Combat stats documented -- dedicated encyclopedia entries, glossary definitions, and screen hints now explain what every combat stat does and how battles resolve, so players no longer need to guess what "Shock" or "Pursuit" mean

Glossary & Tooltips

• Interactive glossary terms -- highlighted words throughout the game's tooltips now show an inline definition popup when hovered, explaining game concepts without leaving the current screen. These appear across building tooltips, power bloc descriptions, military panels, and warning messages

• Nested tooltips -- glossary popups and entity links can now appear inside other tooltips. Hovering a term inside a tooltip opens a second tooltip on top, so you can explore related concepts without closing anything or navigating away

• Clickable entity links -- references to characters, settlements, factions, and power blocs in tooltips and warnings are now clickable, taking you directly to that entity's screen

• All locked buildings now display a reason explaining why they are unavailable, rather than silently being greyed out

Tutorial

• Post-victory objectives -- the tutorial now continues after the player's first military victory, guiding them into mid-game mechanics like diplomacy, power blocs and the Imperial Court

• Battle tutorial briefing -- a briefing screen now appears before the player's first battle, explaining the battle system and what each phase does so new players are not dropped into combat blind

• Tutorial campaign events rewritten -- the introductory campaign events are reworked with improved pacing and clearer guidance through the early game

• Tutorial sequence-breaking improved so players who complete objectives ahead of the tutorial are not blocked by it

Diplomacy & Politics

• Prisoner ransom system -- captured characters can now be ransomed back to their faction, with price based on their rank and importance

• Attempt Escape -- imprisoned characters can attempt to escape captivity, with success based on their skills

• Call to War -- a new diplomacy interaction to summon allies and subjects into an ongoing conflict

• Grant Subsidy -- send resources to a subject faction using a gift selector, helping them build up or recover from war

• Provinces now build buildings in their settlements using their own gold

• Abandon Foederati and Abandon Province -- new interactions for releasing unwanted foederati obligations or giving up distant provinces that are too costly to hold

• Province vassals rebel when surrendered -- if the player cedes a disloyal vassal's unoccupied territory in a peace deal, that vassal now rebels rather than quietly accepting the loss of their homeland

• Disloyal governors rebel when replaced -- replacing a governor who is already disloyal now triggers a rebellion, matching the existing behaviour when imprisoning disloyal characters

• Power bloc de-escalation -- power blocs that have escalated their demands now de-escalate when faction happiness recovers

• Power bloc type descriptions now shown in the sidebar, so players can understand what each bloc wants at a glance

Military

• Imperator trait -- Rephsian rulers who hold subjects now receive the Imperator trait, reflecting their imperial authority and providing associated bonuses. Characters without the trait are titled Dux instead

• Auto-assigned battle actions -- battle actions are now automatically assigned based on the commanding general's traits, so players no longer need to manually pick actions for every battle (but can edit them)

• Battle-damaged army warning -- armies that have recently taken heavy losses now show a warning icon on the map, making it easy to spot which forces need time to recover

• Command radius visible when garrisoned -- the command radius overlay now appears for garrisoned armies, not just armies on the map

• Unit tooltips overhauled with a cleaner rich text grid layout for combat stats

Map & Visuals

• Construction stripes on settlements in Economy map mode show at a glance which settlements are actively building, with tooltips showing what is in the queue

• Rioting settlements highlighted with stripes and a warning tooltip so players can spot unrest on the map without clicking every settlement

• Province tooltips added for Trade, Corruption, and Region Governor map modes, showing relevant province-level data on hover

• Religion conversion modal added with stage images showing conversion progress through distinct visual phases

UI & Quality of Life

• Display settings confirmation dialog -- changing resolution or display mode now shows a confirmation dialog with a countdown timer, automatically reverting if the player does not confirm (preventing being locked out by a bad resolution change)

• Auto-assign governors -- a checkbox on the diplomacy screen that automatically assigns governors to provinces that lack one

• Event frequency setting -- a new slider in Settings > Events controls how often LLM events appear

• Dismiss button in Imperial Court -- court members can now be dismissed (leaving the position empty), with clearer indication of which positions are subordinate to others

• "Not produced" label -- resources that a settlement does not produce now show "Not produced" instead of a confusing 0

• Culture and religion filters added to the Character Finder for narrowing down large character lists

• Console command output (for cheats) now routes to the in-game console, not just the log file

Balance Changes

• Default resource buy/sell ratio adjusted to 2:1 rather than 20:1 (it changes based on buy/sell)

• Negative income dampened when in debt to prevent unrecoverable economic death spirals where debt generates more debt

• Aristocracy stability goal now scales with war score and war type, so aristocrats are less demanding during small wars

• Several building upgrades that are statistical downgrades from their parent buildings are corrected

• Dyeworks production rates reduced significantly (are far too high relative to other production buildings)

• Foederati vassalage reluctance doubled in treaty negotiations -- foederati are harder to vassalise through diplomacy

• Migration distance halved and foederati territory blocked from migration

• One-time gold tribute capped by the sender's actual treasury (no more promising gold you do not have)

Localisation

• Encyclopedia articles translated across all supported languages with proper noun glossaries

• All languages retranslated with consistent proper noun glossaries for place names, faction names, and character titles

• Korean retranslated with consistent speech levels throughout

• Korean and Chinese translation prompts improved for more natural-sounding output

Bug Fixes

Crashes & Saves

• Fixed 4 crash types identified from player crash reports

• Fixed faction auto-destruction during save loading causing missing factions

• Fixed army embarkation state not persisting across save/load (armies forget they are on ships)

Military

• Fixed battle war score not being recorded when the losing side retreats, which can make wars impossible to end

• Fixed navy paths not updating while the game is paused

• Fixed "cannot garrison - under siege" tooltip incorrectly appearing on enemy settlements instead of friendly ones

Economy

• Fixed treasury display flickering during monthly income processing

• Fixed economy map mode not updating when the building queue changes

• Fixed duplicate build queue change notifications causing unnecessary UI rebuilds

• Fixed settlement renames not persisting

• Fixed max-level and sibling building exclusivity not enforced in the build queue

• Fixed building tooltip hover inadvertently adding garrison units and fortification to the settlement

Diplomacy & Politics

• Fixed power bloc happiness changes not broadcasting after interactions, which can leave the UI showing stale happiness values

• Fixed rebels not being treated as defeated when all their settlements are occupied by a foreign power

UI

• Fixed same-faction imprisonment edge cases

• Fixed Steam achievements not syncing

• Fixed battle notification not navigating to the battle when clicked

• Fixed governor portrait becoming unclickable after certain interactions

  Thank you and I hope you enjoy the update!

  Joe